Louisiana Voice

A story by Julie O’Donoghue in the Louisiana Illuminator last Tuesday caught my eye.

Actually, it was her opening paragraph, or as we call it in the trade, the lede, that got my attention – which is, after all, the purpose of a lede: to grab the reader’s attention.

“Louisiana lawmakers,” O’Donoghue wrote, “are quickly moving legislation that would dramatically expand the types of gifts elected officials and government employees could receive while doing their jobs.”

Boiling it down even further, it was the phrase “quickly moving” that sent up the red flags and set off bells and whistles. That’s “quickly moving,” as in too quickly. Those bills that legislators push so strongly and seek quick passage for are generally what are referred to as “snakes,” as in something to be killed.

The sneak amendment that Sen. Neil Riser pushed through on the very last day of the 2014 legislative session that would’ve given then-State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson a generous bump in his retirement of something on the level of an additional $23,000 or $43,000 per year (depending on whom you asked) comes to mind. That amendment passed but was later thrown out when then-Sen. DAN CLAITOR of Baton Rouge filed suit to rescind the increase.

Actually, there are two such bills that address much the same issue: ethics.

Both bills were submitted by Republicans and if you haven’t noticed, it’s the Republicans who pretend to claim the high moral ground: family values, responsible spending and ethics. Yet, it seems to be Republicans who most often get caught committing sexual hanky-panky (of course, there are Democrats who stray as well, but the scales tip decidedly to the right), who increase the federal deficit and who seem to be constantly trying to weaken the state’s ethics and campaign finance laws (see Govs. Bobby Jindal and Jeff Landry).

There are HOUSE BILL 596 by Rep. Mark Wright (R-Covington) which generally eliminates campaign reporting laws, and HB 674 by Rep. Beau Beaullieu (R-New Iberia), which pretty much guts ethics laws.

So you can make your own determination as to what they say, here are the actual copies of HB 596 and HB 674 in their entirety. The full House was SUFFICIENTLY SATISFIED to pass the bill by a UNANIMOUS 96-0 VOTE with eight members not voting. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Now throw in HB 160 by Rep. Kellee Dickerson (R-Denham Springs), and you have the perfect Republican ethics trifecta.

Wright’s bill was originally scheduled to be heard by the House and Governmental Affairs Committee last Wednesday but was not brought up for consideration. HB 674 is pending before that same committee.

Dickerson did present her bill to the H&GA Committee – if you want to call it that. You’ll need to scroll to the 16-MINUTE MARK of the nearly three-hour committee meeting to see for yourself.

For a former TV news personality, she was terribly ill-at-ease, fumbling with her notes far too much at the outset. She eventually got around to calling HB 160 a “strong bill to make a strong difference,” but made her pitch in an embarrassingly weak manner, filled with vague, unsubstantiated claims. It’s no wonder the committee never even voted on her bill.

Basically, what HB 160 would do would be to prohibit anonymous complaints to the State Ethics Board, instead allowing the accused to face his or her accuser. It would not only require that a complaint be made in writing, but that the complainant would be required to file the complaint “in person with the Board at the offices of the ethics administration.” There would be monetary penalties in the form of legal fees for any complainant who “knowingly and willfully files a false ethics complaint.”

Okay, no problem with assessing attorney fees against someone who files a trivial complaint for the wrong reasons, but to require face-to-face confrontation when an employee may wish to file a complaint against a supervisor whom he believes to be in violation of ethics laws only invites retribution. Moreover, requiring a complainant in say, Shreveport, to journey all the way to Baton Rouge is a bit burdensome.

Now, compare red state Louisiana’s 17-year trend toward weakened ethics laws (dating to the onset of Bobby Jindal’s first term as governor in 2008) with that of blue state Maryland (seven of its last nine governors were/are Democrats)  which has just enacted TOUGH NEW ETHICS LAWS in response to the ethical lapses of former Gov. Larry Hogan, a (ahem) Republican.

It’s almost as though there’s this big mural being painted to illustrate more precisely just which party is only pretending to represent morality and virtue.

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On Friday, The Atlantic moved a story into my email inbox that bore the headline, “TYRE NICHOLS AND THE END OF POLICE REFORM.”

