Louisiana Voice

It’s almost like one of those afternoon soap operas where adult children compete for the affections—and inheritance—of filthy-rich Daddy in a no-holds-barred fight for the house, bank account, stocks and even the cars and horses in the stable. Nothing is to trivial to fight for and it’s on as deceit, back-stabbing and blackmail are rules of the day in the winner-take-all struggle.

Except it’s not a family inheritance, but political power and prestige that are at stake and there’s a common goal with each of the three Repugnantcan candidates: one has it; one ain’t gonna get it but keeps trying and the third has to be satisfied with a doctored photo on a mailout that not only tries to project a favorable image of himself but at the same time, attempts to paint the other two as an ogre and a rag-woman, respectively. The flip-side of the mailer contains a doctored (read: AI) photo of Fleming and Trump, side-by-side, both with Trump’s absurd “thumbs-up” that he loves to flash during funerals.

That, in a nutshell, is the scenario Louisiana voters face as they prepare for the closed primary on May 16 for United States Senator.

Bill Cassidy is the incumbent, of course, and he is posilutely, absotively desperate to hang on for a third six-year term. But he has that albatross hanging around his neck in the form of his vote to convict in Cankle-Ankle’s second impeachment trial back in 2021. No amount of suck-up is going to make Mar-A-Lardo forget that slight but God knows, Cassidy’s certainly giving it his best shot, never passing up an opportunity to invoke the sacred name of Trump in his TV ADS.

Much as he did when I asked him a few weeks back when he was going to work up the courage to stand up to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he likewise DISMISSED  Trump’s endorsement of U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow who is challenging Cassidy’s Quixote-like windmill-tilting effort to return to the Beltway.

He, of course, denies any involvement in those ATTACK ADS against Letlow. His denials ring a little hollow when one learns that it’s his own super-PAC that’s behind the ads that accuse Letlow of less-than-forthcoming stock deals while in Congress.

But she’s so cute as she comes to the microphone in the House chambers and reads, word-for-word a prepared MESSAGE OF CONGRATULATIONS to the LSU baseball team on the occasion of its winning the College World Series last June.

But she is anything but cute in that mailer from State Treasurer/physician/payday loan owner/fast food entrepreneur/former Congressman John Fleming who apparently doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up. Besides touting his conservative voting record, he includes a head shot of Letlow that is positively wretched—mouth drawn in a frown, hair in tangled strands, eyes appearing deep-set in a face etched in a decidedly negative expression. And the photo of Cassidy isn’t much better. He has the expression of an ax-murderer. And both the Cassidy and Letlow pics are in black-and-white while Fleming beams at the camera with a pleasant smile and in full color, proving once again, the age-old political strategy that substance is nothing; it’s all in the perception.

Letlow was the early odds-on favorite but those ads hinting at insider trading have had a withering effect on her campaign early-on and no amount of pandering and fealty by Cassidy is going to help him with the MAGHATS, so he’s still toast.

That leaves the heretofore largely ignored Fleming as a viable dark horse in this Shakespearian tragicomedy.

And then, there is Democrat James “Jamie” Davis, Jr., a THIRD-GENERATION FARMER from Waterproof and the grandson of a sharecropper who is standing by to take on the winner between Cassidy, Letlow and Fleming.

Davis studied electrical engineering for two years at LSU before returning home to help his father on the 2,000-acre farm which he now owns. He was elected to serve on the Tensas Parish Police Jury in 2015 and served as vice president of the parish governing body for four years.

I’m going out on a limb here and saying that having attended LSU, having been a farmer for decades and having served at the local governing level probably makes him the best-qualified of the four candidates in this post.

Unfortunately, running for office takes lots of money and all the money is with the other three.

John N. Kennedy, the junior senator from the gret stet of Loozianer, obviously thinks of himself as a modern-day Will Rogers, given his plethora of pithy quotes from the floor of the U.S. Senate and from his book, How to Test Negative for Stupid.

Unfortunately, Kennedy has painted himself into such a corner that some might say he has tested positive for stupid. I would never say that, of course, because there’s no question that he is a man with a high IQ, but I have to admit he can come off the country bumpkin—not by accident, but by CAREFULLY-CONTRIVED EFFORT to sound down-to-earth and to shamelessly appeal to the Trump base. And that’s where I have a problem with the senator; he doesn’t seem to give a rat’s patootie about appealing to anyone else.

