"Do You Know Who I Am?"

Laws? Laws are for the little people. In New Orleans,

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell (District D) was under fire Thursday for allegedly abusing her power by driving dangerously in a city SUV, and then yelling at a state trooper who pulled her over. Hedge-Morrell issued an apology for the incident, which happened on February 26, when a state trooper clocked the councilwoman flying down I-10 at close to 100 miles per hour just before 9 a.m. Morrell was reportedly in a city-provided SUV and using the vehicle’s blue flashing lights to help cut through traffic.

State Police said when they pulled Morrell over and asked her to step out of the vehicle, she refused, and said “Do you know who I am?” Morrell told the trooper that she was on her way to an important meeting with FEMA officials. A similar incident involving Morrell occurred in January.

In the early nineties, when I lived in Washington DC, I had a perfectly able-bodied landlord who kept his wife's handicapped plates after she died, not for sentimental reasons but because they enabled him to screw drivers with actual disabilities out of a parking spot and get away with it. That was just one of the many ways in which he was pond scum — and from the looks of it, Hedge-Morrell is not a hair better. In fact, she's worse; she willfully endangered people's lives, and she's a muckety-muck on the public payroll. Come on: She huffs and she puffs and the cops let her go without another word — twice? If you or I were going 40 miles over the speed limit, during rush hour, illegally using a blue flashing light to cut through traffic, and we refused to follow a police officer's request to step out of the car, and we started mouthing off to the guy, do you suppose for a second that the cop would change his mind and politely wave us on our way?

The people of New Orleans deserve our pity — not just for what Katrina did to them, but also for the immeasurable arrogance and chutzpah of their elected officials.

 [hat tip: Fark] 

Comments

[Fred Mangels]

"The people of New Orleans deserve our pity... for the immeasurable arrogance and chutzpah of their elected officials.".

Hey, they ELECTED them. Why should they deserve our pity?

[Michael Chaney]

Help me out, here, Rogier: who votes down there?

The people of NO deserve two things: our utter contempt, and a brief note explaining that we (the rest of the nation) will no longer fund their below-sea-level lifestyle that serves mainly to line the pockets of the corruptocrats that they continually elect and re-elect.

I was willing to cut them some slack until they re-elected Nagin. I don't know if you're aware that they've now sued the rest of us for $70B ($70,000,000,000 for those keeping track at home) because we didn't save them well enough after Katrina. That would add up to $140,000 for each of the 500,000 residents of that city.

I say we give them the money, then go bulldoze all the levies that we've foolishly built for them over the years.

[Rogier]

Guys:

My premise was that no voter can predict if a candidate, once elected, is going to be behave with integrity or turn into a spoiled, petty little dictator. We now know what kind of public servant Cynthia Hedge-Morrell chose to be. If the people of New Orleans RE-elect her, then yes, they're getting what they asked for. Until then, I mostly feel sorry for them. It must be no fun to unwittingly (?) choose an arrogant bitch with an entitlement complex to represent you.

[Michael Chaney]

They re-elected Nagin. 'nuf said.