What followed was a 960-word essay by writer David Graham about the now-defunct special Memphis police squad that called itself SCORPION (apparently members deemed it such an elite force that it deserved no less than the use of all caps in its name) which literally beat Nichols, an unarmed black man, to death.

The five officers apparently considered themselves so immune from responsibility that they carried out their brutality – in full view of SkyCop a Memphis surveillance camera – in the confidence that they would not be held accountable.

Turns out they were partially correct. Though they were fired soon enough and their SORPION union disbanded, three of the officers walked after their acquittal earlier in the week. Two others had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Now, The Atlantic is one of the last great American publications and Graham certainly possesses greater street creds than most writers plying their trade these days. But calling the Memphis travesty the “end of police reform”?

I’m afraid that ship sailed long before the Nichols killing – right here in Louisiana, in fact – in places like Union Parish. And Baton Rouge. And Ouachita Parish. And Franklin Parish.

In fact, LouisianaVoice has published some 175 stories about State Police misconduct all over Louisiana – from Monroe to Houma, from Lake Charles to New Orleans and most of which went not only unpunished, but was covered up in elaborate efforts to shield miscreant officers. And those don’t even include the sheriffs featured in my book, Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, which exposed sheriffs who ran drugs and prostitution, routinely beat prisoners for entertainment, sanctioned killings, enriched themselves unethically and harassed citizens.

Those include:

The acquittal of State Trooper Jacob Brown for the 2019 beating of AARON BOWMAN, an African American that left Bowman, of Monroe with a broken jaw, broken ribs and a gash to his head. He struck Bowman 18 times with his flashlight and between 2015 and 2021, the year he resigned, he was involved in 23 use of force incidents, 19 of which targeted black people, according to the Associated Press. In 2024, he applied for more than $210,000 in legal fees he said the state owed him as the cost of his defense.

The 2020 beating of ANTONIO HARRIS, a black man, in Franklin Parish by three State Troopers, including Jacob Brown, also implicated in the beating of Bowman above, and Dakota DeMoss, one of several State Troopers involved in the beating of Ronald Greene in May of 2019.

Brown was also captured on video slamming DeShawn Washington against the hood of a police cruiser during a 2019 traffic stop. An Associated Press INVESTIGATION revealed a pattern of concealing beatings at the hands of State Police.

Bowman and Harris were lucky. They survived their beatings. Greene did not. Officers told Greene’s mother that he died as the result of an accident when his car collided with a tree but the damage to his car was only minor and a body cam video that surfaced much later (after officers initially said there was no video) showed him pleading for his life as cops piled on.

When an investigation into the lies and coverup of events surrounding Greene’s death and widespread cheating at the State Police Academy, rather than investigate the events themselves, State Police brass PORED THEIR EFFORTS into trying to determine the SOURCE OF INFORMATION LEAKS.

Trooper KORY YORK, who had faced the most serious charges of the five officers indicted in the case after video showed him dragging Greene by his ankle shackles, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor batter and received only a year’s probation, was allowed to retire and to qualify for his pension of nearly $83,000 per year. Two other troopers involved in the Greene beating death, Dakota DeMoss and John Peters, had their charges of obstruction of justice dismissed. Despite the beating and tasing death of Greene, those were the only charges against DeMoss and Peters.

As if the attempts at covering up their misdeeds were not enough, the Special Legislative Committee to Inquire into the Circumstances and Investigation of the Death of Ronald Greene held one or two perfunctory hearings and then QUIETLY FADED AWAY, more or less confirming the contention by LouisianaVoice that it never really intended to delve too deeply into the issue in the first place.

And then there’s the so-called “BRAVE CAVE” warehouse operated by Baton Rouge Police Department’s “Street Crimes Unit.” Eerily reminiscent of the Memphis PD’s SCORPION outfit, local cops would take suspects to the warehouse where as many as 1,000 suspects were strip searched and even beaten. Like SCORPION, BRPD’s Street Crimes Unit has been disbanded.

All of which brings us full circle back to that headline in The Atlantic. The “End of Police Reform,” it seems, occurred well before the acquittals of those three Memphis cops. And the argument could be made that that ending took place right here in Louisiana.

