Word: blanco
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...weeks ago Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco called upon me to serve on the Louisiana Recovery Authority. I accepted. We are now working urgently with President George W. Bush, the Louisiana congressional delegation, state and local leaders, Mayor Ray Nagin and parish officials to rebuild the Gulf Coast communities in a way that will give people the confidence to return. That will require a strong hurricane-protection system of safe levees and coastal wetlands, updated building codes so people can reconstruct with a sense of security, business incentives that will create opportunity, and school reforms that will draw people home...
Repair and cleanup are linked, to some degree, with planning what New Orleans should look like five years from now. The Louisiana Recovery Authority, appointed by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, met in November with hundreds of New Orleans residents to develop priorities, brainstorm ideas with planners and businessmen, and present a unified voice. The Authority vice chair Walter Isaacson petitioned Congress last week for help in establishing a "recovery corporation" as a vehicle for the city's rebuilding neighborhoods. Donald Powell, the new hurricane czar appointed by George W. Bush, said his job is to listen and gather facts...
Failures aren't born. They're made. Before Hurricane Katrina, it wasn't the job of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to plan for the evacuation of the elderly and poor from New Orleans. Afterward, she wasn't in charge of the federal response. But it was her job to give her constituents heart by looking decisive, steadfast and capable. Even if she wasn...
When it mattered most, Blanco appeared "dazed and confused," says Bernie Pinsonat, a bipartisan political consultant in Baton Rouge, La. When NBC's Matt Lauer asked her whether it was hard to find words to reassure the public, she tried to muster optimism, then circled back to despair. "You know, our people out here are so fearful. They're so worried ... It's a nightmare...
...public might have forgiven her. But, Pinsonat says, "you've got to convince them you're in control." Instead, Blanco waited seven weeks to appoint a recovery commission. She was slow to call the legislature back into session to deal with a nearly $1 billion decline in tax revenue. Her suggested cuts--to education and health care--came under fire last week as unrealistic. In 21 years in state politics, Blanco, a Democrat, was always cautious and deliberative. But those qualities have turned into liabilities...