Louisiana Voice

When push comes to shove, members of Congress, regardless of party affiliation, can be counted on to put aside their philosophical differences long enough to circle the wagons against the diabolical threats of accountability and transparency.

And that is precisely what 357 members of the House—including every single one of Louisiana’s six members—did last Wednesday when they CAME TOGETHER for the common cause of self-preservation to beat back an effort from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) to make public all reports on file with the House Ethics Committee on investigations into allegations of sexual hanky-panky on the part of members.

The 357-65 vote (with a sole member voting “present,” but casting neither a yea nor nay vote), the House, in a rousing display of bipartisanship certain to bring a tear to the eye of every patriotic American, moved to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee, which effectively kills the measure dead in its tracks, thus assuring the preservation of the American Way in the People’s House.

Who says it’s impossible for Republicans and Democrats to work together? This is what the Founded Fathers envisioned: working across the aisle in unison and harmony to display to the world how our leaders protect one another from potential harm.

We should not concern ourselves with charges or sexual harassment by beleaguered staff members or even of sexual relationships with members of their staffs. After all, there is insider trading to be done and wars to be fought.

This, by the way, is the same House membership that voted to release the Epstein files, underscoring once more—in case additional evidence was necessary—the willingness to wax all sanctimonious and indignant with outsiders are targets but much differently when the spotlight is turned inward.

To see a complete vote tally, CLICK HERE.

It was no big surprise that each of the four Republicans—Julia Letlow, Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins and (yes) even pious Mike Johnson—voted to kill the measure. After all, parties are guilty of the occasional dalliance, but if you’re keeping score, the Republicans have a huge lead in hypocrisy. But it was surprising to see the two state Democrats, Troy Carter and Cleo Fields join in sending the measure to purgatory.

But then again, there’s this thing called bipartisanship…

Remember how we were lied to about those weapons of mass destruction (WMD) squirreled away in Iraq, just waitin to be unleased against democracy, freedom and American football?

Well, maybe not football, per se, but certainly the ideals Americans held dear. So, it was off to war with an ill-timed “mission accomplished” boasted by George W. Bush in the first days of that incursion.

Except for two minor points, that is: First, W’s “mission accomplished” morphed into Afghanistan at an eventual cost of 20 years, $1.06 trillion and 4500 American military and 200,000 civilian dead. Second, it turned out there were no WMD. Another 32,300 American service members were wounded in Iraq—and we know what tends to happen to our wounded fighters these days: they’re conveniently forgotten and tossed aside. Could be a coincidence that an estimated 33,000 veterans in this country are homeless?

Can you wrap your brain around what $1.06 trillion could mean to those 33,000 and the other 740,000 American homeless?

Now, let’s fast-forward from May 20, 2003 (the day we invaded Iraq) to today. We’re being told by yet another Repugnantcan administration, one that is an inestimable number of times more dishonest and deceptive than that of George W. Bush, that Iran posed a threat to the U.S., that we-feared-they-might-strike-back-if-we-launched-the-first-strike- so-we-launched-a-preemptive-strike-as-a-precaution or we wanted to thwart Iran’s building nuclear capabilities (the latter reason after Trump tore up an Obama-era anti-nuke agreement with which Iran was in compliance at the time). Truth is, no one know why we’re at war—other than the fact that Cankle Ankes, Pete Hogsbreath and Little Marco acquiesced to the wishes of Yahoo Netanyahu.

As we enter into this special edition of Trumpian Diplomacy, it’s important to remember he was the candidate who harped for years on end—even before he ever ran for president—about the U.S. allowing itself to become entangled in “endless wars.”

It was Trump who proclaimed himself as the candidate for peace.

Likewise, it was Trump who initiated the so-called “Board of Peace” ($1 billion membership fee: please pay before entering) with himself as the chairman.

And it is that same Trump who continues to claim that he has “ended eight wars,” while simultaneously, he has literally attacked eight separate sovereign nations—all without the advice and consent of Congress which, constitutionally, is charged with approving all wars.

