LouisianaVoice‘s April fundraiser is now in the stretch run as we move into the final week. You’ll gave relief from my shameless panhandling until October.
I hate having to come to you this way, but there are certain expenses involved in following the actions of our political leaders – actions and events that others in the media choose to ignore or brush over lightly with touch-and-go coverage. It’s important that some issues not be allowed to die a quiet death and disappear from the radar.
Louisiana State Police come to mind immediately. Had the story of that illegal pension bill for the former LSP superintendent not been pursued, along with all the other stories that emerged from that one story, the Ronald Greene matter might forever have been kept under wraps.
Had a single story been devoted to the Louisiana State Dental Board, it may have gone on running roughshod over dentists who board members found in disfavor.
Had LouisianaVoice and James Gill not stayed with the story of Ashton O’Dwyer, the back story of the plot to sue the US Army Corps of Engineers might never have come to light.
That’s what we do and there are costs involved in keeping this ship afloat. Please contribute what you can by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post to give by credit card or send a check to: Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727. Those contributing $100 or more will received a signed copy of my novel It’s All TheIRS, the story of a man who takes on the IRS with surprising results.
As always, thanks so much for your 11 years of support.
I’m not quite sure what Mike Pompeo meant or why he said, “Parents should get to decide what their children are taught, not the government or teachers unions.”
Those few words tell me a lot about the former guy’s director of the CIA and secretary of state, none of which addresses the issue of public education. Everything about that declaration screams political rhetoric calculated as a dog whistle to the former guy’s largely uneducated political base.
It sounded very much like Pompeo is positioning himself, like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, for a run at some major office, most probably that of president should former guy opt out after bleeding his supporters of every dime he can extract from them for his “defense.”
Regardless if Pompeo’s declaration came from the heart or from political expediency, it’s the same type of political grandstanding emanating from the political right – and from persons wholly unqualified, like myself, to judge what should or should not be taught in the nation’s classrooms.
I’m in no position to determine what should be taught in a science classroom. I’m not a scientist. Looking back, I would prefer having had an introductory course to real physics. I took a course affectionately called baby physics in college.
I thought it was a real course when I signed up but it turned out the entire course was designed for jocks who needed desperately to make a good grade to remain eligible. One of the questions on my final exam was a true-false question: Pluto is a dog-shaped planet. No joke.
I likewise never took trig or calculous and didn’t do too well in algebra. I believe those facts disqualify me to dictate what my grandkids are taught in school. Nor would I be at the top of the list to tell the shop instructor how to teach the proper use of a jigsaw or power drill.
Nor would I ever trust some idiot whose last words were, “Hey, hold my beer and watch this,” or his brain-dead cousin whose last utterance was, “Hell, I can do that. Hold my beer.”
Virtually everyone I know may possess superior knowledge in a single field at most. To place in that person’s hands the responsibility of selecting the curriculum for a wide range of disciplines, from English literature and grammar to quantum and quantitative physics is madness.
Future history books (in Florida, at least) will contain no mention of the Jan. 6, 2021 US Capitol insurrection but will probably repeat the Big Lie that the election was stolen by a bunch of pedophile Democrats. Stories of the Tuskegee Airmen will disappear from history.
Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games, Jackie Robinson? Fuggedaboutit. Hank Aaron never broke Ruth’s home run record.
Louisiana has Clay Higgins, John Kennedy, Steve Scalise, Mike Johnson, and Jeff Landry as members in good standing in the nutcase fraternity.
But Florida counters with DeSantis, Mark Rubio, Matt Gaetz, and Rick Scott and Texas gives us Abbott, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, and Ken Paxton.
It’s enough to make us miss Bobby Jindal.
DeSantis has managed the nearly impossible task of making Disney World appear sympathetic. Instead of addressing the legitimate question of Disney’s treatment of young employees, particularly on its cruise ships where crews comprised mostly of non-citizens are worked brutally long hours for little pay, he chose to attack the theme park for it s policy of inclusion.
DeSantis has purged some 50 or so math texts for supposed CRT content. What can possibly be CRT-related in teaching math? Perhaps it’s the “equal” sign that he finds offensive. As for history, it’s always been said that the winners write the history books but to expunge all references to slavery which was the central issue in a war that tore this country apart, borders on outright censorship. Apparently, the CRT that DeSantis so opposes stands for Comprehensive Rational Thought.
I guess it goes without saying that Florida will ban the reading of Shakespeare’s Othello because it’s a story about a white chick who falls in love with a black dude. In case you’ve never been exposed to that play, the local rednecks appeal to the sage duke to intervene and nip the romance in the bud. Instead, the wise old duke tells them they must exercise restraint, tolerance, and understanding. Well, right away, we know that’s not our Duke.
Another Easter has come and gone and with it, the annual cool snap that always accompanies that holiday (as Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up – every Easter brings a brief cool spell).
Easter this year also coincides with that favorite time of year – federal income tax deadline.
