My district's representative on the New Orleans School Board, Una Anderson, is currently in a run-off for a state House seat. Her campaign is essentially based on a platform of doing away with the Orleans Parish School Board (increasing charters, more state control, etc.). I'm so tired of officials making their office incompetent and then arguing we should privatize government because it is "incompetent." Education leaders in my neighborhood and others have tried to meet with Una Anderson many times over the past year to talk about our schools, but we never got a response. I guess it's because we don't write $1000 campaign checks, like her "trashy" friends at Pampy's Creole Kitchen.
There's a story in the Times-Picayune that Una Anderson accepted not only campaign checks, but actual bribes to bring a lucrative trash school contract to Metro Disposal and Richard's Disposal. There are certainly questions about the reliability of the source, Stan Pampy Barre, who is on his way to jail for his own corruption. But Una, you played a key role in reducing the city's school board from a powerful government entity to a marginalized joke. When you started, the board oversaw more than 120 schools, and now you run 5. So whether or not you're guilty, I look forward to the day when you're out of government.
And to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, who is heading these investigations bringing light to government corruption, please keep up the good work.
Later Note: Dangerblond covers this better than me. Link. Our own Editor B broke "garbagegate." Well done B and your anonymous source.
"I'm so tired of officials making their office incompetant and then arguing we should privatize government because it is 'incompentant.'"
ReplyDeleteYes! That's the racket in recent years by conservative anti-guv types. "Elect me, I hate government. If I make a mistake you should get mad at "the government", not me. Competence is passe, and effective governance is a liberal myth."
Oh, and clever title. Kudos!
ReplyDeleteThanks Oyster, oh great kingfish of the NOLA blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteBut I didn't do spellcheck in my original post obviously. I went back and corrected it. Sorry for being incompeNtAnt.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a parent with two sons who were in the NOPS system between 1994 and 2005....the Orleans Parish School Board was ineffective, counterproductive, and corrupt long before Una Anderson ever showed up. What was the best way to stifle anything that seemed to be working at their school while my boys were in the system? Let the Board hear about it and decide to get involved. Hell, the students would have still been doubled up two classes to one dilapidated portable classroom if it were up to the Orleans Parish School Board; the PTO actually organized and raised (and borrowed from Alden McDonald and the good people at Liberty) the monies to build a new classroom building on their own, with little more Board involvement than the (begrudging) granting of permission.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, come to think of it, if the Board had been involved the students MIGHT have been into a new classroom building of some kind by now...although the budget would have been double the actual cost to build the structure in order to satifactorily line the pockets of Ellenese Brook-Simms, Gail Glapion, and all the usual suspects.
The OPSB has been incompetent since Adam & Eve. Una's just one of the current incompetent occupants.
ReplyDelete