Posted in Uncategorized on October 12, 2015| 6 Comments »
“I’m doing my job that I was elected to do.”
—U.S. Sen. David Vitter, explaining his refusal to engage traditional campaigning and his refusal to participate in debates with other candidates as he attempts to remain in Washington while allowing his Super PAC, The Fund for Louisiana’s Future, to purchase the governor’s election on his behalf.
“I have the job I want.”
—Bobby Jindal, on so many occasions during his first term that we all got sick of hearing it.
Posted in Campaign Contributions, Congress, Earl Long, Elections, Governor's Office, Politicians, Senate, Vitter on October 12, 2015| 9 Comments »
Associated Press reporter Melinda Deslatte had an interesting column on the Louisiana governor’s race that appeared in a number of state dailies and even in what one of our readers derisively calls “The Hayride North,” but which is known to most of us as The Washington Times.
In her column, Deslatte notes that Republican Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, Republican Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne and Democratic State Rep. John Bel Edwards are somewhat irritated that Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter.
The four, for those of you who have drifted off into the semi-conscious state induced by football overdose, are the leading contenders in the Oct. 24 governor’s race and most observers have already conceded the top two spots to Vitter and Edwards.
But Vitter, who remains ensconced in Washington where he insists he is “doing my job that I was elected to do,” is apparently so cocksure of his position that he feels he doesn’t have to get out and meet voters and answer questions or, as the late President Lyndon Johnson would have said, “press the flesh.”
You see, Vitter is trying to buy this election, pure and simple. He’s got this Super PAC called Fund for Louisiana’s Future carrying the water for him. Translated to terms we can all understand, his PAC is his attack dog. He doesn’t have to put his name on those nasty half-truths and outright lies being tossed around about Angelle and Dardenne.
The way Super PACs work, there is supposed to be arms-length separation between the candidate and the Super PAC. There is supposed to be no coordination between the candidate and the Super PACs. That’s why all the attack ads have the disclaimer at the end of the ad that tells us that the message you just heard was paid for by Funds for Louisiana’s Future.
Funds for Louisiana’s Future has somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million to tear down Vitter’s two Republican opponents (notice we never said the ads are used to bring any kind of positive message about Vitter’s accomplishments—just negative messages about Angelle and Dardenne).
But isn’t it interesting that with all those rules about arms-length separation and a ban on coordination, a check of contributions to Funds for Louisiana’s Future finds that Vitter chipped in $250,000 of his own money to the Super PAC. http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/contrib_all.php?cycle=2014&type=A&cmte=c00541037&page=1
How’s that for arms-length separation? Still think there was no consultation between candidate and PAC?
And don’t think for one minute that Edwards is exempt from attacks. The National Republican Governors Association, after having said it did not plan to do any ad buys for the first primary, has done a sudden about face.
But of course the RGA didn’t count on a surge in popularity by Edwards before the Oct. 24 primary. Everyone assumed Edwards would make the runoff, being the only Democrat in the race, but the RGA got a real shock when Edwards actually forged into the lead in not one, but two separate polls two weeks or more before the first primary.
Panic set in quickly and the ads attacking Edwards, trying to tie him to President Obama, suddenly began flashing across TV screens across the state. It evokes memories of when Buddy Roemer came from nowhere in the final weeks of the 1987 election.
But it’s not the polls or the attack ads that have Angelle, Dardenne and Edwards upset. That, after all, is in keeping with the tradition of Louisiana politics and can be expected. After all, when did the truth ever matter when it came to winning an election?
The thing that’s got the three a mad as a wet hen is Vitter’s refusal to participate in TV debates.
Deslatte says the three are accusing Vitter of:
Does all that sound a little too eerily familiar? Did a shiver just run up your spine? Did the room suddenly experience an unexplained chill?
The answers for us were yes, yes, and yes, so we did a little historical research and we find some uncanny similarities with someone else you may remember.
