Louisiana Voice

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.

By Paul Spillman

When Tom invited me to contribute to LouisianaVoice I told him the issue I was most passionate about at the time was the chaos of misunderstanding about what was happening in college athletics. In truth I am passionate about many things but I’ve assigned myself the one lane and plan to stick to it.

But I didn’t plan to contribute as often as I have. I also didn’t plan to write in the first person. But a summer unlike any I can remember in college athletics presented a need, or at least an opportunity, to address one issue after another. In doing so I tried to adopt a voice of editorial commentary with only an occasional personal opinion inserted, though I didn’t try to hide my honest take on current events. But a conversation with my son has prompted a purely personal submission.

I had considered doing something before the Clemson game on the top five games I’ve seen in Tiger Stadium. Actually, I was going to do six and leave number five blank out of respect to Jayden Daniels but then LSU started signing players granted a fifth year, including at least two who signed a free agent contract with an NFL team. This is part of the fallout from the federal judge who granted an injunction to qualifying athletes from the class of 2022 who never received a fifth year of eligibility. That particular ruling was overturned on appeal, but the most recent rulings have come in state courts not subject to the appeal of a federal court ruling.

With those signings, or intent to sign if it hasn’t actually happened as of this writing, LSU has become the official bad boy/bad girl of college sports. Three of the most prominent sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, but excluding baseball – are led by coaches the rest of fandom loves to despise. But even as Will Wade adds another international player to the roster and a player who has signed NBA contracts it is Lane Kiffin and LSU football getting the bad press and heaps of scorn from everybody with a platform or a voice.

Kiffin’s defense is honest, logical, and relevant even if it doesn’t buy either him or the school any good will. Kiffin’s point is it’s not the fault of the players who have sued for a fifth year of eligibility that they were born in the one wrong year to receive five years of eligibility, the courts have determined they’re eligible for another year – in all sports – and they’ve entered the transfer portal. If LSU doesn’t recruit and sign them someone else will.

But Kiffin has all that baggage he’ll carry around until if or when he wins enough national championships to discard it. And LSU has become a poster university for “win no matter the cost” complete with cartoon governor hiring and firing. That image of both is almost universal among college sports fans. And that prompted me to ask my son a question during a recent phone conversation and both our responses prompted me to write this.

My son and his family live out of state but we talk and text and send photos often. As the college football season has neared he is transitioning from soccer (my grandson plays almost year around) back to football, specifically LSU football. He shares my love for the Tigers and we’ve talked a good bit of football in the last few conversations. In the most recent the subject of signing guys who have been cut from NFL pre-season rosters came up and I asked him as it occurred to me, “If Kiffin was doing all these same things but still at Ole Miss would you feel the same way about it?”

Silence on the other end of the phone. It didn’t really surprise me and it gave me a moment to answer that question for myself. We both came up with “No.” If Kiffin was doing all this at Ole Miss I’d be calling him out for it.

And so I find myself having to criticize the one thing I am most dependent on to escape everything else that’s going on in the world – LSU football. LSU is doing what it has to in the modern world to stay on top and I respect that, even support it in general. But I don’t like any of the things that come with it in 2026. And I don’t like much of what college athletics has become because the NCAA is just useless. Nor do I like Congress having to step in because the NCAA is just useless. Congress as it exists today is a very blunt instrument and all it can accomplish is to bludgeon you into submission.

I don’t like losing 25% of every signing class to the transfer portal but I do think players should be allowed to transfer just like any other student. I agree players should share in the profits. I don’t like talking about how much the current roster cost or how it compares to other schools. I think the NCAA screwed the class of 2022 but I am not a fan of bringing back players that signed professional contracts.

And, to be honest, I am not a fan of Lane Kiffin being the face of all this for LSU. I respect Kiffin as a coach, even more so now that he’s our coach and I’ve seen him more up close and in more detail than I previously knew. But there’s a ton of baggage I could do without and every controversial issue adds more whether it’s justified or not. I could do a whole lot without that as the face of my Tigers.

But what’s a guy to do? I’m not the governor and if I was I wouldn’t be hiring and firing administrators and coaches anyway. I thought Scott Woodward was an excellent Athletic Director and if it was up to me I’d bring him back. He did hire Brian Kelly and that didn’t work out, but he also hired Kim Mulkey, Jay Johnson, and Jay Clark, all of whom won national championships for LSU. But his refusal to bring back Will Wade and the pettiness of Landry and his boy Lee Mallet cost Woodward his job.

So all I can do is watch. Watch the governor interfere, watch the hand-picked hires, watch the sport spiral into chaos as the NCAA slowly dies, watch a team I can hardly name any players on, watch a coach I have mixed feelings about, and hope. Hope the games get here without any more distractions, incidents, or issues. Hope for an undefeated September. Hope for good games to enjoy. Hope for a season to distract me from the looming uncertainty of the midterms. Hope for my Tigers to win a championship. Hope for something to feel good about. And sometimes I get to write about all of it. I just wish I felt better about some of the things I write about.