Louisiana Voice

“I signed directives to give a payroll tax holiday, with the understanding that after the election — on the assumption that it would be victorious for an administration that’s done a great job — we will be ending that tax. We’ll be terminating that tax.”

–Donald Trump, in a White House announcement on Monday. [Folks, he’s talking about the payroll tax (6.2% paid by you and 6.2% paid by your employer that funds Social Security and the 1.45% paid by each of you and your boss to fund Medicare—7.65% total for both programs—if self-employed, you pay the entire amount). That can – and does – mean only thing: Trump aims to terminate Social Security – and Medicare – altogether. Remember where you heard it.]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-worst-campaign-promise-183331408.html

“Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent.  Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up – a real WINNER!”

–Trump tweet, Aug. 12, 2020, congratulating QAnon nut job on her Republican primary win in Georgia’s 14^th Congressional District.

“Every 10 years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small, crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”

—Michael Ledeen, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal and later a member of the George W. Bush White House, who co-authored a book with Michael Flynn. Ledeen’s wife, Barbara, initiated the first proposal to obtain Hilary Clinton’s private emails in December 2015 while a staff member for Sen. Chuck Grassley, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders. (The New Yorker, April 18, 2019). […and we wonder why America is hated in some parts of the world.]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/in-the-mueller-report-erik-prince-funds-a-covert-effort-to-obtain-clintons-e-mails-from-a-foreign-state

Read Full Post »

“AOC was a poor student … this is not even a smart person, other than she’s got a good line of stuff. I mean, she goes out and she yaps.”

—Trump on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [Big mistake; classic case of picking on the wrong person.]

“Let’s make a deal, Mr. President: You release your college transcript, I’ll release mine, and we’ll see who was the better student. Loser has to fund the Post Office.”

—AOC in response to idiot child Trump. [Not a chance in hell that he’ll take her up on her offer. Even Trump isn’t that stupid.]

“What do you think Donald Trump’s nickname for you would be?”

—One of the questions asked of the 11 finalists for selection as Joe Biden’s running mate. […and of course, he will come up with a nickname – like any second-grader on the playground. Isn’t it nice to know that we can look forward to a campaign of real substance and not wasted on such trivial matters as peace, the environment, health care, poverty, human rights and employment?

“Not only did you print this birtherism-on-steroids racist crap, Newsweek, but you failed to disclose this guy ran against Harris and lost  AND wrote an article in National Review saying (the) exact opposite about Canadian-born Ted Cruz. When did Newsweek become both racist AND stupid? Of course Ted’s a conservative white male, so TOTALLY different, right?”

—Kurt Eichenwald tweet in response to Newsweek op-ed by John Eastman who questioned Kamala Harris’s eligibility for the office of vice resident. [The Newsweek op-ed was just the opening salvos, folks. There will be many more examples in the next 80 days that will disclose just how pathetically racist and misogynistic the Republican Party, at its very core, really is.]

“Nasty.”

—Trump, on Kamala Harris.

“Nasty.”

—Trump, on Hillary Clinton.

“Nasty.”

—Trump, on Nancy Pelosi.

“I wish her well.”

—Trump, on Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

Read Full Post »

“The closest thing is, uh, in 1917, they say, uh, the great – the great pandemic and it certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people. Probably ended the Second World War; all the soldiers were sick.”

–Trump, in White House press briefing, Aug. 10, 2020. [But we took all the airports at Fort McHenry in that Revolutionary War.]

[For more than two centuries], “the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity.

“COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken. As the crisis unfolded, with another American dying every minute of every day, a country that once turned out fighter planes by the hour could not manage to produce the paper masks or cotton swabs essential for tracking the disease. The nation that defeated smallpox and polio, and led the world for generations in medical innovation and discovery, was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand.”

–Anthropologist Wade Davis, writing in Rolling Stone.

“Mr. President, after three and a half years, do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”

Trump looked confused. “What?” he asked.

“All the lying. All the dishonesties,” 

“That who has done?”