The heavy-handiness of the IRS is so bad that it inspired me to write a novel about a poor schmuck who is unfairly targeted by the agency for hundreds of thousands of dollars he doesn’t owe and decides to fight back. With some newspaper friends and the Internet, he brings Congress to a grinding haltand forces the federal government to negotiate on his terms.
The book is called It’s All TheIRS and you can get a signed copy by contributing $100 or more to LouisianaVoice’s semi-annual fund drive, yet another April feature you don’t want to miss. (I would say a free signed copy if I were some shameless televangelist, but if you’re contributing $100, it wouldn’t be free, would it?)
We strive to bring you stories no one else is covering or to give you more background information than you get elsewhere. To do that takes time and money. Gasoline for travel, fees for copies ($20 per page is what the Louisiana Secretary of State charges even though state law recommends a charge of 25 cents (1/80th the Secretary of State rate). And then, or course, there are the legal fees for pursuing public records from the more reluctant public agencies.
If you can’t give $100, any amount is deeply appreciated. You can give by credit card by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post or you can mail a check to:
Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.
As always, I wish to express my deep gratitude to those who have supported LouisianaVoice for nearly 12 years now.
John Rigol, Jr. is a retired Louisiana State Trooper who is more than a little disgusted and embarrassed over events taking place today in the agency he once served with pride and honor.
Junior, a self-described 80-year-old reprobate, has published his first (hopefully not his last) novel, Hyenas in a Domed Savanna.
How he arrived at the title remains unclear but I can say unequivocally that the hyenas are the politicos. They are commonly viewed as frightening and worthy of contempt. A savanna is a grassland ecosystem which, in this case, would be an analogy to the football playing field. Without giving too much of the plot away, I can tell you it’s a fictional account of human trafficking, namely children, through the New Orleans Superdome.
Rigol, who now makes his home in Ft. Myers with his wife (his third or seventh or maybe ninth run at wedded bliss – no one knows for certain).
Back in 1976, when I was a mere babe, Gov. Edwin Edwards, through Louisiana State Police Superintendent Donald Thibodeaux, appointed Rigol as Chief of Staff Security at the dome which was still very much a controversial issue, especially in north Louisiana where the Dallas Cowboys reigned supreme and no one cared about the impotent Saints.
But Rigol’s appointment was the result of more pressing matters. The dome construction had been completed but there were major problems with personal assaults, muggings, and pickpockets.
Catapulted into ground zero of Louisiana and New Orleans politics, a toxic mix if there ever was one, “Johnny,” a lieutenant with LSP, soon found himself entangled in an intricate weave of intrigue completely alien to him.
Today, when he is not writing (which is rarely), he reads and travels – two of his other three passions (drinking is the other). He also has written an as-yet unpublished exegesis about God, religion, and the Bible.
In the meantime, there is Hyenas in a Domed Savanna.
You can order your copy from Johnny by sending him a check for $20 to:
The Republican Party, for lack of a better term, is an institutional oxymoron.
Put in the poetic vernacular, perhaps three lines from the Kris Kristofferson classic, The Pilgrim sums up the philosophy of the party:
He’s a walking contradiction Partly truth and partly fiction Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home
Before you break out the torches and pitchforks, I remind you that I am a recovering Republican (33 years). Accordingly, like the recovering alcoholic, I have looked the devil squarely in the eye and decided it was time to change and I’ve been sober for 13 years now.
It’s no big secret that the Republicans are opposed to Social Security and Medicare (Sen. Rick Scott wants to phase both out completely, which might not sit well with his senior constituents in Florida. He is supported in his privatization plan by fellow Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.)
In 1935, Republican congressman John Taber claimed Social Security was “designed to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.”
In 1964, Ronald Reagan said his opposition to Social Security and Medicare is why he switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. He branded Social Security as “welfare” and lamented the passage of Medicare, saying, “One of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”
(He neglected to explain how Social Security was “welfare,” when it is a program Americans pay into their entire working lives.)
Any time any program is proposed to help lower-income Americans, the Republican Party’s automatic response is “Socialism!” Yet, that same Republican Party has no problem doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in special federal programs that benefit corporations and their board members.
In fact, if one were to put the pencil to a comparison of fraud perpetuated by the so-called “welfare queens” vs. corporate welfare fraud, one would see a system heavily weighted in favor of the corporate cheats.
Democrats support tax cuts for the middle- and low-income families while Republicans prefer to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
Democrats generally favor choice, gun control, and gay marriage while Republicans are universally opposed to all three propositions.
Democrats support organized labor. While burdened with a history of corruption, labor unions have nevertheless been instrumental in creating the American middle class. Republicans detest organized labor even though certain Republican (read: Richard Nixon and the Teamsters) manage to get in bed together from time to time.
Republicans have expressed their desire to abolish the Department of Education, saying that should be left to the states. As an alternative to that goal, they support school choice through charter schools and school vouchers. Yet, they demand a say in what is taught in schools.
Republicans bitterly oppose any government-run single-payer health care system.
