Word: blancos
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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...
...last week at the first public meeting of his Bring New Orleans Back Commission. Just days earlier, without consulting the commission, he had announced a controversial proposal to allow casino gambling in several large downtown hotels--only to see the idea panned by everyone from Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to chambermaids. And his opponents certainly haven't forgotten his performance in the first, darkest days after Katrina, when Nagin admonished sluggish federal officials to "get off your asses" but then indulged what turned out to be unfounded rumors of rampant murder and rape and wildly exaggerated estimates...
...around the time he endorsed Republican Bobby Jindal over Democrat Blanco in the 2003 race for Governor--a miscalculation that has left a noticeable chill in his relationship with Blanco--New Orleanians began to have second thoughts about Nagin. For all his reforms, residents wondered whether their long-awaited antipolitician could realize critical projects like transforming the city's abysmal schools or breaking its dependence on the low-wage tourism industry. In a city suffering some of the nation's highest poverty and crime rates, African Americans questioned whether their concerns fit on Nagin's pro-business agenda...
...Nagin sometimes comes across as impatient or irascible, or his agenda as hurried or business-centric, his allies say, it's because New Orleans' fiscal problems--which he has said will result in layoffs of possibly 3,000 municipal workers--are so pressing. In a letter to Blanco, Nagin recently laid out his vision for a new, more prosperous New Orleans. It includes creating charter schools, loosening restrictions on the city's ability to levy taxes and passing state-income-tax exemptions for manufacturers who set up plants to process some of the 23 million tons of raw materials--such...