Louisiana Voice

Ruston political power broker James Davison, a wealthy supporter of politically conservative causes, has apparently brokered a deal with Donald Trump that would benefit one of his many companies, according to an investigative piece published by online news services ProPublica.

Davison, known for hosting political heavyweights like Anita Bryant and Colin Powell at his annual company Christmas parties, has apparently brokered a deal for Trump Media to purchase technology to stream television news shows and religious channels at risk of “cancellation” on Davison’s obscure JedTec according to an announcement by Trump Media.

“Obscure” would appear to be the accurate term as JedTec “has virtually no public footprint and no website, and it is unknown to streaming technology experts,” the ProPublica story says.

ProPublica noted that the acquisition would place Trump’s company in a “business relationship with someone with numerous interests before the federal government.”

Those interests, according to the article, would include a large oil pipeline and mining firm, Louisiana’s largest (but little-known) bank and a small defense contractor. ProPublica said the streaming deal “crystalizes the sort of conflicts that Trump’s business interests pose as he vies for a second term” in that the deal poses a “potential for undue influence,” according to a former government ethics attorney, by giving Davison “access to a future president and an advantage in extracting favors from Trump.”

To be fair, in addition to his political clout, – “He’s a powerhouse,” according to former Ruston Daily Leader publisher Rick Hohlt – Davison is well-known as a philanthropist for local institutions like Louisiana Tech University and a local church.

Davison has contributed about $3 million to federal Republican candidates and causes and more than $250,000 to state candidates since 2011. He has also benefitted from large tax breaks granted to his pipeline business by the Trump administration. The breaks are scheduled to expire next year but Trump has promised to extend the controversial tax law should he win in November.

The deal announced by Trump Media involves several entities, including another Davison company, WorldConnect and a British firm, Perception Croup, the latter which has offices and engineers in Slovenia. WorldConnect’s listed phone numbers are disconnected and the outfit’s latest press release was said to be eight years old. One such press release, from 2012, was in celebration of the launching on a streaming platform in the United Kingdom of China Central Television, the propaganda channel of the Chinese

WorldConnect listed only seven staff members on its website, which was taken down in its entirety only hours after ProPublica sent questions about the company to its executives.

A person familiar with the history of WorldConnect said that the company entered into a joint venture with Davison in 2017 to buy the rights to sell Perception Group’s TV technology in the United States. Davison put up most of the money for the deal, according to ProPublica.

Another Davison connection to Trump, one which existed before the streaming deal was announced, was in the person of Ruston attorney W. Kyle Green who sits on Trump Media’s board. Green also just happens to be Davison’s lawyer and is listed as the agent of record on business filings for JedTec with the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office.

Green’s Trump Media biography might raise a few eyebrows to the local folks up in Ruston. As the city’s one-time city prosecutor for eight years, he “successfully prosecuted more than 20,000 criminal defendants,” it said.

That would mean that virtually every person living in Ruston has a criminal record. The city’s entire population is about that number. ProPublica cited a “longtime district attorney in the area” as saying that number of prosecutions in a city that size would necessarily mean that the total cited included traffic tickets, low-hanging fruit for prosecutors and which certainly do not rise to the level of “criminal defendants.” Moreover, as city attorney, he would be pretty much restricted to misdemeanors and small claim civil matters.

The announced deal between Trump Media and JedTec calls for the payment of $17.5 million in cash and up to 5.1 million shares of stock in JedTec – about $150 million at current market value.

Not surprising and typical of Trump’s bluster, a Trump Media spokesperson puffed up his chest and threatened legal action against ProPublica in response to its article, sniffing in the usual legalese that “The assertions and insinuations in this story, including of any ethical improprieties whatsoever or any material omissions from [Trump Media] disclosures, are false, defamatory and a textbook example of a fake news story that will land the left-wing shills at ProPublica in court.”

(Oh, yawn).

Read Full Post »

(Clarification: The Department of Children and Family Services has issued a denial that any Louisiana children are housed in the two states cited below in yesterday’s post. “These are not residential contracts and do not involved the placement of housing of Louisiana children or youth,” the DCFS statement reads.

“Our contract with BCFS [a Texas non-profit] is for Human Trafficking Advocacy services. We contract with Youth Villages [a Tennessee non-profit entity] for implementation of the Lifeset model with our Extended Foster Care youth and staff, along with the implementation of the Intercept prevention model through the Family First Prevention Services Act.”

