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Jeff Hughes taints entire judiciary with TV ads that promote his personal philosophy but are they hiding his real agenda?

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Courts, Governor's Office, Judges, Louisiana Purchase, Politicians, Transparency on November 12, 2012| 7 Comments »

Things are not always as they seem.

Take those flag-waving, gun-loving, pro-traditional marriage, pro-life, pro-death penalty TV ads that helped propel one Jefferson Davis Hughes into the Dec. 8 runoff for the 5th District Louisiana State Supreme Court seat being vacated by the retirement of Chief Justice Kitty Kimball.

To see and hear those ads, one could reasonably come to the conclusion that Hughes is the epitome of American conservative values and that he personally was responsible for the patriotic revolution that freed the colonies from the British Crown.

One of the distasteful ads opens with the portentous voiceover saying in an appropriately ominous tone, “President Obama would never appoint Jeff Hughes to the Louisiana Supreme Court” as if that fact alone qualified him for the office—never mind the fact that Obama appoints none of the State Supreme Court justices.

That stunning opening statement is followed by the pronouncement, complete with all the patriotic fervor the unseen voice can muster that Hughes is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage. And while the ad doesn’t say so, Hughes announced at a recent forum held by the Baton Rouge League of Women Voters that he also supports the death penalty.

Thanks in large part to those slick, misty-eyed, lump-in-the-throat tributes to all that is good and holy, Hughes, with the obligatory “R” behind his name, will face Democrat Circuit Judge John Michael Guidry in next month’s runoff election.

Guidry, who chose to rely on a tactic unheard of in today’s age of electronic media and expensive political consultants/pollsters—public forums and face-to-face campaigning—had no TV ads and yet still managed to finish first in the field of eight candidates with 93,119 votes (27 percent) to 71,911 (21 percent) for Hughes.

The Hughes ads led to the question of propriety on his part because, as Baton Rouge Advocate writer Bill Lodge correctly pointed out, part of Canon 7 of the Louisiana Code of Judicial Conduct stipulates that neither a judge nor a judicial candidate shall make “any statement that would reasonably be expected to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of a mater pending in any Louisiana state court.”

And while gay marriage and gun bans have not yet made it into the Louisiana legal system, there is nothing to say they won’t. Abortion and the death penalty, however, certainly have been raised in the state’s court system.

The question then becomes, did Hughes cross the line in expressing his personal beliefs and prejudices when a judge—at any level, from city court to State Supreme Court—is charged with enforcing the law in total disregard of his own political philosophy?

In our opinion, he stepped far over that line. We feel it is entirely inappropriate for a judge to campaign like a typical political candidate—because he is not. Judges are held, necessarily, to a much higher standard—and they should be. Politicians by their nature are expected to pander to the electorate; judges, on the other hand, are supposed to be fair and impartial in administering the laws—with heavy emphasis on fair and impartial. To express a political stand so charged with controversy and legal interpretation during a campaign taints the entire judiciary.

Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a typical 5-4 split, has ruled otherwise. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s canon of judicial conduct likewise prohibited judicial candidates from advancing their views during campaigns for office but the nation’s high court said that violates the First Amendment right to free speech.

But remember, too, that the U.S. Supreme Court also gave us the Citizens United decision that says corporations are people and are thus free to make unlimited and unreported campaign contributions to secretive super PACs on behalf of favored political candidates.

The Citizens United decision only served to intensify the growing tsunami of secretive campaign contributions funneled through political action committees so we, the citizenry, have no idea who the financial power brokers are behind the candidate(s) seeking our votes.

Campaign finance has evolved into such insanity that when we make a paltry $100 contribution to our favored candidate’s campaign, we may eventually find ourselves pitted against the interests of a corporation that plowed $100,000 into that same candidate’ campaign through some super PAC. When that issue—us against say, banks or credit card companies or environmental polluters—comes to a committee or floor vote, which way do you think our “favored candidate” will vote?

All this brings us back to those cheesy ads that could just be a smokescreen to conceal more sinister underlying issues.