Yet, when Democrats and a couple of stray Repugnantcans attempted to force votes to enforce the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (a federal law intended to check the president’s power to commit the U.S. to armed conflict), votes failed this past week in both the House and Senate.

Now, this is the part I hope you will all remember. Of Louisiana’s six House members and two U.S. Senators, precisely two are Democrats. Both of them, Reps. Troy Carter of Louisiana’s 2^nd District and Cleo Fields of the 8^th District, voted in favor of enforcement of the resolution.

The rest, all Repugnantcans, voted against the measure, in effect, taking way their own power of checks and balances.

Here’s the House vote:

And the Senate:

Ten, twenty years and a couple trillion more dollars and an as yet unknown number of dead and injured American Gis, remember the names of U.S. Reps. Steve Scalise, Mike Johnson, Clay Higgins and Julia Letlow, along with Sens. John Neely Kennedy and Bill Cassidy for ceding their responsibility by bending over and greasing up for the Earl of Mar-A-Lardo.

Of course, Cassidy will be history by that time. So, too, will Agent Orange. But the sorry legacies of each of Louisiana’s Repugnantcan delegation will endure as the ones contributing to the plunging of the U.S. into yet another Viet Nam-Iraq-Afghanistan quagmire that only served to enrich the munitions manufacturers, war speculators and the oil companies while fueling further inflation back home.

Don’t believe me? Well, just sit back and see who gets rich–and who suffers–off Trump’s sweet little war.

There’s an old, time-worn expression that goes back to far no one knows its precise origins:

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

That is sage advice. Bert Lance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget in Jimmy Carter’s administration certainly embraced that philosophy when he said, “…That’s the trouble with government: fixing things that aren’t broken and not fixing thing that are broken.”

Perhaps, in the minds of some people, quoting someone from the Carter administration might not be the best example. He was, after all, the president of gas rationing, double-digit inflation and a failed rescue attempt in the Iranian desert. On the other hand, Carter never boasted about grabbing women by their genitals, he didn’t use his office to enrich himself or his family, he was married just once (though he did once admit to lust in his heart), and he held himself forth as the kind of leader who could be trusted. Yes, his presidency was not what Americans would’ve desired, but he was undercut by an actor named Reagan who had his own eye on the Oval Office.

Citizens for a New Louisiana, its director, Michael Lunsford, and a few library board around the state could certainly do well to adapt that slogan for themselves but like the typical bureaucratic paper shuffler, they just can’t seem to come to that realization.

Take the Livingston Parish Library Board of Control, for example. We had a functioning board until the Livingston Parish Council, goaded on by Lunsford and his organization, began to think they were better qualified to run a library system than those who obtain Master’s degrees to do just that.

So, with the subtly of elephants making baby elephants, the parish council and Lunsford waded into the fray, shook up the existing library board, replacing members with political hacks instead of dedicated public servants.

And to borrow another familiar phrase, no good deed goes unpunished. We now have a dysfunctional library board that is ruled by chaos and chaired by an individual who knows nothing about procedure and we are now looking for a fourth director of our library system in a three-year period because our third just resigned after being in the position just since the second week in January.

Parish councils and police juries also attempted to interfere with the operations of libraries, ostensibly over the availability of inappropriate books to children but really over a single word: control. That’s all the Lunsford crowd ever wanted.

And as for his organization: Citizens for a New Louisiana sounds suspiciously like a cleaned-up version of the old John Birch Society or a couple of other outfits from my high school and college days. They had nice names, too, like H.L. Hunt’s Lifeline and Billy James Hargis’s Christian Crusade. Of course, Hargis fell far and fast in 1976 when it was learned that a newlywed couple, students at his Tulsa-based American Christin College, decided confession was good for the soul and revealed to each other that each had had sex with the good minister.

But never mind all that. The objective is to keep those nasty books out of the hands of the children and to keep them damn crossdressing drag queens from grooming kids (though I could rattle off a couple hundred names of priests, Baptist preachers and church counselors who have been caught “grooming” kids for themselves).