Louisiana Voice

Bring Back Democracy

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Mark Zaborowski

CLAY HIGGINS (R-LA) MAY BE MORE DANGEROUS THAN DONALD TRUMP

There are some similarities between the two politicians. Yes, Higgins is a down home Southern boy and Trump is an East Coast elitist. But they are both salesmen who love the spotlight and would-be hard asses who get off on threatening others. Neither man seems to have much respect for the “sanctity” of marriage; Trump has been married three times and Higgins four times. It goes without saying that both of them spout the Republican “party lines”. They are anti-everything – except guns. Everyone knows about Trump, but maybe it’s time to look into Clay Higgins.

Symbolism: redneck general shot macho promo at Dollar General

The Louisiana GOPer is the Representative of the state’s 3rd Congressional District. He has some college experience, but no degree. Before being elected to Congress in 2016, Higgins had been in the MP force of the National Guard, an automobile salesman, and had a checkered career as a police officer in three different jurisdictions. In his first cop job, he resigned before disciplinary action could be taken against him for police brutality and lying on incident reports. He went on to become a TV spokesman for another police force, where he often strayed from the script to identify and threaten “persons of interest” during broadcasts. He took advantage of his local fame to appear in ads for a security service while in uniform and using taxpayer-funded department equipment to run his own LLC selling shot glasses and T-shirts with his image. He has been sued for unpaid child support and may have hidden certain income from the IRS, though that has yet to be proven. Now that he is in Congress, however, the danger he poses as a violent authoritarian is becoming more evident.

Is the beard a disguise to avoid child support collectors?

When asked what he would do about Black armed protestors, he bragged that he would “drop 10 of them where they stood”. He did assault and physically move one protestor in another incident. As a devoted goose-stepper for the Radical Right segment of Congress, Higgins is a member of the Republican Study Committee and the Freedom Caucus. Consequently, he has been given seats on the prestigious Armed Services and Oversight Committees. As a former lawman, he has shown scant support for the Capitol Police who were assaulted and injured by the Trump-supporting thugs on Jan 6. He actually called for a lenient sentence for one of the rioters who attacked the LEOs with bear spray and shouted on video that they were bringing the violence and that this was “not a peaceful protest!” Higgins has spoken at events sponsored by the Oath Keepers and the Three percenters, even claiming to be one of the latter.

During a hearing, Clay Higgins was questioning FBI director Christopher Wray about some bizarre conspiracy theory concerning “ghost buses” bringing in FBI informants and undercover agents to provoke and promote the Jan 6 insurrection. Not getting the responses he wanted, Higgins threatened the director “Your day is coming”. More recently, he has sent the message to Special Counsel Jack Smith that his “days are numbered” when it comes to his investigation into Donald Trump’s criminality. At the moment Clay Higgins has no more power than any other Congressperson. But if he ever moved into a higher position, say as Speaker or Vice-President, he would be in line for the Presidency itself. Unlike Trump who is all bark, Higgins has proven that he is willing to bite. This is not a man that we want with his finger on any button but his TV remote.

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Louisiana Sen. John “Foghorn Leghorn” Kennedy surely got his comeuppance during Tuesday’s attempted ambush of Dr. Megan Ranney of the Yale School of Public Health before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The St. Tammany self-styled scaramouche apparently thought he could browbeat the good doctor, though it was never abundantly clear just what point he was trying to make in his effort to get the good doctor to commit to a barrage of preconceived notions.

It’s admittedly rare that Kennedy, who relies mostly on pithy platitudes to make a point rather than hard statistics but on Tuesday he talked himself into a corner with his only defense being an annoying habit of constantly interrupting Dr. Ranney even as she tried to answer his weird line of questioning.

He really tripped himself up when he attempted to ask her about the gun-related death rate in Chicago. Now, no one is going to argue that gun violence has reached critical mass in the Windy City, but his effort to paint gun violence against the backdrop of those “who lawfully have a gun in their homes for protection, or perhaps for hunting” he suddenly found himself groping to recover the high ground.

