"Mardi Gras revelry not muted by rain, gloomy skies" by Stacey Plaisance and Michael Kunzelman | Associated Press, February 13, 2013
NEW ORLEANS — Despite threatening skies, the Mardi Gras party carried on as thousands of costumed revelers cheered glitzy floats with make-believe monarchs in an all-out bash before Lent.
In the French Quarter, as usual, Fat Tuesday played out with all its flesh and raunchiness.
Crowds were a little smaller than recent years, perhaps influenced by the forecast of rain. Still, parades went off as scheduled even as a fog settled over the riverfront and downtown areas.
Police, who had to deal with massive waves of visitors — first for the Super Bowl and then for Mardi Gras — reported no major problems other than Saturday night when four people were shot on Bourbon Street. A suspect has been arrested.
Related:
"Gunshots erupted in a crowd of bead-wearing, drink-carrying late-night revelers on Bourbon Street during the countdown to Mardi Gras, wounding four people and sending bystanders running and screaming. Hours later Sunday, though, the same stretch was packed with partiers who said they weren’t letting the violence dampen their fun."
Okay then.
There was a heavy police presence in the tourist-filled French Quarter, where crowds began to swell in the early afternoon and would be bursting at the seams by the time police on horseback declared the party over at midnight.
That's good.... I guess.
The family side of Mardi Gras unfolded along stately St. Charles Avenue....
Cliff Kenwood and his wife, Jennie, of New Orleans, each dressed as a skeleton, wore a banner around his hat referencing the recent publishing changes to the city’s newspaper — The Times-Picayune.
The costumes poked fun at the paper’s decision to cut back from a daily publishing schedule to three days a week.
‘‘We’re black, white, and dead all over,’’ Jennie Kenwood said laughing.
Oh, the corporate media isn't laughing.
She said their family kept their subscription even though they thought about canceling. ‘‘We can’t do it to them. We don’t want them to die,’’ she said.
I don't think you can save them.
Related: Breakfast Buffett
Quite a spread, huh?
Rain or shine, it was a last chance to soak in some fun during the Carnival season, which ends with the start of Lent on Wednesday....
On Bourbon Street, women wore bustiers, fishnet stockings, bikini bottoms, and little else. Some flashed flesh to attract the attention of people throwing beads from balconies.
‘‘We’re a flock of peacocks,’’ said Laura Komarek, a recent New Orleans transplant from Minneapolis who moved to the Big Easy for a teaching job.
Komarek and a group of friends walked Bourbon Street wearing leotards and large, colorful feathers on their bottoms....
‘‘This is a totally different experience than any other event I’ve ever been to in my life. I’m so happy, having a blast with my friends without a care in the world,” she said....
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As for that police presence:
"US judge approves overhaul of New Orleans Police Dept." by Michael Kunzelman and Kevin McGill | Associated Press, January 12, 2013
NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge has approved a sweeping agreement between the Justice Department and the city of New Orleans designed to clean up the city’s long-troubled Police Department, but Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who once strongly backed it, said the city wants to put the brakes on it because of costs.
Landrieu said he asked US District Judge Susie Morgan to delay final approval, largely because the Justice Department has also entered into a potentially expensive separate agreement with the New Orleans sheriff for overhauling the city-funded jail.
Morgan, however, approved the agreement, calling it ‘‘fair, adequate, and reasonable’’ in a Friday ruling.
‘‘The Orleans Parish Prison consent decree may cost $17 million, which is not budgeted for this year and would therefore bankrupt the City,’’ Landrieu said in a news release.
‘‘If a federal judge ordered the City to pay $17 million, we would need to furlough every City employee, including police officers, for 28 days. It makes no sense to furlough or lay off police officers to give pay raises to prison guards.’’
At least the citizens of new Orleans might get a break.
‘‘We just can’t afford it,’’ said City Council member Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a member of the council budget committee.
The mayor said earlier that he was unsure of the city’s next legal step.
He noted that the city already has implemented many elements of the consent decree, including changes in the homicide bureau, the K-9 unit, sex crime investigations, use-of-force investigations, and policies governing the way officers are hired and paid for private, off-duty security details.
