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Archive for January, 2015

Five-member state GOP Congressional delegation votes to sacrifice employee pay; protects corporate CEO tax breaks

Posted in Congress, Ethics, House, Taxes, Transparency on January 11, 2015| 8 Comments »

Pulitzer Prize winning author Hedrick Smith’s best-selling book Who Stole the American Dream? is a real eye-opener for anyone who still believes our elected officials in Washington are the watchdogs of democracy and are ever-vigilant in protecting the interests of their constituents (that would be you and me).

Smith is not the only one who has tried to warn us of the unholy alliance between Wall Street, large corporations, lobbyists and members of Congress. Charles Derber’s Corporation Nation, says one critic, “is the single best explanation of how big corporations have usurped the power of ordinary citizens…”

David Cay Johnston, another Pulitzer winner, has three books (Free Lunch, Perfectly Legal and The Fine Print) that illustrate how complicated tax laws and federal regulations favor the very rich by transferring the tax burden and other costs to the fast disappearing middle class.

For our purposes here, however, we shall limit the discussion to Smith and his book by highlighting some of the book’s timeline:

  • 1950—Top CEO salary in America: GM chairman Charlie Wilson is paid $663,000, roughly  $5  million  in  today’s  dollars,  and  about  40  times the annual wage of his average assembly line worker. Corporate ethic frowned on CEOs taking stock grants as unfair “competitive avarice.” Economists call this period “The Great Compression because the income gap between the rich and the middle class is at its narrowest in the twentieth century.
  • November 1967—Pat  O’Neill, at nineteen, starts a thirty-five-year career with United Airlines  as  a  jet  airline  mechanic,  working  the  overnight  “graveyard  shift”  at Chicago’s   O’Hare  field. He works his way up to chief mechanic, making $60,000 a year, leading a crew that does repairs and safety checks so that planes are ready to be airborne by dawn.
  • August 1971—Corporate attorney Lewis Powell sparks a political rebellion with his call to arms for Corporate America. Circulated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell’s   memo warns that anti-business attitudes and government regulation are threatening to “fatally weaken or destroy” the American free enterprise system. Powell declares that business must arm itself politically, battle organized labor and consumer activists, and mount a long-term campaign to change the balance of power and policy trends in Washington. Later that same year, President Nixon appointed Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • 1971–1972—The CEOs  of  America’s  biggest  corporations, responding to Powell’s  memo, organize the Business Roundtable, which becomes the most potent political lobbying arm of Corporate America. The National Association of Manufacturers moves its headquarters to Washington. In one decade the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doubles its membership and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (small business) grows from 300 to 600,000 members.
  • 1973—The productivity of U.S. workers rises 96 percent since 1945, and average hourly compensation rises in tandem—94 percent from 1945 to 1973. Average Americans share in the nation’s prosperity.  In the next three decades, from 1973 to 2011, worker productivity rises another 80 percent but hourly compensation rises only 10 percent. Ordinary Americans are cut out of their share of the nation’s economic gains.
  • October 1976—Inspired by their mentor, free market economist Milton Friedman, business school professors Michael Jensen and William Meckling propose in an academic study that CEOs be given stock options to align their interests with those of stockholders. Corporate boards, seeing an advantage because options are not charged as a company expense, adopt this “pay for performance” idea, and by 1980, 30 percent of CEOs are receiving stock option grants.
  • Late 1970s—Business mobilizes politically. The number of companies with Washington lobbying offices grows from 175 in 1971 to 2,445 a decade later. Along with 2,000 different trade associations, businesses have a combined Washington staff of 50,000, plus 9,000 lobbyists and 8,000 public relations specialists. Business lobbyists and advocates now outnumber members of Congress by 130 to 1.
  • 1980—Congress passes a deregulatory bill that overrules state usury laws and effectively abolishes limits on interest rates for first mortgages, paving the way for the future subprime mortgage boom.
  • 1994—The CEO stock option boom takes off. 70 percent of CEOs now receive stock option grants and by 2000, grants of millions of stock options become the norm, hugely increasing CEO pay. Corporate executives overtake the inherited rich as the biggest portion of the nation’s richest 1 percent.
  • 2001–2003—The Federal Reserve, led by Chairman Alan Greenspan, cuts interest rates 11 times from 6.5 percent to 1 percent, providing cheap money to fuel a housing boom and revive the U.S. economy. Home prices rise so fast that Americans borrow $700 billion a year from their home equity. Despite warnings about the dangers of rising personal  debt,  Greenspan  hails  home  owners’  “equity  extraction”  as  the  engine  for consumer demand and economic growth.
  • 2003—Airline  mechanic  Pat  O’Neill  retires from United Airlines after 35 years on the job, but when United Airlines declares bankruptcy, his lifetime pension is drastically cut, and his employee stock option plan collapses. His 401(k) suffers from a sharp stock market decline and he is forced to take another job. To rebuild financially, O’Neill is still working today, and he expects never to retire.
  • 2005–2006—More than half of the people to whom banks sell subprime mortgage loans, at high interest rates with heavy fees, are actually solid mainstream middle-class borrowers who qualified for—and should have been sold—prime loans.
  • 2006—Oracle CEO Larry Ellision, with $706.1 million in pay and stock in 2001, tops a Wall Street Journal compilation of the biggest CEO pay packages from 1995 to 2005. Close behind are Michael Eisner of Disney, with payouts of $575.6 million in 1999 and $203 million in 1993; and Sandy Weill of Citigroup, with pay of $621.8 million in three big years between 1997 and 2000.
  • July 4, 2007—Hundreds  of  workers  at  Sunbeam Razor’s  profitable plant in McMinnville, Tennessee, are laid off and ordered to train their replacements in a factory in Mexico, in a firing ordered by Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap. Dunlap has makes a personal fortune as a serial downsizer of businesses. Jack Wahl, owner of Sunbeam competitor Wahl Clipper Corporation, criticizes the Sunbeam layoffs as shortsighted and “extremely wasteful,” and says his company runs profitably with U.S. workers.
  • 2007—The richest 1 percent take a near-record 23 percent of the personal incomes paid to all Americans, earning a combined $1.35 trillion a year, which is more than the entire economies of Canada, Italy, or France.
  • 2007—Among economic sectors, corporate profits see their share of national income rise during the Bush years to the highest level since 1943, while the share of national income going to employee salaries and wages sinks to its lowest level since 1929.
  • 2008—In a Cornell University survey, 57 percent of people say they have never benefited from any government program or policy. But questioned in more detail, it turns out that 94 percent have actually benefited from at least one program. The average person has used four government programs.
  • 2009—After a taxpayer bailout, big Wall Street banks rebuff President Obama’s appeal to “hire American.” They continue offshore hiring and domestic layoffs. In the 2000s, the Hackett Group reports, 3.9 million jobs in finance, IT, human resources, and back-office functions have been lost in North America and Europe. In 2011, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup sign new contracts to offshore $5 billion worth of ITJ and back-office work to Indian firms.
  • 2010—Wall Street financial firms hire 1,447 former government officials as lobbyists to fight new banking regulation legislation, attempting to eliminate or water down provisions for strict regulations. After the bill passes, Wall Street bankers and lobbyists continue the battle to delay or weaken new regulations.
  • 2010—In the Congressional elections of 2010, business interests outspend labor $1.3 billion to $79 million, a 16-to-1 advantage for business. In soft-money contributions to political parties, rather than donations made directly to candidates through political action committees, the business advantage is 97-to-1 ($972 million for business to $10 million for labor).
  • 2010—Thirty-three of 60 new Tea Party members elected to the House are millionaires. Tea Party members have an average net worth of $1.8 million. Overall, 261 of the 535 senators and House representatives are millionaires—49 percent compared to 1 percent among the public at large. http://hedricksmith.com/timeline-who-stole-the-american-dream/