Hughes received only about $44,000 in campaign contributions and $10,200 of that was money he transferred from funds remaining from a prior campaign. He also loaned his campaign $250,000 but even that was not nearly enough to cover the glut of television spots and the widespread mail-outs.

So who paid for that advertising?

One report said that the Citizens for Clean Water and Land http://www.cleanwaterandland.com/ ponied up the money.

It’s an innocuous sounding name and seems to express a goal to which we all aspire but even such noble-appearing endeavors as clean water and land can have underpinnings of greed and objectives of enrichment through political proximity.

Citizens for Clean Water and Land was established by John Carmouche and other plaintiff attorneys for the apparent purpose of influencing the outcome of the Supreme Court race and for paving the way for a favorable ruling by that court at some time in the future.

During the legislative session earlier this year, Carmouche was front and center in the battle to resist reforms in the handling of Louisiana’s so-called legacy lawsuits, http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/may/31/legacy-lawsuit-compromise-sent-to-governors-desk/ an issue that now appears headed for the courts. Carmouche and other plaintiff attorneys were opposed to the reform legislation because it made it more difficult to recover damages against oil companies.

Legacy lawsuits deal with the extent of cleanup of environmental damage caused by the practices of oil producers in the state decades ago.

The reform effort was initiated in part as a result of a $72 million judgment against Shell Oil for its failure to clean up property owned by the family of Lake Charles attorney Michael Veron.

In short, no matter what your position may be on the issue of oilfield cleanup, do we really need a State Supreme Court justice whose campaign is bankrolled by special interests (read: plaintiff attorneys) who feel the need to grease the skids in the hope that their case will eventually make its way before that same Louisiana Supreme Court?

The hidden agenda in this race then would appear to come down to three words:

Influence for sale.

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Romney loss is (he thinks) the perfect opportunity for Piyush presidential run so don’t look for him here for next 3 years

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, Prison, Privatization on November 7, 2012| 7 Comments »

Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama on Tuesday may have provided the perfect opportunity for Gov. Piyush Jindal and de facto governor Timmy Teepell (or so they must certainly be thinking right about now).

Sure, Jindal did the dutiful thing and ran around the country like the proverbial chicken with its head chopped off, talking to throngs of avid Romney supporters that sometimes numbered as many as a dozen or so.

And sure, he said all the right things at those massive gatherings.

But deep down, you have to know that Jindal and Teepell are smirking just a little right now and have already begun their drive to the White House for 2016.

Jindal is an impatient man as witnessed by his rush to push through a radical education agenda and his attempt to completely revamp the state retirement system even though his plan would have cut some state employees’ pensions by as much as 85 percent (and the vast majority of state employees do not qualify for social security because they have never worked in the private sector and state employees don’t pay into the system).

Nor will the vast majority of state employees qualify for Medicare for the same reason. But that fact did nothing to stop him from slashing Medicaid.

Jindal also rushed through his plan to privatize state government, beginning with the ill-fated takeover of the Office of Risk Management by F.A. Richard and Associates (FARA) of Mandeville at an initial contract cost of $68 million to the state. Eight months into its contract, FARA was requesting a $6.8 million amendment to its contract. That was precisely 10 percent of the original contract amount. There is an obscure regulation that allows a one-time amendment to contracts for up to—you guessed it—10 percent.

But wait! There’s more! Less than a month after the contract was bumped up to nearly $75 million, FARA upped and sold the contract to an Ohio company who kept it for about four months before selling it to a New York company.

There was a hitch in all those transactions but again, did it slow Jindal down? Not a bit. That hitch was a clause in the FARA contract that supposedly prohibited the transfer of the contract without prior written approval of the Division of Administration (DOA). When asked for a copy of that prior written approval, DOA responded without a shred of concern and even less of an explanation that no such document existed.

Jindal has plowed headlong into a policy of closing state hospitals with little or no concern of the effects it has to area residents who rely on the hospitals for treatment of injuries, disease and mental illness.

He has been similarly reckless in his closures of state prisons, throwing hundreds of state employees out of work. In both the hospital and prison closures, he has neglected to give area legislators a heads-up before taking the action to close the facilities, an oversight over which lawmakers continue to seethe.

