What does it take for a newspaper to get the story -- or graphic, as the case may be -- right? Let's see:
Veteran reporter: $55,000.
Graphic artist: $40,000.
Single-copy of The Advocate: 50 cents.
Functioning education system: Priceless.
BATON ROUGE, La. -- The flag blends a symbol of the Confederacy with the school colors of Louisiana State University, a combination that provokes anger from blacks and creates headaches for the university.
Black students held a string of game-day protests last year -- the largest attracting several hundred participants -- to demand that the school prohibit fans on campus from flying the banner, a Confederate-style flag in the purple and gold of the LSU Fighting Tigers. The protests resulted in a few scuffles and a lot of attention in the news media -- but no ban on the flag.
This year, the protest organizer is taking a different approach: Instead of protest marches, senior Collins Phillips said he's planning pregame tailgate parties near Tiger Stadium. Beginning with the season opener on Saturday, Phillips said the parties will aim to encourage students to discuss the different meanings the flag carries: from pride in the South to the shame of slavery.
"If we were to march again this year, I think it would be a little redundant. People would say, 'There they go, marching about the flag again,'" he said.
University officials consistently rebuffed Phillips' demands for a ban on the LSU-themed Rebel flag, saying a ban would infringe on First Amendment rights. But while those who like the flag consider it a symbol of both LSU pride and Southern heritage, the school is opposed to the idea of merging its colors with what is also a symbol of slavery.
"We have an intolerance of the display of this symbol, a fundamental rejection by the university, of the use of university colors to even vaguely imply that we would tolerate or endorse this display," said LSU chancellor Sean O'Keefe.
The school has no restrictions on flying the flags on campus, but O'Keefe released a letter Friday asking fans to leave them at home.
"We will not impede the constitutional right of free speech by banning this flag, but we ask that it not be flown on the LSU campus," the letter said.
The school also sent letters to wholesalers and local retailers, asking them to stop selling the flag -- and strongly implying that the stores could be frozen out in the future on the lucrative sales of franchised LSU flags, banners and other items. The flags retail in some stores for $35. To wholesalers, the school sent letters indicating that the flags -- with their taint of racism -- could cause the value of LSU's trademarks to drop, O'Keefe said. The letters included the veiled threat of a lawsuit.
The result, O'Keefe said, has been a sharp drop in the sales of the flags.
"These are serious businesspeople. They get the picture," O'Keefe said.
The owner of one Baton Rouge flag shop said he stopped selling the flags at LSU's request. Byron Smith, owner of the Flag Shop, added that the flags weren't big sellers anyway -- until Phillips started his protest campaign last year.
"I started getting calls like crazy" after the protests began, from people requesting the flags, Smith said.
Phillips' protests drew wide coverage on local TV news and front-page stories in The Advocate, the local daily. Before the homecoming game, three people were arrested for allegedly throwing objects at the roughly 200 protesters. Phillips said he and other demonstrators were spat upon and called racial slurs.
Phillips, 23, a general studies major focusing on communications and African-American studies, takes pride in publicizing the fact that a large chunk of the population considers the flag a symbol of slavery and racism.
ISN'T THERE ANYTHING ELSE to take Southern pride in, apart from a lost cause to preserve a "peculiar institution"?
I'm asking, because I well know how central veneration of that lost war was -- is? -- to one's very identity as a Southerner. After a century and a half, we don't break out the slur "damn Yankee" for nothing when a non-Southerner offends us.
Really, we can talk about honoring our heritage, and our fallen ancestors, and Southern pride, and blah blah blah blah till Gen. Robert E. Lee rides back from the dead atop his beloved Traveller . . . but what does it say about us that we still venerate a war fought to preserve a way of life predicated on enslaving the Negro race?
By what mental and spiritual gymnastics do we turn what is objectively shameful into the source of our "Southern pride"? Again, I'm asking, because it took me a mere four decades of life -- and almost half of it away from the orbit of Southern groupthink -- to ask some quite basic questions on this topic.
HAVE WE SOUTHERNERS become nothing more than America's Serbs? And is Louisiana the rowdy, dysfunctional corner of a rowdy, dysfunctional homeland?
Or am I just a disloyal, so-called LSU fan? And a damn Yankee turncoat bastard, to boot.