First, let’s take Vitter’s earlier claim that “I’m doing my job that I was elected to do.”
Doesn’t that sound a little too much like, “I have the job I want” repeated by Bobby Jindal so often during his first term?
How about Vitter’s:
The similarities are so strong and so frightening—especially with the prospect of another four or eight years of Jindal-like “leadership.”
Skeptics are saying that Angelle as governor would be “Jindal 2.0.” But Vitter as governor would be “Jindal on steroids.”
Already, it’s becoming difficult to keep from saying Jitter or Vindal.
But one thing is abundantly apparent: Vitter is not running for governor; he’s purchasing the office by attacking opponents on TV instead of confronting them face to face like a man. My grandfather had a name for that: cowardice. And if he’s elected, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We will have been purchased, in the words of the late Earl Long, “like a sack of potatoes.”
As for me, my vote is not for sale.
Posted in Budget, Economy, Elections, Governor's Office, Taxes on October 11, 2015| 19 Comments »
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)
There is an interesting parallel to be drawn from Bobby Jindal’s less than earth shaking tax plan in which he advocates raising taxes on the poor (in apparent violation of his Grover Norquist no-tax pledge) while granting even further tax cuts for the wealthy (in harmonious accord with Norquist). https://www.bobbyjindal.com/tax/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100915_MS_TaxPlan%20(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=23715672&spUserID=MTI1NzExOTg5NzE1S0&spJobID=660993528&spReportId=NjYwOTkzNTI4S0
For this comparison, we have Earthmother to thank for pointing this out to us:
News flash, Bobby: 1 percent’s not going to cut it any more than your giving away state hospitals is going to solve the state’s health care problems.
One percent’s not going to get you elected any more than your repetitive cuts to higher education are going to help students struggling to pay higher tuition.
Bobby, you are on a fool’s errand and you’re either too stubborn to admit you don’t have a chance, or you’re blinded by unbridled ambition, delusional….or just stupid.
Your propensity to have—and worse, your willingness to offer to the world—your opinion on every subject, trivial or important, with or without basis (mostly without), long ago grew insipidly thin.
And still you persist.
You persist in saying that there should be no hyphenated Americans and you persist in saying immigration without assimilation is invasion and that those entering this country should learn our language and go to work.
I guess that shows that nothing has changed much over the past 523 years.
Today (Monday, October 12) is Columbus Day, so let’s examine what his arrival meant to the natives of North America. When Columbus landed on the island of San Salvador in 1492, he wrote to the king and queen of Spain that he found natives who “love their neighbors as themselves” whose manners were “decorous and praiseworthy.”
He also wrote, according to Dee Brown in his book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee that the indigenous people should be “made to work, sow and do all that is necessary and to adopt our ways.” Columbus even kidnapped 10 of the friendly San Salvador native Taino tribesmen and carted them off to Spain so they could be introduced to the white man’s ways.
One of them died soon after arriving in Spain but not before he was baptized, sending the Spaniards into a state of religious euphoria in the knowledge that they had made it possible for the first Indian to enter heaven.
As a diplomatic expression of their willingness to assimilate, other European explorers who followed Columbus looted and burned villages. They kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children and sold them into slavery. In a generation, the Europeans had ravaged the island, killed the vegetation and its inhabitants—natives, animals, birds and fish—and turned San Salvador into a wasteland…and then they abandoned it.
How’s that for assimilation, Bobby?
The most outrageous utterance in a long string of outrageous utterances, however, was his unsolicited opinion concerning the recent mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/louisiana-gov-bobby-jindal-defends-comments-blaming-oregon/story?id=34403499
“The killer’s father is now lecturing us on the need for gun control and he says he has no idea how or where his son got the guns,” Jindal wrote in yet another of his inane op-eds. “Of course he doesn’t know. You know why he doesn’t know? Because he is not, and has never been in his son’s life. He is a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public. He’s the problem here.”