He has attempted with equal urgency to enter into a contract with Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) as a third party administrator (TPA) for the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) medical coverage for about 62,000 state employees, retirees and dependents.

Facing certain defeat of the proposed contract at the hands of the House Appropriations Committee last week, Jindal’s new Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols abruptly pulled the proposal from the agenda of the joint meeting between the Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.

It was a less than auspicious coming out party for his new commissioner of administration. A smashing debut for Nichols it was not.

But the administration is back for another attempt this Friday at 8:30 a.m. The makeup of the Appropriations Committee will be slightly different, however, after last week’s Black Friday purge of the committee by Jindal.

And make no mistake, while it was House Speaker Chuck “Genuflecting Gelding” Kleckley (R-Lake Charles) who announced the removal of Reps. Cameron Henry of Metairie and Joseph Harrison of Gray, the word came from Jindal—or Teepell. Both Henry and Harrison are Republicans but both also violated the cardinal rule against questioning anything put before them by Pontiff Piyush.

Harrison said as much when he revealed that the administration historically provides questions to committee members that they are allowed to ask. At the same time, he said, they are instructed not to deviate from the list by asking any questions other than those on the list.

So now Jindal is making one final push to get his contract with BCBS approved.

It’s doubtful he will make a personal appearance; he almost always sends his flunkies to carry the water for him.

It’s also doubtful if Nichols will repeat last week’s faux pas of tell committee members she would “dumb down” her explanation of the proposed contract for the benefit of lawmakers. It’s one thing to close a hospital or prison without informing the legislators in the area. It’s quite another to sit before them and call them dumb to their faces.

The point of all this is this: don’t look for Piyush in Baton Rouge in the remaining three-plus years of his term of office. He’s not likely to be spending much time in his fourth floor office.

A quick drive through on Wednesday revealed that Teepell’s Jeep was parked—as always—in the back parking lot of the State Capitol. This is a former Jindal staff member who resigned more than a year ago to run the Southern office of OnMessage, a Maryland political consulting firm. OnMessage has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Jindal’s campaign fund over recent years but more than a year after Teepell opened that Baton Rouge office, there still is no local address or telephone number for the firm.

If Teepell is doing anything at all for OnMessage, he is doing it—as a private citizen—from the State Capitol’s fourth floor governor’s office. We have mentioned this on at least two other occasions but still the attorney general and the inspector general’s offices have done nothing to bring the misuse of the public office for private purposes to an end.

But the boy wonder we know as Piyush is about to hit the road in a fundraising blitz that will, in all likelihood, dwarf that of his re-election fundraising efforts of a year ago.

He is going to be running full time for president and he is an impatient man. He did not want to wait eight years wasting his valuable time in some obscure federally appointed position in the Romney administration (though doubtless he would have taken a higher profile position if it could keep his name in the forefront). He will serve next year as head of the National Republican Governor’s Association. That will keep his name out there while he ramps up his fundraising efforts.

Now, though, he can hold to the office (in theory if not in reality) of governor of Louisiana for three years while keeping his travel itinerary full. His term will end in January, 2016—just in time for him to become a full time candidate.

Even as he does so, however, there is a significant lesson to be learned from Tuesday’s results—a lesson quite likely overlooked by JindalTeepell.

The Democrats learned from the Reagan landslides that it was going to have to move from the far left more towards the center in order to gain the acceptance and trust of the American electorate. It did and the result was Bill Clinton.

Likewise, to gain the trust of the American people, the Republican Party is going to have shed itself of the stigma it now carries as a refuge for the Tea Partiers. Simply put, the GOP is going to have to shift away from the right right, becoming less a haven for the extremists with more appeal to the centrists.

Unfortunately for Piyush (and perhaps fortunately for the rest of us), he seems incapable of making such a shift. He has shown himself to be stubborn, obstinate and convinced of his own infallability. He is simply unwilling to compromise and that, in the end, will be his undoing.

In the meantime, don’t look for him in Baton Rouge during the next three years.