Anonymous said...YOU KNOW, there are loonies behind both front lines in the Kulturkampf, but it takes a special brand of jackal to actually revel in a region's misfortune and in the death of four of its children.
My, The Holy Lord Most Almighty God must REALLY be pissed at y'all to keep sending His Wrathful Tornadoes at you the way He is!
What'd y'all do - vote to allow Gay Marriages or something?
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA!
(and if you think I'm being crude in the face of tragedy - need I remind you that Y'ALL are the same exact way every time we have an earthquake in California? Guess you hypocrites don't ever REMEMBER doing that, though, DO YOU?)
11:07 AM
Gillespie said the LSU fans will be different from those UCI encountered at Nebraska.YES, HE DID MEAN to suggest every word of it. And then some LSU fans set out to prove the man right.
“That was pretty electric,” Gillespie said of Saturday night’s crowd of 8,646 at Haymarket Park that witnessed UCI’s 3-2 win over the host Cornhuskers. “It was a sea of red, but they’re not a hostile group,” Gillespie said of the Nebraska faithful.
“They’re not on you, and they’re not rude and they’re not vicious and they know the Civil War is over and they know how to act,” Gillespie said, before backtracking somewhat. “Now, I don’t mean to suggest [that is the case at LSU] I really don’t.”
The key sacks came from Broderick Thomas, the end, and Danny Noonan, a consensus all-American middle guard, on the last two plays of the third quarter after L.S.U., trailing 17-7, had taken over on the Nebraska 17-yard line following a blocked field-goal attemptAND LET'S NOT FORGET the treatment Tennessee received when the Vols came to Tiger Stadium for a 2005 weeknight game in the wake of Hurricane Rita.
A defensive tackle, Neil Smith, a New Orleans native, said the motivation for Nebraska came on the first night in town, when nine players and two graduate assistants were arrested in the French Quarter for disturbing the peace, charges which were later dropped.
''A lot of guys say they were mistreated and didn't want to come back,'' Smith said. ''I felt like we needed to give them a bonus to get them to want to come back.''
Noonan, one of those arrested, said the incident was influential in the Huskers' performance. ''I think that only helped us,'' Noonan said. ''We got fired up. The people treated us like dirt.''
The storms that struck Omaha Sunday caused damage only to homes, trees and property. Wednesday night’s storms that sprung up from Lincoln to western Iowa took lives.
One tornado, according to Harrison County dispatchers has four fatalities and up to 30 to 40 injured.
According to an Omaha city official, at least one of the groups of scouts at the camp was from Omaha
Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City will be getting two young juvenile males by medical helicopter right around 8 p.m. from the tornado that touched down at the Little Sioux Scout Ranch.
Parents are to call 431-9272 for information on injuries.
Shortly after 9 p.m., parents who had gathered at the Fellowship Hall in Little Sioux had yet to learn who had been killed and who had been injured.
A state trooper told parents he would deliver a list of names as soon as possible, but the scene at the Boy Scout camp was chaotic. He asked for their patience.
More than 100 people were gathered at the hall, a one-story brick building, and many more were streaming in.
There were numerous reports of damage and tornadoes touching down in Lincoln but nothing confirmed yet as of 7:45 p.m. said Kerry Eagan, chief administrative officer for Lancaster County.
Mike Krysl, a spokesman, for Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City, said the hospital in full-scale disaster alert. Krysl said he did not know the extent of the two juvenile's injuries.
Posted by: Ron Location: Omaha on Jun 9, 2008 at 02:34 PMFISH. BARREL. FIREARMS.
CHANNEL 6 is to be commended for not being EMBARRASED to tell it like it is about how ITSELF AND others had no lead time to know about the bad weather. Many people FAILED to see the tornado in OMAHA. IT IS PATHETIC, people, THAT JIM FLOWERS of everyone in Omaha is STILL the only one on the air who HAS the guts to tell us how people came so close to dying in their beds because of the freakish nature of this storm. Telling the truth is HIS JOB, and I'm glad Jim does it so well.
