Louisiana Voice

Editor’s note: The following was written by Canadian Chelsea Chisholm. She is married to scientist Michael Becker. I met his aunt and uncle in Austin a couple of years ago. Both are PhDs and are currently living in Switzerland. He formerly worked for BBC and participated in expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic and is described as “one hell of an athlete and an incredible diver.” (See the video HERE). Despite both the robust health of each, they both fell victim to Covid – not once, but twice. She shares their story below:

By Chelsea Chisholm

This post is mainly aimed at people in Canada, as I see a lot of confusion and anger running riot on social media back home. For those of you who don’t know, Michael and I contracted Covid back in Feb/early March.

I wrote a fb post then, detailing what it felt like to go through it and asking people to consider others’ safety during the pandemic. I had some fever and chest pain, and after a week they disappeared. Michael had only a slight dry cough, but soon after developed a case of pericarditis, or inflammation of the pericardium, the sack that surrounds the heart. He spent a month with chest pain akin to a mild heart attack, a lot of this time in bed, and was then put on strict orders not to stress his heart for another four months after his inflammation kept returning. Our doctor’s main concern was that he would develop myocarditis, an inflammation of the muscle of the heart which can cause permanent damage.

We slow biked our way through spring and luckily his heart healed. Michael ran an ironman in September after his recovery. I say this not to show that you can bounce back from Covid, but simply to point out that the man was fit. He was not in an at-risk group for Covid. He had no pre-existing conditions. He was 34.

Fast forward 7 months to October. Throughout the summer Michael and I needed to socially distance as much as possible to prevent catching another cold or flu that could trigger his pericarditis. But as he started to feel better, and as the summer had seen such low case numbers in our region, we made the decision to start seeing a few more people. This was around the time that weather was cooling off, sending more people indoors and cases skyrocketing, so I would say this was a poor decision on our part.

Keep in mind that “seeing a few more people” meant expanding our bubble from ~2 to 6. Because a few of those extra people were not limiting their interactions with others, our bubble actually went from 2 to many, and they showed up for dinner at our place infectious (but not yet showing symptoms). We caught Covid again, and for those of you who are wondering, it was not easier the second time around. Michael had a raging fever, was in bed for a week, and after eight weeks now his smell and taste are still gone. His heart rate has been all over the place, making normal things like a short run difficult.

And as for me, I was diagnosed with pericarditis, the same thing Michael had during our Covid 1.0. I’ve been told to lay off strenuous exercise for 6 months, and I’ve yet to go for more than a short walk/run since my diagnosis 8 weeks ago (it still hurts, and simple things like walking uphill are physically exhausting).

Cases this past week in Switzerland were in the top five worst in the world per capita, and we’ve now entered a second (soft) lockdown. Doctors will start triaging patients, choosing who gets to have an ICU bed and who is sent home because there simply isn’t enough space. My family doctor has had to move to the hospital to assist the ICU doctors.

This is in one of the richest countries, with one of the best medical systems, in the world. I’ve watched debates around the pandemic rage back and forth in Canada. It’s the same thing that happened here and continues to happen through the lockdown. Cases are rising steadily in Canada, just as they did here.

The funny thing about exponential growth is that things seem under control until they are not. It will get much worse in the coming weeks. I am not a medical doctor, but I am a scientist, and the stuff I do know a little about, the data, is troubling.

I’m going to ignore the usual arguments, that this is the same as the flu (it is definitively not) and that it only affects the elderly (sorry grandparents?), and focus in on the demographic that seem to vocalize the most around the pandemic. Studies vary but thus far suggest that 5-10% of people aged 18-50 who contract coronavirus will suffer long-term symptoms. This ignores other categories of people who are more at risk due to pre-existing conditions or age, in which case the probability would be higher.

You might look at that and say, that’s quite a low risk. Think of it this way. If cases continue to rise, as they did in Switzerland, one or two (young) people who catch Covid out of every twenty are likely to experience long term symptoms. That means someone in your friend group, a few people in your family, a few people at work. We’ve seen this happen already as a lot of our work colleagues and friends have been laid out with Covid, with some still not back to work or working at half capacity.

A few of these people may even go on to have permanent damage that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. It could be us. We don’t know, and that’s even more scary.