Characterizing Chicago as the “LARGEST OUTDOOR SHOOTING RANGE,” he asked Dr. Ranney if she thought the city’s high number of gun deaths was “because of a finite group of criminals who have rap sheets as long as King Kong’s arm,” She shot back that “Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri have higher firearm death rates, obviously there’s certain…”

She never got to finish her point because Kennedy’s ego will not allow him to hear facts that clash with his opinions. But the fact is, Louisiana, with the nation’s HIGHEST homicide rate, does indeed stand as a more dangerous killing field than Chicago and, get this: Chicago, in 13^th place, ranks well behind number-4 New Orleans and number-5 Baton Rouge in its homicide rate.

Now Kennedy grew up in the Baton Rouge suburb of Zachary in East Baton Rouge Parish and his official residence is now in St. Tammany Parish, which is situated generally between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, so he should have been aware of those statistics before he opened his PLATITUDE-LADEN MOUNTH.

Nevertheless, Dr. Ranney soldiered on, pointing out that she was an academic and not a politician but did manage to say that she thought that contributing factors to gun violence included “easy access to firearms, combined with environmental conditions and lack of great education. There have actually been studies showing that when you green vacant lots and repair abandoned buildings in urban neighborhoods, you see decreases in gunshots and violence as well as decreases in stress and depression in the neighborhoods around them.”

Kennedy’s response? “No disrespect, Doc, but that sounds a lot like word salad to me.”

Word salad? Wow, Foghorn. Way to keep the testimony on a higher plane.

I’ll give you this: you do know how to appeal to the worst instincts of your base.

For your enjoyment (or disgust), I have included a video of the exchange. You can watch it by clicking HERE.

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As one who has been bombarded with multiple solicitations – that’s multiple on a daily basis, sometimes as many as a dozen in a day – from Donald Trump, the Republican Party and various national Republican candidates, it really came as no surprise when a friend sent me a solicitation she received from House Speaker Mike Johnson in which he was hawking purple and gold “Geaux Speaker” lapel buttons for $10 a pop.

The Louisiana Grifter’s come-on opened by saying, “Ever since I officially became the Speaker of the House, conservative grassroots supporters have been reaching out to me non-stop, asking how to show their support.”

Yeah, I just bet.

If that doesn’t sound like Trump 2.0, I don’t know what does. It appears that he literally took Trump’s pitch and substituted his own name.

“I am so excited to announce that you can officially rock your Official Speaker Merchandise,” he gushed.

“If you want to say Geaux Speaker with a game day pin…

“If ou want to drink a cup of joe out of a cup of Mike mug…

“If you want to keep the Speaker top of mind with a branded hat…

“We’ve got you covered! Just check out our newly launched Speaker Store.”

Still wondering what he meant by keeping the speaker “top of mind,” I made a visit to his “SPEAKER STORE.”

My Gawd.

It’s the K-Mart of grifting, the dollar store of gauche. Well, as they say, one man’s junk is another man’s…junk. All designed to extract dollars from people who, for the most part, can’t afford it and for whom Johnson is literally doing nothing in Washington. Just like Trump.

He’s got “I Like Mike” red, white and blue buttons (strikingly similar to the “I Like Ike” buttons of 1952 and ’56 (kind of a rip-off, really), “I Like Mike” coffee mugs, “Speaker Mike coffee mugs (two designs), “I Like Mike” Tees (long and short-sleeved). More lapel pins, baseball caps, bumper stickers, tote bags, beanies, drink koozies (non-alcoholic only, I assume), fleece pullovers, sweats and Lord knows what else – all emblazoned with some variation of Mike Johnson’s name or image. Most of his merch is in the $10-$15 range but some of his crap runs as high as $50.

With each item is the assurance that the product was “Made in America,” but then, anyone can say that. I have to wonder if they really are, but I won’t belabor the point. But for the dignity of a public office, it’s enough to gag a maggot. As a pure measure of bad smell, this idea could knock a buzzard off a s**t wagon at a hundred yards.

But what can you expect from someone whose lips move only when Trump’s hand moves and who has an app on his phone to keep him from checking out Internet porn?