Posted by: Ron Location: Omaha on Jun 9, 2008 at 04:36 PM
Robyn says it all. WOWT could not know that bad weather was coming when the weather bureau FAILED to tell the station's meteorologists -- who weren't there anyway -- that there might be severe weather in OMAHA. I don't think it's right that WOWT should be BLAMED by some OTHER PEOPLE who didn't have weather radios, FOR its all THEIR OWN FAULTS. WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS! i'm going to FIRE back at these naysayers with the truth, which JIM FLOWERS so bravely told people to-day. WOWT, you're my favorite station. And all the whiners should HANG IT UP. don't SURRENDER YOUR moral high ground to these nattering nabobs of negativism. don't give them such LICENSE!
If you're counting on us to tell you a tornado's coming, follow these simple instructions. 1) Put your head between your legs. 2) Kiss your ass goodbye.
Saw a group of neighbors out in the street talking. Joined them. What were they talking about? You won't believe it. They were talking about how you couldn't depend on KFAB any more for information and couldn't watch TV because the power was out. If I were running a station like KFAB, these things would scare the bajeezus out of me.BETRAYED LISTENERS scare today's pilots of the airwaves? Feh!
Now if the neighbors were investment bankers. . . .
When the president of a local school board decides that, no, public education isn't necessarily a public obligation, I'm not sure how much further a community has to go before it hits rock bottom.
After all, it's a little eye-raising -- even in Louisiana -- when a public-school poobah comes out for vouchers. What's next? Prostitutes for monogamy?
THAT'S WHERE the court of winners and wretches finds my hometown -- in a nosedive and still pushing the yoke and throttle hard. If it's indeed true that a strong community is one of proverbial "brother's keepers," Baton Rouge surely bears the mark of Cain.
Not that I'm completely surprised or anything.
Why would the president of a public school board -- such as East Baton Rouge Parish's Jerry Arbour -- say, in effect, "We give up. We can't educate your kids properly. Take the state's money and run"?
Communities outsource things like collecting garbage, not educating their children. Public funds need to go to entities accountable to taxpayers as a whole, not to entities accountable to God-knows-whom (or what) or, perhaps, accountable to no one at all.
Why would communities not insist upon adhering to such a basic principle?
Well, for one thing, because it's hard. And because, first, some sort of commonweal must exist. Individuals must find it within themselves to bond themselves irrevocably to others on some level beyond that of the clan . . . or Klan, as the case may be.
John Deaux must, somewhere within himself, find the strength to be his brother's keeper. Even if that brother is a minority, or poor, or just not all that edifying to be around.
You'd think folks in the Bible Belt would be more serious about biblical principles. But we are talking about Louisiana.
AND WE ARE TALKING about the Deep South here. We are, after all, talking about a region where -- historically -- the electorate hasn't cared much for education, and what care it had was for "white" schools. "Nigger schools" got what was left over from those slim pickings.
In state after state, community after community across the South -- and, to be fair, in many urban areas outside the South -- we have seen a familiar progression from the earliest days of school desegregation.
First, a federal court steps in to order the integration of public schools long under the unequal and unjust yoke of de jure segregation. Then, after much fulminating by local pols and sometimes violent outrage on the part of the public, a token effort is made at "integration." Usually, this involves the admittance of a token number of minority students into "white" schools under the banner of various "freedom of choice" schemes.
Of course, after some time, a federal district judge would deem such tokenism as wholly unacceptable. Baton Rouge's stab as such foot-dragging proceeded at a grade-per-year snail's pace, and had not yet reached the elementary grades by the time the federal judge had enough in 1970.
Then -- at least in Baton Rouge's case -- "integration" was to be achieved through voluntary majority-minority transfers and through a "neighborhood schools" plan. That's right, going to your own neighborhood school constituted race-mixing progress.
Except that white folks either a) fled what previously were mixed areas of town, b) fled the public schools or c) both. And the "integrated" schools largely weren't.
Finally, fed up with segregated "integrated" public schools, federal courts then turned to the B-word -- busing. That, of course, led to an explosion in the numbers of private schools, particularly in Baton Rouge. And to a population explosion in "whiter" outlying areas.
As the public schools, under "forced busing," went from majority white to majority black -- and from majority middle-income to majority lower income -- the white exodus picked up steam, with previous holdouts fleeing what they now saw as "failing schools." I'm not sure, but I think the difference between acceptably mediocre and "failing" is somehow proportionate to the percentage of African-American (and underclass) students.