And, like most politicians who abandon principle for political expedience and existence, he’s not without glaring contradictions. Like House Speaker Mike Johnson and his efforts to manufacture cohesion between his own self-proclaimed Christianity and the obvious Trumpian lies, deceit and a total lack of morality, Kenney has likewise contorted himself into a human pretzel on the issue of economy and fiscal responsibility.

Of course, that should come as no surprise. When he was Secretary of the Department of Revenue and running for State Treasurer, he had a TV ad that said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “As Revenue Secretary, I cut required paperwork for small businesses by 150 percent.” While that isn’t as drastic as Trump’s cutting prescription drug prices by 600 to 1500 percent, neither is mathematically possible and for someone who was a candidate to handle the state’s finances, it was a pretty egregious error.

It was after he was elected Treasurer, however, that he set himself up for exposure as a typical politician instead of a sage philosopher.

Remember when Bobby Jindal was plowing through the state budget, making all those draconian cuts to mental health and education while slashing corporate taxes? It was Kennedy who pursed his lips, puffed out his chest and proclaimed, “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” He said that so many times it became ingrained in our psyche, like the lyrics of a bad song like Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (an all-time horrendous effort). You can read his quote about spending HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

He even came up with this chart to display on the Senate floor (in one of those “speeches” delivered for the C-SPAN cameras before an empty chamber, by the way) that was critical of President Biden’s “spending bonanza.

Kennedy, speaking to an audience of….no one.

Yet, when it came time to vote on the 2025 Reconciliation Bill, aka Trump’s “BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” that analysts agreed would add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit and $5 trillion to the national debt, anyone want to guess how KENNEDY VOTED? As Harry Doyle (Bob Uecker) would say on the movie Major League, “Juuust a little outside” his previous field of fiscal rhetoric. Doesn’t give the appearance of fiscal responsibility much.

Ah, but that’s nothing. Let’s move on to the two positions Kennedy took on U.S. relations with Iran, depending, of course on who was president at the time.

“I don’t want America to be the world’s policeman,” he said just last October on an episode of Pod Force One. Yet, he’s ALL-IN on Trump’s decision to bomb Iran and risk war in the region—a decision that’s likely to send gas prices soaring at the pump as oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz are curtailed. He even manages to justify Trump’s circumventing the WAR POWERS ACT by sniffing, “We certainly don’t have time for Congress to spend months debating action on Iran.”

Wow.

Even FDR didn’t go to war with Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor until he first addressed Congress.

And what could almost pass for gallows humor, Kennedy in a March 2023 address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC) decried the Biden administration’s treating parents like “domestic terrorists.”

When one hears JD Vance, Krisi Noem and others in the Trump administration referring to anyone who objects to the shooting of civilians, the arrest of children or the deplorable conditions in federal detention centers as “domestic terrorists,” it’s no longer a joke.

Nor is John N. Kennedy nearly as clever as he thinks.

In fact, he’s only exposed himself as just another political hack who’ll do whatever necessary to hold on to his plush political office.

He really needs to work at a hand-to-mouth job like most other Americans and come down off that “aw, shucks” gibberish because, to use his own words, he sucks at what he’s doing right now.

There was a point during Cankle Ankle’s two-hour ramble-tamble monologue, otherwise known as the State of the Union Address, last night when he actually made sense—or would have if the words had come from anyone but Donald J. Trump:

Let’s also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information.

They stood up for that. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Did Nancy Pelosi stand up, if she’s here? Doubt it. Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay. I wasn’t sure if anybody even on this side was even going to applaud for that. I’m very impressed. Thank you. I’m very impressed.But when it comes to the corruption that is plundering — it really, it’s plundering America — there’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. Oh, we have all the information.

And in actuality the number is much higher than that, and California, Massachusetts, Maine and many other states are even worse. This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe. So tonight, although started four months ago, I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great vice president, JD Vance.

He’ll get it done. And we’re able to find enough of that fraud — we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It’ll go very quickly. That’s the kind of money you’re talking about. We’ll balance our budget. The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception.

Really? Let’s roll the tape.

