Months ago,
I decided to give New Orleans Recovery Czar Ed Blakely the benefit of many doubts, at least until September came and his promise to have "cranes in the sky" could be evaluated. In a comment to this fine
Library Chronicles post, Big Shot informed us that Blakely got a well-deserved skewering on
Anderson Cooper 360. If anyone has a link to video of this segment, please let me know. For now,
the transcript is brutal enough.
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RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's earned the nickname of master of disaster, after a California earthquake and wildfire. But there are those in New Orleans who say
Dr. Edward Blakely is shaping up to be a disaster himself. Among his blunders? Calling the people of New Orleans buffoons after a planning meeting.
MALCOLM SUBER, NEW ORLEANS COMMUNITY ACTIVIST: The question should be, who was the buffoon who hired him?
KAYE: Last December, Mayor Ray Nagin hired Blakely as the city's recovery czar. "Keeping Them Honest," we went to Blakely himself to chart his progress.
(on camera): So, you have been on board since December. What would you say you have actually accomplished since then?
EDWARD BLAKELY, NEW ORLEANS RECOVERY CZAR: Well, first, we have the plan. Secondly, we now have about $500 million we didn't have before.
KAYE (voice-over): That's only half of what he says he needs. Blakely's blueprint for recovery is $1.1 billion. Despite the lack of funds, he says he's made progress. In fact,
the way Blakely tells it, he's practically rebuilt the city.
BLAKELY: The LSU complex is another accomplishment. Practically every street in the city is being repaired. That didn't happen before I got here. All the signs are up. The city's running.KAYE (on camera): Do you think that he deserves credit for a lot of work that has been done?
JEFF CROUERE, NEW ORLEANS RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: That's not Dr. Blakely. I mean, those are initiatives that were really done by the Louisiana legislature and other bodies. I mean, I think what he unfortunately has a tendency to do is take credit for things which really aren't his doing.
KAYE (voice-over): Blakely says he has spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars on a library and supermarket, not exactly the major rebuilding he promised residents.
(on camera): You had promised cranes in the sky by September.
BLAKELY: They're there. They're there.
KAYE: We came here to the very spot Dr. Blakely directed us to, just off Interstate 10, so we could see the cranes that he says are already in the sky for ourselves.
No cranes here.
(voice-over): And no plan, critics charge, to help the poor rebuild areas like the Lower Ninth Ward, just middle-class neighborhoods.
SUBER: It's like seeing people who already got something to eat.
BLAKELY: I'm out in the Ninth Ward at least once a week, working with poor people, making sure they are included.
KAYE: He organizes bike tours, where he says he teaches urban planning to residents. But critics say all the peddling is a joke. Blakely is simply not around enough, they say, traveling to a teaching job in Australia and to speaking engagements around the U.S.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Being paid $150,000 to do a full-time job and getting half-time commitment was really disappointing to a lot of people.
KAYE:
Blakely says he rarely travels anymore, though he was rushing to the airport right after our interview.
BLAKELY: People can say whatever they want, you know. I just have to do my job.
KAYE: When, many asked during our visit, will he start getting results?
Randi Kaye, CNN, New Orleans.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
===
Labels: Blakely
9 Comments:
Once again, how many cranes do we want to see? Especially from somebody who "campaigned" for the job by saying that an outsider would be less influenced by historic and cultural factors. Mainly, cranes don't repair damaged houses, they replace single and double unit homes with multi-unit housing. On the commercial end, how much more office space do we need?
I agree with David. Cranes is not necessarily a good thing.
But I think the point here has more to do with Blakely's penchant for phony bullshit.
Is it September already? I couldn't see if there were cranes, I was staring at her godawful blouse. What's up with the Bradshaw look?
This piece was another easy hit by a lazy production. When a buffoon judges a buffoon, whose judgement can you value?
I'm sorry you people don't get in touch with Blakely's office, but I've a friend on staff and her hours are incredibly tough. There's more work going on there than at City Hall most days; I'm sure Blakely's fog is due to their update discussions versus our on the ground seeing, since he's rarely in town himself to get the picture. But executives hire good staff, they don't do the grunt work themselves. It's why Jordan's office shows his inability to manage: he can't keep hires and his hires (or retainees) aren't performing.
You boys might know your politics on these blogs, but study some management techniques so you don't make yourselves look so much like buffoons.
Carmen, please.
It's very easy to work really hard on absolutely nothing. Also, "his office is working so hard" still doesn't excuse him for claiming others' achievements as his own. Ok then, what are his staff's achievements? Where is the transparency he promised to bring to the process? Or is that part of things the public need not know?
Perhaps Blakely should hire good PR staff with all that money. Neither he nor his staff are fooling anyone.
I am sure the individuals at the ORM are hard working. In the same way that there are hard working individuals within any agency.
My concerns about Ed Blakley have less to do with his style and more to do with his substance. He is a operating a Governmental agency that has no accountability to the Citizens and no transparency.
The "cranes" are a metaphor for action, and as far as I can tell the ORM takes credit where credit is not due.
I saw this in the Ochsner waiting room this morning. Blakeley was -- Blakeley. No real answers, nothing concrete, taking credit for everything and everyone.
My question is Suspect Device's question: Why does Ed Blakely have his own non-profit recovery corporation?
In Blakely's defense (and I don't particularly consider this a "spirited" defense, if you know what I mean) there seemed to be more than a little smell of the "hit" piece here.
The "very spot...just off Interstate 10" that Randi Kaye said Blakely directed her to as an example of "cranes" (a development project) certainly looked to me to be the large Home Depot going up on Claiborne beside the Pontchartrain Expressway where the old auto junkyards used to be...only with the cameras angled such that all you saw was the cleared expanse where the parking lot will go with the Expressway in the background. If I'm correct about the location, then they were less than honest in the reporting because that IS a rather large project whether Blakely actually had anything to do with it or not.
As for including Jeff Crouere and Malcolm Suber as the impartial observers to supply quotes...the next time I hear Crouere say something good about someone in a Democratic administration or hear Suber say something good about either a Caucasian or an African-American who appears to "consort" with Caucasians will be the first time. They could have probably gotten anti-Blakely quotes from any number of people on the New Orleans scene. Their use of Crouere and Suber tells me that they did a little research first and knew that these were two who would say just what they wanted said for their piece.
And while I'm being disagreeable...LOL
"My question is Suspect Device's question: Why does Ed Blakely have his own non-profit recovery corporation?"
Sometimes you blogger-types seem to me to channel a little bit of your inner-Sicilian and venture slightly into Vendetta Territory..LOL. "My question is why does Ed Blakely eat English muffins? What's wrong? Regular American muffins not good enough for him?"
End of chain-yanking for today.....
As always, great comments, puddinhead. Thanks for taking the time to make them!
