Louisiana Voice

The folks in St. Tammany Parish are not too enamored with local school board member and apparent sore-loser Charles Harrell following the board’s approval last Thursday of an extension of the collective bargaining agreement with its employees.

Even though the board’s vote was unanimous, that didn’t deter Harrell from inadvertently registering his disapproval or disgust into a hot microphone as the audience comprised mostly of school board employees applauded.

He muttered, “Go f**k yourselves” before turning to fellow board member Kalinda Fauntleroy seated to his immediate right and adding, “See how they hide that s**t?”

While it’s uncertain just what he was suggesting as being hidden, his comments certainly were not. Picked up over his mic, the remarks were broadcast throughout the parish over the online video service that airs meetings live.

Needless to say, it’s got quite a few school board employees who were watching the vote live online kind of stirred up. Definitely not the kind of PR or role model you’d like from a board member charged with educating the kiddies.

There was speculation but not confirmation that board President Amanda Martin would call a special meeting in the next few days at which time she would offer a resolution to censure the outspokenly anti-union Harrell, who succeeded his daddy who served on the board for 24 years prior to Junior running for the seat seven years ago.

Public notice of any such meeting must, under law, be posted 24 hours in advance.

But hey, state law doesn’t always seem to apply. The school board administration had the video of the clip deleted to remove Harrell’s pontifications, but not before some alert viewer managed to save it and provide it to LouisianaVoice.

The deletion of his remarks constitutes injury of public records which is in violation of R.S. 14:132, which could carry a sentence of up to five years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5,000,and R.S. 44:36. What’s more, it’s not the first time such action has been taken by the administration, one observer said.

For those who like to play with figures and numbers, here are some interesting data about spending priorities for the State of Louisiana.

In 1970, there were approximately 83,200 individuals incarcerated in Louisiana prisons. The state’s budgeted expenditure for caring for those 5,200 prisoners was $26 million.

Fast forward to 2026 and the Louisiana House of Representatives has ALREADY PASSED, by a vote of 104-0, a BUDGET calling for the expenditure of $902,333,848 (that’s $902.3 million and change) to care for what is now a prison population of 257,200, highest incarceration rate in the world. It now awaits Senate consideration.

When you put the pencil to it, you see that the prison population has increased by a quarter-million people, or 488 percent, while the budget for maintaining our prisons has increased an eye-popping 3,371 percent.

At the same time, the state’s POPULATION has grown from 3.64 million in 1970 to about 4.99 million today, a growth rate of 36.9 percent which lags far, far behind the growth rate of our prison population.

With $100 in 1970 now worth about $800, according to the Consumer Price Index, it’s kinda difficult to comprehend how in 1970, the cost of caring for those 5,200 prisoners came to about $5,000 per prisoner per year while in 2026 the cost of upkeep for 257,200 prisoners, while jumping 3,371 percent overall, equates to only about $3,508.30 per person per year.

“Private, for-profit prison corporations are a multibillion-dollar industry,” noted former law enforcement officer Murphy Painter in a report way back in 2002. “Other companies reap hundreds of millions of dollars annually by providing health care, phones, food, and other services in correctional facilities. Many small towns and rural communities, their traditional industries in decline, lobby for new prisons in their areas. Such forces are working actively to increase the number of citizens being locked up. Private prison companies contribute to a policy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council that has helped draft tougher sentencing laws in dozens of states, and the California Prison Guards Union doles out millions every election to tough-on-crime candidates.”

So, how did Louisiana become the prison capital of the civilized world (by virtue of the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate of any country and Louisiana having the highest in the U.S.)?

Well, it probably goes back to the 1988 presidential campaign and George H.W. Bush’s famous “revolving door” campaign ad about Willie Horton and became a hot topic for any Repugnantcan seeking political office from that point forward.

It was an easy campaign issue to exploit and quickly led to all kinds of new laws and penalties for non-violent crimes which has now led the gret stet of Loozeraner and its tough-on-crime governor and legislature to the verge of passing one of the most inhumane laws imaginable.