The fact that Nixon created the EPA notwithstanding, Republicans are opposed to any legislation supporting environmental protection. A lot has changed in that regard since Republican Teddy Roosevelt advocated conservation and created the National Park Service.
Republicans, to put it in as simple terms as possible, just want the government out of our lives.
So they say.
But truth be told, they only want government out of their lives, but not necessarily out of everyone else’s.
As evidence of this, I offer Exhibit One:
The passage of draconian anti-abortion laws in several states that allow no exceptions for incest or rape. In states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida, for example, a woman has absolutely no say-so over her own body. That right has been usurped by men, most of whom have never been pregnant. In Texas, despite Republican’s insistence on less governmental interference, they encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors in cases of abortions (kinda reminds one of nazism and fascism).
Exhibit Two:
Saturday’s headline in THE WASHINGTON POST: “Florida rejects math books with ‘references’ to critical race theory.”
Wait. What?!!? I thought Republicans wanted less guvmint interference in our daily lives.
How the ever-lovin’ hell can a math book contain CRT? And do the imbeciles in Florida even have the faintest concept of what CRT is? When I was in electronics school in the US Air Force back in the ‘60s, it stood for cathode ray tube, but I kinda doubt that’s what it means today. Do they even make tubes for electronic equipment anymore?
Perhaps the illustration below is what they mean by CRT in math textbooks in Florida:
Exhibit Three:
Another WASHINGTON POSTheadline: “Censorship battles’ new frontier: your public library.”
Yep, not satisfied with purging objectionable material from those communistic, sex-saturated, woke-filled math textbooks, attention is being turned to our public libraries and the equivalent to the old practice of book burning. Can’t have all that propaganda being made available to innocent children. I suppose it never occurred to society’s self-appointed censors that the kiddies will get all that they need from the Internet.
One Bonnie Wallace, a church volunteer, wrote the Llano, Texas, library about the “pornographic filth” she found in the library. She must have been really searching hard because she compiled an Excel spreadsheet of some 60 books that she found offensive. Betcha anything the Harry Potter books, with all their sorcery and witchcraft, were on her list. I’ll go one further and bet you she never read a one of them.
It reminded me of a church lady I knew when I was a kid. She and her husband ran a small grocery store. One day, a man came in and asked for a beer. Of course, Lincoln Parish was dry at the time and she curtly told him she didn’t sell beer. “I’m kidding,” he said. “I just want a root beer.”
After he left, Church Lady, properly offended, took a knife and scraped the word “beer” off every single bottle of root beer in her store.
But back to Bonnie Wallace. She insisted that every book containing any reference to gays, sex, or race be removed from the library shelves.
Which brings up a small problem called the Holy Bible.
Gay couples in the Bible: David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18); Ruth and Naomi (Ruth 1); Daniel and Ashpenaz (Daniel 1), and the Centurion and his beloved servant (Matthew 8). And just for lagniappe, there is the Ethiopian Eunuch in the New Testament.
Incest in the Bible: Okay, this one’s a little dicey. How did Adam and Eve’s children procreate? Or Noah’s children, after everyone else on earth was destroyed in the flood? And what about Lot and his two daughters who got him drunk and seduced him?
Other sexual exploits in the Bible: Two angels visit Sodom and stay with Lot’s family. That night, the men in town come for the angels. Instead, Lot offers them his two daughters “who have not known any man.” (Lot appears to be some kind of serious sexual deviate but somehow is deemed to be the only righteous man around and is saved.)
Genocide in the Bible: Well, there are just too many to list here, but two of the most well-known involve an ark and an Egyptian plague but there are references to cannibalism (when two women make a bargain to eat their own children, 2 Kings 6:24-33), murder, dismemberment, and human sacrifice.
Misogyny in the Bible: Just read Leviticus.
Slavery in the Bible: Schools are prohibited from teaching about slavery in many states now, but there are several references to it in the Bible, primarily in Exodus.
Adultry in the Bible: I give you Abraham, who fathered a son, Ishmael, with an Egyptian servant named Hagar and then a second son, Isaac, with wife Sarah. Ishmael became founder of the Islamic faith and Isaac founded the Jewish nation.
Witches and sorcery in the Bible: (“Do not allow a sorceress to live,” Exodus 22:18); Leviticus 19:31, Deuteronomy 18:10-12.
I realize with all due clarity that this is going to get me into a lot of trouble with my church-going friends who will condemn me to eternal darnnation but I feel it’s important to make this comparison in order to properly drive home the point that Republicans generally insist on:
Cherry-picking those issues with which they agree or disagree and to blow those issues completely out of proportion so that a smokescreen may be established that obfuscates other, more important issues;
Less interference in our daily lives by government – unless that interference advances their agenda, of course;
Gaining control over what we read, watch, hear, experience, and understand so as to secure complete control over as many aspects of our lives as possible through selective indoctrination, and
Advancing the big lie of compassion and understanding.
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Thank you.
Tom Aswell, Publisher
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