Our Views: Temptations of recovery

There were at least two damaging floods in New Orleans in 2005, one of them when the levees broke, and another when ethically challenged public officials and businessmen dealt with an ensuing flood of recovery dollars.

A second member of the New Orleans City Council has now pleaded guilty to misusing federal money. Jon Johnson, a former member of the Legislature, admitted to using the recovery money in part for his failed 2007 campaign, in which he unsuccessfully tried to return to the state Senate.

Prosecutors have now caught up with Johnson, who was elected to the council in 2010. He faces up to five years in prison.

Former council member Renee Gill Pratt was convicted in 2011 of a conspiracy charge that included allegations she misappropriated four vehicles donated to the city after Hurricane Katrina.

Sad ends to political careers in the Crescent City.

Comments

1) Comment by InPVille - 31/07/2012

@SandySays: "Thank you for resisting giving Mother Nature all the credit for the 2005 Flood. Blaming the flooding on Katrina is a practice that effectively denies the humans responsible behind all that talk of a hurricane. As recently noted by Lee Clarke, a Rutgers University disaster expert and author of the book Worst Cases, people seem to want to blame natural events “because if it’s nature or God, then we’re off the hook, morally and practically.” " -[**]- WHAT! First flood: A completely natural hurricane kicked into overdrive because it passed over TWO warm cores spun off from the Gulf Stream into the Gulf of Mexico. Second flood: A flood of federal dollars misused by corrupt public officials. Who claimed a completely natural event(Hurricane Katrina) made public officials misuse federal funds?

2) Comment by SandySays - 31/07/2012

Thank you for resisting giving Mother Nature all the credit for the 2005 Flood. Blaming the flooding on Katrina is a practice that effectively denies the humans responsible behind all that talk of a hurricane. As recently noted by Lee Clarke, a Rutgers University disaster expert and author of the book Worst Cases, people seem to want to blame natural events “because if it’s nature or God, then we’re off the hook, morally and practically.”

3) Comment by 8point6 - 31/07/2012

No mention of party affiliation in this article. They must be democrats. Because, if they were Republicans, "our views" would have been sure to point that out.

4) Comment by [e-mail] - 31/07/2012

It was just too big a pot of money for some to ignore.