Posted in Uncategorized on August 10, 2016| Leave a Comment »
“The system is definitely rigged against independent candidates.”
—U.S. Senate candidate Donald Trump, er Troy Hebert, lamenting his being labeled as a Republican instead of as having no party affiliation in a May opinion poll that showed him at 2 percent. He is suing the polling firm.
Posted in ATC, Elections, Legislature, Legislators, Media, Politicians, Senate on August 10, 2016| 5 Comments »
Poor Troy Hebert. Like his mentor, Bobby Jindal, he just can’t seem to get any traction or notice in a crowded field of candidates.
Unlike Jindal, however, instead of sending out daily email blasts from Iowa proclaiming the glass to be half full (when in reality, the glass was just dirty and needed washing), Hebert, one of 24 candidates for the U.S. Senate, is making his case in the courts.
He should be right at home there, given the number of times he was sued by agents he fired and/or harassed during his tenure as Jindal’s Commissioner of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC).
Where Jindal resigned himself to the kiddie table at the Republican debates in Iowa’s debates that more resembled a bunch of hogs trying to get to the slop trough (and we all know by now that the biggest pig of all, Trump, ultimately prevailed, causing the others to squeal pretty loudly), Hebert is suing a polling firm because he was incorrectly identified as a (gasp!) Republican!
Hebert, a former Democrat while serving as a State Representative from the parishes of Vermilion and Iberia, is a declared Independent, running without party affiliation.
He doesn’t seem to be commanding the same respect as a candidate that he did as head of ATC where employees were required to stand and chirp, “Good morning, Commissioner,” when he entered the room.
So he’s claiming in his lawsuit that a May poll (not to be confused with a maypole) conducted by Southern Media and Opinion Research and its veteran pollster Bernie Pinsonat was “flawed” because it incorrectly identified him as a Republican.
He said the polling firm is incompetent at best and committing fraud at worst by “intentionally misleading respondents,” adding in a whine reminiscent of Trump himself, that “the system is definitely rigged against independent candidates” because the survey was used to keep him from participating in two candidate forums.
Pinsonat, in something of an understatement, said identifying Hebert as an Independent would not get him better numbers.
Hebert says he was not allowed to participate in a June 29 forum sponsored by the Louisiana chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Louisiana Restaurant Association.
He was also turned away, he said, from a July 28 event put on by the Louisiana Municipal Association because he didn’t reach the required 5 percent in the Southern Media survey.
In that poll for the period of May 19-23, State Treasurer John Kennedy and “Undecided” were neck and neck at 32 percent. The only other candidate to touch double digits was U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany with 10 percent. Hebert, with 2 percent, edged out Eric Skrmetta, who got 1 percent.
At least Hebert can take some comfort in the knowledge that he did better in that poll than his former boss did in any of the polls in Iowa.
Of course he still has an outside shot of making the runoff—if he can only persuade Jindal to endorse one of the other candidates
Posted in Uncategorized on August 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
—First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (emphasis added).
Posted in Computers, Corruption, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Legislature, Legislators, Media, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency, Uncategorized on August 8, 2016| 22 Comments »
Apparently Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter has never read the First Amendment. Neither, apparently, has 32nd Judicial District Court Judge Randal Bethancourt. Nor does it seem that either has ever checked into the constitutional status of Louisiana’s criminal defamation statute.
Larpenter made national news last Tuesday (August 2) when he sent a posse of six deputies to the home of a suspected blogger and hauled away two laptop computers because the blogger said bad things about the high sheriff. Somehow, six men to confiscate two laptop computers approaches overkill, but perhaps that’s the way things are done in Terrebonne Parish. After all, the laws that apply to the rest of us don’t seem to hold much water with Larpenter and Bethancourt. https://theintercept.com/2016/08/04/sheriff-raids-house-to-find-anonymous-blogger-who-called-him-corrupt/
The blogger, after all, had said some really bad things about Larpenter and Parish President (and former State Rep.) Gordon Dove and Dove’s business partner Tony Alford, who landed a huge benefits package brokerage contract for Larpenter’s office, and their jointly-owned trucking firm, and Dove’s former legislative assistant Debbie Ortego who was given a $79,000-a-year job as Dove’s new officer manager, and Debbie’s husband Dana who is Dove’s Risk Manager, and Dana’s nephew Parish Attorney Joe Waitz, III, District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr.’s son, and Sheriff Larpenter’s wife Priscilla who has a six-figure job as manager of Tony Alford’s office, and Jackie Dove who is married to Assistant District Attorney Sye Broussard. There were a few other names in the organizational flow chart compiled by the publisher of the Internet blog http://exposedat.in/wp/ but it gets complicated and somewhat confusing after that.