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Angelle’s performance before congressional committee embarrassing; Ponti embellishes his accomplishments

Posted in BESE, Campaign Contributions, Commissions, Governor's Office, Politicians on November 5, 2012| 11 Comments »

Editor’s note:

Within a couple of hours of posting this story, LouisianaVoice received a telephone call. The display on our phone indicated it was from one Holly Boffy. Boffy is the District 7 member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). That is in the southwest corner of Louisiana. Why would she be calling us? we wondered.

It turns out that it was a robocall on behalf of the candidacy of Scott Angelle for the District 2 Public Service Commission seat.

So, why was a BESE member from the Lake Charles area allowing her telephone to be used on behalf of a Public Service Commission candidate from the Baton Rouge area? In all likelihood, she doesn’t know bean dip about the machinations of the Public Service Commission.

The answer is simple.

Boffy, of Youngsville, Louisiana, received two $2,500 campaign contributions in her run for office last fall from Jindal—one on Aug. 25 and a second on Aug. 29. Angelle was originally appointed by former Gov. Kathleen Blanco but held over by Jindal as Secretary of Natural Resources—until he abandoned his post in the middle of the crisis over that toxic sinkhole on Bayou Corne in Assumption Parish.

Connect the dots.

The Piyush Jindal dynasty won’t be satisfied until it has complete control of the state, every agency, board and commission, from top to bottom.

Read on:

Whatever your sentiments about the resumption of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, voters in Louisiana Public Service Commission District 2 would do well to examine the records of the top two contenders in Tuesday’s election to replace retiring commission member and Vice-chairman James Field.

In spite of the erroneous claim by one crackpot blogger that Scott Angelle faked that TV ad showing him addressing thousands of rabid supporters (oh, wait; that was LouisianaVoice, wasn’t it?), it is still worthwhile to take a close look at the candidate. His performance before a congressional committee nearly a year following BP’s disastrous Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 men and injured 17 others and which produced a oil spill that spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf over a three-month period would be comical were it not so pathetic.

At the time of his questioning by Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) during the March 16, 2011, hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee, Angelle was Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

He recently resigned that position in the midst of the still-ongoing Bayou Corne sinkhole disaster in northern Assumption Parish to seek the District 2 Public Service Commission seat, leaving it to others to grapple with a potentially disastrous situation that has produced the sinkhole that is now more than five acres in size and which has caused the evacuation of scores of residents.

Nor has his former boss, Gov. Piyush Jindal shown his face at the sinkhole site despite his propensity to seek camera face time anytime an oil spill or hurricane threatens the state. That’s because the Bayou Corne situation came about because of permits issued on his watch.

And lest we be accused of being a shill for his leading opponent, State Rep. Erich Ponti, rest assured we have some pointed remarks about his misleading TV ad campaign as well.

Besides touting his business acumen, Ponti makes the claim in his ads that he balanced the state budget which, for those even vaguely familiar with the Louisiana legislative process, is an outrageous claim, a preposterous misrepresentation.

First of all, state law mandates that the legislature pass a balanced budget. Unlike Congress, the legislature is forbidden from approving a deficit budget. So, Ponti and his 104 colleagues in the House and the 39 in the Senate in reality had no choice in balancing the budget. It is a claim that each of the other 143 legislators have just as much right as Ponti to make—none.

Second, Ponti is not even a member of any of the House committees that consider the budget before it goes to the House floor. He is chairman of the House Commerce Committee, but it does not consider the budget. Neither does the House Committee on Homeland Security or the Joint Committee on Homeland Security, on both of which he sits. Nor does the Capital Region Legislative Delegation or the Louisiana Republican Legislative Delegation, the two caucuses of which he is a member.

He is not a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Nor is he a member of the Joint Budget Committee or even the Legislative Budget Control Committee.

So, any claim on his part that he had a hand in balancing the state budget is, at best, disingenuous and at worst, an outright lie.

But back to that hearing in March of 2011:

Here are excerpts from the questioning by Markey, the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, and Angelle’s responses:

• Markey, discussing safety comparisons that show better safety records for rigs in European waters than those in U.S. waters even though the same companies were operating in each, asked: “Don’t you think we need to insure that these rigs are operating safely in order to protect lives of workers on these rigs? Don’t you think that the safety recommendations of the BP Commission should be implemented?”