It should be noted that my original public records request said the following: “Pursuant to LA. R.S. 44.1 (et seq.), I hereby submit my formal request for: The opportunity to review copies of any and all current contracts between DCFS and any and all out-of-state providers of (a) treatment, (b) training, (c) housing, (d) rehabilitation, (e) counseling, or (f) residential facilities for Louisiana children.” DCFS responded by providing copies of contracts with vendors based on that request and on which I based the story below.

This, of course does not change the fact that the State of Louisiana is spending more than $6 million on contracts with two vendors that have a troubled history in their treatment of residents charged to their care.)

The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has multi-million-dollar contracts with two out-of-state providers of emergency shelter, foster care, adoption services and housing for problem and migrant children that have experienced scrutiny over the treatment of children in their care.

Youth Villages, Inc., of Memphis, Tennessee, was awarded a one-year, $2 million contract by DCFS on July 1, 2023, to provide housing for youths from the southeastern Louisiana parishes of East and West Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, St. Hela, Washington, Orleans, East and West Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Iberville, East and West Feliciana and Pointe Coupee.

BCFS (formerly Baptist Children and Family Services) was awarded a 18-month, $4.3 million contract on January 1, 2023.

Both the Youth Villages and BCFS contracts expired on June 30 and it was not immediately known if the contracts were renewed.

BCFS, which houses more than 900 kids in San Antonio, Harlingen, Baytown and Raymondville, by 2018 had been cited for 52 VIOLATIONS, including:

• “Inappropriate relationships” between employees and children in their care;
• Raw and undercooked food given to children;
• Staff member kept money sent by parents for a child;
• “Inappropriate magazine pages” depicting nude women given to children.

In Fiscal Years 2015-2018, there were 23 separate ALLEGATIONS of BCFS staff members sexually abusing migrant minors.

BCFS is an affiliated ministry partner with the Baptist Convention of Texas, the largest association of Baptist churches in America. Originally founded as an orphanage, it morphed into a “children’s home,” and eventually managed to tap into massive federal contracts, mainly for the housing of children of undocumented immigrants, which translated to generous pay packages of $500,000 for the BCFS president and salaries north of $200,000 for a half-dozen other staff members.

Those salaries were made possible by the awarding of $77 million in CONTRACTS to the non-profit by the Biden administration. Subsequent to the awarding of that contract, BCFS was cited for mishandling children at the border.

The political problems of BCFS are bipartisan, though; prior to Biden’s becoming president, Donald Trump was said to have PRESSURED administrators of the BCFS infamous tent city in Tornillo, Texas, to take in more migrant children than it could care for.

Like BCFS, the Youth Villages web page is peppered with wholesome photographs of happy children and their families. But the facility apparently has a darker side.

The mother of a 17-year-old girl who died at the facility last year says her daughter was “BODY SLAMMED” for failing to comply with an order to undress in front of male residential staff.

Youth Villages has denied that it did anything inappropriate to Alegend Jones.

The story about her death, however, prompted several negative comments about the home, including allegations by one person who claimed that there was sexual abuse, illegal restraints of kids and staff smoking with underage girls at the facility.

Two other comments resonated with similarity of allegations against other residential facilities for kids. Both writers indicated that Youth Villages, like other homes, works to keep kids for monetary reasons rather than treating and releasing them to their parents.

”…[T]hey ave done this over and over,” wrote one person. “They want kids in their care because the state pays big bucks. They want to provide the doctor as well to make sure you cannot remove a child. It’s scary as s*** and hard to get your child out of their grips.”

Homes and programs for troubled youth have come under increasing federal scrutiny, an effort spearheaded by socialite Paris Hilton who, as a teen, was sent to a home in Utah where she says she was beaten, raped and watched every minute – even when she showered or went to the bathroom.

There was no indication of how many Louisiana children are housed in the Tennessee and Texas facilities, though the total of more than $6 million in contracts would indicate that there are/were perhaps dozens.

Read Full Post »

I plan to promote one of my readers for the office of vice president. I came to this decision after he sent me an interesting message that revealed that he is far more astute, far more intelligent and possessive of far more plain old horse sense that that guy from Ohio/West Virginia.

The reader, a retired Navy veteran, noted that he watched on network news as J.D. Vance said, somewhere among his hillbilly rambling about childless cat women, that the federal income tax system needed to be change to tax childless couples at a higher rate than those with children.

“Really?” my friend wrote. “Seems that this is exactly the system that’s been in place for a long time! More kids equals more deductions [and more deductions] equal less tax. Singles bear a much higher tax on identical incomes.

