Louisiana Voice

How do you become chairman of the LSU Board of Supervisors?

The same way you get yourself named to the board in the first place.

For starters, you give money—lots of it—to the right political campaigns.

Secondly, you chum up to the governor and then you get the governor and legislator to change the rules for selection of chairman and put that power exclusively in the hands of the governor.

College degree, by the way is not a requisite, even for board membership.

And being named to the board of supervisors, along with the Superdome Commission, is one of the sweetest political plums you can pluck off the patronage tree.

Lee Mallett, a major Repugnantcan donor, both on the state and national level, was named by Gov. Squeaky Toy Landry as the new chair of the board earlier this year. The fact that he and four of his companies combined to contribute$52,500 to Landry since 2013.

Of course, this isn’t Mallett’s first rodeo; he was first appointed to the board way back in 2012 by BOBBY JINDAL, the beneficiary of $158,000 in contributions from Mallett and seven of his companies.

As icing on the cake, Jindal also had the Department of Corrections ISSUE A DIRECTIVE to state parole and probation officers to FUNNEL OFFENDERS into Mallett’s halfway house in Lacassine.

The board of supervisors’ web page offers a typical glowing BIOGRAPHY of Mallett, who dropped out of McNeese State University after a single semester..

While the ATS web page touted training in pipefitting, welding, electrical, millwright, heavy equipment operator and instrumentation fitter, at least one district attorney who refers offenders to facilities such as ACADEMY OF TRAINING SKILLS (ATS) said he has experienced numerous complaints about the program and no longer refers offenders to ATS.

Because of complaints about Mallett’s ATS, however, one district attorney stopped referrals and began sending clients to Cenikor Foundation, a Houston-based center with facilities in Baton Rouge.

“We just stopped sending people to ATS,” a spokesman for the DA’s office said. “The jobs they were getting our people were jobs hamburger flipping at fast food restaurants, not technical skills. The claims that they are providing medical treatment don’t seem to be valid, either, because our referrals told us they received no medical treatment.

“Moreover, ATS works these people and pays money into personal accounts for each resident, which is certainly an accepted practice,” he said. “However, without exception, when our referrals completed their programs there, instead of receiving the money in their accounts, they wound up owing ATS money.”

Lest one get the idea we’re picking on Mallett, it would only be fair to point out that others made pretty substantial political contributions to Landry and were subsequently appointed to the board: In all, 12 board members and/or their companies combined to contribute $281,500 to Landry

Attorney JOHN CARMOUCHE and his law firm, Talbot Carmouche and Marcello contributed $60,000 to Landry’s campaign coffers in 2021 and 2023.

ESPERANZA MORAN is the wife of Shreveport oil man Scott Moran and while she has made no contributions personally to Landry, her husband has chipped in $40,600 since 2015.

BLAISE ZUSCHLAG is CEO and Executive Vice President of Acadian Ambulance. The company’s political action committee funneled $32,500 to Landry between 2011 and 2022.

 New Orleans attorney RODERICK ALVENDIA and his law firm, Alvendia Kelly and Demares, gave $27,500.

Opelousas attorney PATRICK MORROW and his law firm, Morow Morrow Ryan & Bassett, contributed $25,000 between 2017 and 2023.

RAYMOND MORRIS and his company, West Carroll Health Systems, combined to contribute $12,500.

Former LSU and professional basketball player COLLIS TEMPLE who today operates several group homes for adjudicated youths, and SCOTT BALLARD each contributed $10,000.

New Orleans attorney JAMES M. WILLIAM ponied up a paltry $4,000.

REBECCA BONIOL and LAURIE LIPSEY ARONSON brought up the rear among the 12 members who contributed to Landry.

Boniol, who with her husband, owns automobile dealerships in Lake Charles and Shreveport, gave $3,000 and Aronson, CEO of Lipsey’s and Haspel, a firearms dealership, gave $2,500.

Now, having once more illustrated how money talks in politics while sound policy walks, it’s interesting to note that Monday’s Baton Rouge Advocate had an interesting story about how applications from students to attend LSU have increased about 110 percent, from 29,000 to 62,000 since 2020.

A little more than double the applications in six years is pretty substantial, but with that could come problems.