• Angelle: “I’m not familiar with the safety recommendations.”

• Markey: “You haven’t analyzed the recommendations?”

• Angelle: “I have not.”

• Markey: “Given your job, don’t you think you should’ve looked at those safety recommendations?”

• Angelle: “I have not analyzed those recommendations, sir.”

• Markey: “Could you analyze them and give a set of responses to the safety recommendations back to the committee?”

• Angelle: Sir, I have not analyzed all those recommendations. I will tell you that in my comments, I indicated it would not be business as usual and we support it not being business as usual.”

• Markey: “Does that include implementing the safety recommendations of the BP Commission?”

• Angelle: “I am not aware of all of the safety recommendations of the BP Commission.”

• Markey: “Are you aware of any of the safety recommendations of the BP Commission?”

• Angelle: “I am aware of some of the safety recommendations, yes sir.”

• Markey: “Are there any of those safety recommendations that you recommend be implemented? Can you tell us what those are?”

• Angelle: “I would just simply say that generally, I believe that repetitive safety measures as…blow out preventers and those kinds of things are very important. I certainly understand containment issues (as) being very, very important but I would say again that having the new regulations that have been promulgated, we are now at a point that the industry has demonstrated to the government the ability…”

• Markey: “Even though you are not familiar with the safety recommendations of the BP Commission, you’re ready to say it’s safe and people should go out there, is that what you’re saying?”

• Angelle: That’s not what I said. I said that it’s my understanding that the Bureau of Ocean Energy has promulgated new rules and regulations and the industry has demonstrated an ability to comply with those and now is the time to begin issuing permits inasmuch as industry has begun to comply with those recommendations.”

• Markey: “And they issued those recommendations last month. So we’re ready to go. Are you satisfied with the recommendations that were promulgated by the…”

• Angelle: “It’s not for me to be satisfied. I come here not to blame but to bring about a solution and that is the industry has demonstrated an ability and we need a sense of urgency in issuing permits.”

• Markey: “In your testimony, you say that seven rigs have already left the Gulf since the moratorium was declared. But according to the Department of the Interior, at least four of these seven rigs have returned to the Gulf in 2011 and five new rigs have already arrived or are scheduled to. Overall, there are 125 (rigs) in the Gulf of Mexico today compared to 122 one year ago. Doesn’t it misrepresent what is happening in the Gulf to only mention the rigs that have left without mentioning the new ones that have come in?”

• Angelle: I would say that whatever new ones that have come in, they are not working. It’s just inventory and it’s like having automobiles on a lot; you can have a lot of automobiles on the lot but if you’re not selling them, you’re not creating economic activity.”

• Markey: “But we have the new regulations and we’re ready to go and the administration is now issuing new leases and the rigs are returning. These companies are capitalists; they are returning and new ones are arriving, so it represents a confidence on the oil industry in what is happening or else they would not be returning and they would not be adding new rigs.”

• Angelle: “The Obama administration is not issuing new leases. The Lease sales scheduled for this year have been cancelled.”

• Markey: “I do not think oil companies are sending rigs back just to sit idle. That’s not how oil companies operate. They’re sending them back because there are new opportunities for them.”

So what this race boils down to—or at least what it should boil down to is these two questions:

• If Scott Angelle would walk into a congressional hearing totally unprepared to discuss something as important as proposed safety regulations for offshore drilling—an issue that was certain to impact the Louisiana economy and hundreds of jobs for Louisiana workers—what makes voters think he would adequately prepare himself for such matters as utility rate increases and regulations for, say, the trucking industry in Louisiana as a member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission?

• Is Scott Angelle simply being opportunistic in trying to set himself up for a run at the governor’s office in 2015?

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3rd Congressional District incumbent candidates Landry and Boustany saw big increases in wealth while serving in office

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Politicians on October 29, 2012| 3 Comments »

There’s an old joke about an honest congressman who refused to take advantage of his position to enrich himself and was defeated for re-election because his constituents considered him too stupid to hold elective office.