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A friend alerted me to an interesting story that illustrated the courage of U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy in confronting difficult situations. It seems that like Col. Bone Spurs his own self, he hits the bricks, cuts and runs, vamooses, bails, takes a walk and otherwise opts out.

There don’t seem to be sufficient verbs for what Kennedy did, But NewsNation’s CHRIS CUOMO certainly gave it the old college try when Kennedy scooted away from a scheduled live interview on Tuesday, just five minutes before air time. Who knew he could move so fast? Like they say, when the going gets tough, the tough take a powder.

It seems that he learned it wasn’t going to be a softball Fox News-type of question-and-answer session but instead, was going to include some tough questions for which his Foghorn Leghorn approach wouldn’t suffice. “Seeya!”

Cuomo, who said Kennedy didn’t so much as call him, text him or make any other effort to contact him to cancel. The show’s host said Kennedy blew him off after learning that the interview would include questions about El Presidente Tub-a-Lardo’ demand for the freedom of a 2020 election denier TINA PETERS, who was jailed over an election security breach last year.

“He doesn’t even call me himself. He just bails,” Cuomo said of Kennedy’s no-show. “Mr. Man’s Man. Mr. ‘I’m a straight shooter.’” It’s “very poor form,” Cuomo added while accusing Kennedy of puling a “punk-ass move. I’ve been in this business a really long time and nobody does that unless they’re a coward,” he spewed.

Further venting, Cuomo expressed his disgust with the pollical climate when he said officials are “more afraid of getting caught saying something that will offend the president than any kind of duty, any kind of morality, any kind of philosophy, any kind of principle. They are about nothing but fealty.”

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark. Looks like someone left Mr. “I-have-a-platitude-for-everything” speechless for a change because as of Wednesday morning, Kennedy had not uttered a peep about the cancellation.

And while we’re on the subject of Kennedy, here are a few more votes by Kennedy and Sen. Bill Cassidy which further display that fealty alluded to by Cuomo.

Voting in lock-step with the Party of Trump (it ceased being the Republican Party back in 2016), the two Louisiana senators, with absolutely no free will of their own (except for the animalistic instinct of self-survival, which pitifully takes precedent over – again quoting Cuomo – any kind of principle, they:

Voted along Trumpian lines on a motion to proceed on House Joint Resolution 60 which provides for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the National Park Service as it relates to motor vehicle use restrictions in the 1.2-million-acre GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA in Arizona and southeast Utah. The motion PASSED BY A 53-47 VOTE-..

Voted with an identical 53-47 MAJORITY (again, along Trumpian lines) to confirm Frank Bisignano as commissioner of the Social Security Administration. A self-described “Doge person,” Bisignano, as president and CEO of Fiserv, established a slash-and-burn reputation for cutting to the bone with massive layoffs. Writer Branko Marcetic said that “Maybe no part of the Trump administration’s program of dismantling federal government agencies has generated as much concern as its drastic cuts to the SSA, the agency responsible for trillions of dollars’ worth of payments to retirees, people with disabilities, and millions of other Americans, and which is already seeing its workers laid off en masse, its offices shuttered, and some of its core services ended.” Another write, Jessica Corbett, said that Bisignano “is also a liar,” claiming he was “not involved in all the chaotic and destructive changes at the Social Security Administration: the hollowing out of the agency, the stealing of our most sensitive data, the harmful and poorly rolled out policy changes, their sudden reversals, and more. However, there are well over a dozen long-serving civil servants, identified by a brave whistleblower, who CAN VALIDATE that he is lying.”

Voted with the 53-45 majority (alas, again along Trumpian Party lines) in favor of HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 61 for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Rubber Tire Manufacturing,” proving once again that politicians are far more knowledgeable about environmental concerns than the scientists in the agency created to deal with that specific subject.

Voted in lock-step with the Trumpian majority of 53-46 in favor of proceeding on SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 13 providing for the congressional disapproval of the rule by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury relating to the review of application under the BANK MERGER ACT. Now you really gotta wonder about this one: the author of the resolution is none other than the junior senator from Louisiana, one John Neely Kennedy. Not sure what his motives are for this bill but I bet if you sniff around long enough, you’ll pick up the scent of bank lobbyists and maybe a little campaign money floating around from a few prominent bankers.

