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Archive for May, 2018

Greed is the name of the game as Senate payday loan bill would double interest rates: follow the campaign dollars

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Senate on May 4, 2018| 7 Comments »

If you would like a crystal-clear example of the disdain with which elected officials hold their constituency, those people whose interests they are elected to serve, you need look no further than SENATE BILL 365 by Sen. Rick Ward (R-Port Allen).

The bill, which gives Louisiana’s payday loan industry an opportunity to dig its spurs a little deeper into the very people who can lease afford it, was passed in the Senate on Monday by a 20-17 VOTE, with two members not voting.

Of the 20 who voted in favor of the bill, 13 have received campaign contributions totaling $43,250 (an average of $3,327 each) since 2011. Three of those, Daniel Martiny, R-Metairie ($9,500), Body White, R-Central ($9,000) and Gary Smith, D-Norco ($7,950), averaged $8,817 each.

Other recipients included:

  • Conrad Appel, R-Metairie: $4,000;
  • Wesley Bishop, D- New Orleans: $1500;
  • Norby Chabert, R-Houma: $2500;
  • Dale Erdy, R-Livingston: $1000
  • Ronnie Johns, R-Lake Charles: $3000;
  • Eric Lafleur, D-Ville Platte: $1500;
  • Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton: $500;
  • Barrow Peacock, R-Bossier City: $1500;
  • Ed Price, D-Gonzales: $1000;
  • Rick Ward, R-Port Allen: $2300.

Fourteen of the 17 senators who voted against the bill also received a combined total of $34,500, or an average of $2,464 each, campaign finance records show.

They included:

  • Senate President John Alario, R-Westwego: $7000;
  • Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge: $1000;
  • Page Cortez, R-Lafayette: $4500;
  • Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville: $500;
  • Jim Fannin, R-Jonesboro: $2000;
  • Gerald Long, R-Winnfield: $2500;
  • Dan Morrish, R-Jennings: $2500;
  • Jonathan Perry, R-Kaplan: $1500;
  • Neil Riser, R-Columbia: $2500;
  • John Smith, R-Leesville: $5000;
  • Leon Tarver, D-Shreveport: $1000;
  • Francis Thompson, D-Delhi: $1500;
  • Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe: $2000.

Good on them for not cratering to the influence of campaign bucks but the overriding question remains: Why do candidates even accept money from these type sources when they know full well their motives?

The bill, if approved by the House and signed by Gov. Edwards who received $6,500 himself from payday loan contributors, would create the Louisiana Credit Access Loan Act, which would allow lenders to issue new payday loans from $500 to $875 for terms of three to 12 months. Present law limits loans to $350 for up to 60 days.

The bill also doubles the annual percentage rate on loans that can be made.

Proponents of the bill say that payday lenders provided a needed service to low-income borrowers who are unable to obtain traditional loans. But what they do not say is that such loans carry a $131 origination fee and 85 percent APR. Ward’s bill would increase the fees to $270 and the annual interest rate to 167 percent.

Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project argues that Louisiana’s lower-income citizens upon whom payday loan companies prey, cannot afford triple-digit interest rates, adding that the bill is being pushed by more than a dozen “well-connected lobbyists” who he said are selling “a false narrative.” He said the bill is an example of “greed and arrogance at the highest level.”

The finest legislators money can buy, folks.

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Former State Trooper charged with 74 felony counts holds Dequincy Police Dept. commission—but he really can sing

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, State Police on May 4, 2018| 7 Comments »

The latest news coming out of Lake Charles regarding one of four state troopers charged with malfeasance and 74 counts of injuring public records is the defense offered up by his attorney, the same attorney who loves to file SLAPP lawsuits against a Welsh city alderman.

Oh, and there’s the revelation that former State Trooper Jimmy Rogers, who resigned in the middle of a Louisiana State Police (LSP) internal affairs investigation, still holds—or recently held—a commission from the DEQUINCY POLICE DEPARTMENT.

Rogers attempted to return to LSP when he sent an email to Troop D Commander Benny Broussard on March 7 in which he (a) claimed he had resigned in “good standing,” and (b) said he would like to return to his former job. Ironically, in that email he said, “I was clear (sic) of every claim except altering times on tickets. I am guilty of writing times on tickets later than the stop actually was.”

Yeah, well, actually, those altered tickets are exactly what those 74 felony counts are all about and about which Calcasieu Parish DISTRICT ATTORNEY John DeRosier says he is “in the process of preparing formal charges.”

DeRosier said he was “going to assume that there’s a financial benefit” to Rogers’s practice of jotting an incorrect time on all those tickets ostensibly written while working Local Agency Compensated Enforcement (LACE) patrol. LACE is a cooperative program in which local district attorneys pay state police for beefed-up patrol to catch traffic offenders.

The financial benefit to Rogers, at least theoretically, would be that he wrote his tickets early in his shift but put later times to make it appear he worked his entire shift when in reality, he would go home early after writing a few tickets. DeRosier might be taking that offense a little personally since it is his office that pays for those hours that Rogers is accused of not working.