• Phillip Esformes, who owned more than 30 nursing homes in the Miami area, was charged by the U.S. Justice Department in July 2016 with what at the time was described as “the largest single criminal health care fraud case ever brought against an individual” when he was accused of running a $1.3 billion fraud and money-laundering scheme. He was eventually sentenced to a 20-year prison sentence which was commuted by Trump in 2020. Four years after his commutation, in October 2024, he was arrested for domestic abuse after he allegedly assaulted his wife and father-in-law in separate incident—and for witness tampering and property damage.
• Rick Scott was CEO of Columbia/HCA that routinely inflated bills, billed for services never rendered and pushed unnecessary medical procedures to maximize reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. A 1997federal raid uncovered false cost reports, kickbacks to doctors and upcoding of medical diagnoses that resulted in inflated payments from government programs. Scott was forced to resign in the wake of the largest: LARGEST MEDICARE’MEDICAID FRAUD CASE IN HISTORY. He walked away with $300 million in stock and a $5 million severance package while HCA pleaded guilty to 14 corporate felonies and paid fines of $1.7 billion. Scott, meanwhile, went on to become Repugnantcan governor of Florida and then was elected to the U.S. Senate where he continues to serve.
• Former Trump advisor Eric Herschmann, is defending former pro wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr. in that nasty FRAUD CASE IN MISSISSIPPI that has also involved former NFL quarterback Brett Farve, former head of the Mississippi Department of Human Services John Davis and former Repugnantcan Gov. Phil Bryant. That case involves the misappropriation of about $100 million.

Now then, about that insider trading which suddenly appears to weigh on Trump’s conscience:

It’s somehow ironic that the drifting grifting president would suggest that others not be allowed to game the system considering how he and his family have milked the system for untold millions (maybe billion, who knows?) just during the first year of his final term in office. They have used the office of the president to accumulate as much as they possibly can, legally and illegally.

Nevertheless, let’s delve into this insider trading a bit and we learn that the practice knows no political labels: Repugnantcans and Democrats are both guilty. It’s ironic that Trump should champion a law stopping the practice when the STOP TRADING ON CONGRESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE (STOCK) act attempted to do the same thing in 2012—during the (gasp!) Obama administration. Of course, Agent Orange would never give credit for such progressive legislation to Obama.

It’s almost uncanny how well some members of Congress managed to beat the stock market in 2025

Rember Louisiana’s very own Billy Tauzin. He was an influential House member when he negotiated an agreement whereby Medicare/Medicaid would be unable to negotiate the price of prescription pharmaceuticals. While folks were still scratching their heads in confusion as to why he would do such a thing, he abruptly quit Congress and went to work as head of PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry. Suddenly the scales were removed from our eyes.

In one of the more ironic twists, KALB-TV IN ALEXANDRIA had, of all people, Julia Letlow and Cleo Fields preview Trump’s State of the Union Speech on Tuesday. You’ve probably seen the ads (don’t know how you could miss ‘em unless you live under a rock) shaming Letlow for her belated reports of stock trading. And Fields himself is listed as one of the members of Congress who consistently beat the stock market during 2025.

So, what exactly has produced this sudden pang of conscience among our 535 members of Congress in the collective concern over insider trading?

Well, to begin with, it’s an  ELECTION YEAR and there are just some things that demand bipartisanship, even in Congress and what better way than to try to make the suckers voters back home think they’re actually trying to do something constructive?

But as with any other effort to initiate reform in Congress, a word of caution:

Don’t hold your breath.

I don’t like to say I told you so, but….

Oh, hell, yes, I do. I love being able to say I told you so. Everybody does if they’re honest.

There’s just something inherent in our DNA that gives us that warm fuzzy feeling when we’re able to do that.

Take, for instance, my LOUISIANA VOICE post of last Tuesday (Feb. 17) in which I discussed the trend toward political control of higher education and the fact that Gov. Squeaky Toy Landry has, in two years, made five political appointments to heads of Louisiana colleges and universities.

Well, now you can make that six.

Just as I predicted, Ramesh Kolluru was named as the only finalist for the presidency of University of Louisiana Lafayette.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult prediction, though. Here are some excerpts from that Feb. 17 post:

Kolluru was approached last year by an industry-friendly lobbying group called “Committee of 100 for Economic Development, Inc.,” or C100. That was following the Environmental Protection Agency’s three-day public hearing in Baton Rouge about whether Louisiana should be given enforcement responsibility of carbon capture and storage projects in the state. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a method of reducing greenhouse gases by capturing carbon dioxide from the pollution of industrial smokestacks. The captured carbon is transported via pipeline and, ultimately, injected deep underground.

One of the proposed injection sites is in Lake Maurepas in Tangipahoa Parish where a professor has already been reined in for adverse findings of that proposition. The funding for that research was provided by one of the industries proposing to store the carbon.

