Louisiana Voice

Those concerned about transparency in government (and in all reality, that should be every one of us) have to be wondering about the necessity of the sudden explosion of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) being signed by elected and appointed officials throughout Louisiana.

After all, they were elected by the citizenry to represent the citizenry—not some faceless, soulless out-of-state corporate entity. We have seen that officials in every single parish in Louisiana, included in many cases, state legislators, have become parties to these agreements that prohibit them from discussing or even acknowledging a major event that will affect the lives and livelihoods of residents of their state, their parishes, their districts.

In scores of these cases, generous tax incentives have been approved for the corporations who may or may not provide jobs to the local folks. These incentives, taken together, have cost the state and local governments billions of dollars in needed revenue.

All this is to say that the worst-kept secret in Livingston Parish has been all but confirmed by official documents obtained by LouisianaVoice despite the parish president and every member of the parish council having signed one of those proliferating NDAs in an effort to keep a lid on the news:

Livingston Parish, more specifically, Walker, Louisiana, is getting one of those electricity-eating, water-guzzling data centers. (Parish President Randy DeLatte recently hinted to a constituent that he soon would have “a big announcement to make.” Hope this doesn’t let the air out of his balloon.)

Go to the 21-minute mark of this video of the Livingston Parish Livingston Zoning Commission 11 3 25 – YouTube meeting of Nov. 3, 2025 and you can hear parish council member Ricky Goff admit he signed an NDA for a major project along Buddy Ellis Road that he explains was originally planned for a 1700-family subdivision but which plans have “changed a little bit.”

That “change” is now a 691-acre tract on which the data center will be built. Unofficial word is the big tech company building this one is Microsoft. Like the data center being constructed in Richland Parish and the one to be built in St. Francisville, hundreds, if not thousands of construction jobs will be created. But after the facility is up and running, we just don’t know how many permanent jobs will be made available—especially to the local folk.

Tony Achord is owner of Southern Heirs Auctions on Buddy Ellis Road. His shop is on land owned by Our Lady Of the Lake Medical Center and because OLOL originally had no plans for the Buddy Ellis frontage property, he was assured he was welcome to operate his antique auction business for as long as he wanted. That is, until last Friday when he received a registered letter from OLOL’s attorneys giving him 90 days to vacate.

“They (the data center operator) must’ve bought the hospital property,” Achord said.

Actually, 691 acres of property were quietly and with no explanation by the parish council, rezoned last Nov. 20 from R-2 (residential) to I-2 (heavy industrial) at the request of Juban Land Holdings which appears to hold the deed to all 691 acres. Louisiana Secretary of State records list Reeder & Hawes Investments of Dallas, Texas, as the only officer of Juban Land Holding, LLC. William Christopher Reeder of Dallas is listed as manager and sole officer of Reeder & Hawes and Baton Rouge attorney Michael R. Hubbell is the registered agent for both Juban Land and Reeder & Hawes.

As with the parish zoning commission, the full parish council voted unanimously in favor of the rezoning, all, like Goff in testifying to the zoning commission, were apparently “very comfortable with what’s coming…whether it be medical or whatever.”

(Scroll down to Case # 25:53)

But other records would lend more credence to a data center. For instance, Dixie Electric Membership Cooperative (DEMCO) has made application to Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) for “expedited” authority to generate up to a gigawatt of electricity. That is supported in part by the confidential testimony before the Louisiana Public Service Commission of Jeffrey Andry, Jr., chief strategy and regulatory officer for DEMCO in November 2025.

And even though the testimony was removed from circulation in the interests of confidentiality, there were still several passages in the transcript of his testomony that were redacted as an extra precautionary measure to ensure their secrecy.

A gigawatt (GW) is equivalent to a billion watts, or 1,000 megawatts.

To give you some PERSPECTIVE, the total capacity of all U.S. electricity generating plants was about 1,100 GW in 2012.

The U.S. grid handles 700 GW on peak days.

One GW can power as many as 750,000 to 850,000 homes for one year.