The CEOs of the top corporations in the U.S. made, on average, 331 times the wages of the average rank-and-file U.S. worker in 2013, compared to that 4:1 ratio reported in 1950. The CEO-to-minimum-wage-worker pay ratio was 774:1. http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014

Between 1978 and 2013, CEO compensation increased 937 percent.

The pay increase of non-supervisory workers during this same time period? 10.2 percent.  http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/

The breaks enjoyed by super rich at the expense of Joe the Plumber are such that even Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in America, publicly acknowledged the disparity. Noting that his 2010 tax rate was lower than that paid by 20 of his employees.

“While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,” he said. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

So, what has all this to do with the price of eggs?

Plenty.

The House this week defeated by a vote of 168-243 House Resolution 5 which would have barred tax deductions for executive pay packages in excess of $1 million unless the company raised worker pay by a percentage tied to its productivity.

We suppose the executives of Wal-Mart need all the help they can get. WAL-MART TAX BREAKS

So how did the Louisiana delegation vote?

Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond (2nd District) was the only one of the six to vote in favor of the interests of workers over those of in the executive offices.

Voting “no” on the measure were newly elected Reps. Garrett Graves (6th District) and Ralph Abraham (5th District), as well as Steve Scalise (1st District), Charles Boustany (3rd District) and John Fleming (4th District).

