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Archive for March, 2020

There is a man in Congress who can make Donald Trump appear to be the adult in the room.

There is a man in Congress who can make fellow Rep. Devin Nunes appear to be the voice of reason and restraint.

There is a man in Congress who can make fellow Rep. Lindsey Graham look like a paragon of consistency.

There is a man in Congress who can make fellow Rep. Jim Jordan appear to be a calming influence.

There is a man in Congress who can make just about anyone else seem like a tower of intellect.

That man is none other than Louisiana’s 3rd District U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, aka the lawman who told Michael Cohen he’d arrested “thousands of people.” (His former boss, St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz, says the number is closer to six. Maybe.)

Clay Higgins is the former used car salesman who once got CANNED by the Opelousas Police Department—or rather resigned in lieu of firing—for roughing up a citizen and then lying about it.

Clay Higgins is the same guy who then was fired by the St. Landry Sheriff’s Department for trying to commercialize his position as a public information officer with videos, T-shirts, a radio production, and, of all things, photo sessions like he was some kind of slick magazine centerfold model.

Clay Higgins is the same guy who then landed a position in the office of Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope who would soon have his own legal problems.

Clay Higgins is the same guy who fell behind on his child support payments by about $100,000 but assured his ex-wife during his campaign for Congress that once elected, he would have access to all sorts of money.

Clay Higgins is the same one who called for the ERADICATION of all who might have any sympathy for Islamics.

Clay Higgins is the same one who, while tailgating with Trump on a trip to Germany, made a political video at AUSCHWITZ in violation of all manner of protocol and decorum.

Clay Higgins is the same one who ATTENDED A PAIR OF CONFERENCES, one hosted by a hate group and another by climate science deniers.

And while Trump takes his cue from Fox News, Higgins apparently takes his from Louisiana’s version of Rush Limbaugh, MOON GRIFFON.

Apparently taking Griffon’s advice to heart, the Cajun Barney Fife lit into Gov. John Bel Edwards on Tuesday over the governor’s proclamation prohibiting gatherings of more than 250 people—including church congregations.

Higgins, who likely hasn’t seen the inside of a church since the last funeral he attended, took particular umbrage at Gov. Edwards’s imposition of size restrictions on groups, saying in a LETTER to the governor, “…the decision to gather should be the choice of the individual or institution and not a mandate by any government entity. The State has no authority to enforce the proclamation nor any ban on worship.”

For whatever reason, Higgins has not deemed to hold Trump to those same standards even though Trump is calling for restricting gatherings to a much smaller number: 10.

Higgins also ignored is own BLOG POST in which he said, among other things, “All Americans, regardless of ideology, must be united in our effort to combat the coronavirus. We must prioritize the health and safety of American families.”

We couldn’t agree more. But sometimes being “united” means making sacrifices. This is one of those times. There is no question that things are going to get tight and people are going to suffer financially. But people are going to feel the economic effects regardless of whether or not John Bel Edwards imposes restrictions on the size of gatherings.

The proclamation makes more sense than that Florida preacher who urged his congregation to keep coming to services, saying, “If we die, we die for Jesus.” That, folks, is the epitome of selfishness; the preacher didn’t want to lose out on any “love offerings.” What an idiot.

In a nearly incoherent VIDEO, a grubby-looking Higgins, looking more like a homeless man than a member of Congress, ranted and rambled like a New Orleans wino about Edwards’s proclamation. While he called the governor’s action “stupid,” it was Higgins who came across as the poster child for stupid. Stand up comic Ron “Tater Salad” White must’ve had Higgins in mind when he said, “You can’t fix stupid.”

New Orleans Advocate columnist Stephanie Grace, apparently in a more charitable mood, refrained from accurately describing Higgins’s idiotic demagoguery for what it was: boorish grandstanding. She let him off the hook by saying he was “just out of line.”

I would add a couple of questions for Higgins:

  • What would you propose as an alternative?
  • Instead of slurring and mumbling some incoherent insult at the governor, why don’t you try and be a part of the solution to a very difficult situation?
  • Is this how the voters of the 3rd District elected you to represent them? Seriously?

A friend, appropriately offended by Higgins’s verbal mooning of the governor [who, by the way has displayed infinitely more leadership characteristics during the coronavirus epidemic than one Donald Trump], said simply, “If this guy gets re-elected, his constituents are as crazy as he is.”

 

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“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

—Donald Trump, January 22, speaking of the coronavirus epidemic.

 

“We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment—five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.”

—Trump, on January 30.

 

“Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

—Trump, in a February 2 interview with Sean Hannity.

 

“We have [coronavirus] very much under control in this country. We had 12 [people with the disease], at one point.  And now they’ve gotten very much better.  Many of them are fully recovered.”

—Trump, on February 23.

 

“We’re going down, not up.  We’re going very substantially down, not up. It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”

—Trump, on February 28.

 

“We have an invisible enemy. This is a bad one. This is a very bad one.”

—Trump, on March 16.

 

“I’d rate it a 10. I think we’ve done a great job.”

Trump, on March 16, in response to a reporter’s asking how he would rate the response to the coronavirus crisis. [Trump, of course, disbanded the White House office specifically dedicated to preparing for a pandemic shortly after taking office.]