And to complete the trifecta, we have Kyle Duncan, a pal of Johnson’s from LSU Law School days. The two worked together on behalf of the religious right to overturn federal abortion laws.

Duncan not only is anti-women’s rights, but is also a rabid anti-LGBTQ activist in a day and age when society, if not Duncan and Johnson, has come to the realization that not everyone is cookie-cutter identical to what they prefer in gender, color, or philosophy. They don’t understand that love need not be defined by gender; they have never suffered discrimination in hiring, housing, or any of the myriad ways in which a person can feel pain through indifference, slight, or downright hostility. They have no appreciation that other religions have every right that Christian do or that we have the right to no religion if we so choose.

The Biblical arguments of Johnson and Duncan on behalf of the religious right just don’t ring true. A couple of major characters in the Bible, after all, appeared to have had (gasp!) homosexual tendencies and quite a number of them, including David, Christ’s ancestor, were guilty of adultry in violation of every tenet the religious right holds dear.

In 2018, Trump appointed Duncan to a judgeship on the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals which encompasses the states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Trouble is, Duncan does not reside in either of those states, choosing instead to make his residence in his McLean, Virginia, home he and his wife purchased for $790,000 in September 2016. Do we not have a residency requirement? Or at least the expectation?

But apparently, that’s okay. I mean, after all, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tupperware lives not in Alabama but in Florida.

We don’t know where Cancun Cruz is.

And we don’t know for sure who George Santos really is.

But the man who Johnson succeeded as Speaker really takes the prize.

In an address on Sunday and later in a posing on X, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican, nee Speaker, apparently after checking out a Rhonda Santis-approved high school history book, DECLARED that “In every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterwards.”

Whoa.

Native Americans might disagree with that and Mexico might decide it wants all or parts of Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming back.

And how does McCarthy think the US acquired the territories of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines?

McCarthy is dangerously close to making Clay Higgins look intelligent by comparison.

Now excuse me while I visit the Mike Johnson Store to pick out a pair of “I Like Mike” gold-plated tin medallion earrings for my wife’s Christmas present. At five bucks, they’re a bargain.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll state my conviction again that Louisiana Tech University will never swim with the big fish in college football.

My alma mater, which gave the world such notables as country singers Kix Brooks and Trace Adkins and athletes like Karl Malone, Terry Bradshaw, Fred Dean and Phil Robertson, has deluded itself into believing it can compete in bog-time football.

It can’t.

I love the Bulldogs and I still bleed red and blue more than 50 years after graduating Magna Cum Barely. And I yelled myself hoarse at the exploits of Bradshaw and company. I can still remember that hail Mary to Ken Liberto that beat Northwestern State in the closing seconds of the annual State Fair game in 1967.

But here’s the thing. Since Tech has insisted on going “big time,” the State Fair game that sold out State Fair Stadium each year now is but a memory because a great intrastate rivalry has been terminated. Oh, Tech played Northwestern in 2022, I believe it was, but that was just a blip on the radar screen and not a regular event like before.

The annual battle between Tech and NLU filled the schools’ respective stadiums. Now, they don’t play, choosing to ignore each other’s very existence even though they’re only 30 miles apart. Another great in-state rivalry is dead and attendance is flat.

Meanwhile, Tech, NLU, Grambling, ULL and every other school in the state lines up to get their brains beaten out by the likes of LSU, Nebraska, Texas, Mississippi State, Alabama, Auburn and Florida who are more than happy to pay the smaller schools $250,000 or so for a “rent-a-win,” which in reality is little more than an intrasquad scrimmage.

 Do the math. The stadiums of the bigger schools are sold out no matter who the opponent is. It’s a win-win for the bigger schools in that it awards what for the bigger school is a token payout for a guaranteed win. It’s a win-lose for Tech, et al. A big payout (relative to its far more modest home attendance figures) but at the expense of getting its team to serve as blocking dummies for the big boys. (And no, I’m not calling anyone’s players “dummies,” so don’t even go there.)