We don’t feel that extending even more generous tax breaks for corporate executives to the detriment of those on whose backs they made their fortunes was in the best interest of Louisiana citizens who elected them to be their voices in Washington.

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Orleans Tax Assessor employs tactic of ‘throw it up against the wall to see what sticks’ with parish property valuations

Posted in Revenue, Taxes on January 10, 2015| 4 Comments »

By Robert Burns

(Special to LouisianaVoice)

In the 10 years immediately prior to my December 31, 2012 retirement, I held a real estate brokerage license in Louisiana primarily because the only thing I auctioned in my auction career was real estate.  During that time, I took numerous real estate courses and one thing that was repeatedly emphasized regarding property taxes in Louisiana was that “Orleans Parish is a whole different animal.”

LouisianaVoice readers may recall that, prior to Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was unique in that it had seven assessors, each overseeing a different taxing district in New Orleans.  Orleans Parish already receives its taxes one year in advance while all other parishes collect at the end of the year.  In other words, Orleans Parish is already living on borrowed time.  Many changes were advocated after Katrina, and one proposal was the consolidation of those tax assessors into one.  It required an amendment to Louisiana’s Constitution, which overwhelmingly passed on a statewide vote in November of 2006.

LouisianaVoice has learned that considerable frustration and consternation has ensued among many Orleans Parish taxpayers since Orleans Parish Assessor Erroll Williams became the first parish-wide solo assessor in Orleans Parish and was sworn into office in January of 2011.  Before addressing these taxpayer frustrations, however, a brief primer is necessary regarding property tax appeals in Orleans Parish.

Let’s begin with the hypothetical taxpayer who receives notice in the mail from Williams’ office that his property value has been reassessed to a value significantly higher than the taxpayer believes can be justified.  First, those reassessments in other parishes in Louisiana occur only every four (4) years as per Louisiana’s Constitution (the next year for reassessment is 2016); however, LouisianaVoice has learned that a significant number of taxpayers in Orleans Parish are receiving reassessments throughout the four-year timeframe.

One taxing official spoke with LouisianaVoice and relayed that Assessor Williams justifies the practice of annual reassessments by virtue of the fact Louisiana’s Constitution states such assessments shall take place “at least” every four years.  Some irate Orleans Parish taxpayers, however, have suggested that Assessor Williams is engaging in a practice called “sale chasing,” in which his office learns of a property that sells on a given street, and then he begins reassessments of other properties in the same vicinity immediately.

Taxpayers have the right to file an appeal of assessments. To use a judiciary analogy, let’s consider Assessor Williams the judge who rendered his ruling. Unhappy with the ruling, the litigant appeals. In the case of a legal case, it would be the appeals court who would hear the appeal. For an Orleans Parish property tax appeal, it is the New Orleans Board of Review that hears the appeal. Who is the New Orleans Board of Review? It’s the New Orleans City Council (NOCC). So, in the legal analogy, the NOCC is the appeals court.

This is where things become interesting. The NOCC is literally flooded with appeals of property tax notices every year; furthermore, the NOCC lacks the technical expertise to ascertain whether the taxpayer or Assessor Williams is correct in the asserted value. Accordingly, for years, the NOCC has contracted out with a firm named Hammerman and Gainer (HGI) to ascertain a valuation and see if an agreement can be reached between the taxpayer and Williams.  LouisianaVoice noted that, after obtaining sizable contracts post-Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy (likely due to political connections and contributions to the campaigns of Gov. Jindal and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christy), the New Jersey Sandy contract was cancelled six (6) months later due to substandard performance. https://louisianavoice.com/2014/12/31/louisianavoice-2014-year-in-review-part-dieu-it-just-gets-weirder-and-weirder-as-we-barrel-with-abandon-into-2015/

HGI subcontracts with licensed real estate appraisers to ascertain a valuation for the appellant. By subcontracting its work and not doing its own appraisals, HGI is adding a layer of cost to the process. Once HGI obtains a valuation from the appraiser, a mini-appeal hearing of sorts transpires with Williams, the taxpayer and HGI. It is unclear how many cases are resolved at this level, but what is known is that a substantial volume of cases winds up in the hands of the NOCC (serving as the first appeals court in our legal analogy) to resolve.

At an NOCC hearing, spreadsheets are distributed among council members, and they literally make an up-or-down vote on literally hundreds of these tax appeals after any individual recommendations are discussed regarding whether to go with HGI’s appraiser estimate or Williams’ valuation. LouisianaVoice has learned that, historically, the NOCC typically has sided with the HGI valuation from the appraiser rather than Williams’ valuation.