That could be attributed to a major change that took place eight years ago. In 2018, the state’s flagship university de-emphasized two major criteria for admission to the school. Whereas he had required a 3.0 high school GPA and a score of 22 on the ACT college entrance exam, the new standards opened the doors for more admissions. Then-President F. King Alexander lowered ADMISSION STANDARDS that leaned more on essays and recommendations than it did test scores.

The problem with opening the doors to so many more students in such a short time is LSU is already years and tens of millions of dollars behind in maintenance to its physical plant. Where will so many new students be housed? How many more instructors and professors will have to be hired to teach so many new students? Will LSU have sufficient classroom space to accommodate such an increase in humanity? And where on earth will that many more students find parking spaces on campus? More campus police will have to be added to the payroll to protect property and prevent an inevitable surge in campus crime.

Those are just a few of the growing pain problems LSU is going to be facing because of the relaxed admission standards.

And campaign contributions in exchange for board appointments and the perks that do with an appointment aren’t going to solve those problems.

Read Full Post »

LSU baseball has officially begun a defense of its national title but there’s another spectator sport that just had its opening day for Louisianans, so grab your popcorn, turn up the volume and make yourself comfortable for the next few months.

After all, first-rate collegiate baseball notwithstanding, there’s nothing more entertaining than watch the unfolding of a pissing contest between Repugnantcans when they compete with each other for elective office.

Of course, as we are well aware, once the votes are counted and a winner declared, they will close ranks, lock arms and act as though they’ve always been the best of friends. Until they aren’t.

In the meantime, though, it’s on between senatorial candidates Bill Cassidy, John Fleming and Julia Letlow and Gov. Jeff Landry who isn’t even running.

Cassidy, the incumbent, is tilting at windmills in an effort to hold on to his seat which, for all intents and purposes, he lost in 2021 when he cast a vote in favor of conviction in Cankle Ankles Trump’s Impeachment II trial. Never mind that he voted to confirm every single one of Trump’s nominations for U.S. Supreme Court and various cabinet positions. Trump is never one to forget a perceived slight and he makes it his personal goal to get his revenge. Thus, he has ENDORSED the candidacy of Rep. Julia Letlow in her challenge to Cassidy.

Okay, nothing spectacular there in the way of explosives. But then on Wednesday (Feb. 11), State Treasurer John Fleming, snubbed for Mar-A-Lardo’s endorsement, CLAIMED that Landry had been working for more than a year on some sort of scheme to assist with getting Trump’s endorsement of Letlow.

Squeaky Toy Landry lost no time in firing back, saying that anyone who would make up a story like that “may not be fit for office.”

Ouch!

Fleming had reason to feel he’d been spurned. He served as Deputy Chief of Staff during Trump’s first term so naturally, he sort-of, kinda felt like he might score the endorsement from POTUS (Pedophile of the United States).

But in Fleming’s paranoid mind, there was a method to his madness: Landry wanted Trump to support Letlow so that after she wins the Senate seat, she would subsequently resign and Landry would then appoint himself to succeed Cassidy but only after appointing Letlow to lead a college or university—“something she’s always wanted to do,” Fleming whined.

That’s not entirely out of the realm of the unreasonable. After all, Landry has already made appointments to the top jobs at five other universities—McNeese State, Southeastern Louisiana University, Louisiana Tech and LSU, some of which were considered controversial at best.

Fleming and Landry were all buddy-buddy in the past but a FRACTURE IN THEIR RELATIONSHIP began to appear over how to address Louisiana’s inordinately high auto insurance rates. And damnit, Fleming wanted that senate job and figured he was entitled to it—until the Trump/Landry tandem, real or imagined, became a factor

And Letlow? Yes, she’s definitely wanted to head up a state university and was a finalist for the job at the University of Louisiana Monroe before being passed over.

So far, she has kept as low a profile as a political candidate can but that doesn’t mean her opponent[s] will.

Take that attack ad by the political action committee that just happens to support Cassidy. No question about it, it constitutes dirty politics in that it does nothing to support the agenda of any other candidate but goes out of its way to attack the presumed leading candidate.

Writers in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Florida, as well as The Donald his own self, have said at various times of primary races, “Republicans eat their own.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same—especially in Louisiana where politics is a spectator sport that rivals LSU football in its popularity.