HOUSE BILL 211 by Rep. Debbie (Silly-O) Villio (R-Kenner) would impose criminal penalties on individuals for the ghastly crime of being homeless.

Rep. Debbie Villio (R-Kenner)

The proposed law “creates the crime of unauthorized camping on public property and provides that this crime is the intentional use of any tent, shelter, or bedding constructed or arranged for the purpose of or in such a way to permit overnight use on public property that is not a designated campground.”

I’m not too sure how many “designated campgrounds” can be found in urban areas like New Orleans or Baton Rouge or what means of transportation the homeless can be expected to use to get there, but yet, here we are.

On a first conviction, a fine of not more than $500 and imprisonment for not more than six months, or both, may be imposed.

A second conviction gets even more severe with these threats to society: a fine of not more than $1,000 and imprisonment with or without hard labor for not less than one year, not more than two years.

Now, I respectfully ask the obvious question: if a person is homeless and likely physically or mentally disabled, where is he going to come up with $500 or $1,000 for such a fine? He’s homeless for a reason in most cases and that is usually because he is unqualified for a job because of the aforementioned disability.

Not my problem, say Louisiana’s Repugnantcan legislators: Seventy of them voted in favor of the bill to only 28 who voted no. Seven took a walk. Want their names? Click HERE to see how every member of the House voted.

This despicable bill goes along with that quote from the late comedian Brother Dave Gardner that I cited a while back in another post: “If a man’s down, kick him. If he survives it, he has a chance to rise above it.” That truly seems to be the attitude of these 70 legislators. To solve the problem of high prison costs, lets’s just lock up more people to care for and to feed. We can always cut health care, education and early childhood development.

Sure, homelessness is a problem and it’s growing. When we send young men off to war and then ignore them when they come home. when people like Ronald Reagan all the way down to Bobby Jindal shutter the doors of mental health facilities, when foster children “age out” when they turn 18 and have nowhere to turn, when as many as 3.3 million children are victims of sex or labor trafficking at any given time, you have homelessness. And that’s not even counting the addicts who desperately need help. And punishment on top of misfortune is not help by anyone’s definition.

We do not need more laws to incarcerate even more people, despite what the executives of the myriad private prisons popping up across the horizon claim.

First of all, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for the existence of a private prison. They exist only to reap money from caging human beings. That is unquestionably wrong. Prisons should never have been allowed to become a profit-making enterprise. That is not their purpose. When profits are factored in, care and rehabilitation are quickly factored out. The lower the maintenance cost, the better the bottom line.

“More than half of the nation is one crisis away from homelessness.” According to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

That’s been said many ways, but in the end, the meaning is always the same.

It might be good advice to Villio and her 69 colleagues to take heed of that admonition and proceed accordingly.

(As a postscript, and since the Repugnantcans seem determined to erase the lines separating church and state, they might want to refresh the foundation of their fundamentalist faith by re-reading Matthew 25:40.)

In the immortal words of Foghorn Leghorn, “Ah’m proud–Ah say, Ah’m proud to say that Louisiana’s premier political cartoonist has come out of retirement to be featured from time to time in LouisianaVoice posts. That tickles me like Miss Prissy’s feathers in mah ear. Heah’s a couple of his initial offerings:”

(with apologies to L.D. Knox)

A post on social media by an unidentified Bossier City resident gave further insight to the horrendous shooting deaths of eight children in the Cedar Grove section of Shreveport over the weekend.

The post was anonymous because the copy of it that was sent to LouisianaVoice did not contain the author’s name. LouisianaVoice has chosen to reprint the post with the original grammar unchanged:

“The suspect [Shamar Elkins] was a former young soldier of mine and I have known him since he was a child,” it said of the shooter and the ensuring events that ended at the writer’s home. “He called me Uncle as I helped raise him without a father present.

“I have no involvement in the actual incident. The suspect went on a chase with police to my residence after the murders, I guess looking for that safety that he had in me as his adopted uncle and trusted offices. I had spoken with him just yesterday about his possible divorce. I didn’t pick up any indicators of murder/suicide and I should have!

