Louisiana Voice

When last we visited the ACCREDITATION RACKET on Jan. 14, the emphasis was on college accreditations and the fact that college presidents like Southeastern Louisiana University’s William Wainwright may serve on the board of trustees for the accrediting entity, in this case the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCC).

Added to that built-in conflict is the fact the colleges and universities pay memberships to SASCC—and pay for the privilege of being accredited.

But it’s not just colleges and universities that have cozy relationships with their accrediting agencies, but hospitals do so also.

And so do prisons, though one might never know it from reading headlines about substandard care, filthy conditions, inadequate or even spoiled food fed prisoners, unqualified staff, poor medical care, seemingly nonexistent oversight for contraband and frequent DEATHS.

From 2019 to 2024, Louisiana Department of Safety and Corrections FIGURES SHOW there have been 911 deaths inside state prisons. The leading cause, department statistics show, is heart attacks (205), followed closely by cancer (197) and overdoses (115). Homicide accounted for 22 deaths of incarcerated individuals.

Prison Legal News, an online publication dedicated to Louisiana prison news, reported in January 2024 that deaths while incarcerated in Louisiana INCREASED BY 18 PERCENT from 2020 to 2021.

A web page called simply INCARCERATION TRANSPARENCY, however, takes the research a step further by counting the number of deaths in the seven-year period of 2014-2020. The number is an astounding 1,718. The report lists five reasons for death: violence, medical, suicide, drugs and “other.”

No data are available for the numerous private prisons operating in the state, though most of those have spotty records at best.

Yet, the Louisiana Department of Corrections invariably churns out glowing press releases each time one of the state prisons under its jurisdiction achieves accreditation from the American Correctional Association (ACA).

What those press releases do not reveal, however, is that Richard Stalder, who served as 16 years as DOC secretary, was the ACA president from 1998 to 2000.

Other factors not often mentioned about the ACA:

It is the lobbying arm of America’s prisons, often going to bat for support legislation favorable to the prison industry.

States—and presumably private and local prisons pay a fee to obtain accreditation.

Louisiana, for example, in addition to paying customary membership dues to be a member of the association, paid out more than $134,000 last years to have 10 of its prisons and its headquarters accredited. Those fees ranged from $7,350 for the state’s Prison Enterprises, a DOC department that operates a diverse group of industry, agriculture and service programs in eight correctional facilities throughout the state, to $21,750 for Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

So, basically, what we have is a state agency that pays to be a member of the association that accredits its correctional facilities, pays them to conduct accreditation and political lobbying and occasionally has its director chosen to preside a two-year term as president of the association.

How likely is a facility to emerge with a negative rating, given such an incestuous relationship?

To see the costs for each facility, go to these links:

Perhaps we all should send a nice email to Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), the one who said the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol looked like a “normal day of tourist visits” to him and suggest that the people crowding the streets of Minneapolis in sub-zero wind chill temperatures represent just a “normal day of tourist visits.”

Just a thought, but if you do decide to send him a reminder of his acute awareness of the prevailing mood of mobs, go to https://clyde.house.gov/contact/ and scroll to the bottom of the page to type your greetings.

Oh, and be sure to give your zip code as either 30501 to 30507, 30577, 30643 or 30533 to 30597. Otherwise, I find members of Congress block all emails from outside their districts.

I bet he’d love to hear from you.

If you’re not concerned by now, you should be.

If you’re not alarmed by now, you should be.

If you’re not ready to join the resistance, you should be.

The pretense is gone; The Trump administration and Repugnantcans like Mike Johnson have one objective by now: total control of our bedrooms, our schoolrooms, and our minds because once they get control of those, everything else they want will come easy.

Why would Pam Bondi write Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on the same day as the Alex Pretti murder, coincidentally (or not), to tell him if he’d turn over the state’s voter rolls, then ICE, Border Patrol and Homeland Security (read: Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Oath Keepers, et al) just might be removed from his state.