If that is the case for Louisiana’s redrawn 3rd Congressional District, voters are going to be in a real quandary next Tuesday when it comes time to choose between the two incumbents. Not to trivialize the campaign of Democrat Ron Richard, but realistically, this race is between Republicans Ron Landry and Charles Boustany.

Campaign contributions certainly bear that analysis out: Boustany has received about $3 million in contributions to Landry’s $1.8 million while Richard has pulled in only $53,000, according to figures provided by OpenSecrets.org, an online campaign tracking organization.

But the real story may lie in how both Landry and Boustany have seen their fortunes grow while serving in Congress.

The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics recently published an analysis of the financial health of each of the 535 members of the House and Senate and the report showed that all but two of Louisiana’s eight-member congressional delegation (six Congressmen and two Senators) saw their bottom lines increase significantly since taking office.

In the 3rd Congressional District, the two Republican frontrunners saw their wealth increase much more dramatically—262 percent for Boustany and 233 percent for Landry.

But Landry did it in much shorter time—from $2.5 million in 2009 to $8.2 million just a year later.

Boustany’s wealth was listed at $1.4 million in 2010, up from $400,000 in 2004.

Put another way, Boustany had a $1 million increase in his estimated wealth over a six-year period compared to an increase of $5.7 million in a single year for Tea Party incumbent Landry.

Both men are pitted against each other in the redrawn district that resulted in the loss of one seat in Congress.

Boustany serves on the House Ways and Means Committee which, among other things, handles commercial matters that include trade agreements, revenue measures and transportation of durable goods. It also oversees social security, Medicare and Medicaid, and passage of highway and farm bills.

His five largest contributors, by industry, include health professionals, $284,725; insurance, $151,700; oil and gas, $127,550; health services/HMOs, $115,300, and lobbyists, $95,067.

Landry serves on the House committees on Natural Resources, Transportation and Infrastructure and Small Business.

His five biggest contributors, by industry, include sea transport, $128,550; oil and gas, $124,416; retired, $52,600; crop production and basic processing, $44,600, and general contractors, $34,250.

The Washington Post story said investments by members of Congress range from riskier, high-growth funds to safer municipal bonds. While lawmakers range from the super-rich to the deep-in-debt, they generally don’t get rich simply by virtue of their membership in Congress. On the other hand, wealthy candidates who go to Congress seem to get richer while serving.

The wealthiest one-third of members were for the most part immune from the recent recession. They took the fewest financial hits and saw their investments recover rather quickly, even rising to new heights, the report said. Another 121 were worse off in 2010 than they were six years before and 24 actually reported their wealth in negative numbers.

The seamier side of congressional wealth is reflected in the fact that 73 members (almost 14 percent) either sponsored or co-sponsored legislation that benefited businesses or industries in which either they or family members had a financial interest.

Others leveraged their positions to lucrative positions in the private sector upon leaving Congress.

Two such congressmen were from Louisiana.

Richard Baker of Baton Rouge was a former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Capital Markets Subcommittee before resigning in January of 2008 to accept a hedge fund lobbying position with the Managed Funds Association.

Billy Tauzin of Chackbay helped ram through the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill which, among other things, prohibited Medicare from negotiating prices on prescription drugs set by pharmaceutical companies. He did not seek re-election in 2004 and the following year took a job as head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a power lobbying group for the pharmaceutical industry.

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Angelle rallies Cajundome crowd in PSC TV spot, attracts campaign money from companies regulated by commission

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Ethics, Governor's Office, LSU, Politicians on October 21, 2012| 19 Comments »

Former Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources Scott Angelle, who resigned his post right in the middle of the deepening crisis with the Assumption Parish sinkhole to run for the District 2 seat on the Louisiana Public Service Commission, has been running a curious television ad in the 12-parish district.

He is running to succeed current commissioner James Field whose term ends on Dec. 31. Field, vice-chairman of the commission, is not seeking re-election.

The district includes all the parishes of East and West Feliciana, Iberia, Lafayette, Lafourche, St. Mary and Terrebonne, and parts of East and West Baton Rouge, Iberville, Livingston and St. Martin.