Read Full Post »

By Marc R. Settembrino, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology; Member: United Federation of College Teachers, American Association of University Professors

The following text represents my personal views and does not necessarily represent the views of Southeastern Louisiana University.

Last week, Dr. Wainwright attended the Faculty Senate Meeting at Southeastern Louisiana University. He’s got a busy schedule, and I appreciate that he took the time to speak directly with faculty about the challenges facing Southeastern.

Dr. Wainwright shared that in a recent survey, faculty identified low morale as our single biggest concern. Students, he explained, are seeing it too, ranking faculty morale as the second most important issue affecting the university. I’ve been thinking about this ever since.

Salary is absolutely part of the morale problem. Southeastern faculty are among the lowest paid in the region, and many salaries that stagnated during the Jindal administration never recovered. Dr. Wainwright shared that some faculty members earn less than $40,000 a year. He also indicated that salary increases are being considered once certain financial benchmarks are met. That’s encouraging. But salary alone will not fix morale.

Historically, universities have thrived on the principles of shared governance and academic freedom. Both are essential to morale, and both have been weakened over time, nationally and here at Southeastern.

Shared governance means that universities are run collaboratively. Administrators, faculty, staff, and sometimes students all share responsibility for major institutional decisions. When shared governance works, faculty are not just told what to do; we are part of the process. That matters because faculty are more invested and more accountable when we have a meaningful voice in decisions that shape our work and our students’ experiences.

In my 13 years at Southeastern, my colleagues have repeatedly raised concerns about major decisions being made behind closed doors in Dynson Hall, often without explanation, consultation, or a clear implementation plan. Too often, policies arrive as directives, leaving faculty scrambling to comply with little guidance beyond an implicit “do it now” or, in the worst cases, warnings about “insubordination.” This lack of transparency and heavy-handedness creates frustration, uncertainty, and resentment, all of which erode morale.

A recent example discussed at the February Senate meeting was a new administrative goal that part-time instructors should deliver 30% of instruction at Southeastern.

For readers unfamiliar with university labor, part-time instructors—often called adjuncts—are hired on a course-by-course basis. They typically receive low pay, no benefits, and no guarantee of continued employment. Nationally, adjuncts are among the most economically vulnerable workers in higher education.

On December 17, 2025, department heads received a memo from the provost stating that departments should plan for at least 30% of instructional activity to be delivered by part-time instructors, including adjuncts, graduate teaching fellows, and other qualified teaching staff. The announcement surprised many faculty and raised immediate concerns.

Would full-time faculty be laid off to make room for part-time labor? These fears are especially pressing because many full-time instructors at Southeastern already work on short-term contracts with limited job security.

At the Senate meeting, Dr. Wainwright described the policy as a long-term goal rather than an immediate mandate, explaining that the university hopes to reach it through attrition—meaning that as full-time faculty retire or leave, positions may be eliminated or converted into part-time instructional roles.

While this clarification helped, the broader issue remains: the policy’s rollout followed a familiar top-down pattern that left faculty anxious about our livelihoods and the future of our university. Given Southeastern’s continued placement on the American Association of University Professors’ censure list following the unlawful termination of tenured faculty in 2011, such fears are not irrational. When communication is limited and governance is weak, trust suffers.

Concerns about morale are further intensified by growing threats to academic freedom. Academic freedom protects the free pursuit of knowledge in service of the public good, allowing faculty to research, publish, and teach without fear of political retaliation or administrative interference.

Across the country, this principle is under attack. In states like Florida and Texas, lawmakers have passed laws restricting what can be taught in public universities, prompting administrative censorship to comply. While Louisiana has not yet enacted similar bans, many faculty at Southeastern worry that they are on the horizon, and that administrators may not stand firmly behind faculty if they do. These fears are compounded by reports of Southeastern faculty facing retaliation for exercising First Amendment rights, and by proposed changes to the academic freedom policy that would narrow protections for teaching “controversial” topics.

To the administration’s credit, the Faculty Senate was consulted on proposed academic freedom policy changes, and I am hopeful that faculty guidance will be taken seriously. Still, these concerns intersect with concerns about the new 30% goal. A faculty increasingly composed of part-time instructors—who lack job security and are excluded from shared governance—cannot meaningfully exercise academic freedom. When faculty are disposable, so too is their ability to speak freely.