“You have done,”

–Exchange between HuffPost’s S.V. Dáte and Donald Trump at Aug. 13 press briefing before Trump paused and then called on another reporter without answering. [Disrespect for the president? No more than the disrespect he’s shown for the American people. It’s long past time when the media should hold him accountable for more than 20,000 lies he’s told since taking office. And yes, we should respect the office of the president but the one occupying the office is only a person – like the rest of us – and is accountable to us and is owed no automatic allegiance or fealty.]

“I heard it today that [Harris] doesn’t meet the requirements. And, by the way, the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer. I have no idea if that’s right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out.”

— Donald Trump, in remarks to reporters, Aug. 13, 2020. [(Sigh) Here we go again with Trump and his birther rumors. To paraphrase Mr. T, I almost pity the fool.

Read Full Post »

THE LAW IS FOR PROTECTION OF THE PEOPLE.

Perhaps so, but Hammond Police Chief Edwin Bergeron has to go.

A disturbing video that the Hammond Police Department has insisted for nearly three years didn’t exist has now surfaced that puts Bergeron at the center of a no-holds-barred assault on a handcuffed prisoner back in 2017.

Kentdrick Ratliff may not be Billy Dalton or Homer Lee Honeycutt immortalized in Kris Kristofferson’s song, but he didn’t deserve the all-out attack from half-a-dozen of Hammond’s doughnut-fed finest. One officer, Sgt. Thomas Mushinsky couldn’t resist the temptation to aim a swift kick to the most vulnerable area of Ratliff’s (or any man’s) body as he lay legs apart, motionless and face down on the floor after being punched repeatedly by then-Sgt. Bergeron and then tased.

Out of the gaggle of officers who participated in or watched the one-sided melee, only Mushinsky has faced any disciplinary action even though other officers can be seen kicking Ratliff in the head and yet another officer kept his heavy tactical boot on Ratliff’s neck as still another kneeled on his body.

If you have the stomach for it, you can watch the video HERE.

Ratliff’s sin? He tried to reach for a bottle of pills sitting on the desk next to where he was sitting while his hands were cuffed behind him. He was initially arrested for the violent crime of blocking a sidewalk with his car. A search of his vehicle turned up the bottle of pills and a small amount of pot.

He didn’t put up much of a fight when Bergeron pounced on him like a monkey on a cupcake and delivered five quick blows with his fist as Ratliff descended into an opening on top of the desk.

Attorney Ravi Shah, who represents Ratliff who said he and the Tangipahoa Parish district attorney have been told for years that no video of the incident existed.

That remained the official version of the truth until someone leaked the full video to Baton Rouge TV station WBRZ and its investigative reporter Chris Nakamoto.

“What shocked me is that they would so blatantly lie and tell another officer of the court that the video did not exist, and it did at one point and clearly still exists now showing what happened to my client,” Shah said.

There was little reason to conceal the existence of the video, after all, because of the restrictive doctrine of QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, the antiquated law which shields police officers – and prosecutors – from liability in all but the most heinous violations of “clearly established” rights.

Nakamoto provided LouisianaVoice with a copy of a REPORT done by Use of Force Consultants of McKinney, Texas, when a link to the report on WBRZ’s online story did not work. That report says Mushinsky’s kick was a “trained distraction technique but said that the force used by Bergeron and another officer was “excessive and borderline criminal.”

The report also said, “There were six strikes delivered by Sgt. Bergeron and three strikes by Officer Dunn. Ratliff was of no threat to either officers at this time.”

It’s important to know that the report was commissioned by Mushinsky, so it might be expected that it would try to show him in a favorable light. The company was retained after the Hammond mayor imposed a 60-day suspension and ordered additional training for Mushinsky upon the recommendation of then-Police Chief James Stewart.

The upshot of the whole incident was the filing of 13 serious CHARGES against Ratliff, including disarming a police officer even though Bergeron can be clearly seen placing his weapon in a locker before the fracas ever started, and resisting an officer violently. The term violently is certainly in the eye of the beholder as Ratliff, who is much smaller than either of his subduing officers, doesn’t appear to put up much of a fight.