That sounds an awful lot like extortion to me but hey, what do I know? I’m just an American citizen who was once proud of this country. Today, I have grave concerns for the direction in which we’re headed—not for me so much, I’m 82, but for my grandchildren who are at real risk of living under an authoritarian dictatorship.

For all these years, the political right has defended the Second Amendment as if it were the holy grail—even in the wake of multiple shootings of innocent school children. All they were willing to offer up were TAPs (“thoughts and prayer”). Now, in a whiplash-inducing about-face, the killing of Pretti was completely justified because he was carrying a weapon—legally. The fact that he was disarmed before the first of 10 shots was fired is suddenly irrelevant.

And why were DHS and ICE sent there in the first place? Ostensibly because Minnesota became embroiled in a massive federally-funded day care scandal whereby taxpayers were robbed of millions of dollars.

Horse hockey. Trump saw an opportunity to attempt to flip a blue state in this year’s elections and presto! He has an issue with which to express his disdain and disgust.

Except for that Mississippi welfare fraud involving a former Repugnican governor. That’s off-limits. I mean, c’mon, Mississippi is a red state; no need to go barging in there.

And Trump claimed a drug crisis as an excuse to invade Venezuela even as he was issuing a pardon to the former PRESIDENT OF HONDURAS who was convicted (in the same court where Venezuela’s Madura will be tried) of being the leader of one of the largest criminal enterprises that has ever existed and who is responsible for the smuggling of 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. Trump says he was “set up.”

So now, Trump is judge and jury? That sounds an awfully lot like a despot handing down edicts.

Likewise, Trump is so offended at Minnesota’s rampant fraud as to dispatch federal forces there even as he PARDONS SEVERAL INDIVIDUALS CONVICTED OF FRAUD. Trump himself was forced to settle a fraud case involving his fake Trump University for $25 million and to repay millions in funds defrauded from a Trump non-profit foundation intended to help children with cancer—and to agree never to operate another non-profit in New York.

So, just as Venezuela wasn’t about drugs, neither has the crackdown in Minnesota been about immigration or fraud; it’s all about control.

After all, as one reader noted, ICE has 22,000 officers with a $27.7 billion budget, with $75 billion allocated over the next four years. The U.S. Marine Corps has 177,000 active-duty personnel with a $57 billion budget. Why does ICE need so much funding?

And if his henchmen happen to murder a few innocent people or abduct a five-year-old boy as being among Trump’s “worst of the worst,” then so be it. It’s all part of the process of seizing control and, at least to him, a small price to pay in order to gain that control.

But if we are willing to sit back and watch as he wreaks havoc, destroys lives and guts our freedoms without taking action, then we fully deserve what we get.

You have to know by now that Trump will go as far as he is allowed to go, whether it be invading or annexing a sovereign nation, destroying the White House’s East Wing to construct a $400 million ballroom or issuing pardons to insurrectionists, fraudsters, drug smugglers and sex traffickers.

But if we stand as one and say, “NO MORE” to the Trumps, the Pam Bondis, the Kash Patels, the Kristi Noems, the J.D. Vances, the Mike Johnsons, then maybe, just maybe, we can take this country back in the name of the citizens of the United States of America.

We can put football and the transfer portal aside, forget about March Madness and pay more attention to what the truly important things are or we can blithely go about our circuses and allow this monster to steadily erode our freedoms until we awaken one day as we’re being loaded onto the railroad cars (metamorphically speaking).

The choice is ours. You love your sports vernacular? Try this one: the ball is in your court.

In my 82+ years of living, I have visions etched into my memory of water cannons and police dogs used against civil rights protesters in Alabama, the horrific murders of Emmett Till, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwermer in Mississippi and the murders of innocent blacks in Concordia Parish, Louisiana.

Invariably, with those civil rights attacks and killings, the perpetrators were either local redneck law enforcement officers with no regard for human life or just your run-of-the mill rednecks bent on killing innocent people.