Well, Bobby, let’s examine your record, particularly your last term. You have not and have never been in our lives. You have spent the entirety of your last four years in Iowa. When you weren’t there physically, you were there in spirit, there in your far-fetched, ambitious, implausible dreams.
You have been a complete failure as a governor, a leader, and an inspiration to 4.6 million citizens of Louisiana. When you were elected, you carried the hopes and dreams of a better Louisiana into the governor’s office. You promptly discarded those hopes and dreams in favor of an unrealistic pursuit of your own impossible hopes and dreams.
You should be embarrassed to even show your face in public in Louisiana, much less choose to build your post-political home in Baton Rouge.
In short, you’re the problem here.
But hey, don’t sweat it, Bobby. You still have an unshakable lock on your 1 percent.
Posted in Courts, Crime, Elections, Ethics, TV News on October 10, 2015| 11 Comments »
When the Greeks and Romans created their respective gods of justice, they apparently did not have Louisiana’s Second Judicial District in mind.
The Lady of Justice, holding a sword and the scales of justice, is a familiar sight in Western culture. Her statue adorns many courthouses and halls of justice across the U.S. and miniature versions stand proudly on the desks of countless attorneys. In some depictions, she is blindfolded but most often, she is not.
The origin of the statue is said to be Themis, a Greek goddess of divine justice. In illustrations of her, she carries the scales of justice in one hand and a sword in the other, with her eyes covered. The Romans consolidated her and her daughter Dike to form Justitia.
So just how did the Second Judicial District, which comprises the parishes of Jackson, Bienville and Claiborne, come to be overlooked in the administering of so-called blind justice, aka fair and impartial justice?
Two words.
Mack Ford.
Or more accurately, three words: Rev. Mack Ford.
Back in January, a Bienville Parish grand jury declined to indict Ford, then 82, who was accused of raping girls who were residents of his infamous New Bethany Home in Arcadia in the 1970s, ‘80s and into the ‘90s. Ford died suddenly just over a month later, on February 11. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/02/mack_w_ford_founder_of_new_bet.html
And while it may seem unfair to pick on him at this point, his death is not the issue here.
Three former residents of New Bethany traveled to Arcadia from three different states in December of 2014 to testify about their experiences with Ford. Other witnesses testified in October of that year.
But in a terse, one-paragraph written statement, then-District Attorney Jonathan Stewart said the grand jury was given “research and information regarding the statute of limitations with regard to each alleged act and, after deliberation, returned a no true bill.” STEWART GRAND JURY LETTER A no true bill means the grand jury decided not to indict. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/01/grand_jury_declines_to_indict.html
So, if we are to understand Stewart’s statement and his interpretation of the law (and apparently, his instructions to the grand jury—though we will never know that for sure since grand jury proceedings are secret), the reason there was no indictment was because the statute of limitations had expired.
But wait!
Just last week, on Thursday (October 8), Shreveport television station KSLA ran a story about a 74-year-old Grant Parish man who was arrested for his alleged involvement in the rape of a young girl….in the 1970s. http://www.ksla.com/story/30219460/74-year-old-charged-in-1970s-rape-of-young-girl?fb_action_ids=10154259652069128&fb_action_types=og.comments&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B913686945391152%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.comments%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D
Roy Leon Robertson was booked into the Caddo Correctional Center on Monday, October 5 and charged with aggravated rape, according to the TV report.
He is accused of raping a girl under the age of 13 in the ‘70s, but the rape was not reported to Caddo authorities until 2014 when he came under investigation for similar offenses in Winn Parish.
The parallels in the Robertson and Ford cases are unmistakable. Both were accused of raping juveniles in the ‘70s even though in each case, the offenses were not formally reported until 2014, and the reported offenses occurred in the same general area of the state.
Yet, while one such report resulted in an immediate arrest, the other was dismissed because of what the local D.A said was an expired statute of limitation.