Tech (3-9) ULM (2-10), McNeese (1-10), ULL (6-6), Nicholls State (6-5), Grambling (5-6), Southeastern (3-8, Northwestern State (0-6) and Southern (6-5) combined for a lackluster 32-65 won-loss posting, an anemic winning record of 33 percent. Only two of the teams, Southern and Nicholls had winning records (barely) while ULL broke even. Northwestern cancelled its season midway through its schedule and head coach Brad Laird resigned following the tragic death of safety Ronnie Caldwell.

NLU and Southern jettisoned their coaches and it would surprise no one to see similar terminations at Tech, McNeese or Grambling. Since the retirement of legendary Grambling coach Eddie Robinson after 56 years at the helm, there’s been a coaching carousel at the school.

Tech pays head coach Sonny Cumble something in the neighborhood of $900,000 a year, which is a pretty good neighborhood for a place like Ruston where the average household income is considerably less. That computes to $300,000 for each of Tech’s three wins this past season. Again, do the math. Tech’s paltry attendance figures simply don’t justify that kind of expenditure.

But the obvious question is why do I so firmly believe that Tech (and other state schools) should forget about any aspirations of big-time football despite the occasional wins over the bigger schools (NLU and Tech can each lay claim to having beaten Alabama and Tech has thumped Mississippi State a couple of times)?

I offer the transfer portal as Exhibit A.

For Exhibit B, I offer NIL (Name, Image and Likeness).

The two are intertwined to lure top players away from the smaller schools. And as they gravitate to the larger, powerhouse schools, the smaller schools will continue to suffer.

I don’t like the transfer portal because its very name guts the concept of commitment. The image of a kid out of high school donning the cap of the school he chooses for the benefit of television press conferences is rendered meaningless by the transfer portal.

He enrolls at Tech or McNeese or ULL and immediately makes an impact with outstanding play. Then, LSU, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma and other major schools will cast covetous eyes on the player who might help them win a national championship. And that lustful gaze will be returned by a kid who suddenly has visions of the riches and fame of playing on a bigger stage.

It’s just too easy to jimp ship these days. It was bad enough that players could become draft eligible before their senior years but the transfer portal doesn’t give fans a chance to even learn the player’s name before he’s gone.

And why not. NIL gives players a chance to profit on the use of their names, images or likenesses but what is the potential of capitalizing on NIL in Ruston, Monroe, Natchitoches, or Thibodaux? Or Hammond or Grambling or even Lake Charles or Lafayette?

Well, perhaps there’s some potential in Lafayette – when the oil patch is prospering. But the grass (or the money) is a lot greener in the bigger markets so a stellar player, say, a reincarnation of Terry Bradshaw, is going to see that and as soon as he can cram his clothing into his backpack, he’s gone.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition. The late F. Jay Taylor had visions of greatness for Tech and he accomplished so much as president of the school. He once told me that when it came time to hire a football coach, he had only one candidate in mind and he was damn well going to get him. And get him he did and Maxie Lambright built an outstanding small college program at Tech.

But after the Lambright era, Tech began to dream too big too fast and the results have been less than rewarding. I may be in the minority, but I would far rather see Tech as a swaggering, snarling bulldog in a small yard than to be a toothless chihuahua in a big yard.

Even Slippery Rock, another of my favorite teams, knows the wisdom of staying within itself. The Rockets are 10-1 this year and in the NCAA Division II playoffs by knowing they are small and staying small.

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Amanda Jones may have lost her opening skirmish against those who unfairly attacked her but the fight is very much alive and she continues to get rave reviews from national media for her courageous stand in defense of the First Amendment right to choose what we want to read.

Jones, a school librarian in Livingston Parish had the temerity a couple of years ago to attend a meeting of the Livingston Parish Library Board in the capacity of a private citizen in opposition to proposed book banning.

Her battle has been chronicled by NBC News, The Hill, Education Week, The Independent, The American Library Association, NPR, HuffPost, The New York Times, Library Journal, Education leader Diane, Ravitch’s blog, and of course, The Baton Rouge Advocate and LOUISIANA VOICE, among others.