“I was totally unaware of all of the events taking place this morning when my cameras suddenly activated that there was activity in my doorway. I went and heard his voice, My Nephew, and then opened the door unknowingly, and he was standing there with his short barrel AR carbine. We talked for a little under a minute and then he put the barrel to his mouth and DONE. When he fired, I assume that the police thought he was shooting at them or me so they then opened fire. I got some glass in my arm from secondary kinetics.

PLEASE PRAY FOR THOSE BABIES! They are in a much better place now I know, but the imprint of this tragedy is deep and hurts! Please pray.

Of all the elections for public office that are held in this state, the ones that consistently leave me the most disgusted and frustrated are the ones for judges—at any level.

Take, for instance, the one for the Louisiana Supreme Court’s 1^st District race next month between William “Billy” Burris and Blair Downing-Edwards, both Republicans.

And the last word of the preceding paragraph is part of the disturbing problem I have with judges’ elections.

Last week, I received a mailout attacking Burris. I don’t know Burris. In fact, I never heard of him until I received the mailer that screamed out, “Billy Burris protects powerful predators instead of kids. We can’t trust him to keep us safe.”

Well, that certainly grabs one’s attention, doesn’t it?

On one side of the mailout said, “A local school official and political insider was found guilty of second-degree child cruelty. Judge Billy Burris refused to hear the case and called the child abuser ‘“’a good man.’”

Flip it over, and the mailer repeats the charge, explaining that the “political insider was found guilty on 4 counts of child cruelty” for:

• “Putting his hand over the mouth and nose of a 4-year-old until the child went limp.
• Wrapping packing tape around the heads of three 13-year-old boys.

It cited as its source for the information The Times-Picayune of Nov. 22, 2022.

And while those disciplinary acts surely appear to have been over the top, they certainly did not rise to the level of the far more serious crimes of sexual abuse which the ad’s breathless headline implies at first glance to anyone who reads no further.

In short, it’s gutter politics that’s beneath the dignity of what a judge’s election should be and does nothing to further the case for either candidate, both of whom should be running on the strict basis of interpretation of law–and certainly not partisan politics–as it applies to future cases that might come before the State Supreme Court.

Which brings us to 22^nd JDC Judge Burris and his opponent, First Circuit Court of Appeal Blair Downing-Edwards and the qualifications they claim make them the choice for the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Burris touts himself as “a conservative, rule-of-law-oriented judge. As proof if his “conservative” creds, he points to the fact that he is a member of the Federalist Society and a “lifetime” member of the National Rifle Association” and has received endorsements from Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association (MCPAC) and SouthPAC, “reflecting support from the state’s business and conservative communities,” according to his web page which sports a photo of him all serious and carrying a shotgun over his shoulder like some serious American hunter.

As for Downing-Edwards, her television ad promotes her as a “rock-solid Republican” even as a video image of President Ineptstein appears with him arriving at some event. It’s a not so thinly-veiled effort to link her campaign to his coattails. Likewise, her web page tells us in somewhat contradictory terms that she “has built her career on a conservative judicial philosophy” but with “respect for the rule of law, and an unwavering belief that judges must apply the law as written—not legislate from the bench.”

If that is so, then I must respectfully ask why in hell she saw the need to remind us that she is a “longtime Republican” and of her “conservative judicial philosophy” and that Louisiana “deserves justices who are independent, rooted in conservative principles…”?

It has long been my contention that candidates for judgeships should lay partisan politics and personal philosophies aside and restrict their qualifications to the singular premise of interpreting the law as it is written and not how one feels it should apply to their personal tenets.

Adhering to that one principle is the only way a judge can be fair and impartial. Any other consideration in handing down a ruling is nothing more than grandstanding in the tradition of Clarence Thomas.

One last thought: at the bottom of that mailout attacking Burris was the disclaimer: “Paid for by Defend and Protect Louisiana: not authorized by any candidate of candidate’s committee.”

But with only Burris and Downing-Edwards in the race, it may as well have had her name all over it.