But the gist of the story is that certain connected entities have successfully evaded their responsibility to pay nearly $400,000 in parish taxes, malfeasance on the part of local officials for not pursuing the collection of the delinquent taxes with, in the words of the late John F. Kennedy, “great vigor,” nepotism, ethics violations, and violations of environmental regulations.
To give you a bit of background, LouisianaVoice had a post two years ago about Dove and his trucking company which got into trouble with the environmental watchdogs in Montana who, unlike their counterparts in Louisiana, tend to do their jobs with no consideration given to oil company political contributions and highly paid oil and gas lobbyists milling around the State Capitol’s rotunda with steak restaurant vouchers for famished legislators. https://louisianavoice.com/2014/06/01/gordon-dove-fox-in-the-house-natural-resources-committee-henhouse-or-perhaps-its-just-louisiana-jindaltics-as-usual/
As we read through the mystery blogger’s most recent post about Terrebonne Parish (the one that got him into trouble with Larpenter and Judge Bethancourt), we couldn’t help but be impressed with the detailed thoroughness with which he laid out his case, supported by document after document.
He had documents and links to documents to support every claim in his post and yet all that made no difference to the two officials who went after the presumed publisher of the blog, one Wayne Anderson who just happens to be a police officer for the City of Houma and who formerly worked as a Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s deputy.
Despite his denials that he is the owner of the blog, he was placed on paid leave a little more than an hour after the raid.
Regardless whether or not Anderson is being truthful in denying authorship of the blog, the entire thing should be a moot point. The blogger, Anderson or whomever, has a right to free speech guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. It’s not that there hasn’t been an effort to thwart freedom of speech. Louisiana’s criminal defamation statute comes immediately to mind.
http://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2013/code-revisedstatutes/title-14/rs-14-47
That law was passed way back in the beginning of John McKeithen’s last term as governor. It was also the start of the final four-year term for Attorney General P.F. “Jack” Gremillion of whom former Gov. Earl Long once said, “If you want to hide something from Jack Gremillion, put it in a law book.”
Bethancourt said he had to stay within the “four corners” of the warrant and affidavit (whatever that means) and that he was unable to discern if Alford was a public official (under the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Sullivan v. New York Times which ruled that for a public official to claim libel, he must prove not only malicious intent but “reckless disregard for the truth”)—despite Alford’s status as a member of a local levee district. Louisiana’s criminal defamation statute, he said, is “pretty broad” and that he would the state to have a “look-see” at what was contained on the computers that might have defamatory statements on them.
The only problem with the judge’s interpretation of the state’s “pretty broad” defamation statute is that it is non-existent.
David Ardoin, Anderson’s attorney, correctly pointed out that Bethancourt made a mistake in approving the warrant to raid his client’s home because in 1981, the second year of former Gov. Dave Treen’s term of office, the law was declared unconstitutional. http://www.lsli.org/files/unconst_report2016.pdf
Just to put things in their proper perspective, that was 35 years ago. Way to stay current on the law, Judge. And Judge, one more thing: since the law was held unconstitutional, it would seem that neither your nor the sheriff—nor anyone else, for that matter—has any right to have a “look-see” at what is contained on Anderson’s computers. That, yer honor, is invasion of privacy.
I happened to run into former Gov. Edwin Edwards last Friday when we each were guests on different hourly segments of the Jim Engster Show in Baton Rouge. I asked him if he remembered the defamation law and he immediately responded, “Of course. It was later declared unconstitutional.” A pretty sharp mind for a man who turned 89 on Sunday (August 7).
When I explained what had occurred in Terrebonne Parish, he said, “It sounds to me like the sheriff has some very serious legal problems. I would love to be that blogger’s attorney in that civil litigation.”
Sheriff Larpenter and Judge Bethancourt have greatly overstepped their authority and their responsibility to the citizens of Terrebonne Parish. So much so that the local newspaper, the Houma Daily Courier, took a big risk in alienating the local power structure when it took the sheriff to task in a sharply worded EDITORIAL on Sunday (Aug. 7). The paper, however, stopped short of condemning Judge Bethancourt for going along with the sheriff’s Gestapo-like tactics.
Just a cursory read of ExposeDat makes it abundantly and undeniably clear that there are some cozy—too cozy—relationships that border on political incest in Terrebonne Parish. Too much authority and power is vested in the hands of too few people to allow for a workable system of checks and balances. Those few control how millions upon millions of public dollars are spent. Whenever that occurs, there is no oversight and invariably, greed becomes the motivating factor that drives virtually every action.
And it is the citizens who are the ultimate losers.
Local media are subject to economic realities, they can be—and are—squeezed by those in power so that any real investigative reporting is tempered by whatever financial pressure (read: advertising revenue) can be applied by those with the most to lose.
Because of that, bloggers like ExposeDat who are not beholden to the Chamber of Commerce or the local banks are more important than ever before.