From what I read online, people are upset about the infringement on their rights and freedoms, either through the cancellation of social activities or the requirement to wear a mask inside. The worst is when I see people calling the pandemic a hoax. I don’t want to get in a screaming match over facebook, I’ve seen enough of that already, and honestly, it’s heartbreaking (no pun intended). For those of you who have questions about what Covid is like, or whether it is real, or whether it is indeed worse than the flu (yes), I’d be happy to talk about our own personal experiences, if only to put a face to this. I am also happy to share resources about what measures appear to be working to reduce spread (see the bottom of this post).

The pandemic is hard, and some of us are luckier than others, as I’m sure a lot of struggling small business owners will attest. But I would say almost all of us reading this post are pretty well off compared to the rest of the world. We have access to medicine or live in a place where self-isolating is possible. And many of us are being asked to do our part through very simple actions, like limiting our gatherings and wearing a mask to the grocery store so that elderly people can feel more safe shopping for food. While masks are not 100% effective (neither is birth control, I might add), they help to reduce the risk of spreading the virus from you to others. These things are not that hard, and are the least we can do to help reduce the load on the many doctors and nurses who are are working tirelessly to save others during this time.

And if this feels like too big of an ask, I’d suggest reflecting on how good you must have it, that wearing a mask in a store is your biggest hurdle in life right now…

For those of you who want resources, here’s an excellent graphic on how masks can work to reduce spread: https://www.nytimes.com/…/wear-mask-covid-particles-ul…

 A National Geographic study shows that mask wearing during your day to day (transport, shopping) can really help to protect you and others. It also shows that the longer you are in a room with someone (public/private gatherings), the more likely you are to catch it, even if everyone is wearing masks, so limiting indoor gatherings is really important.

A recent paper that suggests limiting small gatherings, shutting schools and increasing availability of PPE are the most effective measures that governments have taken thus far to reduce the spread of the virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0).

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Editor’s note: I received this from a friend and I was struck by his sincerity and his concern for the well-being of us all. I am re-posting his remarks here in the hope that at least some of those who still doubt the seriousness of this horrendous virus will at long last comprehend that the consequences of self-imposed ignorance can be lethal. (As a personal note, I have had family members contract Covid and at least two people whom I knew personally have died from it. Please remember that it’s not about you nor is it about your “personal freedom.” It’s about survival.)

I’m posting this in social media for my “Friends” and even friends of my friends who may not have understood why I was so adamantly opposed to Donald Trump and what he has done and what I feel he stands for as a leader of the country.

The fact that you see or received this may be that you know I have been “hermit-like” in most of my associations since March of this year[2020], and I have been even more outspoken than normal on some issues related to masks, social distancing and refusing to attend some events where I felt there was a danger to others added if I attended.

Being one of those who is in the endangered group of the population, and knowing so many others who I believe are members of this group or should know that they are, I felt it incumbent on me to set some example. Being an “example” can be difficult, but I will attempt to make that leap here.

PLEASE, wear you mask PROPERLY and respect the health and safety of others I want to see at some point in the future. Don’t attend any large gatherings at all!

Don’t go to church, even though it may be legal, not because it would be considered sacrilegious, but because you are endangering others, even extended family by third-party contact.

I don’t hate Trump or you because you may have been a Trump voter, even secretly like those KKK members or friends of members who would be ashamed to wear your pointy robe in daylight. I just am a reader of facts, and the facts, to me, are clear.

Trump and his followers are just as guilty as all those who silently gave in to the Nazis in the 1930s. One step at a time they gave away rights, powers and the freedom of others because they saw some benefits for themselves.

For now, I’m willing to sit home and only “socialize” in a very limited circle. There will be better days ahead, when public safety is no so threatened. A vaccine is coming, and more people will treat public safety in a manner that protects the most vulnerable. Then we will party, hug and go about business like we did prior to January, 2020.

I hope we are all around at that time to celebrate survival of this nightmare of Covid-19, Donald Trump and those things that tore us apart.

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(With apologies to Margaret Wise Brown)

Good night loon, 

Good night goon, 

Good night nastiest man in the room.

Good night lies, 

Good night spies, 

Good night rants and alibis.

Good night twitter, 

Good night tweets. 

Good night all those crazy bleats.

Good night red hats, 

Good night cruel chants, 

Good night sniveling sycophants.

Good night wall, 

Good night cages, 

Good night endless midnight rages.

Good night fine people on both sides, 

Good night losers, good night suckers, 

Good night evil nasty f**kers.