Or could it be that Sen. Kennedy has some bank stock in his portfolio and he stands to make a killing if a certain merger that we don’t yet know about is allowed to go through?

The following isn’t about Kennedy; it’s about four of the six Louisiana members of the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, and the most cringe-worthy vote yet. It is the perfect illustration of just how far our gutless wonders are willing to go to please the aforementioned Herr Tub-a-Lardo.

In somewhat confusing verbiage, it’s the vote on ordering the previous question on House Resolution 377 which provides for consideration of HOUSE RESOLUTION 276.

And what is H.R. 276 you ask? Why, it provides for the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, of course. With veterans homeless and/or needing mental health care; with housing costs spiraling out of control; with impending runaway inflation caused by insane tariffs; with college costs becoming more and more out of the reach of students; with looming threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; with an egomaniac president choking off critical grants for scientific research by foundations and universities and with a host of unqualified cabinet members too numerous to list here, we waste time on crap like indulging an overweight, mentally underdeveloped psychopath by passing a meaningless resolution to rename a body of water? Are you kidding me?

As might be expected, the four members of the Party of Trump fell in line, as required, behind this silliness (as did every single member of the party who voted – 14 did not vote as was the case for 13 Democrats). The final tally was 206 to 200 in favor of this life-altering piece of legislation which was fast-tracked past such things as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in order to massage the ego of this physically big (as in grossly overweight) but mentally miniscule sad excuse for a leader. Voting yes, predictably, were Reps. Julia Letlow, Clay Higgins, Steve KKK Scalise and House Mouthpiece Mike “I have a porn-detector app” Johnson. The two Democrats, Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, voted no.

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Do U.S. senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy represent the best interests of Louisianans or do they reflect the wishes of Agent Orange, aka El Presidente Trump, aka Supreme Threat to the U.S. Constitution?

For that answer we need only scrutinize their votes for confirmation of Trump nominees.

Let’s begin with one of the more controversial ones to come up for Senate confirmation.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, he of the misuse of social media.You may recall the flap over the use of a personal email server by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to send and receive classified messages. There was an FBI investigation. The final six paragraphs of then FBI director JAMES COMEY’S STATEMENT on that investigation are key.

That’s because Hegseth committed a SIMILAR FAUX PAS not once, but twice within the span of a few weeks. Now, let’s jump back to his Senate confirmation which was approved by the RAZOR -THIN 51-49 VOTE. Cassidy and Kennedy both voted yea. Had they used the information they already had about Hegseth’s drinking and womanizing proclivities to justify nay votes, the vote would have been 49-51. Had just one of them voted no, it would have been a 50-50 tie. Either way, the nomination of the tragically unfit Hegseth would have failed.

Okay, let’s examine another nominee, one Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (no relation to Louisiana’s esteemed Foghorn Leghorn (“Nice, Ah say nice girl, but about as sharp as a sack o’ wet mice.”). It would only have taken nay votes by Cassidy and John Kennedy to negate the 52-48 VOTE for a guy who has vowed to investigate FICTIONAL CHEMTRAILS, those white trails that hang suspended in the wake of military jet aircraft. (They’re fictional because they’re not chemical trails – or trails of toxic chemicals being sprayed on unsuspecting Americans – but contrails, or clouds that form when water vapor condenses and freezes around small particles – aerosols – in aircraft exhausts). This guy will be personally responsible for setting medical research back 50 years or more but Cassidy (a physician, no less) and Kennedy each voted for him.

Remember Kristi Noem, former governor of South Dakota who infamously admitted to shooting a dog because it wouldn’t hunt? Well, she’s now our SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY, thanks to a 59-34 Senate vote. Two of those yea votes came from Cassidy and Kennedy.

And then there’s Tulsi Gabbard, who was confirmed by another close VOTE OF 52-48, despite that mysterious 2017 TRIP TO SYRIA where she met with then-President Bashar al-Assad who, since the overthrow of his corrupt government, hightailed it to safe haven in Russia. Details of her meeting with the tyrant president have never been revealed. Had our two senators but changed their votes from yea to nay, her nomination to this ultra-sensitive position would have been thwarted.

