Posted in Uncategorized on February 20, 2020| 14 Comments »
“What he is doing is lawless, it’s unprecedented, it breaks every rule in our constitutional democracy, and the law will find a way to catch up with him. He can pardon his Mar-a-Lago friends, and pardon his campaign contributors, and this or that. But one way or another, our system is robust enough between the press and the courts to bring him and his ilk to justice.”
–Former solicitor general Neil Katyal, Feb. 18, 2020.
Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Public Records, Transparency, Uncategorized on February 19, 2020| 9 Comments »
When Kimberly Gail Womack was found dead in the bedroom of her Jarreau residence in Pointe Coupee Parish, her daughter Kathryn Simpson assumed there would be a thorough investigation into her death.
Womack, had died little more than a month shy of her 49th birthday of “blunt force trauma to head by assault,” according to the official death certificate. She suffered “left sided (sic) subdural hematoma (brain hemorrhaging generally associated with traumatic brain injury) because of a blow or blows to the head, and “multiple fractured ribs.
Her death was assigned to the parish coroner and Simpson had every reason to believe authorities would devote their energy to find her mother’s killer.
That was on Aug. 1, 2008, and more than 11 years later, no one has been charged with the killing and authorities have attempted to deflect Simpson’s inquiries into her mother’s case, saying (a) that she died from a fall and (b) her lifestyle was the primary contributing factor in her death.
Eighteenth Judicial District Assistant District Attorney Tony Clayton has even implied to Simpson that she “will never know” the full story of Womack’s death.
Those words now seem prophetic since after more than 11 years, the case appears no closer to resolution than ever.
Kim Womack’s “lifestyle” kept resonating with Simpson, who was aware her mother was involved with a West Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy.
The only problem was, unbeknownst to Simpson, the deputy, WBR Sheriff’s deputy was married. It’s not known if Womack was aware that inconvenient fact.
When the deputy, whom Simpson says she had known all her life, was a no-show for her mother’s memorial, “I got suspicious.”
Clayton refused to provide the investigative report to Simpson. “He told me he would let me see the information but he could not let it get out because of the media got hold of it, it could ruin the deputy’s life and he wasn’t going to do that,” Simpson said.
She said she then went to the office of the deputy’s wife and “slapped my mom’s picture down in front of his wife. I asked if she knew the woman in the picture.” She said she told the woman that her mother was having an affair with her husband and my mom “has now turned up dead.”
Womack had accompanied the deputy to a training session in Lake Charles about three weeks before her death, Simpson said.
She said the man’s wife told her she would present her husband with what Simpson had given her and that the two women would talk the following day.
“I called her the next day and she wasn’t ugly, but she said she couldn’t talk to me anymore,” Simpson said.
“The deputy went to Tony Clayton’s office and threw a fit the next day,” she said. “And that’s the last I ever heard of it (the investigation).”
Ty Chaney, chief investigator for the Pointe Coupee Parish Coroner’s Office, did write a two-paragraph letter dated Jan. 28, 2020 that he attached to the six-page autopsy report in which he stipulated that “This death was a result of a left side Subdural Hematoma from Blunt Force trauma to head.
“This is still a pending homicide investigation with Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff Office.” The autopsy report added that she suffered “multiple bruises and abrasions on the upper and lower extremities as well as the midfrontal region of the face.”
The problem with any investigation at this point is that Womack’s body was cremated by Rabenhorst Funeral Home of Baton Rouge on Aug. 4, 2008, just three days after her death.
Louisiana R.S. 13:5719 says “…If, after the necessary investigation, the coroner is satisfied that there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death, he shall issue a permit for cremation.”
An autopsy was completed but the coroner’s report made it plain that there were “suspicious circumstances. By cremating the body, any evidence that might have been overlooked was gone forever.
When prosecutors and law enforcement investigators are less diligent about solving crimes that are not sufficiently high-profile or because victims lack name recognition, social status or proper connections, or when prosecutors just go for the low-hanging fruit (read: easy cases), then justice is not being served on an equal and impartial basis.
