Ray Nagin—A Sign of Things to Come in Virginia

The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.”
John Bannister Gibson (1780-1853), American jurist

It would seem that in Louisiana the wheels of injustice take about nine years to get their grinding done. Take for instance the case of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Following the tragedy and chaos that was Hurricane Katrina, back in 2005; Mayor Nagin’s actions came under the scrutiny of the Federal Court System much to his demise.

Despite his caterwauling at the time, it turns out that, alas, Mayor Nagin was involved in some underhanded deeds. It seems he was convicted February 12^th of “accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin's support for various projects. The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business,” as reported in a recent AP story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Now it seems that Nagin will be seeing another part of Louisiana. U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan sentenced the former mayor to 10-years in prison for “bribery, money laundering, and other corruption that spanned his two terms as mayor.” How can it be that yet another of our illustrious representatives has fallen into the trap of money grabbing?

It must be the work of Satan, don’t you think?

The Federal sentencing guide lines actually called for about twice that much time, but the judge apparently felt sorry for Nagin. During the sentencing, she said, "Mr. Nagin claimed a much, much smaller share of the profits in this conspiracy."

Some profit.

It’s annoying to me that people we elect to positions of trust end up doing things like this. I understand the lure of the coin and that old adage about the love of money. But still, where is your moral fiber, America?

And yet, right here in Virginia we have the same battle pitting morals and ethics against greed. Will we soon be seeing a similar result when former Governor Bob McDonnell steps up to the docket? And yet, what did he do? To hear his side of the story, he did nothing wrong. And yet, there have been a raft of people stepping up saying, “oh, you know, we ought not to charge him with this or that or the other thing.”

I suppose it’s not too much of a surprise that most of them were former State Attorney’s General. That the governor was experiencing cash flow issues during that time is not so surprising. Most of the public has experienced such issues, lack of money is a problem for nearly everyone at some time or another, I expect.

But accessing the back door to the vault is another thing altogether.

If everything was above board and legal, then why wasn’t it reported? Plain and simple, there it is. No one denies that people serving in a high office live by a different set of laws than the rest of us peons in the society. We vote them in fully knowing that there will be some quid for that pro quo. What we don’t expect is the wanton disregard for what is morally and ethically right. Taking enormous amounts of money or very expensive gifts seems a bit extravagant. When the sums start climbing into the hundreds of thousands of dollars from one person/business, it merits looking at.

Governor Bob would have been very happy to just leave office and never hear any more about his relationship with Star Scientific CEO Jonnie R. Williams Sr. But such is the life in this day and age that such indiscretions often come to light, as in the case of Mayor Nagin. How it will turn out in the sunny state of Virginia is quite another matter.