by JAY ARENA
On February 12 a federal court convicted former New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin on 20 of 21 counts of bribery and fraud that carries a maximum sentence of over 200 years. Following the announcement the predictably shallow, hypocritical commentary quickly commenced. The first to weigh-in was the recently reelected Mayor, Mitch Landrieu, the son of former mayor Moon Landrieu who was a paid agent of the city’s most powerful developer, Joe Canizaro, before, after and some say during his time as mayor.
“My first thought is it’s a terribly sad day for the city of New Orleans”, Landrieu sighed, but then reassured his audience that “the city of New Orleans has been in different hands the past four years…and we’re making great progress, and we like the new way.” Nagin’s predecessor, National Urban League “CEO” Marc Morial, who himself faced an investigation by the US attorney’s office, lamented that the conviction damaged “New Orleans in an immeasurable…way” but, like Landrieu, saw the positive since the harm was not “irreparable.”
Likewise, Jason Berry, whose blog “American Zombie” played a central role in exposing the corruption, emphasized how the “prosecution and conviction are important for our city” since it would move New Orleans beyond the corruption that supposedly holds it back. In contrast, the story-line nationally was that of another “corrupt Louisiana politician,” with the Washington Post lamenting that Nagin simply ended up “absorbing the corrupt ethos” of New Orleans and Louisiana that “he had promised to fight.”
What all the superficial commentary missed is that Nagin was convicted on the least of his crimes. Yes, “Ray Reagan,” as the former Cox Cable executive was known, should be jailed for his kickback schemes, especially his arrangement with Home Depot to squash a living wage and neighborhood employment requirement in exchange for contracts for his family’s counter-top business. Likewise New Jersey Governor Chris Christie should be prosecuted for his gangster-style tactics on behalf of developers, which is but one example among many that underscores corruption is by no means exclusive to the Pelican State or Big Easy. But the real crimes – the police murders and assaults of Katrina survivors, the systematic looting of the city’s public sector in the aftermath of Katrina, the flagrant violations of international law, the permanent expulsion of over 100,000 low income New Orleanians – should have been the ones that placed Nagin in the dock. These are the crimes that neither Nagin’s fellow Democrats, nor Republicans, neither the liberal Soros nor rightist Koch wings of the capitalist class, that neither the corporate media nor subservient intellectuals could comment on. Why? Because they were all co-conspirators, along with now disgraced Nagin, in these crimes.
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