Far from it. In fact, it smacks of either laziness or favoritism.
Clayton earlier this week formally announced his candidacy to succeed his boss, DA Ricky Ward who is retiring. This story likely will invoke howls of a political hatchet job. In an election year, that would be an expected reaction for a political candidate under fire. The truth is, however, that I know little about Tony Clayton and have no axe to grind with him. Nor do I know of any other potential candidate for the DA’s post in the three-parish 18th JDC.
The only dog I have in this hunt is contempt for any public official who appears to be shirking his duty to the people he or she serves or who is otherwise giving less than his/her best. And after 11 years of inaction on the Kim Womack case, it would appear that someone has gone to sleep on the job in the 18th JDC.
The alternative would seem to be that someone is indeed being protected.
Posted in Corruption, Courts, Notable Quotables, Uncategorized on February 19, 2020| 10 Comments »
“It’s a clemency process for the well-connected, and that’s it. Trump is wielding the power the way you would expect the leader of a banana republic who wants to reward his friends and cronies.”
—Rachel Barkow, professor and clemency expert at New York University School of Law, following Trump’s issuing pardons to 11 people, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who had attempted to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat after he was elected president.
“Extortion by a public official is a very serious crime, routinely prosecuted throughout the United States whenever, as here, it can be detected and proven. That has to be the case in America: a justice system must hold public officials accountable for corruption. It would be unfair to their victims and the public to do otherwise. While the president has the power to reduce Mr. Blagojevich’s sentence, the fact remains that the former governor was convicted of very serious crimes.”
—Chicago attorneys Reid J. Schar, Chris Niewoehner and Patrick J. Fitzgerald and Cook County Judge Carrie E. Hamilton, in a statement in response to Trump’s pardon of Blagojevich.
“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about.”
—U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe of Philadelphia, on the emergency meeting called by the Federal Judges Association to address concerns over Trump’s and Justice Department officials’ intervention in politically sensitive court cases.
Posted in Attorney General, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Fraud, Jobs, Media, Politicians, Transparency, Uncategorized on February 18, 2020| 10 Comments »
You gotta love it when someone gets burned for their hypocrisy, tries to jump out in front of the story, and that effort falls flat.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who rails against illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, has the proverbial egg all over his face and his brother Benjamin’s 10-minute VIDEO on Youtube in an effort to blunt the effects of a stellar investigative report by the Baton Rouge Advocate landed with a thud.
And of course, The Hayride internet blog also attempted to come to Landry’s rescue, accusing the Baton Rouge paper of doing a hatchet job on poor Jeff.
Both Ben Landry and The Hayride accused the paper of attacking brother Jeff Landry because he’s a conservative but in doing so, neglected to observe that The Advocate has long been the unofficial official organ for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), quite possibly the most conservative businessmen’s club in the state of Louisiana.
But the bottom line is it’s pretty hard to defend Landry for his latest escapade: being part of a $17 million scam to hire Mexican welders and pipe fitters under H-2B visa rules through three companies owned by Jeff and Ben Landry.
Under terms of the deal, the Mexicans would work for CB&I, the prime contractor on the $7 billion Cameron LNG project in Hackberry in Cameron Parish. The three Landry companies would be subcontracted to a company run by Houston labor broker Marco Pesquera.
Pesquera made millions of dollars by defrauding the immigration system to bring more than a thousand Mexican laborers to the Gulf South but his luck finally ran out when he was convicted and began a three-year prison sentence in December for fraud.
Ben Landry, in his “Poor Me, Poor Jeff” video, blamed all his brothers’ woes on The Advocate and its reliance on a convicted felon for building its case against the attorney general.
Not said in that 10-minute diatribe was the fact that prosecutors like Jeff Landry often use jailhouse snitches, i.e. convicted felons, as the preferred ploy to convict defendants, frequently putting away innocent people, so playing the convicted felon card would seem rather disingenuous. I guess it’s okay when prosecutors do it.