The separate jail agreement calls for Sheriff Marlin Gusman to provide adequate medical and mental health care and overhaul policies on use of force and rape prevention, among other reforms.
The agreement approved Friday would require the Police Department to overhaul its policies and procedures for use of force, training, interrogations, searches and arrests, recruitment, and supervision....
The agreement resolves the Justice Department’s allegations that New Orleans police officers engaged in a pattern of discriminatory and unconstitutional activity.
Attorney General Eric Holder has said the agreement is the most wide-ranging in the Justice Department’s history....
Lawyers for two groups representing rank-and-file officers expressed concern that the consent decree could chip away at civil-service protections, may force officers to work longer hours without overtime pay, and would bar officers from using pepper spray.
No one cares about you looters and your collective bargaining rights anymore, thin blue line. Oppression of the people and protection of the masters wins you no sympathy.
The Justice Department has reached similar agreements with police departments in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Oakland, and Detroit.
But the New Orleans consent decree is broader in scope and includes requirements that no other department has had to implement.
The agreement, for instance, requires officers to respect that bystanders have a constitutional right to observe and record their conduct in public places. It also requires officers to receive at least 24 hours of training on stops, searches, and arrests; 40 hours of use-of-force training; and four hours of training on bias-free policing.
The Police Department, which has been plagued by decades of corruption and brutality complaints, came under renewed scrutiny following a string of police shootings in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
See: Katrina Clean-Up
It's still not finished seven years later.
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Speaking of clean-ups:
"Former New Orleans mayor Nagin charged on bribery charges" by Michael Kunzelman | Associated Press, January 19, 2013
NEW ORLEANS — More than a decade ago, Ray Nagin was elected mayor of New Orleans on a vow to root out corruption in a city plagued by decades of it.
On Friday, the former mayor was indicted on charges that he lined his pockets with bribe money, payoffs, and gratuities while the chronically poor city struggled to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
The federal indictment alleges that city contractors paid Nagin more than $200,000 in bribes and subsidized his trips to Hawaii, Jamaica, and other places in exchange for his help securing millions of dollars in work for the city.
The charges against Nagin are the product of a City Hall corruption investigation that already has resulted in guilty pleas by two former city officials and two businessmen and a prison sentence for a former city vendor.
The case also punctuates the reversal of political and personal fortune for Nagin, who had what New Orleans Magazine editor Errol Laborde called ‘‘rock star status’’ soon after his election in 2002.
Nagin, a former cable television executive, took office with an image as a largely apolitical businessman ready to root out corruption. ‘‘The media bought into that 100 percent. They used the term ‘crackdown on corruption,’ ’’ Laborde said Friday.
But Nagin’s popularity and support waned in the years after Katrina. The federal investigation of his administration was mushrooming by the time he left office in 2010....
The indictment also accuses Nagin — who now lives in Frisco, Texas — of getting free private jet and limousine services to New York from an unidentified businessman who owned a New Orleans movie theater.
Nagin is accused of agreeing to waive tax penalties that the businessman owed to the city on a delinquent tax bill in 2006.
Nagin’s attorney, Robert Jenkins, didn’t immediately return cellphone calls seeking comment on the indictment.
No one answered the door at Nagin’s home in Texas on Friday.
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Also see: New Orleans Back to Normal
At least they got a good governor:
"Louisiana to fund Medicaid hospice" by Melinda Deslatte | Associated Press, January 24, 2013
BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s administration scrapped plans Wednesday to shutter the state’s Medicaid hospice program in February, meaning the state will continue to provide end-of-life care to people on their death beds who can’t afford private insurance.
Jindal’s health secretary Bruce Greenstein made the announcement as hospice program supporters were gathering for a vigil on the state capitol steps to protest the cut. Greenstein said his department will use grant funding to cover the costs this year.
Cheers went up across the small crowd of people gathered in what they expected to be a somber vigil....
The cut would have made Louisiana one of only two states that don’t pay for hospice care through its Medicaid program, and the plan faced strong resistance from state senators, who were seeking ways to avoid shuttering hospice.
Oklahoma is currently the only state that doesn’t offer hospice care to adults through Medicaid, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
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