“[The news clip] would have been more powerful if the newscaster had mentioned this stupid JDV oversight,” he wrote.

What a maroon!

Hmm. Don’t think there’s much to add to his observation except to wonder if it really was an oversight or an insight into his general ignorance.

Read Full Post »

The Republicans say crime is exploding and they’re attempting to capitalize on that claim in the 2024 election campaigns.

The Democrats are saying that crime is down and they’re pointing to that to promote their agenda in the 2024 elections.

Who is correct?

Well, it might be difficult to say because 31 percent of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the U.S. failed to report crime data to the FBI’s national database in 2022, the latest year for which figures are available.

That’s an improvement, however, over the nearly 40 percent who failed to submit data in 2021, according to the MARSHALL PROJECT, an online news services.

In Louisiana, cooperation of local law enforcement is hard to come by. Fully 42 percent of the state’s agencies failed to report any crime data in 2022 and only 37 percent reported a full year’s crime data.

The largest jurisdiction in the state and the one with one of the highest crime rates in the state, New Orleans, failed to submit any data at all in 2022, according to the report, which said that 394,000 people live under the New Orleans Police Department’s jurisdiction. That’s 8 percent of all the people living in Louisiana.

Of the state’s 238 law enforcement agencies, which includes sheriffs, municipal departments and Louisiana State Police, only 137 submitted reports to the database in 2022. That represented 3.4 million of the state’s 4.6 million people, leaving data on crime data for the remaining 26 percent unreported.

Overall, Louisiana had the 11^th lowest reporting rate in the nation. Florida was the worst, with only 8 percent of its agencies submitting data. Mississippi was 7^th lowest with 48 percent of agencies not reporting. Delaware and Oklahoma tied for first, each with 100 percent participation.

Read Full Post »

Let’s all stand and welcome the newest member of the Over-the-Top Conspiracy Club – not that it’s any surprise that he’d choose to jump on board what sounds like some passé Q-Anon tripe being bandied about that is so last year.

Scott McKay, aka MacAoidh, is advancing the absurd theory that Donald Trump was set up by the Secret Service, FBI, or some other deep state group, to walk into an assassination trap that failed only because of “divine intervention” (McKay’s words, obviously picked up from all those frothing evangelicals who think Trump was sent as our redeemer).

In today’s post on The Hayride, of which McKay is publisher, he eagerly latched onto a conspiracy version that rivals the actual conspiracy that surrounded the assassination of GRIGORI RASPUTIN on Dec. 30, 1916 as a run-up to Russia’s Bolshevik revolution. Now there was a real conspiracy.

In doing so, he advances the idea that rather than sheer incompetence, the Secret Service was somehow complicit in some bizarre plot to lure Trump into some false sense of security in order to “bait the trap.”

It’s not even worth the effort to elaborate on the Secret Service SNAFUs which he lists as “proof” in his effort to convince that the Secret Service “or elements within” were “involved in facilitating that assassination attempt.”

Yes, Scott, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was far too vague and elusive in her answers to the House Oversight Committee hastily convened to investigate the agency’s failings.

But with any conspiracy, there needs to be a scapegoat. Do you really believe that shooter Thomas Crooks would willingly sacrifice himself to abet some cockamamie scheme that left far too many holes in it to have been hatched by professionals like the Secret Service.

Crooks had a weapon, all right, but not nearly of the sophistication of those being held by Secret Service sharpshooters. If there was some plot to take down Trump, why not employ one of the sharpshooters if they were part of some intricate plot? They wouldn’t have missed.

It makes just as much sense to speculate that the entire event was staged by an ex-reality show host (read: entertainer) who, upon hearing the cue of gunshots, dropped to the floor and slapped camsules of “theater blood” to his ear to make it all look real to a national television audience. But that scenario would require an agreement by the Secret Service and 20-year-old Crooks – a registered Republican, no less – to make the supreme sacrifice to carry the ruse out to its end goal, as well. The others who were hit, including one fatality – well, they’re just collateral damage. Of course that version is a load of horse hockey, as well.

There are a lot of inconsistencies. That’s true enough and no one is denying that. But to turn a bumbled assignment into some sinister plot when you are not part of any investigative unit is to join the Flat Earth Society and those Mississippi fishermen who claim they were beamed up and anally probed by aliens.

“…[O]ur government was involved. It’s very difficult to see things any other way,” McKay wrote.

Only if your head happens to be conducting that anal probe.

Read Full Post »