Louisiana Voice

We’ve entered the final week of our Spring fundraiser and if you haven’t noticed, I have not posted very many solicitations for this one. That’s because of the guilt I feel for asking for your hard-earned money when we’re fighting higher costs of fuel, food, medicine, housing and transportation, to name but a few of the consumer goods and services that have skyrocketed out of control because of gross indifference in Washington.

It’s true. Those 535 members of Congress, the occupant of the Oval Office and the judiciary have no concept of the struggles Americans are facing, nor do they seem to really care. The would-be Jesus President is far more preoccupied with his $400 million ballroom, his proposed golden archway, begging for the Nobel Peace Prize while invading Venezeula and Iran and threatening Canada, Greenland and Cuba, planning a redneck UFC Freedom 250 fight, molding the military to his desired level of featy and grifting billions of dollars for him and his family. They’re all out of touch with reality while we try to balance the household budget.

That’s why I feel pangs of guilt in coming to you when I know there are disabled veterans, homeless people, mentally ill people in need of help. That’s also why I always try to plug the food pantry, or food bank. They do wonderful work and are deserving of all the help they can get.

But if you have anything left to spare and you like to see journalism speak truth to power and to not shrink from its responsibilities, we would greatly appreciate your support. We at LouisianaVoice strive to maintain a high level of credibility with interesting, factual information that others seem to try to avoid or to merely give superficial coverage to.

If you are so inclined and are in a position to do so, go HERE and scroll down to the Keep Us Independent button. Click on it and follow directions to make a ONE-TIME contribution.

Those who contribute $50 or more will received a signed copy of my new book, The Dinosaur Club. It’s about six geriatric former news reporters who become angry over the sex trafficking of children and unite to go after the traffickers.

A pretty good living could probably be hashed out by an enterprising investigative reporter writing only about Jackson Parish what with deputy sheriffs sexually assaulting daughters, a local juvenile detention center fashioned out of storage containers, moonlighting of health products by the sheriff and a deputy, questionable associations between the sheriff and a Covid testing service, bulk dirt purchases from a company owned by a deputy, all followed by the abrupt “retirements” of Sheriff Andy Brown and his chief investigator (AND BUSINESS PARTNER) Donovan Shultz last November.

But it apparently didn’t stop when they stepped down.

Word on the street is Jackson Parish may yet not be free of Brown’s influence. Charles “Chuck” Garrett owned a building SOUTH OF TOWN on U.S. 167 that the sheriff’s office once (but no longer, it seems) used for an animal control facility.

Sheriff candidate Jesse Allen Magee and Garrett are partners in a company identified as C & J LIVESTOCK  and Garrett and his family are generous contributors to Magee’s campaign a you might expect a business partner to be. Of the $19,000 received by Magee during 2026, fully 40 percent, $7,700 has come from Garrett, his wife and two others named Garrett from Corsicana, Texas, and Coushatta, respectively, have also contributed ($1,250 between the two), according to reports filed with the state. Actually, figures show that Garrett and his wife have contributed a total of $12,500, but there are two separate $5,000 contributions by Charles Garrett that are only four days apart in January. That’s most likely a duplicate entry.

The only question remaining is this: given the business relationship between Brown and his chief investigator Shultz, could there be a deputy’s job awaiting Magee’s business partner should he win the election for sheriff?

And if you think all that is curious, then there is the mayor and employees of the town of Hodge, also in Jackson Parish, are taking the fifth over the disappearance of a couple of pet cats.

“This time the corruption appears to be in the [Brent] Barnett Sheriff’s Office,” says the cats’ owner, Tommy McDougald who added the matter is apparently “under investigation” by the sheriff’s department).

On April 8, he said the town of Hodge baited, trapped and removed his two pet cats. “We had pictures of these traps the morning of the cats disappeared,” he said. “The neighbor confirmed via text that the town had reached out to set traps on their property and around the neighborhood. I went searching the alley and porches of vacant houses around my home and found no traps other than the one just under the neighbor’s carport. I immediately called the mayor of Hodge Gerald Palmer. I asked where I could reclaim my two cats. He confirmed the city caught some cats and “they were hauled far away.” 

The next morning, at an intersection in town, I flagged down the town vehicle that had been driving by and stopping to check traps. I asked them where I could reclaim my two pet cats. They asked me what they looked like and I described then they confirmed they had trapped my cats. I asked again where they had taken my cats. The said they were taken up the hill. I asked them to specify where is up the hill. They stated ‘They were taken up the hill in Jonesboro to town where they were then taken somewhere in Monroe.’’’ 

McDougald said he then called the town of Jonesboro and he was told they had not taken in any cats, saying they don’t have any way to do that and definitely don’t take any animals to Monroe.

“We contacted every animal shelter in Ouachita Parish [and] they all stated they don’t take animals from outside the parish,” he said.

“There is a Village animal control ordinance #135 that was put into law in 1993 that is 10 pages. It specifically specifies in detail how every aspect of animal control “shall” be handled. It leaves very little space for executive discretion anywhere (the ordinance is below).

“I was hesitant to go to the sheriff’s department because I knew it was a direct conflict of interest since the mayor was a retired deputy with the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office,” he said. “I sent the sheriff a personal email about the situation to make him aware of the conflict of interest.  His chief deputy called me, assuring me there would be a ‘thorough investigation’ and again I disclosed the conflict of interest. He assured me that didn’t matter. 

He said the sheriff’s office previously wanted him to obtain the records and only recently said they will look for them if they exist.

Ordinance 135 says unequivocally there “shall be intake logs, due process for owners” to reclaim any animal held. The mayor (Gerald T. Palmer) and his employees have pled their fifth amendment rights,” McDougald said.

“The sheriff ‘s department initially said there isn’t much to go on since we don’t have witness statements and again, I pushed for the objective evidence to be pursued. This is animal theft by taking my personal property (cats), animal cruelty by dumping the cats, and malfeasance for not following the laws within ordinance 135. I had never received a complaint or citation for my animals from a neighbor or the town. I have sworn affidavits, texts, emails, call logs, photos, and surveillance footage to support my claims.

“The Humane Society of Louisiana has been working in promoting justice and a safe return of the pets. There has been a $1000 reward posted. The sheriff’s department is stonewalling.”

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)