So, bottom line, the Livingston Parish Council decided it knew what was best for the parish’s 150,000 residents and that only they had a need to know about a major event that will affect the lives of thousands of people.

Maybe George Orwell was correct. Maybe Big Brother is watching us and watching after us.

And what better way to sneak in any obscure regulation, tax exemption or “economic development” project than with the handy NDA?

If my feeble memory serves me correctly, I seem to recall an indignant Donald J. Trump and the sofa-loving J.D. Vance going a little beserk at the fraud discovered in the State of Minnesota and that they went after Gov. Tim Walz with their big guns by endorsing that pillow guy Mike Lindel, all to no avail, it turned out.

Ah, but now der Führer gets another shot at allow Fraud Czar Vance root out even more fraud–this time in Cadet Bone Spurs’s home state of Florida.

The new out of Florida today is that a grand jury has found that Gov. Rhonda Santis and his administration used a “sophisticated scheme” to MISAPPROPRIATE TAXPAYER MONEY for political purposes.

Gasp. I feel faint. But wait, there’s more.

It seems that the money, some $10 million in Medicaid settlement funds, was funneled into Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit arm of an organization launched by Casey DeSantis, the guv’s wife. And get this: White booted Rhonda Santis attempted to pressure The Orlando Sentinel into not reporting on the transfer to fund political activities.

Ol’ Agent Orange turned the full wrath of the U.S. Justice Department loose onto that bicyclist who stopped by the Reflecting Pool to check out the shoddy $14 million repair job and he has used the department as a weapon against other perceived enemies in his never-ending quest to administer justice fairly and equally (sarcasm fully intentional).

Nah. My guess is he’ll go after CBS News Miami which obtained and published the GRAND JURY REPORT which is supposed to be sealed.

It’s not enough that a deranged, addle-brained POTUS (Pedophile of the United States) has appointed hundreds, maybe thousands, of masked, armed thugs as some sort of reincarnation of the infamous SS Troops of nearly a century ago.

Nor is it enough that he had empowered, even encouraged, these Schutzstaffel goons to kidnap innocent people and kill American citizens in the process.

But now, in an apparent effort to inflict even more inhumane treatment, Trump’s anonymous—and cowardly—mob emulating enforcers are being equipped with electric shock gloves—at a cost of $20 million.

As an aside, bear in mind that it’s the Repugnantcans who preach fiscal responsibility while at the same time allowing this bloated egomaniac to soak U.S. taxpayers for more than $1.4 billion in wasteful vanity projects as he has personally added nearly $8 trillion (with a “T”) to the national debt. And that doesn’t even include the cost of a war Trump started despite his campaign promise of no new wars and his receiving the FIFA Peace (or was it Piece?) Medal.

• A cool billion dollars for security upgrades as part of his East Wing ballroom renovations—you know, the project that was going to cost $250 million and be paid by private donations.
• $13.1 million (so far) for renovations to the Reflecting Pool—renovations that originally were going to cost only $1.8 million.
• A $100 million 250-foot-tall “Independence Arch”
• Painting the Eisenhower Executive Office Building estimated (so far) at $7.5 million.
• Paving over the Rose Garden: $1.9 million.
• Remember that “free Boeing 747 Trump received from Qatar? Well, the estimated cost of refurbishing it so Trump will no longer need to hide in a catering cart is estimated at $934 million. Guess who’s on the hook for paying that?
• And just take a look at the cost of the little war with Iran that Trump started as a distraction to the Epstein files. So far, the cost is $41 billion over and above the normal Pentagon budget—and we’re still running out of ammunition. And the cost is INCREASING FASTER than you can say “Charge it.”

Meanwhile, sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln cannot get fresh food, clean laundry or working toilets.