Once the decision is made, the NOCC is responsible for notifying both Assessor Williams and the taxpayer of its decision. The taxpayer is notified by certified mail, and NOCC has historically notified Williams via email (which Williams admits) with the entirety of its decisions from the meeting.

What is critical, however, is the timing of notification: By Louisiana Statute, both Williams and the taxpayer have 10 days from receiving notice to appeal the NOCC decision to the Louisiana Tax Commission (LTC) who, to carry our legal analogy a step further, serves as the Louisiana Supreme Court in that their decision typically constitutes the end of the matter.  However, if a taxpayer is still dissatisfied with the LTC’s decision, he can seek judicial review in a Louisiana District Court and simultaneously file a second lawsuit with the taxes being paid under protest.

Sources tell LouisianaVoice that, while taxpayers have been obtaining their certified mailings in a timely fashion, Williams’ notifications have consistently been delayed (one individual has stated the delays have been at Williams’ urging) until after the taxpayers’ 10-day appeal window has closed. Remember, the NOCC has historically tended to favor HGI’s (i.e. the appraiser’s number) which has been in the taxpayer’s favor and not Williams’ favor.  So, the taxpayer gets a warm and fuzzy feeling that everything is over and he can move on with his life because the 10-day window (from when he received notice) has passed.

Well, not exactly.

Sources tell LouisianaVoice that the fact that Williams’ notice has historically been delayed until after the taxpayer appeal period has lapsed has provided him with a “double-secret appeal” window, and he has exercised his appeal rights to the LTC.  The following table derived from stats provided by the LTC would seem to bear this out.

Property Tax Year LTC Appeals Filed by Orleans Parish Taxpayers LTC Appeals Filed by Assessor Williams Total LTC Appeals Filed for Orleans Parish Percentage of Appeals Filed by Assessor Williams
          2012    515    509    1,024   49.71%
          2013    175    421       596   70.64%

 

Now the taxpayer is notified of a third hearing (including the mini-hearing with HGI). This hearing is in Baton Rouge before the LTC.  Worse yet, the taxpayer who thought everything was okay suddenly finds that he is literally among hundreds of other taxpayers, all of whom have traveled to Baton Rouge to have their cases argued before members of the LTC which faces a crowded docket, thanks to Williams’ appealing so many Orleans Parish taxpayer assessments.

Worse yet, Williams reportedly sends no representative to the LTC hearing to defend his office’s valuation, nor is any evidence put on to support his valuation, the same tactic he uses in cases heard at the NOCC appeal hearings as well. Using the legal case analogy, this would be akin to an attorney filing an appeal with the Louisiana Supreme Court and then declining to attend the court’s hearing to argue his points.

Accordingly, the LTC has little choice but to rule in favor of the taxpayer and that concludes the matter. The result is significant time, energy, and financial resources shelled out by the taxpayer all to wind up where he was before Williams began this whole process, which some have characterized as a blatant abuse of power on Williams’ part.

Nevertheless, a certain number of taxpayers either just give up or accept Williams’ assessment (and that may well be exactly what he’s banking on with the theory that some money gained is better than none).  Obviously, to the extent some taxpayers opt not to appeal to the LTC, the result is in fact increased revenues for the City of New Orleans.

As a result, some New Orleans power brokers reportedly are demanding that notifications be sent by the NOCC simultaneously to taxpayers and to Williams (thus eliminating Williams’ double-secret appeal window). A NOCC high-level staffer confided that he is now “personally hand delivering” the spreadsheet nearly immediately after the NOCC approves the valuations.

Nevertheless, like many public officials who don’t like an infringement upon their fiefdoms delay notifying Williams (again, said to be at Williams’ urging). Williams sought an opinion from Attorney General Buddy Caldwell’s office regarding when the NOCC is required to send notifications. Assistant Attorney General Emalie Boyce released this Louisiana AG’s Opinion on the matter on November 24, 2014, which said that notification must transpire contemporaneously or “within the same period of time.” Thus, Williams’ tactic has effectively been eliminated.  Further, by the wording of the opinion, it appears that Williams blames the NOCC for the delay in notification to him and also criticized the NOCC for merely sending email notice rather than certified mail notice (the AG opinion states certified mail is required).  Interestingly enough, when we spoke with the NOCC staffer, he had no idea Williams had even requested the opinion, much less that one had been released by the AG’s Office.