Now -- almost three decades after "forced busing" began and several years after it was deemed pointless and abandoned along with the 47-year deseg case -- my hometown school district has gone from 65 percent white to 83 percent minority. Whites, once a strong majority in Baton Rouge, now make up less than half the population.
Until Katrina flooded Baton Rouge with those fleeing New Orleans and southeast Louisiana, the city's population hadn't grown in two decades.
THAT'S THE HISTORY of these things, and I would imagine Baton Rouge's troubled transformation mirrors that of more than a few Southern cities. And some Northern cities, too.
No, I am not digressing. My point is to suggest that America's original sin -- slavery and racism -- destroyed basic bonds of human affection. Racism was so prevalent for so long that the notion of commonweal has become unthinkable.
When a people has become so accustomed -- so enculturated over centuries -- to thinking that some humans are chattel, that some humans are less than oneself, it becomes impossible to think of anyone as one's brother. And impossible to believe that you are The Other's keeper . . . and he yours.
Is that, ultimately, why Jerry Arbour, the school board president, finds it easy to figuratively throw up his hands and abandon his responsibility to educate the public's children? Is that, ultimately, why Baton Rouge -- why Louisiana -- pretty much always has thrown up its hands and abdicated its responsibility too?
And why, when someone at the capitol gets the notion that the state budget is too big, it's always education, health care and social services that take the big hit?
IF PRESSED by someone up here in Yankeeland to explain my hometown and home state, maybe I'll tell them that to understand Baton Rouge (and Louisiana) you need to understand a city (and a state) that throws its hands up.
Huh?
See, when you're faced with a really big problem -- as most people are sooner or later -- you basically have two choices: You bear down and fix it, or you throw your hands up.
For centuries, when faced with corrupt oligarchs and politicians, what have Louisianians done . . . what do Louisianians do still? They throw their hands up, and the crooked pols are still in charge.
When faced with endemic poverty and social dysfunction? Throw your hands up.
Sputtering economic infrastructure . . . ignorant workforce? Put on a pot of gumbo, grab a six pack of Abita . . . and throw your hands up.
Failing schools? Throw your hands up.
In other words, "It ain't me, it ain't my kin, throw the bastards a voucher and let the private schools clean up the mess."
IF I AM NOT my brother's keeper (if I have no brother, just The Other) there is no such thing as commonweal and -- unless I'm getting directly screwed here -- civic culture and governance ain't my problem. My problem is how to move heaven and earth to get a prime tailgaiting spot at Tiger Stadium.
To be born a Louisianian is to learn not to ask for whom the bell tolls.
It's much easier just to throw up your hands.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.AS THE ASTRONAUTS read words more than half as old as civilization itself -- read from sacred scripture on Christmas Eve -- we saw the Earth rise over the horizon of the moon's surface.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
More severe weather and a serious threat of flooding were expected this afternoon and tonight in southeast Nebraska and western Iowa.MOST PLACES, springtime is seen as the season of rebirth . . . the season of pleasant weather and the warm up to a summer of fun. And that it is.
Wednesday night, the region was hit with a little bit of everything - heavy rain, hail, wind and, possibly, tornadoes.
Reports of tornadoes came in from the cities of Ceresco, Ulysses and Surprise in Nebraska and from near Glenwood, Red Oak and Malvern in Iowa, said Terry Landsvork, observation program leader at the National Weather Service office in Valley.
Landsvork said Plattsmouth, Neb., and Red Oak, Iowa, each had about 5½ inches of rain.
"They are building an ark in Plattsmouth," he said.
Murray, Neb., and Lincoln both reported hail measuring 1.75 inches in diameter. Reports of 1-inch hail came in from around the Omaha metropolitan area, Landsvork said.
A line of storms packing high winds and some suspected tornadoes ravaged Ceresco, about 15 miles north of Lincoln, about 8:30 p.m. The storm knocked out power, downed trees, blew out windows and blew off part of the roof of the town's only tavern, the Barn Door.
Storm debris was scattered across U.S. Highway 77, the location of the tavern and the Mills Squeegee convenience store. A satellite dish and some cinderblocks were blown off the store's roof.
Just west of town, the metal panels of a farm building were strewn around power poles and across a field. Damage to farm buildings also was reported farther west near Ulysses, Dwight and Valparaiso.