Good night Ivanka 

Good night Jared, 

Good night Baron, we hardly knew ya.

Good night thief, Good night grief, 

Good night cruel and callous chief.

Good night fake news, And Fox and friends, 

This is how the nightmare ends.

Good night at last. It’s time to go, 

The American people told you so. 

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Much has been written here about the legal problems experienced by LaSalle Corrections of Ruston, problems brought about by alleged neglect and mistreatment of prisoners being held at its various locations in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia.

Several wrongful death and wrongful injury lawsuits have revealed inadequate training of employees, falsification of prisoner records and fraudulent records certifying that employees had completed certain required training when they, in fact, had not.

Thirteen months ago, reporter Cindy Chang of the New Orleans Advocate/Times-Picayune wrote a PROFILE of LaSalle founder Billy McConnell and his son, Clay. That story provided an interesting glimpse into how they regard prisons – and nursing homes – not from a standpoint of caring for living human beings but as a means to padding the corporate bottom line.

LouisianaVoice has now gone a bit further to show how far the principals – or at least one of the principals – of LaSalle will go to ensure that bottom line is not disturbed by a marital split.

Depending on the month, Louisiana and Oklahoma compete for the title of the state with the highest rate of incarcerations in a nation that leads the world in that statistic. That means that one of the two states will be at any given time, be the world’s leader in incarcerations.

Twenty-five years ago, Billy McConnell was running a family company that financed and built schools, fire stations and nursing homes. But then a federal court ordered Louisiana’s Department of Corrections to reduce the number of prisoners in its overcrowded prison system.

A light came on in Billy McConnell’s head and he subsequently entered the winning bid to construct a prison in Alexandria. That led to others and soon came the decision to not just build, but also operate correctional facilities.

Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown was elected in 2003 on a platform of replacing the parish jail that was located on the top floor of the 74-year-old courthouse in Jonesboro. But Brown had no funds and no authority to raise taxes to build the jail, which he envisioned as being large enough to house additional prisoners in order to maximize the state’s per diem payments.

Along came LaSalle, which built a $15 million, 1,147-bed facility for a relatively crime-free parish of barely 16,000 souls. That’s one prison bed for every 14 Jackson Parish residents. But then, Louisiana’s rate of incarceration is one of every seven residents, so perhaps one bed for every 14 residents isn’t so out of line for the state.

For the privilege of warehousing – and make no mistake, warehousing is the accurate term – state prisoners for about $25 per day per prisoner, LaSalle agreed to pay Brown $100,000 as a “sponsor fee” to operate the jail under his authority.

When the feds came along and upped the ante to about $65 per day for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees, that was icing on the cake. While LaSalle paid the jail’s employees, Brown retained the right to hire and fire the 130 or so personnel – a pretty good bit of political patronage for a local elected official to control.

So, obviously, the McConnells’ decision to go into the jailing business was a humanitarian gesture, right? I mean, after all, son Clay McConnell is a Methodist minister. For the answer to the benevolent question, let’s let him provide the answer:

“We realized that prisons are like nursing homes. You need occupancy to be high. You need to treat people fairly and run a good ship, but run it like a business, watch food costs, employee costs.”

To that end, I guess you’d call LaSalle an unqualified success were it not for those pesky legal costs from all those lawsuits over dead and injured prisoners, and employees either terminated or who sued when they became ill after being exposed to the coronavirus.

But to get a peek at the real heart of this man of God, one need only examine the dispute that arose between the younger McConnell and his former wife following their 2015 divorce.

Clay and Leigh McConnell were married in November 1996 and divorced in October 2016. While married, the couple jointly owned 16.66 percent interest in McConnell Correctional Center, LLC, via an operating agreement dated March 9, 2000.

But wait. On Feb. 2, 2006, McConnell Correction Center, LLC, effected a corporate name change to WMC Enterprises, LLC.

Leigh McConnell was requested to sign a “Transfer of Assets” agreement by her then-husband who she said told her that the transfer agreement was to ensure his voting rights in WMC Enterprises since she “did not attend board meetings of McConnell Correctional Center, LLC,” according to court documents obtained by LouisianaVoice.

The transfer agreement stated in part that Leigh McConnell “has no ownership interest in the entities transferred herein and accordingly no ownership interest in WMC Enterprises, LLC, which is acknowledged as being the separate property of her husband Clay.”