But let’s hear what a Caddo official had to say about that:
“There is no prescription for aggravated rape,” according to investigator Jared Marshall. A victim may come forward at any time. “Normally it’s called the statue (sic) of limitations, but in Louisiana it’s called a prescription,” the TV station quoted Marshall as saying.
Detectives said the victim decided to come forward upon learning that Robertson may still be harming young children.
“It doesn’t shock me at all that a report like this was made years later,” said psychologist Bruce McCormick. “Sometimes people are just not psychologically ready to make a report at the time, particularly the younger people,” he said.
Marshall said victims should not be concerned if it’s too late to prosecute. “The process of coming forward is for the protection of potential future victims,” he said.
Never too late to prosecute?
Oops. Apparently Jonathan Stewart didn’t get the memo.
“If he (Ford) had been indicted for just one thing, it would have been justice for so many people,” Kansas police dispatcher Simone Jones, one of Ford’s accusers, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in January. She said Ford raped her in the early 1980s. “Why does this man continue to walk free?” she said following the grand jury’s decision.
The grand jury was convened a year after Jones and other former residents traveled to Arcadia in support of Jennifer Halter, a cancer victim who said she wanted to fulfill a dying wish to report Ford who she said began molesting her shortly after she arrived at the school in 1988, abuse she said continued until she left in 1990.
Jones said she was 14 when Ford forced her to perform oral sex on him.
“They let us down again,” Halter told The Times-Picayune. “I can’t understand why it’s okay for these people to do what they do and walk away like nothing was done wrong.” She said she experienced frequent sexual contact by Ford during choir trips to area churches which he chaperoned. She said she reported those incidents to police in 2013.
“This has gone on for years,” Tara Cummings told The Times-Picayune. A resident of New Bethany in 1982 and ’83, she said if the statute of limitations was an issue, Stewart should never have convened a grand jury to in the first place. “The particulars for the statutes of limitations for these crimes was always accessible to the DA’s office,” she was quoted as saying. “They (prosecutors) are the party who needs to understand and be clear about what is and what is not possible under the statutes.”
Perhaps Stewart should contact the District Attorney’s office in Caddo Parish—except he is no longer in office.
In April of 2014, Stewart fired Assistant District Attorney Danny Newell after Newell announced he would run against his boss. Stewart subsequently withdrew from his re-election bid and Newell was elected district attorney. https://lincolnparishnewsonline.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/da-stewart-fires-assistant-in-claiborne-newell-likely-opponent-in-14/
Posted in Uncategorized on October 9, 2015| 3 Comments »
We are still holding our semi-annual fundraiser to help offset some of the expenses incurred in chasing down stories for LouisianaVoice.
But this post is not a solicitation. Instead, at the risk of sounding like some cheesy televangelist, I want to share a letter that I received today (Friday, October 9) I have removed the contributor’s name and address to protect her privacy.
(I must make a small correction: With Edwards in the Governor’s Mansion is not my book. It was written by former Angola inmate Forest Hammond about his experiences as a prisoner-butler in the Edwin Edwards governor’s mansion. I was merely the editor of the book.)
I received two other checks along with this one in my post office box, each for $100. Those contributions are greatly appreciated but with all due respect, nothing could have touched me as deeply as that letter. And it was certainly not a “paltry sum.” This one gesture meant more to me than the contributor could ever know.
It immediately brought to mind a parable I once read in the Bible. Not being a biblical scholar, I admit that I had to google it and found it was Luke 21:1-4. It reads:
It also occurred to me that I could never deposit that check. Yes, we need money to operate but we don’t need it badly enough to take it from someone who desires to help us but obviously does not have the financial means to do so. Her gesture is the true definition of sacrifice.
What I have decided to do instead is to frame the check and her letter and hang it on the wall over my computer in my office.
That way, I will have a daily reminder of why I do this.
$2.50 each or three for $6.00
Louisiana Voice 