Louisiana Voice

Back during my 20 years wasted as a defender of the state fisc via my service (sarcasm) as an Office of Risk Management (ORM) claims adjuster (the worst claims adjuster ever, in my humble estimation). I can only surmise that when our in-house attorney counseled me – with a straight face – on one occasion that I was “the best adjuster on the floor,” it was just his feeble attempt at motivation – or perhaps some sick, inside joke.

That bit of dark humor aside, our job at ORM, as best as I can ascertain, was to babysit legal files, keep a log of communication with defense attorneys (usually some friend of the attorney general, who made the recommendations for assignments) and real-life (as opposed to us, who were usually hired off the street with zero experience) adjusters.

By babysit, I mean that our job was to do nothing official on our files (which, I might add, were too many, in the first place, for one person to manage efficiently) and to pass on eventual recommendations to settle lawsuits over the state’s abysmal state highways only after the defense attorneys, adjusters and expert witnesses (again, usually political contributors to the attorney general or governor) had run the clock out and sucked as much money from the state as reasonably – sometimes unreasonably –  acceptable under the unwritten rules of “just pay the damn bills.”

After settlement, we adjusters were tasked with evaluating the defense attorney on the case and God help adjuster who gave a negative review. We would be ordered to explain in detail why we would do such an evil thing. We would literally be put on trial ourselves, forced to defend our eval. It reached a point with me that I just checked everything as “favorable,” no matter how bad the attorney was, just to avoid the grilling from our own legal counsel.

That is not to say the other side didn’t load up with its own hired guns, particularly the same “experts” who showed up repeatedly on lawsuit after lawsuit to opine just how negligent the state was in every. single. case.

I bring all this up to cite one “expert” in particular – a former employee of the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD), the named defendant in all highway lawsuits. This guy had gone over to what we not-so-jokingly referred to as the “dark side” by consistently testifying against the state. The regularity of his participation was almost as if he’d never left the DOTD payroll – except, of course, he was now on the other side.

This expert also had his own web page back then that was dedicated to what he quite seriously referred to as “CHEMTRAILS” (chemical trails), those while trails that a lot of jets leave in their wake as they streak across the sky. That page has since been taken down, replaced by his exhausting, 700-page testament to his faith in God, The Complete Deliverance Manual. (He’s also penned books – manuals – on witchcraft deliverance (“a comprehensive guide to receive freedom from witchcraft”), on breaking curses (“an instruction manual on how to break curses”), healing deliverance (a manual to guide in healing and deliverance from diseases”) ( sexual deliverance (“a manual eo assist in deliverance from sexual demons and sins”), on end times deliverance (“a deliverance manual dealing with issues pertaining to the end times”) and others in the same vein.

In reality, though, they’re not chemical trails at all, but CONDENSATION TRAILS (“contrails”), formed when hot humid exhaust from aircraft engines mixes with the cold, moist air at high altitudes, causing water vapor to condense and freeze into ice crystals, creating that white visible trail one sees in the sky.

But you’d never know it by this guy. He willfully and irresponsibly lays claim to the completely debunked myth that what he stubbornly referred to as chemtrails are in reality alternately poisonous bases being released on the citizenry by the guvmint or an insidious plot devised by Democrats to control the weather (thereby shooting down MTG’s Jewish laser beam theory), a conspiracy theory that has prompted NUMEROUS STATES to enact or consider legislation banning them in their respective states.

Seriously, have these people lost their damn minds?

It’s difficult for a rational mind to consider such a possibility unless one arbitrarily decides that the instigators have no families of their own would be exposed to harm by such thing as toxic gases or that control of the weather would not necessarily concentrate on an individual target but instead would inflict damage on a wide swath of America.

But that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump-appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. – he who leaves bear carcasses in Central Park and who decapitates deceased whales with a chain saw and transports them home atop his car and who subscribes to the idiotic chemtrail theory to such an extent that he has promised a full-scale investigation of this hoo-haw  theory-crap.

This Kennedy, in start contrast to his father and uncles, is a bona fide nutcase who in bent on destroying America’s healthcare, not improving it.

What’s more, Louisiana’s two U.S. senators VOTED TO CONFIRM his appointment. That’s both, as in Sen. Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who certainly knew better and Sen. John N. Kennedy (no relation), who, being a RHODES SCHOLAR, damn-well should’ve known better – but then he has brought into a number of half-ass theories when they serve his Trumpian purposes.

And for those diabetics and cancer sufferers, you can take comfort in the knowledge that RFK Jr. was confirmed by the overwhelming vote of 52-48, meaning that if Louisiana’s two supposedly intelligent senators had voted no, the vote would have been 50-50 and RFK Jr.’s confirmation would have failed – as it should have.

But hey! /don’t go dissing (or pissing) on their reputations, no matter how sullied. They’re intelligent men, as to which their professions and academic credentials will testify, and Cassidy is ever-so-desperate to get back in Trump’s good graces that he would vote to confirm Idi Amin or Hitler (because he’s up for reelection next year) while John Kennedy long ago sold his soul to everything Trump, merits or qualifications be damned.

Because these two held the swing votes in their hands, I must conclude that whatever loony tunes theory RFK Jr. may concoct down the road and his methods of dealing with same, Cassidy and Kennedy will be complicit. They will be unable to separate themselves from the consequences for their votes will stick to them like tar as long as RFK Jr. remains at his post.

Cassidy and John N. Kennedy are bound together in history. They’re now joined at the hip. In short, whatever happens down the road, they own it.

Mark that down. Bank it. Most of all, remember where you read it.