C100 desired to continue recruiting support for state control of CCS so, Michael Olivier, former head of C100 ASKED KULLURU TO HELP. “We will be seeking influential business leaders in regions of the state to sign OpEds and we will use social media to influence public opinion in the upcoming EPA ruling. Would you be that person in Acadiana? He asked, according to emails obtained through a public records request.

Kolluru’s response? “Absolutely!” So much for objectivity and non-bias in research.

Kolluru was already serving as interim president following the abrupt resignation of Joseph Savoie last July, But guess what his job was before that? He was the university’s vice president for research, innovation and economic development. His eagerness to assist in the promotion of a controversial matter like carbon capture pretty much throws his objectivity into serious question and automatically tarnishes any research from the school.

Climate scientist and Penn State University professor Michael Mann called the relationship between C100 and ULL “deeply problematic,” according The Lens, a respected New Orleans online news service.

Just remember who told you Kolluru was a sure bet for the ULL job.

After all, this is Louisiana.

Cankle Ankle Trump’s $400 million ballroom construction project aside, there is a lot of other proposed mega-building construction taking place throughout the country with but scant information about the potential impact it might have on local communities.

And Louisiana is right in the thick of it all.

On the one hand, ICE is discreetly snapping EMPTY WAREHOUSES for conversion to massive detention centers capable of storing as many as 8,000 to 10,000 human beings indefinitely without benefit of attorneys or due process.

On the other, water-gulping data centers are also cropping up that will perform God-knows-what functions, buildings that promise to dwarf Walmart supercenters.

Squeaky toy Jeff Landry says the announced Amazon $12 billion center in the Caddo and Bossier parish area will create 540 new permanent jobs as well as 1700 indirect new job opportunities in the state’s northwest region.

Already, construction had begun on another $10 billion (but already edging up to $30 billion in cost) Meta-run AI data center about 100 miles to the east along I-20 in RICHLAND PARISH. It promises to eat up more electric power in a day than the entire city of New Orleans on one of those typically sweltering hot August days.

Anthropic plans a similar $10 billion facility in West Feliciana Parish

But get this: the Richland Parish data center, located in the tiny community of Holly Ridge, is registered to use an astonishing 23 MILLION GALLONS OF WATER PER DAY, or 8.4 billion gallons per year. Those in northwest Louisiana and West Feliciana Parish promise to be equally thirsty for water and power, which is certain to adversely affect consumer rates in the area.

But the bigger—much bigger—question should be: just what in the name of George Orwell’s 1984 will these data systems be used for? Besides posing as a significant drain on subsurface water tables and creating unfathomable demands on electric power, questions should abound on exactly what type of data is expected to be gathered by all these data centers.

The industry as a whole has been criticized for its lack of transparency in development decision. In Louisiana, local and state officials have created seeming airtight NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS (NDAs) in order to hide the economic development process.

But in an era of Trumpian dystopia when Repugnantcans openly espouse less government intrusion in our personal lives while privately obsessing over our bedroom preferences, our health care, blocking our preferences over the quality of air and water we breathe and drink and stripping away our rights little by little, it’s more than a little alarming to contemplate just how much personal information Big Brother is amassing on us in those mammoth data centers.

Perhaps the promise of good-paying jobs for the few is supposed to assuage the concerns of tens of thousands of others living in the area of these monster structures.

As if those concerns are not enough, there’s the hush-hush effort to buy up empty warehouse space for conversion to DETENTION CENTERS to hold thousands upon thousands of people, most of whom have never done a thing to harm us and in fact, probably have a lower overall crime rate than the general population of this country.

We have those who claim these undocumented people are taking our jobs but an equal number claim they’re freeloaders. They can’t be both. And while they’re claiming that they’re a drain on society, ICE keeps raiding work sites to apprehend them. At the same time, claims are made that they’re taking up our housing while remaining homeless. And Trump’s claim that millions of undocumented types are voting illegally, that is a myth, as well; Even as state legislatures like our very own in Louisiana are passing legislation making it illegal for undocumenteds to vote, it’s already illegal for them to vote and precious few cases of illegal voting have been certified, Trump’s wild claims notwithstanding.

Yet, here we are, building more and bigger prisons to hold these people indefinitely, converting many working people into those wards of the state the Repugnantcans are so damned concerned about.

And more and more, bigger and bigger data centers to keep tabs on the rest of us.