Orleans Parish property tax appeals by Williams for 2014 are down substantially (dropping from 421 in 2013 to only 33 in 2014). LouisianaVoice delved extensively into the reason for the decline by making inquiries of numerous sources providing us with information for this article. Those sources, including the NOCC staffer, relayed that the huge decline is attributable to one at-large councilman who, sensing an opportunity to shore up New Orleans’ finances, acquiesced to Williams’ valuations for 2014 rather than the HGI, appraiser-backed valuations. Thus, Williams has essentially been left with nothing to appeal (at least for 2014) given that his valuations, in an about-face by the NOCC for 2014 vs. prior years, have largely been upheld by the NOCC.

Now, while conducting research for this article, LouisianaVoice was informed by an individual with extensive knowledge of the process that it would be “quite revealing” to seek the legal expenses of the Orleans Parish Assessor and to view copies of litigation initiated against that office over the last several years. Accordingly, we made public records requests of Williams’ office for those records, only to have him attempt to “educate” us on Public Records Laws in that, Louisiana Statutory rate of $0.25 per page notwithstanding, Williams relayed that “our rate is $1 per page.” Again, without citing a Louisiana Statute, we were informed that we’d be responsible for paying all personnel costs for redacting out “attorney-client privileged information” (including the bizarre inclusion of material stated to be in the lawsuits themselves, which are already public record for the world to see!).

We decided that, since Williams is so willing to educate us on Louisiana’s Public Records laws, we’d offer him an opportunity to educate us on a few other matters, such as whether his office attends appeals hearings and, if so, whether his office puts on any evidence in support of his office’s valuations at those hearings. Williams, apparently miffed at our line of questioning, fired off this letter dated January 5, 2015 which said our inquiries were not public records requests (we never asserted that they were but merely relayed in writing that he could feel free to further educate us) but rather “interrogatories,” to which “no answer will be forthcoming to your interrogatories.”

It appears as Jindal’s term nears its end, so too may have the HGI contract to handle Orleans Parish property tax appeals.  Our contact at NOCC said HGI’s status for 2015 is “unclear.”  When we added we’d sent public records request to their New Orleans post office box, he said, “I think you’ll find they’ve quit manning that P. O. Box.”  Another source, when told of our public records request of HGI said, “It’s probably better I not say anything.”

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Jindal issues directive to slash state contracts: which of his campaign contributors will be asked to make the sacrifice?

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, DHH, DOA, Finances, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Layoffs, Legislators, Legislature, Revenue on January 9, 2015| 11 Comments »

Having laid off about all the personnel he can, after cutting higher education and health care to the bone, and after selling all the state property he can and privatizing state agencies and hospitals to benefit political allies, Gov. Bobby Jindal has finally turned to his only recourse in making even deeper cuts in the state budget to cover an ever-widening deficit: state contracts.

Meanwhile, LouisianaVoice has learned that a Jindal “policy advisor” recently appointed as an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Environmental Quality will remain in that post only about nine months before enrolling in law school.

Chance McNeely, who has served as a $65,000-a-year policy analyst for the governor’s office since last March, began in his new position of Assistant Secretary for Environmental Compliance this month but is already making plans to leave.

Jindal, you may recall, has issued two hiring freezes and two expenditure reductions and even issued a directive last April that “no agency use employee transfers, promotions, reallocations or the creation of new positions in such a manner as to exceed a ceiling” imposed by the administration.

State Treasurer John Kennedy and others have been calling on the governor to cut contract expenses across the board as a means of saving money for the state but those calls have largely been ignored by Jindal who no doubt will now claim this decision as his own.

The state issued 3,576 contracts or contract amendments in Fiscal Year 2014 (July 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014) totaling a little more than $3.6 billion, according to figures provided by the Office of Contractual Review.

The Office of Group Benefits accounted for 17 contracts totaling nearly $1.5 billion, the most of any state agency. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana has a $1.1 billion contract to administer the health benefits program for state employees, retirees and dependents, which accounts for most of that $1.5 billion figure.

The governor’s office, through the Division of Administration, was second highest with 807 contracts or amendments costing more than $744.2 million.

The Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) normally has the highest amount of active contracts in terms of value at any given time, but the 730 contracts/amendments approved by DHH during Fy-14 accounted for $454.9 million, third highest among state agencies.

In fiscal 2007 (July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007), the year before Jindal took office, there were 6,621 active contracts totaling $3.3 billion, up from the $2 billion in contracts during the 2005-06 (FY-07) fiscal year because of hurricanes Katrina and Rita that year. The next year’s total increased to $4.72 billion. Jindal took office in January of 2008, halfway through that fiscal year. In and to $5 billion in FY-2008-09. The number of contracts decreased from 7,286 to 6,781 that year but the cumulative amount of those contracts increased to $5 billion.