Angelle’s agency was aware of possible problems with a salt dome in Assumption Parish nearly two years ago, yet he never alerted local officials. The sinkhole in the parish’s Bayou Corne community began forming on Aug. 3 and 150 area families were forced to evacuate. Angelle resigned four days later to run for PSC.

Today, the sinkhole, which has been the site of several earth tremors, is the size of several football fields—and growing.

The Department of Natural Resources issued a permit to Texas Brine to begin exploration of the dome to see if it could be mined. That permit was issued in May of 2010, just about the same time that Angelle left DNR temporarily to become interim lieutenant governor.

As soon as the sinkhole developed in August, Angelle resigned.

And curiously, Gov. Piyush Jindal has yet to make an appearance at the site of the disaster which has displaced hundreds of residents. If there are no hurricanes or Gulf oil spills, there are no national television network news cameras; ergo, no Jindal and now no Scott Angelle.

Instead, what we have been treated to is a well-edited television ad depicting Angelle as the savior of the offshore oil industry.

In this ad, you are treated to sound bites from a fiery Angelle speech about the federal offshore drilling moratorium. It’s bad enough that he sounds like the stereotypical southern politician as depicted in so many uncomplimentary old movies (the only things missing are the bourbon, the string bow tie, the white cotton suit and the spats), but the speech never happened.

But we jumped the gun and we’re not above admitting when we are wrong.

Contrary to our initial skepticism over the validity of the ad’s content, it now appears that he did indeed make the speech as depicted in his cheesy ad. It was at Lafayette’s Cajundome and the 15,000 or so in attendance were worked into an emotional lather, albeit before Angelle had taken the stage. We concede as much now. The fact that he was only one of several speakers should not detract from his soul-stirring rhetoric that was enough to conjure up memories of the Kingfish, Earl Long and George Wallace.

But make no mistake about it, it is all cheap theatrics. And make no mistake about this: Angelle had precious little to do with fighting President Obama on the drilling moratorium or with Obama’s subsequent lifting of the moratorium. That fight was led by Jindal and Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter in a rare cooperative effort.

But the ad certainly makes Angelle look like a champion of the people, a true demagogue.

When Jindal took office in 2008, he retained Angelle, who was appointed DNR secretary by former Gov. Kathleen Blanco in 2004. In 2010, Jindal chose Angelle to serve as interim lieutenant governor when former Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu was elected mayor of New Orleans.

Accordingly, it would not seem much of a stretch to assume that Angelle would remain loyal to Jindal should he be elected to the PSC in November, thus extending the governor’s reach into yet another state agency.

After all, as a couple of readers comment below, immediately after Angelle’s resignation as DNR secretary, Jindal appointed him to the LSU Board of Supervisors, thus tightening his control over the board even more.

Moreover, Jindal, as our readers so quickly pointed out, also made Angelle his legislative liaison to work on behalf of oil companies who were fighting the so-called “legacy lawsuits.” The resulting legislation weakened landowners’ power to force oil companies to clean up lease sites upon leaving the sites.

Now Angelle wants to “regulate” those same companies on whose behalf he worked so diligently to weaken landowner rights.

A closer look at just who is supporting his campaign is quite revealing and offers a much clearer picture of just where Angelle’s loyalties might lie if elected.

The Public Service Commission has jurisdiction over publicly-owned utilities providing electric, water, wastewater, natural gas, and telecommunication services, as well as all the electric cooperatives in Louisiana. The LPSC also regulates intrastate transportation services including passenger carrier services, waste haulers, household goods carriers, non-consensual towing, and intrastate pipelines.

No fewer than 85 such companies or persons affiliated with industries regulated by the PSC have contributed between $1,000 and $5,000 to Angelle’s campaign since his August resignation.

Altogether, those 85 have combined to pour more than $230,000 into his campaign coffers in less than three months.

Those contributors include energy, towing, communications and transportation companies, an ambulance service, oil and gas exploration companies, shale oil fracking companies and four companies owned by Jindal’s latest appointment to the LSU Board of Supervisors Lee Mallett of Iowa, Louisiana.

Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

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