Sunday, January 08, 2006
 Former NBC producer Daniel Hopsicker's MadCowMorningNews Jan. 3 2006: "Everything you need to know to understand the way things are in America today was starkly visible on Chris Matthews’ year-end review on MSNBC’s HARDBALL last weekend.
The show featured a recap from New Orleans of the major unpleasantness of Hurricane Katrina, and an interview with a local "restauranteur" named Finis Shellnut, crowing about the blow the disaster had struck to the city’s poor people…
The name rang a bell. We couldn’t quite place it, though. Then we found another hurricane interview he’d done. An accompanying picture shows him sitting at a table with a bottle of champagne…
"Finis Shellnut is wealthy and he isn't hiding it, even in the difficult times following the Katrina disaster. The 53-year-old real estate magnate sits in front of one of his buildings in the French Quarter, enjoying a chilled bottle of French champagne," Der Spiegel reported.
"The man is a walking glitz machine, from the diamonds on his Rolex to his gold-framed glasses to the silver cross dangling on his chest under his half-open shirt. Shellnut is doing well these days, extremely well. He senses a lot of post-Katrina business coming his way."
Shellnut wasn't particularly hard-hit by the storm and the flooding in New Orleans.
"My real estate is in the city's better neighborhoods," he told Der Spiegel, clearly pleased with himself, "a tree fell down here and there, but otherwise everything's just fine."
[...]
"Despite all the chaos and destruction, the storm and the floods came with a silver lining for people like Shellnut. "Most importantly, the hurricane drove poor people and criminals out of the city," he says, "and we hope they don't come back."
We found two separate FOX NEWS reports seeming to indicate that the loathsome Shellnut may have been responsible for some of the reports about atrocities being committed in the days after the hurricane... atrocities which later turned out to have no basis in fact, but which may have helped depress real estate prices later.
"Finis Shellnut stuck in French Quarter on phone, surrounded by looters," FOX NEWS reported. Then, later: "Finis Shellnut reports looters shot police officer in head."
Who is Finis Shellnut? . . .
The financially oh-so-lucky Shellnut is the former brother-in-law of Bill Clinton’s close personal and political friend, former Asst U.S. Attorney General Webster Hubbell (who went to federal prison for a Whitewater-related conviction), as well as a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But his real claim on notoriety came when he was identified as the man who picked up the duffel bags filled with cash dropped by CIA Drug Pilot Barry Seal at the Triple S Ranch near Hot Springs, Arkansas. An estimated $9 million per week fell out of the sky.
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