The number of state contracts continued to decline through the 2013-14 fiscal year but they increased to a high of $6.55 billion in 2011-12 even though the actual number of contracts continued to decrease to fewer than 4,800.

Across the board cuts will most likely not work as some state contracts necessarily must remain intact. Those would include contracts funded in whole or part by federal dollars in such areas as highway construction, Medicaid benefits and community development projects.

But in many other contracts it will be interesting to see if the cuts will be carried out since many of the contractors are major contributors to the campaigns of Jindal and other state politicians.

Jeez, how will the administration decide which contracts to cut?

Those contractors who don’t pony up with campaign cash are the obvious candidates.

Then there are those who give only token contributions to the governor’s political campaigns. Cuts, yes, but perhaps not so much.

But those who open up their wallets and bank accounts? No way. Gotta dance with who brung you (apologies to the late University of Texas coach Darrell Royal).

A random check by LouisianaVoice turned up 26 companies with state contracts totaling nearly $1.4 billion which, either through the companies themselves or through corporate representatives, have combined to pour more than $283,000 into one or more of Jindal’s state campaigns. That means that for every dollar contributed, the donor receives a contract of nearly $4,947. A 10 percent net profit on those contracts would mean a bottom line return of $495 for every dollar contributed—a nice investment by anyone’s standards.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some major contractors, the amount of their contracts and their campaign contributions (in parenthesis) to Jindal:

  • CSRS, Inc.: $5 million ($10,000);
  • DB Sysgraph, Inc.: $1.2 million ($5,000);
  • United Healthcare: $14.86 million ($20,000);
  • Coastal Estuary Services: $18.87 million ($18,000);
  • Vantage Health Plan: $45 million ($11,000);
  • Louisiana Health Service (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana): $1.1 billion ($7,500);
  • Alvarez & Marsal: $7.4 million ($5,000);
  • Acadian Ambulance: $4.3 million (13 contracts) ($15,000);
  • Van Meter & Associates: $8.7 million ($17,500);
  • Fitzgerald Contractors: $655,400 ($2,500);
  • Global Data Systems: $1.74 million ($5,000);
  • Sides & Associates: $4.4 million ($6,000);
  • GCR, Inc.: $10 million ($2,000);
  • GCI Technologies & Solutions: $32.5 million ($5,000);
  • SAS Institute, Inc.: $630,000 ($6,000);
  • Hammerman & Gainer, LLC: $67 million ($20,000);
  • Rodel, Parson, Koch, Blanche, Balhoff & McCollister: $3.7 million ($26,500);
  • CH2M Hill: $3 million ($13,500);
  • Burk-Kleinpeter, Inc.: $7 million ($17,500);
  • CDM Smith, Inc.: $6 million (two contracts) ($2,500);
  • Eustis Engineering Services: $3 million ($1,000);
  • Sigma Consulting: $3 million ($21,250);
  • MWH Americas, Inc.: $3 million ($5,000);
  • McGlinchey, Stafford, PLLC: $2.8 million ($17,000);
  • Faircloth, Melton & Keiser, LLC: $4.1 million ($19,000);
  • Adams & Reese, LLP: $1.33 million ($3,350);

In addition to the contributions to Jindal, four contractors also contributed to the Louisiana Republican Party: DB Sysgraph ($5,000), GCR, Inc. ($6,000), CGI Technologies and Solutions ($5,000), and Blue Cross/Blue Shield ($2,000). Blue Cross also contributed $15,500 to Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon and $2,500 to Speaker of the House Chuck Kleckley (R-Lake Charles).

Vantage Health also contributed $10,000 to Donelon and $3,500 to Kleckley and United Health Care contributed $3,000 to Kleckley.

Another firm, Hunt-Guillot of Ruston, held a three-year, $20 million contract to perform grant management activities in connection to hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike. That contract expired last June 30. Hunt-Guillot also held a five-month, $3 million contract in 2011 for additional grant management of recovery projects related to Katrina and Rita.

Hunt-Guillot made two contributions totaling $4,750 to Jindal’s campaign in 2007. Additionally, Hunt-Guillot principal Trot Hunt made two contributions of $2,500 each to Jindal during his 2007 campaign for governor.

And Jindal made a $5,000 campaign contribution to Hunt-Guillot principal Jay Guillot during his successful run for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2011, campaign finance records show.

As the vise tightens around Jindal, who is striving desperately to hold things together until he leaves town a year from now in his quest for the presidency, hard decisions will have to be made. He can’t keep firing employees and he’s run out of state property to sell.