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“If you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. They didn’t do testing like this. And actually, they lost approximately 14,000 people and they didn’t do the testing. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late.”

—Donald Trump, as usual, attempting to deflect attention away from his failure to act promptly to the coronavirus outbreak. And as usual, he is wrong—or worse, lying. The CDC did focus on testing — conducting 5,000 tests in the first month and sending out a million tests in the first five months of the outbreak.

The virus was first detected in the US on April 15, 2009. The CDC informed the World Health Organization about initial cases three days later, on April 18. A test to detect this strain of swine flu was developed by the CDC and cleared for use 10 days later, on April 28, and the CDC started shipping tests across the US and around the world on May 1—only two weeks after first detecting the virus.

Over the next four months, more than a million tests “were shipped to 120 domestic and 250 international laboratories in 140 countries,” according to the CDC’s report. By May 18, one month after detection of the virus, 40 states were authorized to conduct their own 2009 H1N1 testing, with eight states having multiple laboratories that could process the tests, the report says.

Between April 12, 2009 and April 10, 2010, the CDC estimates that the swine flu killed 12,469 people in the US.

The first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the US on January 20 of this year. As of Wednesday, almost two months later, 11,079 specimens had been tested in the US.

Of course, Trump has neglected to mention—and he will never acknowledge the fact—that one year after taking office, he abolished the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, initially established to prepare for pandemics like covid-19.

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Baton Rouge attorney Tim Hardy says that contrary to reports out of Shreveport, he has not “fired” the city as a client, nor does he represent the city on environmental matters.

It’s not uncommon for a client to fire his attorney, but for an attorney to fire his client?

Pretty rare, especially if that client is a fairly large municipality paying significant fees. For law firms putting a fair amount of emphasis on rainmaking (legal parlance for bringing in clients), it’s practically unprecedented.

But in the case of the City of Shreveport, LouisianaVoice was told that’s exactly what happened. Shreveport has been mired in decades-long battles with the Environmental Protection Agency over illegal sewerage discharges, but Hardy said his work with the city was not involved in matters concerning the consent decree over illegal discharges into the Red River.

TIM HARDY

“I will say this,” Hardy told LouisianaVoice, “there likely will be discussions going forward concerning my representation of the city in other matters. But I have not ‘fired’ the city, nor has there been any communication between me and the city regarding anything of that nature.”

A source close to the city informed LouisianaVoice on Saturday that Hardy had severed his relationship with the city and that the dispute was over the ongoing controversy surrounding the consent decree.

Having already paid a $650,000 fine to the EPA, while agreeing to the 146-page CONSENT DECREE entered into under the administration of former Mayor Cedric Glover in 2014, the city saw the cost of compliance mushroom from $350 million to $1 billion.

A year ago, Mayor Adrian Perkins appointed Burns and McDonnel/Bonton to oversee compliance and Hardy, a Shreveport native and a partner in the Baton Rouge law firm  BREAZEALE, SACHSE & WILSON was retained for legal representation in other matters, Hardy said.

The consent decree was entered into after the city was cited for violations of the Clean Water Act in the form of discharges of untreated sewage into the Red River, according to an online EPA POSTING of the settlement agreement.

The city also posted its own VERSION of the agreement.

A state AUDIT of the city for the year ended December 31, 2017 addressed the ongoing problems with wastewater problems experienced by the city:

“A consent decree, with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), relative to wastewater improvements in Shreveport was officially filed in early 2014. The consent decree will require the city to make various wastewater treatment plant and sanitary sewer infrastructure improvements in order to reduce sanitary sewer overflows in the sewer collection system and meet wastewater discharge permit requirements under wet weather conditions.

“To fund the sewer improvement program, the City Council approved rate increases over a 10-year period. The first of those increases went into effect October 1, 2013. A 15% increase in sewer rates went into effect January 1, 2017. The Water & Sewerage department continues to work with the EPA to make sure the project stays on schedule. With most of the Phase 1 projects completed the City has started on Phase 2 projects while laying the ground work for Phase 3. To help fund that work an additional $120 million of Water & Sewer revenue bonds were sold in 2017.

“The City continues to pay off General Obligation Bonds; the City will pay off all but the 2011 and 2014 GOB debt in the next 3 years. Increases in Water and Sewer rates will fund the additional debt required to complete the project required by the consent decree. With most revenues flat, continuing services at current levels will be a challenge without additional revenues.”

Sewage discharge apparently isn’t the only environmental issue facing the city. An online report by Epic Water Filters cited a laundry list of contaminants found in Shreveport’s drinking water.

But whatever the problem with the sewage discharge, the city apparently was not heeding the advice of its legal representation and a frustrated Hardy finally called it quits on Friday.

LouisianaVoice attempted to contact Hardy for a comment, emailing him on Saturday, asking that he call us but did not respond until Sunday. “I didn’t call you back because I didn’t know who you were,” he said, adding he had never read LouisianaVoice.

 

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“The buck stops here.”

—Sign on the desk of Harry S Truman

 

“Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.”

—Donald Trump tweet, November 8, 2013.

 

“I don’t take responsibility at all.”

—Donald Trump, at a press conference Friday during which he blamed Barack Obama for the lack of widespread access to testing for coronavirus.

 

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