Low faculty morale at Southeastern did not appear overnight. For more than a decade, Southeastern faculty have felt treated less like professionals and more like problems to be managed. This history predates the current administration, and I do not envy Drs. Wainwright and Skipper for inheriting these challenges. I appreciate Dr. Wainwright’s efforts to be more visible and engaged with faculty, and there have been positive steps forward. But rebuilding trust takes time.

Improving morale will require more than salary adjustments alone. Raises are badly needed and long overdue, but morale cannot be improved by redistributing scarcity, especially if that means laying off colleagues who contribute daily to student learning and campus life.

Ultimately, morale is about trust. Rebuilding it will require sustained commitment to shared governance, transparency in decision-making, and meaningful protection of academic freedom. If faculty are treated as partners rather than obstacles, morale will improve, and when faculty thrive, so do students and the institution as a whole.

Meanwhile, a hearing has been set for chemistry professor who was removed for connecting water pollution to heavy industry:

Last year, Dr. Fereshteh Emami was removed from her position as the lead investigator on the Lake Maurepas Monitoring Project, a Southeastern Louisiana University research project funded by Air Products & Chemicals. Her removal came immediately after media coverage of her research, which connected water pollution to heavy industry.

In theDr. Emami filed an academic freedom grievance with the university. An amended version of that grievance is attached. A hearing will be held regarding her grievance on February 20, 2026 at 10:00am at Southeastern Louisiana University, in Room 205 of Fayard Hall. The hearing will be open to media and the public.

Read Full Post »

Perhaps Pastor Bobby Green, instead of reading from the Book of Revelation on Tuesday’s meeting of the Livingston Parish Library Board of Control should take some time to instead read Ezekiel 23:20 before trying to lecture others about which books belong in the public library.

Or maybe Pastor Philip Gray (not even a resident of Livingston Parish, but Baton Rouge) should read Hosea 13:16 before urging board members to “follow God’s judgment” in their vote before advocating for the removal of the graphic novel This One Summer, a book that after 12 years on the library shelf, is suddenly controversial.

Before Dylan Whitney, who admitted he’d not even read the book but nevertheless advocated that “We should just burn the book and get rid of it forever,” maybe he ought to sit down and pour over Ruth 1:16 and 2 Samuel 1:26, 2 Samuel 16:12, 1 Samuel 18:1-5, I Samuel 20:1-23; 35-42, 1 Samuel 20:41, 1 Samuel 28:32-34 and 1 Samuel 20: 12-17; 42.

All those concerned citizens so uptight about a book should take a peek at Genesis 19:8 and 19:30-38, passages you aren’t likely to hear in your Sunday sermons.

The spineless board voted 6-3 to relocate the award-winning book to the adult section of the library despite legal advice from District Attorney Scott Perrilloux and the Tulane University Law School’s First Amendment Law Clinic, both of whom said the content of the novel does not meet the statutory definition of “sexually explicit” material in the state statute.

Livingston Parish librarian Amanda Jones, author of That Librarian, and who is pursuing a defamation lawsuit against library critics (she earlier this week won a major victory with a Louisiana Supreme Court ruling) spoke out against the board’s action but was constantly interrupted by several so-called “Christians” who attempted to shout her down.

To get an idea how absurd the hysteria has become over the library issue—on the part of people who most likely have made precious visits to the library and possibly have not read a book since the introduction of Facebook—had become, State Rep. Kellee Hennessee Dickerson was in attendance.

Dickerson had authored the 2024 House Bill 777 (maybe it should’ve been 666) which, as unbelievable as this seems, would have barred librarians from using public funds to attend American Library Association conferences. Furthermore, her bill would apparently have made such attendance a felony punishable by prison time with or without hard labor.

Sanity prevailed in that case, however, and the bill failed.

Such is the insanity that has gripped some residents of Livingston Parish, thanks in no small part to the meddling of non-resident Mike Lunsford and his Repugnantcan-funded Citizens for a New Louisiana.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems these “Christians” could better invest their time visiting patients of nursing homes, shut-ins, providing services for those in need and offering a hand to those who are suffering rather than getting their drawers in a know over books in a library.