Those “entities” consisted of several other companies that operated under the McConnell Correctional Center corporate umbrella before being transferred to WMC Enterprises.

So, according to Leigh McConnell, she was told by her husband that the purpose of the transfer was to protect his voting rights when in fact the real purpose was to make her half of the 16.66 percent go poof.

 As of 2014, the value of that 16.66 percent was approximately $5.3 million, meaning that as of six years ago, LaSalle (or McConnell Correctional Center, aka WMC Enterprises) was worth approximately $31.6 million. One source said the estimate of today’s worth could be three times that amount, or nearly $100 million.

But Leigh McConnell said in her petition to revoke the transfer agreement filed on Nov. 9, 2016, which she says she signed under false pretenses, denied her half of that 16.66 percent, or 8.33 percent, share in the ownership of McConnell Correctional Center.

She said she was the victim of fraud perpetrated by her then (now ex-) husband, Clay McConnell, her former father-in-law, William McConnell, and WMC Enterprises.

She cited a passage of the original operating agreement of McConnell Correctional Center which said, “No transfer of a membership interest may occur without the unanimous consent of all members and any purported attempt to transfer a membership interest without such approval will not vest in such transferee any membership rights in the company.”

As so happens in such matters, one side in a legal dispute often has limited financial resources while the other has a bigger stack of chips and figuratively, at least, holds all the cards.

This was no exception. Leigh McConnell simply ran out of funds to pursue her claim and her ex-husband, the ordained minister, just kept writing checks to his attorney in order to drag out proceedings. Together, they waited her out until she eventually was more or less forced to dismiss her claim, according to a source close to the situation.

There are two lessons to be learned here:

• What’s $50,000 – or even $100,000 in legal fees – if it can save you a few million?
• Justice can indeed be bought, or at least rented, if you bring enough money to the table: just keep raising the bet until the other side is forced to fold.

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A public official need not actually do or say something to violate his oath of office. The mere act of silence or inaction in a crisis situation is a clear sign of one of three things: cowardice, negligence at best, or treason at worst.

I will not go so far as accuse John Kennedy of treason, but his reticence in the ongoing tantrum by Donald Trump certainly qualifies as cowardice and negligence. He calls to mind the words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I know he ran on Trump’s coattails in 2016; he said so by claiming to be an unconditional supporter of Tweet Thang. But it just seems to me that a real man would not be too proud – or cowardly – to admit that perhaps he made a mistake or to at least issue some sort of public proclamation that it’s time for the Tangerine Toddler to admit that he lost the election by 6 million votes and by the same electoral vote that he won by four years ago. Is that too much to ask of our junior senator?

It was another John Kennedy, the one who was gunned down in Dallas 57 years ago Sunday, who once said, “In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow.”

In 1955, that Kennedy, with the assistance of Ted Sorenson, wrote his famous book Profiles in Courage, which examined eight U.S. Senators who displayed great courage under extreme pressure from their parties and their constituents. They stand in stark contrast to the John Kennedy of today who has exhibited zero resolve to do the right thing and stand up to the tyrant whose days in the White House are dwindling down to a precious few.

Why is this? The only explanation is he is too damned worried about pissing off the rabid Trump supporters of this state and losing his job as opposed to not being sufficiently concerned about standing up for the U.S. Constitution. In short, John Neely Kennedy has his priorities skewed to the point of being FUBAR (see: Saving Private Ryan).

John N. Kennedy, I didn’t know John F. Kennedy, but you’re no John F. Kennedy.

As a refresher for John Neely Kennedy, here are thumbnail sketches of the eight senators profiled by John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

John Quincy Adams broke with his party when he was the sole Federalist to vote in favor of the Louisiana Purchase. Adams continued voting against his party, but the big break came in 1807 when Thomas Jefferson asked Congress to enact an embargo against Great Britain to shut off international trade in retaliation against British aggression towards American merchant ships. The embargo would have had a disastrous effect on the Massachusetts economy but Adams agreed with Jefferson and helped steer the embargo bill into law. The Federalist held fast to a philosophy of appeasement toward the British and Adams resigned from his seat in 1808.

Daniel Webster was a Massachusetts senator (Whig). His ultimate downfall began in 1850 when he agreed to help Kentucky’s Henry Clay pass a compromise bill that would keep the Union together. Webster’s support of Clay’s bill enraged his constituents and ended his career as a Senator.

Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton was deeply opposed to the introduction of slavery into new territories. Benton was concerned that the issue was being exploited by Southern and Northern partisans and his position cost him the popularity he previously had in his state, and he was stripped of all of his committee memberships except Foreign Relations. In 1850, Benton was still opposed to the series of measures known as the Great Compromise and did not hesitate to make his feelings known. Benton was constantly called out of order by Vice President Millard Fillmore, the presiding officer. Benton was voted out of office in 1851, returned to Congress in 1853 as a representative, but lost his seat in 1855. Although his uncompromising stand on prohibiting slavery in new territories ended his political career his stand was one of the factors that kept Missouri from seceding from the Union.

Sam Houston refused to support the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and would have allowed the residents of territories from Iowa to the Rocky Mountains to decide the slavery issue themselves. Houston, a southerner, felt that the act would further divide the Union. Houston’s vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the breaking point. He was the only Southern Democrat to vote no. Houston was dismissed from the Senate by the Texas legislature in 1857. Two years later he was his election as governor of Texas was a major defeat of Southern pro-slavery extremists. In February 1861, the Texas legislature voted to secede from the Union. His refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy led to his ouster as governor in March 1861.

Edmund Ross of Kansas cast the deciding vote that acquitted President Andres Johnson who was impeached because Radical Republicans had passed a Tenure of Office Act to prevent a president from firing cabinet members without Senate consent in an attempt to try to stop Johnson from firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson believed Stanton was a tool of the Radicals who wanted to establish a military dictatorship in the South. Johnson favored a policy of reconstructing the Confederate states back into the Union as quickly as possible without unnecessary military intervention, as Lincoln had intended. When Johnson fired Stanton, the impeachment began. Ross voted against convicting Johnson despite suffering abuse from fellow Republicans and from the press. Neither he nor any other Republican who voted to acquit Andrew Johnson was reelected to the Senate, and Ross and his family suffered ostracism and poverty upon their return to Kansas in 1871. Ross was eventually vindicated when the Supreme Court declared the Tenure of Office Act to be unconstitutional, and praised by the press and the public for having saved the country from dictatorship.

Lucious Lamar, a Mississippi Democrat did the unpardonable when he gave a eulogy on the House floor as a freshman representative in 1874 upon the death of Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Sumner was hated by most Southerners because of his opposition to slavery and his vehemence in denouncing slaveholders. In 1856 Sumner was brutally caned on the Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina. Lamar’s eulogy praised Sumner’s desire for unity between North and South and many in the South felt it a betrayal. In 1876, Lamar was elected to the Senate and once again acted in opposition to his constituents and his party when he agreed to the findings of an election commission that gave the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

George Norris, a Nebraska Republican, showed early on that he was not afraid to stand up to powerful individuals. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for authorization to arm American merchant ships, even though the United States was still officially neutral in the war. Although Wilson’s request was immediately popular with the American public, Norris felt that Wilson’s bill was a ruse by big business to get the United States into the war in Europe. Norris was the only member of the Nebraska delegation to vote against passage of the bill and he was criticized on every side. He offered to resign from the Senate, saying that if the people of Nebraska no longer felt that he was representing them adequately, he should step down. Norris touched off a firestorm of criticism in 1928 when he backed Al Smith, a Catholic Democrat who was anti-Prohibition, for president rather than Herbert Hoover, whom Norris felt was owned by monopolistic power companies. Norris went on to serve in the Senate until his defeat for re-election in 1942.

Robert A. Taft, the son of William Howard Taft, was a conservative’s conservative, with presidential aspirations. Taft made a speech at Kenyon College in October 1946 in which he opposed the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials that were just ending. Taft felt the defendants were being tried under ex post facto laws (laws that apply retroactively, especially those which criminalize an action that was legal when it was committed).  Taft viewed the Constitution as the foundation of the American system of justice and felt that discarding its principles in order to punish a defeated enemy out of vengeance was a grave wrong. Taft so strongly believed in the wisdom of the Constitution that speaking out was more important than his personal ambitions or popularity. Many years later, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas agreed with Taft’s view that the Nuremberg Trials were an unconstitutional use of ex post facto laws.

Sadly, none of the courageous traits chronicled by Massachusetts’s John F. Kennedy can be found in Louisiana’s John Neely Kennedy.

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