But now she has achieved the ultimate accolade. Last night, Oprah Winfrey was the keynote speaker at the 74^th National Book Awards ceremony in New York City. Regardless of your opinion of Oprah, when she speaks, people in positions of power listen. One endorsement from her can turn a book into an overnight bestseller.

Last night Oprah took the occasion to heap words of praise on Amanda Jones and her battle for the right to read. To hear what she said, click HERE.

Jones, the 2021 National Librarian of the Year and former president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, was pilloried unmercifully by detractors whose only tactic in their efforts to censor books was to attack her for her defense of the First Amendment. The verbal assaults weren’t in support of the idea of censorship – that cannot be defended – but rather, they consisted exclusively of character assassination of Amanda Jones.

That social media criticism sank to the sorry level of outright defamation but the district court ruled that Jones was a public figure and tossed her lawsuit. That curious decision is currently under appeal. Public figures, as per the landmark US Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, have a higher bar to clear in order to advance defamation lawsuits. The ruling was intended for elected officials and appointed officials of authority, not librarians.

As an illustration of just how far the morality police are willing – and able – to go in their absurd decency quest to rid library shelves of anything with objectional words or themes, a book was removed from school libraries in Alabama recently because the author’s name was…Gay. That’s right, his last name was Gay and that was sufficient to ban the book.

But Jones nevertheless trudges onward, determined to fight efforts to pick and choose which books to ban – what we are allowed to read. Books like To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the best books ever written.

When I first moved to Livingston Parish in 1981, the Livingston Parish Library was housed in a single tiny, cramped room in the rear of a one-story medical building. Today, we boast a proud parish-wide library system that is the envy of surrounding parishes. It is my fervent hope that we can keep the facilities open.

Jones, contacted this morning, had this to say about her experience, the Oprah plug and to endorse a tax renewal – not a new tax, but a renewal – this Saturday to fund the parish library system.

“For the past year and a half, I have been publicly lied about on social media by a group of hate-filled individuals hell bent on silencing me. My crime? Speaking out as a resident on behalf of the Livingston Parish Public Library. They lie and say I was advocating for certain books to be in children’s sections, but I never spoke about a particular book. I spoke about censorship in general and reminded the public that our library has policies in place to challenge books they object to in our local library. They’ve twisted my words to suit their narrative in an effort to defund our public library and scare everyone in the community into silence. The harassment forced me to take a medical leave of absence from my job as a school librarian, which is a job I love with my whole being.

“I refuse to be silent and I refuse to back down. They are bullies. I do not back down to bullies. I filed a defamation lawsuit. They will tell you that I am trying to silence two parents’ voices. One of those parents doesn’t even live in our parish and the other parent never spoke out at that meeting. All he had the courage to do was lie about me online from behind a screen. I do not know these people. I have never spoken to them or interacted with them online. I do not object to them voicing their opinions, but I do object to them posting the lie that I advocate the teaching of anal sex to children and want to give pornography to children.

“Last night, Oprah recognized me for my efforts to save our public library at the National Book Awards. To say I am shocked is an understatement. Oprah is the reason I know about authors like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Dr. Maya Angelou–authors who all shaped the person I am today. It’s Oprah. She has helped shape the book industry. I will cherish her recognition forever. However, even more important to me is our public library. I believe in the freedom to read. I believe that libraries should serve all members of the community. I believe that libraries are for everyone and have faith in the dedicated professionals with library science degrees. Our libraries are community hubs open to all. Help us save it before it is too late.

“Do you love our Livingston Parish Public Library? Vote YES to the millage renewal on November 18th. This is not a new tax. Otherwise, our public libraries will close by 2026 and that’s the real travesty.

“Don’t believe what I’m telling you? It’s all in the court motions. Check it out for yourself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-mEI4baXZsvPdpbslQ_1FbP8uGoPDLIz/view . Do you also stand against censorship? Join us at Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship: https://www.la-cac.org/  Want to know more about our efforts to save the Livingston Parish Library? Visit https://www.lplalliance.com/, 

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