But no matter. Rogers apparently has this captivating voice that should be sufficient to beat the rap. You see, according to his attorney, Ron Richard, Rogers is a man “who probably sang the national anthem at more events in this town than anyone else” and is confident “both in himself and his faith in God that he will be vindicated and all will be made right in the end.”

Good to know. But…but…but Rogers put it in writing back on March 7 that he was guilty of falsifying the times. Which brings up the obvious question: Will Richard have him sing the national anthem on the stand during his trial? Apparently, Richard thinks that is important.

This is the same attorney who filed a so-called SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation or, if you will, frivolous or harassment) LAWSUIT against Welsh Alderman Jacob Colby Perry on behalf of four separate clients—the Welsh mayor, her daughter, her son, and the town’s police chief.

They lost and had to pay Perry’s legal fees of some $16,000.

If convicted, Rogers could be facing up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000—on each count.

Now, Dequincy, about that Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement commission you issued to Rogers when you hired him as a reserve police officer….

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House, unable to agree on a sane budget for the state, agrees that concealed permit holders be able to enter schools armed

Posted in Ethics, House, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Senate on May 3, 2018| 25 Comments »

My longtime friend and confidant Harley Purvis, he of the booth in the back in the corner in the dark at John Wayne Culpepper’s Lip-Smackin’ Bar-B-Que House of Prayer and Used Light Bulb Emporium in Watson, had a term for the Louisiana House of Representatives passage of HB 602 yesterday:

Bats**t crazy.

And truly, that’s the only appropriate description of this house of morons who can’t seem to pass a budget but can agree that anyone with a concealed permit may enter any public school in Louisiana locked and loaded.

To give proper credit, there were 37 MEMBERS who voted nay on the bill authored by Rep. Blake Miguez (R-Erath) and Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) and another nine didn’t vote.

So, what’s so terrible about HB 602 that it’s got my shorts twisted in a knot?

Well, quite simply, these two idiots think it’s perfectly okay for anyone armed with a concealed weapon to enter a school building in Louisiana—so long as they have a concealed carry permit.

And if you two idiots think you can come after me for libel for correctly calling you idiots, then bring it on, ass clowns. As for me, I’ll shout it from the highest building in Baton Rouge that you never quite completed your potty training before being elected to the Louisiana Legislature.

What person in his right mind, after the horrors of Sandy Hook and Parkland and Columbine, to name only three of the number of school shootings for which we long ago lost accurate count, would ever suggest that it’s okay for anyone, permitted or not, to enter a school building armed?

BATS**T CRAZY.

Somehow, I suspect that this has the fingerprints of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and certainly the NRA, all over it.

Do take a careful look at the vote to see how your representative voted. Out where I live, Rogers Pope did not vote but I have every confidence that had he been present, he would have voted against the bill. He’s a former teacher and the retired Superintendent of Livingston Parish Schools.

Valerie Hodges, from further north in Livingston Parish, voted for the bill but that’s no surprise. She’s the one who voted to give state financial aid to religious-affiliated schools a few years ago and then blew a gasket when an Islamic (yes, Valerie, Islam is still a religion) applied for funding.

From Lincoln Parish, where I grew up, I’m proud to say that Rob Shadoin had the good sense to vote no.

As for Neil Riser, I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, His sponsorship of such an asinine bill is a blatant conflict of interest: He owns two funeral homes.

If I’m reading this bill correctly (and it’s pretty straightforward), it does not permit teachers, administrators, school employees, or students to arm themselves on campus. Well, thank God for small favors.

The bill also says, “Nothing…shall limit the authority of a school board or school to prohibit a person from carrying a firearm, or to regulate the carrying of a firearm, in certain venues or facilities within the school district or an individual school unless the person is otherwise authorized to do so by law.”

So, I suppose the bill still gives the locals some say-so as to the prohibition of weapons on school campuses and in school buildings.

That being the case, what is the purpose of the bill in the first place? Apparently, to open the door (so to speak) to concealed carriers should local school districts or schools fail to expressly prohibit weapons in schools or on campuses.

Present law provides that a concealed handgun permit “does not authorize nor entitle the permit holder to carry a concealed handgun in certain places, including into a school, school campus, or a school bus,” the bill says.

The bill proposes to remedy that by repealing the exception “relative to schools, school campuses, or school buses, but provides that if the concealed handgun (permit holder) is a teacher, administrator, or employee of any school acting within the course and scope of his employment or is a student of any school,” the provisions of the proposed law “shall not be construed to authorize the teacher, administrator, employee, or student of the school to carry a concealed handgun into any school, school campus, or school bus unless specifically authorized to do so by law.”

This, folks, is insanity, pure and simple.

If you have children, grandchildren or if you have a loved one who is a teacher or staff member at a school in Louisiana, I implore you to first, ask yourself what possible reason could someone have to enter a school building with a loaded gun? After you’ve pondered the logic behind that warped thinking, call your senator and demand that this irrational, this madness, be stopped in its tracks.

Call me a bleeding heart, I don’t mind. I’ll take that any day over reading or writing about bleeding children and teachers.

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