Pro basketball stars & legends volunteered in New Orleans

With the NBA having set up shop in the Crescent City for this weekend's All-Star extravaganza, current stars, legends, WNBA standouts and other celebrities took to the streets, lending a helping hand to assist in building houses, painting schools and planting sod at 10 sites throughout the city as part of the NBA Cares All-Star Day of Service. More than 2,500 others joined the pro basketball players, undeterred by afternoon showers.

It was the largest single-day effort by the NBA, as well as the largest single volunteer effort since Katrina wrecked the region in 2005.

What's New In New Orleans?

The imposing presence of Robert A. Cerasoli as the city's first inspector general is the clearest sign that the changes Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans in 2005 were not limited to physical devastation. By declaring war on municipal corruption, Cerasoli has signaled that life in the Big Easy no longer will be so easy.

A sign of change that transcends federal dollars was the arrival last August of Cerasoli, the nation's foremost inspector general, who served 10 years as Massachusetts state IG. "I was amazed when I arrived to find that just about everybody I met had been the victim of a holdup," Cerasoli told me. He wondered why crime was much more rampant in New Orleans than in Atlanta, a larger city with a smaller police force.

Cerasoli is working closely with U.S. Attorney Jim Letten to crack down on corruption.

Study confirms Formaldehyde in FEMA Trailers

Hurricane victims have been complaining about FEMA trailers making them sick for a very long time. Now a recent study has confirmed that the FEMA trailers contain formaldehyde.

The study found:

--Average levels of formaldehyde in all units was about 77 parts per billion -- a level higher than U.S. background levels. And that exposure "over time at this level" can affect health. Levels measured ranged from 3 ppb to 590 ppb.

--The levels -- measured in the winter and long after residents moved in -- likely underrepresent long-term exposures since formaldehyde levels tend to be higher in newer travel trailers and during warmer weather.

--Indoor temperature was a significant factor for formaldehyde levels in this study independent of trailer make or model.

--Formaldehyde levels varied by model -- "mobile homes, park homes and travel trailers" -- but all types of trailers tested had some high levels.

--At the levels seen in many trailers, health could be affected.

New Orleans Airport Traffic Increases

Annual passenger traffic at Louisiana's largest airport jumped nearly 21% in 2007 and reached about three-quarters of the number handled before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, the airport reported Tuesday. Just over 7.5 million passengers either embarked or disembarked at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in 2007, an increase from about 6.1 million in 2006.

In 2004, the last full year before Katrina totally disrupted the airport, a record 9.7 million passengers passed through the airport. After the storm shut down most traffic for the last four months, the tally dropped to 7.8 million. A major challenge for the airport has been rebuilding the number of flights coming through New Orleans. By May, the airport, which had 132 daily flights in December, will have seven more flights.

That total will represent 86% of the pre-Katrina level, along with 80% of pre-storm number of seats, said airport spokeswoman Michelle Wilcut.

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This news probably has the contract thief, Stan "Pampy" Barre, counting his ill-gotten dollars.

Nick Baroni and Son Gets Light Sentence

Who write these recommended guidelines?

Nick Baroni and his son receive a year and a day for defrauding the Navy.


Saying he found the outpouring of sentiment about the case "strange," Williams said that as a judge from the "free state of Maryland," he was free to ignore "all the stuff going on in Louisiana" and make his own judgment based on evidence and sentencing guidelines.

Although free to ignore those guidelines, Williams decided on a sentence for Nick Baroni, 63, and his son, Keith, 39, within the recommended guidelines: 10 to 16 months.

Former New Orleans City Council President, Oliver Thomas, would have done better with this deal. Though true, he failed to cooperate with the feds, but his sentencing guidelines were more harsher.

Road Home Program

This editorial excerpt, about the Road Home Program, says it best:

A program that lacks follow-up, is slow in processing appeals and can't resolve thousands of cases that are more than a year old has systemic problems. When legislators say they keep getting phone calls from frustrated applicants with the same complaints about the program, that reflects a systemic problem.

Unfortunately, one of those systemic problems has been the Office of Community Development, and it's surprising that Gov. Bobby Jindal has not yet made changes in leadership at OCD.

Ms. Elkins' office negotiated a weak contract with ICF that lacked benchmarks and penalties and then had to be browbeaten to add even mild penalties. Even now, the office has yet to negotiate ICF's benchmarks for the first quarter of the year or to determine whether the contractor met all of last year's requirements.

Ms. Elkins also has been a constant apologist for ICF's mishaps and has resisted some efforts to improve the program's performance and transparency. Legislative auditors began citing systemic problems last year -- from data and policy discrepancies to grants that were too low or too high. Ms. Elkins was always quick to dismiss problems or claim that they had been corrected -- even as applicants and sometimes auditors kept exposing more examples of the same issues.

Obama defeats Clinton In La. primary

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama launched another surge in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Saturday, defeating New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Louisiana primary after caucus victories in Nebraska and Washington state earlier in the day. |Read on|