After seven years, it may be in Jindal’s final year that the legislature finally stands up to his amateurish manner of handling the state’s finances. Speaker Kleckley, heretofore one of Jindal’s staunchest allies in the House, has come out publicly in opposition to any additional cuts to higher education. The Public Service Commission earlier refused to surrender its automobile fleet to Jindal who wanted to sell them at auction. It’ll be interesting to see who will be the next to grow a pair.

Jindal is rarely in the state these days and when he is, he is too busy taking potshots at President Obama and planning prayer meetings when he should be minding the store and doing the job to which he was twice elected. There is more than ample evidence by now that Jindal is having trouble holding things together by remote control.

To continue on his course of self-promotion at the expense of four million Louisiana citizens is the worst kind of duplicity and deceit and he most certainly deserves his near certain future of political obscurity.

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As Rep. Steve Scalise story grows, sordid details emerge about dark underside of the white supremacy movement

Posted in Fraud, Governor's Office, House, Judges, Legislators, Legislature, Media, Politicians, Senate on January 2, 2015| 43 Comments »

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise’s claim that he did not know who he was talking to when he spoke to that meeting of the Workshop on Civil Rights hosted by the European-American Unity and Rights Conference (EURO) back in May of 2002 is coming unraveled like a cheap suit.

And so too, are the cover stories concocted by participants of that meeting who are trying to pull Scalise’s fat out of the fire.

And those accounts, with their unsavory associations and bizarre twists, constitute some of the most sordid stories imaginable, complete with bombing plots, pornography, escort services, mailing lists and dozens of politicians who subsequently went into scramble mode.

Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything” and because of conflicting memories of those involved, the coverups appear to be spinning out of control.

Thanks to stellar investigative reporting by blogger Lamar White, Scalise’s position as House Majority Whip could go the same way as that of former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) who resigned his post as Senate Majority Leader following his association with a similar white supremacy group, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). Lott resigned from the Senate five years later and now works, along with former U.S. Sen. John Breaux (D-LA) in the powerful Washington lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs.

CCC and EURO have cross-pollinated over the years to the point where it’s difficult to distinguish one from the other with certain individuals having been—and remaining—members of both organizations.

One of those with just such dual membership is Kenny Knight of Prairieville.

Knight has publicly taken credit for issuing the invitation to Scalise to speak to the Jefferson Heights Civic Association at the Landmark Hotel in Metairie 12 years ago, but not, he said, to EURO, which was scheduled to meet in the same room later that day.

There are several problems with that story.

One, Scalise himself has made no such claim, choosing instead to plead ignorance that he was addressing a white supremacy group in 2002 while he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. He makes no mention of any such civic association. http://www.businessreport.com/article/scalise-defending-amid-rising-scandal-regarding-2002-speech-white-supremacist-event

But claiming ignorance is a pretty weak defense given his comment years ago to New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Stephanie Grace that he was “like David Duke without the baggage.” http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/state/11213737-123/stephanie-grace-scalises-pitch-to

Duke, of course, was—and is—President of EURO and also addressed the Landmark gathering via teleconference hookup from Europe.

The second inconvenient snag in the failure to communicate (with apologies to the late Strother Martin of Cool Hand Luke) occurred when Knight told the Times-Picayune that he was not a member of EURO http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/12/david_duke_adviser_kenny_knigh.html

Barbara Noble, whom the Times-Picayune  said “was dating Knight” at the time of Scalise’s address (the implication being they might no longer be dating), backed up his claim. “Neither of us were members of EURO,” she said.

But while technically, Knight may not have a member of EURO, a quick check of the Louisiana Secretary of State’s corporate records reveals that he was not only a member of the organization’s predecessor, the National Organization for European American Rights (NO FEAR), he was the organization’s treasurer. (Duke changed the name to EURO after being sued for trademark infringement by No Fear, Inc.)

And what would be Noble’s motivation in having his back if she is a former girlfriend?

A further check of the Secretary of State’s web page also reveals that she and Knight both were officers of or affiliated with five separate corporate entities, three of which are still in good standing with the Secretary of State’s office.

All-American Health & Life Insurance of Metairie is not in good standing for failure to file its annual report with the Secretary of State, records show but both were listed as officers. Knight was the firm’s president she was vice president.

Southeast Solar Distributors likewise is listed as inactive by the Secretary of State. She was the company’s president and Knight its vice president when it was active, records show.

While she is not listed as an officer of T-Mart, Inc. of Prairieville, a telephone call to the business by LouisianaVoice reached her voice mail. Other active businesses in which the two are involved include Axcess Medical Clinic, Inc., of Prairieville (Knight is Director and she is Secretary) and Louisiana Men’s Clinic, Inc. of Mandeville (both are directors).