(Already obsolete: the national debt has now surpassed $40 trillion)

Remember in 2016 when Trump promised to completely eliminate the national debt within eight years? Well, at the time he said that, the national debt was $19 trillion. Today, it is a little more than $40 trillion (“Little” being a relative term). IN TRUMP’S FIRST TERM, the debt increased to $27.8 trillion and while it increased to $36.2 trillion under Biden, it has already jumped by another $4 trillion in less than two years of Trump’s second term.

So, now, another $20 million so that a criminal element sanctioned by Diaper Don can torture dark-skin individuals and toss them into privately-owned cages at a cost expected to be another $38.3 billion by the end of 2026. The gloves have already been implicated in the death of a Kentucky man allegedly shocked 27 times in one of those aforementioned cages.

But do these mouth-breathing ICE agents really need electric shock gloves? Shouldn’t they be kept away from sharp utensils and things like tasers and bear spray? I mean, these people are so dumb, they’re a potential danger to themselves. You simply cannot overload such low IQs with so much necessity to think. One of them is going to hurt himself one day.

The word on the street is Stephen Miller has ordered a set of the electric shock gloves because his arms are too weak to strangle prostitutes. (Thank you, I’ll be here all week. But seriously, folks…)

But here’s a novel approach that I’ve advocated before but it’s worth repeating because writer THOM HARTMANN is now saying it.

Immigrants wouldn’t be trying to enter this country if they weren’t being hired by wealthy white corporate CEOs who are taking full advantage of cheap labor. Solution: arrest the one who are hiring illegal immigrants.

Repugnantcans and MAGGOTS are running around screaming about (a) illegal immigrants getting welfare and Medicaid (not true) and (b) taking jobs from hard-working “Amuricuns.”

Well, Boopsie, you can’t have it both ways. If they’re taking your jobs, then it’s a good bet they ain’t on welfare or Medicaid. You know anyone who got outbid on a home purchase by someone on Welfare? Didn’t think so.

But if you’re the betting type, here’s a sure bet for you: the MAGGOTS and Repugnantcans aren’t about to shut up making the claim. It’s a perfect dog whistle for the trailer park.

Item: Peoples Health is “TRANSITIONING” to UnitedHealthcare (UHC), the results of an acquisition which actually took effect on Jan. 1, 2024.

The merger—or purchase–leaves UnitedHealthcare the largest health insurance company in the U.S. and second-largest Medicare Advantage provider in the state, was done quietly and without fanfare.

But the takeover is a potential ominous development for Peoples Health’s 63,000 members in Louisiana. Despite a pledge that “nothing will change about Peoples Health,” UnitedHealthcare’s history says differently.

But the way medical procedures are approved is changing, as one recent telephone call revealed.

UnitedHealth Group denied 16.2 percent of all standard authorization requests in 2025, about 4.8 percent higher than the industry average.

Among Medicare Advantage plans, the average denial rate is about 17.4 percent so far this year. That’s versus a national Medicare Advantage denial rate of 8.9 percent. Fully 10 percent of urgent (expedited) requests are rejected by UnitedHealthcare. On appeals, about 34.4 percent are overturned.

A U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations REPORT in October 2024 indicated that the nation’s insurers, UnitedHealthcare included, have been using AI-POWERED TOOLS to deny some claims from Medicare Advantage plans holders. UnitedHealthcare’s AI model has a 90 PERCENT ERROR RATE, according to a lawsuit filed against the company. The lawsuit claims that the high error rate is not a bug in the system, but a feature of the UHC program.

A Peoples Health policy holder was recently contacted by telephone by a UnitedHealthcare representative who said referrals for treatment by most specialists must come from primary care physicians, effective Jan. 1.

Heretofore, Peoples Health has generally accepted claims from specialists without the necessity of primary care physician referrals. The exceptions are ophthalmologists and dentists.

Moreover, the primary care physician will be required to make such referrals through United HealthCare’s provider portal every six months.

In a classic repudiation of the “if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it” dictate, that will not only require more paperwork for the primary care provider, but it will also result in critical time delays for some procedures which will initially be denied, necessitating the appeal process.

And oh, don’t be surprised, too, if your premiums are increased in the near future.