Weekend Commentary
Good News!!!!
Hurricane Katrina Money “Finally” Going to Some Poor People.
OMG!!!! You mean there was “hard earned taxpayer money” left after “friends of Haley” enjoyed time at the trough.
EXAMPLE!!! The right hand man to Carlos Ghosn Jim Morton also a big Tea Party supporter via SC Jim DeMint, a man who’s not going to help the EV and wants to “slash funding” and hurt the president. Oddly Ghosn didn’t ‘ditch” Morton when he left NISSAN in 2007. No Mr. Morton serves on boards and became Ghosn “stealth” supporter.
??? Why
It’s all about the greenback.
Forget bonuses at NISSAN to long term managers and directors. Money secretly made it to the bank accounts & phony charities of “team Ghosn” members. Business decisions were made for “many” reasons. In America hidden cost centers were the “norm”. It was morally WRONG!!!!
Mr. Morton destroyed a company and he had the support from a guy who was publically “sucking up to the Clintons” attending lots of summits and conferences spouting hypocritical rhetoric.
??? Why say you want more women in the work force then in America reduce women in management from 21% to 10%. It makes no sense. At Nissan bad decisions were made by Tennessee HR. Someone “approved them” Morton then Thormann are the answers. They blamed the Japanese. Huh…. One executive was American and the other French. Maybe that’s the joy in having a multinational company… you can always blame another culture when there's a problem.
The "blame game" is a business practice I hope is in the past. I've noticed in large companies it's the norm. People need to be accountable for their decisions. If they make a mistake they need to admit it and MOVE ON!!! wow.... a concept of people taking responsiblity for their decisions. ??? Maybe I'm just a "dreamer" and that's not realistic.
Nissan that’s why you need "1" corporate culture. A culture that is transparent and not led by personal greed and those with BIG EGO'S. What I like about the Japanese culture is the effort made by those in business in Japan to act as a "team". ??? Can they at least encourage women on that team.
FYI - I've met a bunch of talanted women in the auto industry.
At Nissan the stockholders/shareholders suffered due to one mans "ego". That needs to change for the spirit of success to shine. Everyone needs to feel special, not just the guy in the fancy suit.
Many employees at NISSAN lost respect for Ghosn’s leadership. When that happens a leader cannot lead. Heck….look at President Obama he’s sadly an example. Then people will follow Rogue leadership (maybe consider Sarah Palin as a future President) and too many will try to govern. Thus creating instability and chaos. Kind of like Central America. Huh……. It’s interesting.
Below is an article about Mississippi, for me it's sad. As an American taxpayer I'm angry.
Nissan “wasted” money that should have gone to Hurricane Katrina Victims.
What happened to ALL American taxpayers was wrong!!!!
Have A Great Day!!!
Sharyn
Haley Barbour and his minions who controlled the recovery money. A week ago, Barbour and his Mississippi Development Authority team relented under pressure
Neighborhood Homes to reach many
By Bill Minor
Published: Friday, November 26, 2010 11:06 PM CST
This was a case of David versus Goliath: David being Gulf Coast community advocates for low income householders whose domiciles were badly damaged by Katrina five years ago, but shut out by the state from federal disaster relief funds; Goliath being Gov. Haley Barbour and his minions who controlled the recovery money.
Chalk up one for David.
A week ago, Barbour and his Mississippi Development Authority team relented under pressure from the Obama Administration and agreed to give the Gulf Coast housing advocates a $132 million slice of the $5.4 billion federal storm recovery aid allotted to the state in December, 2005, half of which was intended to be spent on low and moderate income families.
Remember, the Gulf Coast community advocates filed a federal suit two years ago opposing the Barbour Administration’s diversion of $600 million to a pre-Katrina grandiose plan to expand the state-owned Port of Gulfport. The diversion scheme had been approved by HUD back when Barbour’s buddy, George W. Bush, was still in office.
As part of the $132 million deal announced November 17, the advocacy groups agreed to drop their lawsuit and Barbour’s MDA will institute an outreach campaign to find qualified applicants from the six Coastal area counties, plus Forrest, Lamar and Jones counties which also had damage from Katrina.
The program, named “Neighborhood Home”, caps at $75,000 the maximum any household can receive for repairs. Importantly, unlike commercial insurance, the new program will cover both wind and water damage.
Reilly Morse, senior attorney for the Mississippi Center for Justice, one of the key advocacy groups, said that 4400 elderly and handicapped persons with unmet housing needs have already been identified and hundreds more are expected from the outreach.
Morse, who has been leading the Gulf Coast community housing advocacy effort for several years, said “It was an amazing group of people” who came together at the Isaiah Fredericks Community Center in North Gulfport on Nov. 17 for the announcement of the disaster plan settlement. Shaun Donovan, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, along with Governor Barbour and Morse were the principals on hand for the landmark settlement unveiling.
Special credit was given by Morse to Gerald Blessey, formerly Biloxi mayor and state legislator, for getting Barbour and MDA officials on board to direct the $132 million to housing recovery for lower-income households. Blessey now serves as MDA’s housing recovery director.
“We’ve had a hard time getting anyone (at the state level) to listen to us until Gerald Blessey went to bat for us,” Morse declared. Overall, he added, “this was a victory for a persistent community effort.” Besides the Center for Justice, the lawsuit against HUD had been joined by the state Conference of the NAACP, and the Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center. Pro bono legal support had been given by attorneys from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Low income black neighborhoods are expected to particularly benefit from the new program, Morse declared. He told the story of how during the storm a white Gulfport family with a young child had been forced to abandon their home just South of the raised railroad bed which traverses the coastal cities. “They knocked loudly on the door of the first house they came to North of the railroad tracks, and finally, an elderly black lady came to the door,” he said.
“She invited the little family inside to ride out the storm,” Morse added. “Later after the family had left, wind heavily damaged the elderly lady’s home and relatives who lived in another area took her in to live with them,” he said.
The 82-year-old black lady couldn’t afford to make necessary repairs in the last five years to make her home livable. “She is one of the many worthy householders we expect to make whole,” Morse said.
Bill Minor, a syndicated columnist, has been covering Mississippi politics for more than 50 years.