Louisiana Men’s Clinic is a facility that specializes in the treatment of erectile dysfunction http://louisianamensclinic.com/ while Axcess Medical Clinic appears to be an office complex for physicians owned by the pair.

Two months following Scalise’s address to EURO, Knight was on the Mississippi Gulf Coast representing CCC in its celebration after the Gulfport City Council voted to keep flying the confederate flag.

KENNY KNIGHT

(That’s Kenny Knight in the middle with the white shirt, brown shorts and white beard.)

Accompanying Knight at that rally was Vincent Breeding, one-time resident of Duke’s home and keeper of the EURO flame as its president while Duke served a federal prison term for fraud and tax evasion.

VINCE BREEDING

(Vincent Breeding is on the right wearing the slacks and tie. Kenny Knight is at the far left. And as one reader pointed out, these aren’t Ole Miss frat boys waving the Rebel flag.)

But Breeding, it turns out, had a much darker side. In addition to espousing the virtues of white supremacy, Christian beliefs and conservative values, he hosted an internet website which, in addition to offering graphic pornography, also provided an escort service that catered to all tastes, including black women. That would seem rather difficult to square with the EURO philosophy.

But then Duke himself once published a sexual self-help book for women entitled Finders Keepers under the pseudonym Dorothy Vanderbilt.

In 2003, Breeding was ousted from his leadership role in EURO and was succeeded by Knight but four years later, on Aug. 2, 2007, both Knight and Breeding, along with Barbara Noble, would participate in ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the Ascension Parish Chamber of Commerce.

Breeding, in addition to his porn web page and escort service and his previous employment at a Tampa strip club, once shared an apartment with one Todd Vanbiber who authorities thwarted in his plot to place 14 bombs along two major highways, I-4, the major access route to Walt Disney World, and U.S. 441. The bombings were planned for April 19, 1997, the second anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Another Duke associate, Don Black, was once shot while attempting to steal the mailing list of the National States’ Rights Party. The man who shot him was Jerry Ray, brother of James Earl Ray. Ironically, Black not only survived the gunshot, but later worked closely with Duke through his web page Stormfront and along the way, married Duke’s ex-wife.

Mailing lists, it turns out, constitute the life blood of organizations such as EURO, CCC, and the KKK. It is those mailing lists that allow the leaders of the organizations to solicit funds from those of like minds and it was just such a list that supported Duke’s lavish lifestyle that finally caught up with him.

And it was that same list that was sold to then-gubernatorial candidate Mike Foster in 1995 for $150,000. Foster failed to report the purchase as a campaign expenditure and would become the first Louisiana governor to be fined for violating the state’s code of ethics for elected officials.

But Foster was not the first by any stretch—nor the last—to be linked to such white supremacy groups. Louisiana Congressman John Rarick and Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox both were members of the old White Citizens Council, forerunner to the CCC.

Former Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Kay Cobb addressed CCC on two occasions and Trent Lott five times, once telling its members that they stood “for the right principles and the right philosophy,” only to later claim he had “no idea” what the organization stood for (we’re beginning to detect a trend here). As nice saves go, Senator, not so much.

Lott also spoke at the 100th birthday celebration of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, proclaiming that if the rest of the country had followed Mississippi’s lead in voting for the segregationist “Dixiecrat” when he ran for president in 1943, “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years…” When Lott later apologized for his remarks, the CCC labeled him as “little more than a political prostitute.”

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was elected largely on the strength of support from CCC and his photo even appeared with CCC officers on the organization’s website and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr delivered the keynote speech at the CCC national convention in June of 1998.

Byron De La Beckwith, the man who in 1963 murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers, was a CCC member as was Charles Sharpe. While serving as South Carolina’s Commissioner of Agriculture, Sharpe was arrested for accepting $20,000 in bribes to protect an illegal cockfighting ring.

And then there is Tony Perkins who, like Lott and Judge Cobb, addressed the Louisiana CCC. His appearance was on May 19, 2001 (almost exactly a year before Scalise’s appearance), when he was serving as a Republican state representative from Baton Rouge. Perkins currently serves as President of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C.

These are only the more prominent public officials who have affiliated themselves with these groups. There are others. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/fall/communing-with-the-council

So we have the CCC, EURO, and the KKK, which are pretty much synonymous with their interchangeable memberships, rubbing shoulders with right-wing, family-values politicians who run for cover the moment the glare of public scrutiny is shone upon them. The only thing missing from the picture are the 30 pieces of silver.

All of which must, by necessity, raise this burning question: Is the price of political fraudulence worth the wear and tear on an elected official’s integrity?

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