Whenever a blogger draws the ire of a public official or is referred to as a “chronic complainer (as in the case of LouisianaVoice recently), it only means that blogger has struck a nerve. Whenever someone says “They’re just a blogger” like a State Trooper ally of State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson recently said in an attempt to discredit LouisianaVoice, we just smile and say, “Yep. We are ‘just a blogger’ who exposed an attempt by Edmonson to enrich his retirement benefits by about $30,000 a year—illegally, we might add—and stopped that little scheme in its tracks.
To ExposeDat, we strongly urge the publisher, whoever you are, to keep the heat on. You’ve already done the heavy lifting and we support your lonely vigil. Don’t relent. If you know you’re doing the right thing, then follow the advice of Winston Churchill: “Never give up. Never, Never, Never.”
Posted in Governor's Office, State Police on August 7, 2016| 12 Comments »
Stephen F. Campbell has been around quite a while in a number of capacities within the Department of Public Safety (DPS) and now he’s back as something called a Confidential Assistant to Louisiana State Police (LSP) Superintendent Mike Edmonson at the Joint Emergency Services Training Center (JESTC) in Zachary—with a benefit package that includes free room and board.
Campbell is a former Deputy Secretary of DPS in the Transportation and Environmental Safety Section. Following his retirement in 1987, he served as a public safety and transportation advocate in Washington, D.C., where he represented the American Trucking Association, the Motor Freight Carriers Association and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.
On July 11, 2011, he returned to LSP as Training and Development Program Staff Manager at $84,000 per year.
He remained at that position just over a year, terminating on July 31, 2012. Five days later, on August 5, 2012, he was appointed by Bobby Jindal as Commissioner of the Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) to succeed former State Sen. Nick Gautreaux.
http://kpel965.com/new-director-for-the-office-of-motor-vehicles/
He started out at a salary of $99,000 but on July 1, 2015, during a time state civil service employees were going yet another year without pay increases, he was bumped up to $104,000.
But political realities being what they are, Campbell’s position as head of OMV was destined to be short-lived. Four months later, Democrat John Bel Edwards was elected governor and in December, the governor-elected pegged former Democratic State Rep. Karen St. Germain of Plaquemine to the position and Campbell appeared to be out.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/john_bel_edwards_appointees.html
But wait. When you’re a FOE (Friend of Edmonson), you’re never out.
Campbell had no sooner cleaned out his desk than Edmonson appointed him as his Confidential Assistant on January 11, coincidentally, the day Edwards was inaugurated as Governor.
Edmonson attempted to negotiate a salary for Campbell that was comparable to what he was making as OMV director but was told that Campbell was not qualified for that salary grade.
So, his salary is $64,500 per year and while his official title is Confidential Assistant, he is assigned to JESTC as an assistant manager, a position that never existed before. Observers at JESTC insist that he does little, if anything, to earn his salary.
One insider said, “An assistant manager was never needed during those years that JESTC was training foreign officers, nor when Triple Canopy had a large portion of the property leased for their training operations.”
Triple Canopy, founded in May 2003 by veteran U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers, is a private security company that provides risk management, security, and mission support services for corporate, government and non-profit clients.
“There have been no outside agencies doing substantial business with JESTC since Triple Canopy moved away a couple of years ago,” our source added.
A search by LouisianaVoice of current and expired contracts turned up no contracts between LSP and Triple Canopy, so the terms of the lease agreement remain obscured. LouisianaVoice has made a public records request for that lease agreement.
The JESTC features a Staff Development Center (SDC), a motel-type facility. SDC rooms are commonly assigned to troopers when they arrive from out of town for extended training. The rooms are assigned by the SDC staff during normal office hours and by an LSP Barracks supervisor after normal office hours. Rooms are also rented by outside agencies which use the facility for various activities, including training.
LouisianaVoice has been told that the Barracks Lieutenant assigned Room 613 to Campbell, apparently on something other than a temporary basis because a recent mix-up stirred the ire of Campbell.
Recently, the Control Room Supervisor at the LSP Barracks received an irate call from Campbell. Edmonson’s Confidential Assistant, it seems, was complaining that Room 613—his room—had apparently been assigned to another trooper by mistake. Campbell told the supervisor that the room was reserved for his exclusive use only and was not to be assigned to anyone else in the future, according to our sources.
This is reminiscent to our story a couple of month ago which revealed that State Police Major Jason Starnes, subsequent to his separation from his wife, was residing in the LSP Training Academy’s VIP quarters, aka the “Charlie Dupuy Suite,” so named because Edmonson’s Chief of Staff Charlie Dupuy also resided there during his own divorce.
There seems to be a developing pattern here: If you are a FOE and in need of a place to crash, there’s plenty of rent-free space available, complete with all the amenities, including meals, at the LSP cafeteria.
These are perks not available to anyone outside Edmonson’s tight little circle.
Rank does have its privileges.
$2.50 each or three for $6.00
Louisiana Voice 