You know folks maybe I was being a bit hard on Mike Fawer for bringing the Renee Gill Pratt portion of the Dollar Bill Jefferson saga to trial. Make no mistake, Fawer abrasive style will insure Gill Pratt gets the book thrown at her but the testimony this past week gives the public another good peek into the way business is conducted in the NOLA metro area thus the title of this post.
For our many readers that are not in this area who are hooked on our Jefferson Parish coverage we’ll start with a must read in the Times Picayune story Gill Pratt racketeering trial offers glimpse into inner workings of a political machine. The unbridled greed is breathtaking and provides probably the best reason for banning earmarks since it appears most of it is looted out by cronies of corrupt politicians who are incapable of making an honest living.
Next up is T-P columnist Stephanie Grace who wrote a column on the testimony of two DaimlerChrysler execs in Gill Pratt’s trial last week. This is also a must read as Grace describes the impact of these prosecution witnesses on the Judge and jury:
As a retired executive with DaimlerChrysler finished testifying last week in Renee Gill Pratt’s racketeering trial, U.S. District Court Judge Ivan Lemelle took the unusual step of thanking the automotive giant for donating a passel of vehicles to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
That Lemelle felt it necessary to voice the city’s gratitude said a lot about the appalling narrative he, and the jury, had just heard.
Appalling is just the right word here as Grace describes the brazen behavior of the Jeffersons as they evidently did not bother to hide their intent to loot the charity from DaimlerChrysler exec Roxie Thomas.
Given what the jury is hearing I again wonder what the heck Fawer was thinking bringing up the damaging grand jury testimony of Maleka Thornton as it related to Gill Pratt the boss and person. If I had to put on my Carnac the Magnificent hat and hazard a guess I suspect Gill Pratt will be taken into custody immediately after the guilty verdict.
Now lets connect the testimony of Eddy Oliver (linked above) as it regards the Jeffersons involvement in the Orleans Parish Public Schools and this jewel by the T-P’s Mark Waller, Jefferson Parish magnet school admissions rules test parents, which features the travails experienced by parent Marisa Jones in enrolling her daughter in a Jefferson Parish Magnet School. Even those the general public would perceive as insiders pay the price for systemic corruption as Mrs. Jones ironically is also an accountant for Jefferson Parish Government.
The Orleans Parish Schools and City Government did not become completely dysfunctional overnight, rather it happened over the course of a couple of decades. You look at how the Jefferson Parish Schools stack up state-wide and you see the same sort of deterioration in the quality of the services delivered. Leaches like School board member Mark Morgan, Gretna Mayor Ronnie Harris and his police chief Arthur Lawson and their cronies are the reason.
sop
“Change the names and you have…” a situation repeated countless times and places following Hurricane Katrina”.
IMO, what made New Orleans and Jefferson Parish different was both had the existing “infrastructure” in place for “taking candy” from any baby.
Both still do – great post, Sop!
What’s “going on” in Lemelle’s Courtroom is, indeed, “Theater of the Absurd”, but let me give “The SLABBED Nation” some examples that won’t appear in “The Times-Pick-Your-Nose”, or be written about by “The Associated Depressed”. Lemelle is lazy, stupid and corrupt, and he is where he is today SOLELY by virtue of his skin color. He acquired his “moral compass” as a law clerk serving at the knee of then-Criminal Court Magistrate Robert Collins (Lemelle “puffs” his resume by suggesting that Collins was Criminal Court Judge, which is a lie), who later was convicted of bribery while sitting on the Federal Bench (another Negro who got there ONLY because of his skin color), and was the ONLY Eastern District Federal Judge to be impeached before “G.T. Ortous” (but I hope there are “more” to come – I’m PRAYING). Lemelle’s total LACK of a moral compass is best exemplified in the reported case of “In re High Sulphur Content Gasoline Products Liability Litigation”, 517 F.3d 220 (5th Cir. 2008), in which he illegally funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to his attorney-cronies, and then LIED about it “on-the-record”. Although the Fifth Circuit reversed him, in a scathing opinion, they didn’t discipline him in the least (This is the same Judge who disbarred me and entered a Default Judgment against me for almost $200,000). Then we read that he “thanked” the Chrysler-Executive witness for the post-KATRINA vehicles, at least 4 of which Gill-Pratt and the Jeffersons converted to their own use (along with most of the contents) until “the heat”, via an expose from The Times Picayune got too “hot”, even for them. The Stephanie Grace Op-Ed today doesn’t say whether Lemelle expressed his “thanks” in the presence of the jury or outside the presence of the jury, but if it was the former you can bet that Mike Fawer is “licking his chops”. Does anybody know? Lastly, Gill-Pratt is being tried by her “lonesome”, because Lemelle let Mose Jefferson off-the-hook and granted a continuance, reportedly because Lemelle was persuaded that Mose Jefferson has only 6-months to live. I was at Federal Court that day to meet with my lawyers in the Office of the Federal Public Defender. Do you know who one of Mose Jefferson’s expert witnesses was? Dr. Dwight McKenna, a felon who was convicted of a crime involving moral turpidude, namely income tax evasion, for which he served “hard time”. And by the way, Lemelle disclosed that Dr. McKenna is his personal physician. Does anyone want to take bets on whether Mose Jefferson outlives “the Lockerbie bomber”, who should have died a year ago, but is still alive and living the life of Riley in Libya, having been released from prison in Scotland “for humanitarian reasons”? Ashton O’Dwyer a/k/a “The WHITE Henry Glover”.
Ashton:
My thoughts exactly about the
One last thing to piss you off on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. I bet he lets her walk free while the matter is on appeal!!!!
O’Dwyer, please switch back to the “white Adolph Archie.” That one made me laugh.