Louisiana Voice

Fraud in the US Congress is nothing new. Republican J.R. Majewski campaigned for a congressional seat in Ohio in 2022 as an Air Force combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The truth was he never saw Afghanistan and instead of combat, he helped to load planes at an air base in US ally Qatar, far from the fighting.

Madison Cawthon was elected to the House from North Carolina in 2020 despite consistently contradicting himself on his background and qualifications.

Matt Gaetz won election in Florida and stories surfaced almost immediately about sex with underage girls, drug use and other controversies.

But for pure brass, no one could surpass the forged credentials of GEORGE SANTOS whose lies about his background were so perverse that it got him expelled from Congress.

But now, though, comes word that Louisiana may well have its very own professional chameleon in the person of former US Rep. and now State Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, thanks to a little old-fashioned journalistic digging by New Orleans Public Radio station WWNO.

Abraham, Louisiana’s top public health official, it seems, may have misrepresented his own credentials in claiming in several state communications and web platforms to be a family medicine doctor.

True enough, he is a veterinarian and owner of a couple of north Louisiana pharmacies but those to not equate to board certification as a “practicing family medicine physician” in Richland Parish, as stated on his official online Health Department BIOGRAPHY.

Similar qualifications are found in other publications, including a NEWSLETTER for Medicaid providers.

Earlier this month Abraham issued an edict to state health workers to cease promoting seasonal vaccines such as influenza and pneumonia and even posted on the Department of Health website (alongside his questionable qualification perhaps?) a letter criticizing the state’s COVID response.

Parish health units, he assures us, will continue to stock vaccines but they aren’t allowed to promote mass vaccination.

“Rather than instructing individuals to receive any and all vaccines, LDH staff should communicate data regarding the reduced risk of disease, hospitalization, and death associated with a vaccine and encourage individuals to discuss considerations for vaccination with their healthcare provider,” Abraham wrote in his communication, obtained by The New Orleans Advocate. 

Abraham was appointed by Jeff Landry who apparently did not do a very good job of vetting his health czar. The guv deftly deflected inquiries about the new directive, the first such that has been reduced to writing. Instead, he referred questions to the Department of Health, which, of course, would never speak up without a nod from Landry and most certainly would never be critical of any program promoted by the administration despite the face that “Staff at Louisiana’s health department fear the new policy undermines their efforts to protect the public, and violates the fundamental mission of public health: to prevent illness and disease by following the science,” according to NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO.

You can read the full story on WWNO by clicking HERE.

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Remember not so long ago when a blowhard named Trump stoked the rumor that the President of the U.S. was born in Africa?

Now, there’s a myth being promoted by the current IMPOTUS in Washington that an African, no less, is working diligently to ferret out government waste and fraud in an effort to slash trillions of dollars from the federal budget on behalf of that same Donald Trump.

The truth that is emerging is somewhat different. Rather than looking for ways to eliminate waste, Elon Musk and his puppet Trump are seeking information – lots of it. And it is information that neither should have any need for.

Why, for instance, would they need your and my tax information and bank records? Yet, that is precisely what the latest dust-up is all about. In fact, he head of the SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION stepped down from her position this past weekend over Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) demand to access social security recipient information.

That is today’s story. Yesterday, it was Musk’s DOGE seeking access to TAXPAYER DATA.  at the IRS, giving him (and, presumably Le Grande Orange) access to literally millions of files that contain tax records, bank records, social security numbers, addresses, etc.

This, if you will recall, from a president who steadfastly refuses to release his own tax information despite repeated promises to do so during the 2016 campaign.

That insincere campaign promise aside, why would you suppose a non-elected, foreign-born proxy for the president would need your Social Security, tax and bank records? The answer is that it’s information they want and there is only a couple of reasons for wanting that information.

One, it can be used against voices of dissent – kinda the way dictators in other countries have done. For some reason, 1930s Germany comes to mind. A bone-chilling proposition indeed.

Two, there could be some scheme at play to undermine – or even eliminate – Social Security (and Medicaid/Medicare). Remember, that was one of the many objectives cited in Project 2025, the playbook put together by the Heritage Foundation with which Trump said he was unfamiliar.

The irony is that Trump and Musk’s cuts and firing of federal employees has hit Trump’s support base the hardest – not that we didn’t warn you in advance or anything.

Kevin Kosar, a honcho at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, lamented that “the DOGE push to downsize government employees will hit the coalition that elected Trump.” That includes Louisiana where more than 19,400 federal employees reside, according to LOUISIANA ILLUMINATOR.