Another nominee who has proven to be more than a little controversial is Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bodi. She was approved with a MORE COMFORTABLE MARGIN OF 54-46, partly on the support of Louisiana’s two senators, who both voted to confirm. To date, she has used the Justice Department to go after universities, attorneys and foreign nationals (with legal residence status) who had the temerity to protest U.S. foreign policy (a right our U.S. Constitution supposedly guarantees, but one which the Trump administration chooses to ignore).

Then there is Linda McMahon, nominated with the express intent of dismantling the agency she was chosen to head (U.S. Department of Education). McMahon’s single qualification for presiding over education is her experience as a professional wrestling promoter (Hulk Hogan, Haystack McCall, Andre the Giant, et al come to mind as ambassadors of this gentlemanly sport, definitely not fixed). Approved by a SENATE VOTE OF 51-45, she has since, under orders from Trump, no doubt, informed Harvard that billions of dollars in federal research grants would not be forthcoming unless Harvard ceased its DEI appointments. This from an administration that bases its entire existence on its own version of DEI, a word Trump can’t spell even if you spot him the D and the E. No problem for Cassidy and John Kennedy, though, who each fell all over themselves in their eagerness to vote yea on McMahon’s appointment.

And as Trump Lapdog in Chief, there’s KASH PATEL, Trump’s nominee for FBI director – a rather odd choice given that Patel, as a major apologist for Agent Orange, has been loudly critical of the FBI as an agent of the so-called “Deep State.” No matter. Patel managed to suck up to Trump by writing a children’s book titled The Plot Against the King, described as “featuring a thinly-veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after ‘King Donald’” with Kash playing a wizard who manages to frustrate her plans. Talk about lap dogs…Of course, Cassidy and Kennedy both fell in line and voted thumbs-up on this ultimate lickspittle.

And then there are Lee Zeldin, now head of EPA, THANKS TO A 56-42 SENATE VOTE. (It didn’t take long for the EPA, under his leadership, to launch the MOST EXENSIVE DEREGULATORY ACTION in U.S. history) and former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was approved by a 53-45 vote to be ADMINISTRATOR OF THE SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION despite revelations that as a new senator back in early 2020, she sold $20 million in stock following a briefing in the weeks leading up to the coronavirus pandemic. Although she was eventually cleared of insider training, the stench of those charges remained. Naturally, Cassidy and Kennedy could be counted on by Trump to obediently toe the line and vote yea for both Zeldin and Loeffler.

Do you see a trend here? Can you see both Cassidy and Kennedy blindly following Republican Party directives and voting for anything – and anyone – their master Trump wants? Can you detect a definitive inclination to do whatever ringmaster Trump commands, benefits to the people of Louisiana be damned?

Ask yourself if you can ever count on these two when the chips are on the table to cast their lot with the people they represent or the party to which they are obviously beholden.

I think, in your heart of hearts, you know the answer.

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Congressman Troy A. Carter, Sr. (D-LA), member of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued the following statement:

“The reckless DOGE chainsaw cuts from the Trump/Musk administration are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet — they are a clear and present danger to the people, economy, and environment of Louisiana.

“The ongoing oil spill off Louisiana’s Gulf Coast is rapidly contaminating our marshlands, threatening vital wildlife habitats, and endangering the fisheries that so many Louisiana families depend on. Yet at this critical moment, the federal teams we rely on for rapid response — like NOAA’s Emergency Response Division — have been gutted. Over 1,000 NOAA staff have been laid off or forced into early retirement, including eight from the very unit tasked with addressing oil and chemical spills. We are watching decades of expertise — innumerable years collectively — walk out the door.

“As oil shoots 30 to 40 feet into the air from a well that should have been permanently sealed years ago, we are left scrambling to contain a disaster with fewer people, fewer resources, and fewer answers. This week marks 15 years since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, and yet here we stand, once again, dangerously unprepared.

“As a Member of Congress representing Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District and a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I will explore every avenue to expose and reverse these short-sighted, penny-wise, pound-foolish policies. We owe it to our communities, our environment, and our future generations to safeguard Louisiana’s coast — before it’s too late.”

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