It’s especially curious when you consider how Jeff Landry went to such great lengths to shield Pesquera and his company and his companies’ ties to Pesquera as well as how they embellished their claims for a need for foreign labor, documentation required by the feds.
H-2b visas are supposed to be issued only if there is a shortage of American workers to perform the needed work.
Southern Innovative Services was approved for 113 welders and pipefitters from Mexico and Evergreen got the nod for 195.
Records provided to The Advocate by the Louisiana Workforce Commission showed that 113 local welders and pipefitters applied for positions with Evergreen Contractors, one of three Landry companies involved in the scheme.
Pesquera told The Advocate that none of the Landry companies hired a single American for work—and never intended to.
Brent Littlefield, Jeff Landry’s campaign mouthpiece, refused to respond to repeated questions from The Advocate as to whether Evergreen hired any American welders or pipefitters.
While Evergreen obtained a contractor’s license in June 2018, his other two companies, Prime Response and Southern Innovative Services, have never obtained one as required by law and Jeff Landry, normally quick with the lip, has not responded to questions about the companies’ status regarding state contracting licenses.
And while Jeff Landry, who disrupted a State of the Union Address by President Obama while he was a member of Congress by holding up a sign opposing the drilling moratorium in the Gulf following the BP spill, was uncharacteristically mum in responding to The Advocate’s questions, his brother most certainly was not in his Youtube video.
“The Advocate newspaper is on a crusade against my brother—my guess is, for no other reason than because he is a conservative,” Ben Landry said.
You have to wonder if Landry may have used his position as attorney general to lean on CB&I to hire those Mexican workers that he was importing at the same time he was publicly positioning himself as a dedicated opponent of illegal immigration.
Jeff Landry, it seems, couldn’t be satisfied with being a full-time attorney general; he just had to find a way to enrich himself while in office.
Funny, isn’t it, how politicians can conveniently bend their moral compasses so that north is south and east is west.
Posted in Economy, Education on February 18, 2020| 9 Comments »
If you’re 65 or over and live in Louisiana, get out now.
If you’re not yet 65 and live in Louisiana, get out before you reach that age.
According to 24/7 Wall Street, that online service that does surveys on government, consumerism and just about anything else, Louisiana is the 4th worst state in which older Americans can reside.
Worse even than Alabama (though barely: it was 5th worst), but better than West Virginia (the worst), Arkansas (a surprise at 2nd worst) and of course, Mississippi (3rd worst).
We already know that lousy political support makes Louisiana a horrible state for teachers of all ages, so, what, exactly, makes Louisiana such a poor choice for older Americans?
Well, for openers, try these statistics on for size:
Our life expectancy at age 65 of 83.1 years is tied for 8th lowest. West Virginia is lowest at 82.5 years.
We’re 8th highest with 38 percent of our population aged 65 and older with a disability (welcome to my world).
Our poverty rate of 12.4 percent for those 65 and older is tied with Mississippi for 2nd highest in the nation (New Mexico is highest at 13.3 percent).
The $36,345 median income for 65 and older households is 2nd lowest (West Virginia was lowest at $36,147 while Mississippi and Arkansas have the 3rd and 4th lowest median incomes for older households, respectively).
Louisiana has the 10th lowest population aged 65 and older at 720,610 which could mean that our older citizens, like my good friend and Ruston High School classmate John Sachs, took the hint and left the state (though John’s choice of Arkansas is somewhat questionable in retrospect).
In case you’re wondering, the national median income of retirement-age households is $44,992, more than $8,600 higher than Louisiana.
As an added incentive for us old folks to git while the gittin’s good, Louisiana crime rate—both property and violent crime—ranks among the highest in the country. (With our open carry laws and our obsession with guns to protect ourselves, you’d think that figure would be a little lower. Just sayin’.)
But even though I flooded in 2016 and subsequently was screwed by FEMA and the Restore Louisiana program, I was born in this state, my children and grandchildren live here, and while I abhor Baton Rouge traffic, I love Louisiana’s people, our culture, our food and our music.
I’m stayin’.
$2.50 each or three for $6.00
Louisiana Voice 