Eugene and Betty Tvrdy lost their century-old wooden barn and a machine shed near their farmhouse west of Ceresco.
One of the couple's goats died during the storm when the barn collapsed, trapping the animals. Nine other goats made it out of the rubble safely, Betty Tvrdy said today.
Two of the couple's missing horses were located this morning on the edge of the farmstead. Both horses appeared unharmed.
The goats and horses are staying with a neighbor today while the Tvrdys survey their damage and meet with insurance adjusters.
(snip)
Tornadoes also were reported in Nebraska near Champion, Maywood, Bertrand, Smithfield, Elwood, Kearney and Wauneta. Nearly a half-dozen funnel clouds were spotted in southwest Iowa.
An acreage about two miles south of Emerson, Iowa, home to a family of four, was wrecked by a tornado. Siding and part of the roof were torn from the house, and windows were broken. Trees were down, and limbs and branches were strewn about.
As the storm moved east in Iowa, it damaged another home and then headed into Montgomery and Union Counties.
Larry Hurst, Mills County emergency management director, said the Emerson family was not injured. "A little shaken, but they were able to get safe shelter."
Two barns and a machine shed also were destroyed on the acreage, said Josh Bowen, a friend of the family.
The tornado was among four or five funnel clouds spotted in Mills County on Wednesday evening. No injuries were reported.
The rush of the opportunistic superdelegates toward the inevitable nominee only worsened what was certain to be an unhappy day for the Clintons, who had arrived at their Westchester home at about 3 a.m. after an awkward last day of campaigning in South Dakota. Bill Clinton had flown into a rage and called a reporter a "scumbag." At her last event in South Dakota, Hillary had lost her voice in a coughing fit. Somebody had seen fit to play an inappropriate John Fogerty tune before she took the stage: "It ain't me, it ain't me. I ain't no fortunate one."WHY DO I keep thinking of Baal and golden calves? Or, in this case, a golden ass . . . er, donkey.
On Tuesday evening, the crowd began to assemble at Baruch College in Manhattan for Clinton's non-concession speech. The scene was made to look festive: The Clinton campaign ordered 70 boxes of Domino's pizza for the press corps, and set up a cash bar for its fundraisers, or "honored guests." The honored guests were not in a partying mood, however. One older woman pointed at a reporter accusingly and said: "He is the one who destroyed our heroine!"
A crew from "The Daily Show" joined the party, and, hoping to keep Clinton in the race, struck up a cheer of "Four more months!"
Such an outlandish thing seemed almost plausible among the Clinton backers in the hermetically sealed Baruch gym. Below ground level, there was no cellphone or BlackBerry reception, and there was no television playing in the room. That meant that they could not see the network projections showing that, while Clinton had won South Dakota, Obama had won enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Instead, they listened to Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down."
Seventeen months after she sat regally in her New York living room and calmly declared: “I’m in and I’m in to win,” Hillary Clinton stands on a stage in a stifling hot shed in South Dakota, coughing and spluttering, as her daughter, Chelsea, grabs the microphone from her hand to take over the show.PERHAPS NO COUPLE has been such poster children for their generation -- and for a whole era of American history -- as the Clintons . . . Bill and Hill. Their motto just as well could have been "You can't touch this," because, well, who could?
“A long campaign,” the former First Lady chokes out between sips of water. Her husband, red-faced and exhausted – and having just apologised for another angry outburst in front of reporters – looks on wistfully at the final rally of his wife’s presidential bid, an endeavour that has been transformed from an inevitable juggernaut into a costly train wreck.
It was an extraordinary moment, exactly five months after the first contest in Iowa, to see the former First Family in the dying moments of the longest primary campaign in history, a gruelling journey across America that was meant to end in a Clinton restoration and has instead bought a very different inevitability: defeat at the hands of Barack Obama.
(snip)
In this final day of campaigning, Mrs Clinton was still defiant, still giving, as she has done for months, an impressive and detailed stump speech full of uplifting prescriptions for healthcare, taxes and energy independence. Yet there was a sense of a woman with her fingers in a leaking dam, straining to halt the impending flood of super-delegates to her rival. Even as she spoke in Sioux Falls, several of her Democratic Senate colleagues were meeting behind closed doors in Washington to plot the end-game by planning a mass endorsement for Mr Obama.