Never did I imagine in my worst nightmares a scenario in which our own federal government would turn against citizens of this country. All that began to change when police brutally attacked demonstrators at the Democratic national convention in Chicago in 1968 and again in 1970 with the killing of students at Jackson State and Kent State universities.

Today, we are witnessing the daily mental deterioration of an unstable president and his hand-picked collection of Joseph Goebbels/Heinrich Himmler wannabes like Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Pam Bondi, J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem and Kash Patel.

And make no mistake, they’re not above lying to cover their own asses. Don’t believe me? Just ask yourself if you can recall a single time when any of them have owned up to any mistake or issued a public apology for something that occurred on their watch.

They don’t make mistakes. That’s their top priority: never admit you’re wrong about anything. Frankly, I have a lot of trouble with people who cannot face up to their own responsibilities.

And Noem yesterday, following the completely senseless shooting death of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, saying she was “praying” for him. Like hell she was. That (excuse my candor) heartless bitch most likely doesn’t know the first thing about prayer. This is a woman who admitted she shot a puppy because it would hunt to please her. So now, she’s going to stand at a podium and tell us what went down in the latest murder by ICE agents in Minneapolis? Spare me. I wasn’t there; she wasn’t there. Neither of were eyewitnesses to the homicide.

She claimed, without a shred of evidence to back up her assertion, “This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism.”

Here’s another lie by Noem, who apparently loves shooting from the lip: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Yeah, with a CELLPHONE.

But there were plenty of those who were there who have given sworn oaths that Pretti was NOT brandishing a weapon; he was attempting to assist a woman who ICE agents had set up on one of their now-familiar attacks of body-slamming, choke-holds, bear spray and tear gas.

What’s the real reason Minnesota is ground-zero in Trump’s war on America? Simple. There’s an election there this year and the Repugnantcans are so desperate to flip Minnesota, they’re willing to destroy basic freedoms in an entire state.

Oh, you think it’s about that child-care fraud? Think again. Sure, it’s an issue and something that should never have been allowed to occur, especially on such a large scale.

But, as I’ve said here a couple time already, why doesn’t Trump have his Depends in a wad over the welfare fraud next door in Mississippi? That’s easy to answer. Mississippi is already a red state, so there’s no need to go barging in there.

Think ol’ Yam Tits is offended by fraud? Nah. Look at Trump University, a debacle that saw him ordered by the results of a class-action lawsuit to refund $25 million to students he cheated. Want more? Try the Donald J. Trump Foundation which in 2018, was sued because it misused charity funds intended for children suffering from cancer for business and political purposes. Again, the court ordered Trump to refund $2 million and Trump agreed to CEASE OPERATIONS of its foundation as part of the settlement.

Trump has made it his goal to rid Minnesota of all those illegal immigrants. But LET’S LOOK AT THE NUMBERS. Minnesota has a whopping 130,000 undocumented immigrants. Texas, meanwhile has 1.2 million and Florida has 1.6 million. Both Texas and Florida are decidedly red states, so no need to dispatch ICE there, right?

The presence of ICE and Homeland Security is no more about immigration than the invasion of Venezuela was about drugs or the desire to annex Greenland is about national security. It’s a ruse, just like the entirety of this administration.

Want further evidence? In a letter dated Jan. 24 (the same day as the Pretti murder) Bodi wrote a THREE-PAGE LETTER to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in which, among other demands, she told Walz if he wanted a return to normalcy, he should “allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law…”

She added, “I am confident that these simple steps will help bring back law an order to Minnesota and improve the lives of Americans.”

We are under siege in this country. The plantation boss of Mar-a-Lardo is going to take every step possible to either assure a Repugnantcan win in the mid-terms or, failing that, attempt to cancel the elections altogether, even if it comes to invoking the Insurrection Act. He is a ruthless, bigoted, despot and the U.S. Constitution means absolutely nothing to him.

It’s up to us to take whatever legal measure necessary to stop this man, whether be the 25^th Amendment or a third impeachment.