Our very own Sen. Bill Cassidy expressed his concern that the firing of FBI agents would have dire consequences for the state. “I am all for efficiency and ultimately downsizing the federal government, but firing large numbers of new FBI agents is not the way to achieve this,” Cassidy wrote in a social media post. “Louisiana specifically benefits from newly hired FBI agents. We need to add to our law enforcement, not take away.”

Louisiana Illuminator also pointed out last week that proposed cuts in research funding from the National Institutes of Health could result in Louisiana colleges and universities LOSING TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

Now what do you suppose the result of a loss in funding would be? Well, if you remember, every time Bobby Jindal cut funding for higher ed (which was often), tuition went up. A college education is fast exceeding the ability of the average household to pay and any loss of funding is going to be made up somewhere. So, you do the math.

You can bet that efforts to obtain tax and banking records aren’t made with major Trump donors in mind. Don’t hold your breath, for instance, for any further targeting by the administration of one Frank Schuler, IV, of Atlanta, whose tax shelter scheme has been described as “the worst of the worst tax scams.” He is currently fighting the IRS over $4 billion in disallowed deductions.

I think we can safely predict that Schuler’s headaches will mysteriously vanish now that he has been appointed as a SENIOR ADVISER to the General Services Administration by the Trump administration. Strange how these things work, eh?

So, I reiterate: the goal is not to eradicate waste, it’s to establish an oligarchy and you and I aren’t invited.

And folks, keep this in mind: Trump hasn’t even been in office a month yet. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

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–Donald Trump

It just doesn’t look good on him — especially when he steals the line — allegedly from Napoleon. Regardless who first said it, it wasn’t original with IMPOTUS.

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Those of us old enough to remember can recall a terrific 1964 movie called Seven Days in May.

Starring such heavy-hitters as Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, John Houseman, Martin Balsam, Edmond O’Brien, Andrew Duggan, Leonard Nimoy and Fredric March, the movie was about an attempted takeover of the US government by a military-political cabal.

The award-winning movie was an adaptation of the book by the same name by authors Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, II. Both the book and movie were packed with intrigue and suspense and deserve a place among the best fictional political stories of the era.

But readers and movie buffs probably are unfamiliar with a follow-up book by Knebel the very next year that suddenly takes on eerie relevance to today’s political climate more than half-a-century after it was written.

NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID is the story of a narcissistic president who has descended into madness and sees enemies everywhere he looks as he sits in a darkened room and unloads on a naïve midwestern senator before whom he is dangling the vice-presidency in his upcoming election to a second term (the current vice-president is one of those perceived as an enemy).

This president, Mark Hollenbach, expresses his desire to install telephone taps on every living American as a means of reducing crime, a suggestion that chills the potential running mate, Sen. Jim MacVeagh.

But the real shock comes on MacVeagh’s second visit to Camp David. That’s when Hollenbach unveils his plans to annex Canada, which some find to be strangely familiar rhetoric.

But then, Hollenbach expands on his grandiose plans when he announces his intention to also incorporate Scandinavia – Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland (but not Greenland in this scenario) – into a new superpower he calls Aspen.

If all that is not enough, the president, who is obviously going insane, suggests that he would dispense of NATO in his scheming. He tells MacVeagh that he would freeze out Great Britain, France and Germany because he sees them as has-beens on the world stage. At the same time, he assures his audience of one that the three European countries would eventually come around and join his new nation of Aspen – even if he were compelled to use force to convince them.

Force? MacVeagh asks.

“Yes, force,” Hollenbach replies. “Only if necessary, and I doubt it ever would be. There are other kinds of pressure; trade duties (tariffs) and barriers, financial measures, economic sanctions, if you will.”

But Hollenbach said his first move, however, would be to meet with the Russians and to propose a nuclear alliance against China.

It suddenly becomes MacVeagh’s task to alert congressional leaders and cabinet members of Hollenbach’s intentions and of his mental instability. But the problem is getting others to listen to him because Hollenbach is an immensely popular president and no one wants to believe the – dare we say, “fake news” about him.

It’s almost impossible to believe all that was written 60 years ago, but it was – proof that art can indeed imitate life and life can imitate art.

Despite the popularity – and success – of Seven Days in May, the plot of Night of Camp David was so far out there, so absurd, so wildly unbelievable, that Hollywood wouldn’t touch it.

But yet, here we are.

Talk about déjà vu…it’s almost as if IMPOTUS had read the book.

Except we know he doesn’t read.

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