At two events she became convulsed by coughing fits. At one she got the name of the local mayor wrong. In Yankton, she completely lost her voice and had to leave the stage. Chelsea again took over, the reluctant, largely mute campaigner of Iowa now a star in her own right. During the day Mrs Clinton’s event advance team was laid off. Campaign staff were urged to turn in expense receipts. Young aides were talking about vacations. Several volunteers, amid a slightly hysterical fin de siècle atmosphere, gave Oscar-like speeches listing all the states they had visited.
Now the former president and the would-be president appear for all the world like a couple of half-crazed refugees stumbling, glassy-eyed and babbling, out of the ruins of a political Dresden of their own making. Their reputations in tatters, their futures uncertain, they can't help but mindlessly prattle about glorious days still to come.
The world, alas, has moved on.
THE CLINTONS, Bill and Hill, are America. America, behold yourself . . . soon enough.
Soon enough.
OK, so Bo Diddley is lip-synching . . . and not all that successfully. And so what if KHJ radio's Sam Riddle don't know Didd-uh-lee squat about how it's important not to overenunciate Did-lee.
(Boss Angeles, my ass.)
There are only two things you need to know about why this is a cool video. One, it's Bo-bobo-bo-bobo-BO! Diddley, dammit!
Two, everything's better with go-go dancers.
I miss the '60s. And we all miss Bo Diddley.
At the Capitol, legislators might adopt a daily uniform. Everyone would dress the same, like in school. It sounds silly, but some are already trying it out.
Every woman in the House Transportation Committee wore turquoise and brown Monday. It's no coincidence that they all got a staff memo. "I don't have enough time to think about what I'm going to wear, so the memo saves me that day. I know exactly what I'm going to wear, like a uniform," says Rep. Karen St. Germain of Plaquemine.
(snip)
Men have been matching for years by wearing a dark suit with a patriotic-looking tie or a seersucker suit and boots. So, Representative St. Germain says it's their turn to tie together. "It's a little bit better than standing up and yelling on a hormonal day. This was a lot more effective," she says. St. Germain says it shows solidarity, with a little silliness. "I think it's a little fun in the middle of a long six months of being at the Capitol. We kind of needed something to bring us back to reality. Hey, this is not a bad idea."
These are the people making the call on stuff like cutting social services, health care and higher education. And on "reforming" ethics. Let's not forget ethics.
Geez, what's the men's excuse? "I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue"?
Imagine a streetcar ride from downtown to the Henry Doorly Zoo along a transformed 10th Street boulevard."WELL," SAYS ANYONE from around these parts. "So?"
At 10th and Bancroft Streets, a fountain would be the centerpiece of a new roundabout. Signs would help visitors decide whether to go to the zoo, get on Interstate 80, stop at Lauritzen Gardens or head to the new north downtown baseball stadium. Tenth Street would be renamed Parkway 10.
For now, it's all just a pipe dream.
But it's the vision that was shared Monday by Mayor Mike Fahey, City Councilman Garry Gernandt and a number of south Omaha neighborhood leaders.
The first step toward improving the corridors along 10th and 13th Streets is setting new rules and regulations that will preserve the area's character while enhancing it with new lighting, landscaping and attractive development.
The city now has limited control over the type and look of commercial development along those entryways to downtown.
Monday's announcement in the mayor's conference room seemed to demonstrate that Fahey had made amends with the south Omaha neighborhoods. After months of controversy over plans to demolish Rosenblatt Stadium and build a new downtown ballfield, Fahey stood with many of the people who had condemned him earlier this year.
"All was forgiven months and months ago," said Jason Smith, the former Save Rosenblatt leader.
Even as the Rosenblatt fight raged on, neighborhood leaders and the Fahey administration were simultaneously working on the plan for 10th and 13th Streets.
Fahey said that in the seven years since he and Gernandt were elected, Rosenblatt has been the only issue that caused significant disagreement between the two. They have worked together to improve the 24th Street business district, build the new South Omaha Library and construct the Salvation Army's Kroc Center, Fahey said.
"Support for south Omaha has always been an administration goal," Fahey said. He said he remains committed to "improving the look and feel of the entire city."