They could even study the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy to get a handle on Mosaic Law. But they may wish to avoid reading 2 Kings 6:29. That’s a little too harsh and should probably serve to relegate the Bible to the adult or even erotic sections.

Leviticus, besides admonishing us on what clothes not to wear and what food not to eat (commandments most of us have violated and continue to violate on a regular basis), tells us in 19:33-34, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Wow, Kristi Noem needs to read that, for sure.

The point of all this is not to denigrate Christianity in particular or religion in general. That’s a deeply personal issue and our freedom to believe or not believe is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. No, the purpose of all this is remind us of Matthew 7:1. It offers great advice as does John 8:7.

In other words, turn your focus inward and stop obsessing so cotton-pickin’ much about what others are doing, thinking and saying. And most of all, quit listening to crackpots like Mike Lunsford. After all, who appointed him the guardian of decency anyway?

Read Full Post »

This is the story of a monster—a Louisiana monster who carried out his “utterly evil” acts while hiding behind the facade of piety of a so-called man of God.

It’s about the SEVEN-YEAR PRISON SENTENCE of Pentecostal pastor Milton Otto Martin III of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, more readily known as the site of 1814’s Battle of New Orleans.

Martin was sentenced after being found guilty of indecent behavior with a juvenile but acquitted of carnal knowledge

While the nation’s attention is fixated on who is or isn’t in the Jeffrey Epstein files, society turns a blind eye to a child sex-abuse scandal that literally dwarfs anything Epstein and his high-rollers pals may have done.

This is not to diminish the scope or severity of the abuses of Epstein, et al, but to turn the gaze away from them at least long enough to look at the much bigger problem of child sex-abuse by members of the clergy.

And this is not just about the sordid story of the attempt by the Catholic Church to cover up activity by hundreds of priests—we’ve read about those. It’s about a much quieter pandemic of abuse by Protestant clergy and far too many cases of SEX ABUSE IN THE POLITICAL REALM outside the Epstein circle of friends.

This is the story of one of literally thousands of church officials who shield themselves behind the cloak of decency and goodness in order to inflict a lifetime of guilt, shame, and trauma on children who have been taught to trust them because they are servants of God.

Yes, 147 lawmakers in 44 states, but that’s miniscule when compared to the 1700 CATHOLIC PRIESTS and 700 SOUTHERN BAPTIST PREACHERS implicated in DOCUMENTED SEX-ABUSE CASES.

Typically, Martin blamed his victim, now 30 but at the time only 16, claiming he was unable to resist the temptation that she presented.

It’s a time-honored fallback strategy of ministers outed for have sexual relationships with young girls, especially in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, which is not far removed from the Pentecostal faith. Invariably, it falls upon the young victim to stand before the congregation and beg forgiveness for tempting the poor pastor. And just as frequently, the congregation rallies to the minister’s side while ostracizing the young female “sinner.”

In Martin’s case, he was said to have told her at the time he was molesting her that her “world would turn upside down” if she reported his crimes, which consisted of engaging in oral sex with her and conducting indecent behavior on her between the ages of 15 and 17.

Further evidence of the rampant hypocrisy among these disciples of God, in 2025 alone, 188 ANTI-LGBQ+ SO-CALLED “CHRISTIANS” had been accused of child abuse just through early November, a number that well may have exceeded 200 by year’s end.

And lest anyone think I’m taking dead aim only at Republicans, be assured that this sickness knows no political disposition; it wraps its tenacles around REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS ALIKE.

That is what prompted me to write The Dinosaur Club, a book about child sex-trafficking throughout American society, politicians, law enforcement, Catholic, Protestant, adoption agencies, foster homes and group homes. It’s about a handful of retired newspaper reporters, all in their late 70s and early 80s who calling themselves the Dinosaurs, stumble upon a child sex-trafficking enterprise and after doing quick comb-overs, stocking up on Depends, Metamucil and blood pressure and heart medication, insert their hearing aids, grab their walkers and dentures, embark on one last writing assignment to expose the perpetrators.

The book will be out in a few weeks. The price of the book will be $30, including shipping. You may reserve your copy now by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the yellow DONATE button to pay by credit card or you may mail a check to Tom Aswell, 107 North College Street West, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70725.

Read Full Post »