I was listening to a previously recorded
Garland Robinette show this afternoon on WWL. I think that it was from last week and C Ray was the guest. He has a regular monthly appearance where Robinette throws softballs and Nagin dodges some of the tougher questions from the live callers. Today a caller asked, "in your personal opinion, what have been the biggest successes of your second term?" A good question, I thought. Nagin paused for a moment and this is what he came up with:
- Bringing 300,000 people back into the city. I don't know about you, but I'm quite sure that Nagin didn't factor into my moving back into my home. In fact, I don't remember him filling my gas tank and I certainly don't remember him picking up the household trash that festered outside of my house for weeks on end.
- Nagin pats himself on the back for cleaning up the city and lifting people's spirits. Do you remember how long those cars sat under the I-10 overpass? Months and months and months. In fact, I seem to think that it was over a year before the cars were cleared. It took Nagin that long to find the right towing company for the right price when it was rumored that one company offered to PAY US to take possession of the flooded vehicles.
- Lastly, Nagin claims that he has succeeded in providing utilities to most of the city. I'm not sure what he had to do beyond give a single command to the Sewerage and Water Board and a nod to Entergy. Speaking of utilities, I'm not sure I'd want to take any sort of credit for what Entergy is doing right now given the sky-rocketing utility prices.
So, there you have it. Nagin himself can't come up with a good enough justification for his paycheck.
