Louisiana Voice

Two events this week, unrelated in outward appearances but identical in intent, occurring 400 miles apart, provide us with a peek into what is quite likely to become a trend that will adversely affect Americans’ right to know what their government is up to at every level, from town councils and school boards all the way up to the highest federal levels.

Run-on sentences aside, the incident in Washington only illustrates the hypocrisy that exists on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Nothing new there other than how it casts even more shade on the pseudo-Christianity of House Speaker Mike Johnson.

But legislative action by the State of Ohio serves as definite harbinger of things to come, probably in every state, before all is said and done. And I would add that it’s a direct attack on the public’s access to public records.

Let’s take Congress first. Mikey, our very own Speaker, this week revived an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He did so at the behest of Donald Trump who is hellbent on punishing those members – and witnesses – who participated in the first investigation.

But then, an aide to Johnson pointed out that if subpoenas are issued to say, Cassidy Hutchinson, it could prove embarrassing to certain representatives who just might happen to be Republicans and, gosh, we can’t have that.

You see, it turns out that after Hutchinson originally testified in 2022, she became the recipient of “several texts from [House] members who were trying to engage in sexual favors” with her.

What? Members of the People’s House engaging in SEX SOLICITATION BY TEXT? Why, that’s unthinkable! Can you say Gaetz? MTG? Boebert?

Actually, there are 435 members of the House, more than 300 of them males. Could’ve been any of them. As a member of Johnson’s staff pointed out that subpoenaing Hutchinson could “potentially reveal embarrassing information.”

Since when is the U.S. House of Representatives concerned about a little “embarrassing information”?

They didn’t seem so embarrassed when MTG flashed those nude photos of Hunter Biden in committee. Hell, not even Hunter appeared overly embarrassed.

Lauren Boebert didn’t seem too embarrassed when she was fondling her date’s genitals during a performance of the Beetlejuice musical in 2023.

And of course, it’s fairly well known that Johnson his own self has an app on his phone and on his son’s phone so that each can keep tabs on the other so that neither will be tempted to take a sneak peek at online porn. Interesting that he should have a need for such an app.

But let us now consider what has taken place in Ohio, a development that I personally consider far more important and ominous than anti-porn phone apps.

In August 2022, a police officer gunned down 20-year-old Donovan Lewis in his bed. Police body cam footage revealed that in contrast to what police said, there was never any “altercation.” He never fought police; he wasn’t even given time to resist because officer Ricky Anderson drew and fired in less than a second. That video footage helped spur the indictment of Anderson on charges of homicide and reckless endangerment.

So, what was the upshot of all that? With no hearing, no public comment, no advance warning, a proposal was snuck into an omnibus bill in the closing hours of the Ohio legislature last month that now IMPOSE A FEE of up to $750 for access to body-cam or other video footage.

Let’s say, for example, that an incident where four or five state police set up someone like, say, a Ronald Greene and unlike the Greene case, each cop has his body-cam running. The victim is killed by police and his grieving mother insists on viewing the body-cam to see if police are telling the truth when they say he wrecked his car and resisted officers. Do the math: $750 multiplied by five cops comes to $3,750 that the mom must pay to determine if her son was wrongly killed.

It’s not just Ohio, either. The Indianapolis metropolitan police department charges $150 per video and the state of Washington allows for a charge of 49 cents per minute of footage and some departments add a fee based on the time necessary to edit footage. Edit? No thanks. I would prefer unedited footage. It’s even worse in California where police footage must be redacted before becoming public.

Michael Weinman, director of government affairs for the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, said the charge will deter those who only want the videos for the purpose of monetizing social media sites. While there is some merit to his argument, there has to be a better solution than an across-the-board charge of $750.

I don’t think I’ve given anyone any ideas. No, just the opposite. I believe these departments communicate with each other and they’re light years ahead of us already. So, get ready because it’s coming. We’re going to have to pay and pay dearly for our right to know in the not-so-distant future.

After that, it’ll be a slippery slope to the loss of other rights and freedoms even as we are told to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain – until one day we wake up and wonder “what the hell happened?”