Some people apparently are beginning to take the entire affair seriously – and not necessarily in Ratliff’s favor.

“We noted a Hammond (police) unit following us out of town today as we were leaving,” Nakamoto told LouisianaVoice on Thursday. “I got a strange phone call last night to stop digging… with an anonymous person telling me it could be dangerous. I’ve worked in this market for 13 years, and can count on one hand how many times that’s happened.”

Meanwhile, Bergeron should do the honorable thing and step down.

He’s brought enough dishonor already.

Read Full Post »

The Louisiana Board of Ethics has awakened long enough to file separate ethics violation charges against both Dr. REBEKAH GEE and her husband, attorney DAVID LEE PATRON, according to documents obtained by LouisianaVoice.

The charges, while separate, stem from the same set of facts – Patron’s legal representation of a restaurant which was under the regulation of Dr. Gee during her tenure as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH).

Governmental ethics has been such a cruel joke since Bobby Jindal’s “reform” of the Board of Ethics way back in 2008 that any action at all by the otherwise moribund board is suddenly a major news story.

This is the same ethics board that cleared state troopers for their 2016 trip in a state vehicle to San Diego via the Grand Canyon, determining they were acting on directives from above, and then clearing the person who gave those directives, then-State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson who was represented, coincidentally (or perhaps ironically), by the former head of the Ethics Board.

Dr. Gee headed LDH from 2016 until her RESIGNATION in January. In March, she was hired as head of the LSU HEALTH CARE SERVICES DIVISION.

Patron, who specializes in intellectual property, is a partner in the Baton Rouge law firm Phelps Dunbar. He was retained by the Ruby Slipper Café, LLC, which has six restaurants in New Orleans and one each in Metairie, Baton Rouge, Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile and Orange Beach, Alabama.

LDH regulates the eight restaurants in Louisiana and between January 2016 and February 2020, conducted 106 inspections of the restaurant’s eight Louisiana locations.

Phelps Dunbar was retained by Ruby Slipper and as part of its representation, filed a breach of fiduciary duty lawsuit on behalf of the Ruby Slipper against a former employee. Patron was the signatory on the pleadings filed in the litigation in U.S. District Court.

Though neither the firm nor Patron handled any matters on behalf of Ruby Slipper in 2016 and 2017, Patron did represent the restaurant in three matters in 2018 and 2019. He billed Ruby Slipper $157,142 in 2018 and $133,528 in 2019, according to July 17 Board of Ethics letters sent to Patron and Dr. Gee. Patron received a percentage of Phelps Dunbar’s net revenue.

PATRON’S LETTER says he violated state law “by virtue of his failure to file the requisite financial disclosures reflecting his direct or indirect receipt of anything of economic value resulting from the provision of legal services to the Ruby Slipper at a time when the Ruby Slipper conducted operations or activities that are regulated by the LDH.”

DR. GEE’S LETTER said she is also in violation of state ethics statutes “by virtue of her receipt of a thing of economic value” (Patron’s compensation from Phelps Dunbar as part of their community property regime).

Both letters requested that the Ethics Adjudicatory Board conduct hearings on the charges to determine if there were any ethics violations and to “assess the appropriate penalties.”

It’s not the first time Dr. Gee has come under scrutiny. In April 2018, LouisianaVoice REVEALED that the LDH legal counsel, a state employee, had pursued negotiations with LSU on her behalf – on state time and using a state computer, state telephone and his state email address – in attempts to help her retain her tenure at LSU and for LSU to pay her medical malpractice insurance premiums.

Any rank-and-file civil servant would be severely disciplined for any such use of state property for personal purposes.

Dr. Gee and legal counsel Stephen Russo apparently also ignored the obvious conflict of interest in her continued part-time employment as a physician at the LSU Health Sciences Center, which like the Ruby Slipper, is overseen by – and which receives funding from – the agency she headed.

Read Full Post »