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Archive for the ‘Congress’ Category

Two Louisiana elected officials, both Republicans, have demonstrated starkly contrasting examples of responsible leadership this week.

First, the good news about an elected official doing the right thing.

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler staunchly refused a request from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to provide it with highly personal information about Louisiana voters, including social security numbers, birth dates, and certain family history.

The commission was formed by President Frump in investigate what he claims was fraud in the presidential elections last November. Could anything have been so inappropriately named? It’s like calling the KKK a commission on human dignity and equal rights.

President Grump seems to think that widespread voter fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote. That claim seems a tad far-fetched, given the fact he lost the popular vote by about three million. Next thing you know, the Trumper will be trying to convince us that pro wrestling is real.

About two dozen states have refused outright to provide such information and another 20 or so have either not made a decision or only partially complied with the request.

Mark Ballard, writing in the Baton Rouge ADVOCATE, quoted Schedler as saying, “The President’s Commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that I have, time and time again, refused to release. My response to the Commission is, you’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data, and if you are, then you can purchase the limited public information available by law, to any candidate running for office. That’s it.”

Louisiana’s public voter list, Ballard wrote, includes only names, addresses, party affiliation and voter history. Voter history only indicates whether or not people participated in previous elections but not how they voted.

Schedler deserves credit for making the decision to comply with state law instead of trying to see if he could circumvent the law and cater to the wishes of a president who seems to have taken a ride on the Disoriented Express and checked into the Hotel Silly.

Too bad the same can’t be said of U.S. Rep. Clay (Barney Fife) Higgins, that rootin’-tootin’, gun-wavin’ former deputy (as in public information officer) sheriff who once threatened to single-handedly take out all the drug lords of St. Landry Parish only to wind up being forced to resign by an embarrassed sheriff.

Higgins somehow managed to get himself elected as something of a wannabe Trumpette and now the good folks of the Third District are saddled with him for the next 18 months. Surely, common sense will prevail and he will be denied a second term—unless, of course, they feel sorry for him and want to keep him in office until his $200,000 in delinquent child support payments are caught up.

In the meantime, he has advocated murdering all radical Islamics, radical being a relative term most likely applicable to all Islamics in Higgins’ demented mindset.

And now, this ignorant ass-clown has tried to turn a visit to the AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL into some kind of personal political statement in violation of posted plaques that requested respectful “mournful” silence inside the most infamous concentration camp where more than a million Jews were gassed by Nazis during World War II.

Higgins posted a video on YouTube in which he walks through different areas of the Poland camp, explaining that it took only about 20 minutes to kill the Jews inside the gas chambers. “This is why Homeland Security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible,” he said on the video.

“The world’s a smaller place now than it was in World War II,” Higgins said. “The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this. It’s hard to walk away from gas chambers, ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment, unwavering commitment, to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world.”

The Auschwitz Memorial tweeted, “Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage.”

Well, the folks at the Auschwitz Memorial need to quit wasting their time with tweets about Higgins’ lack of decorum. They have to realize that this is the country that gave the world Donald Trump and Louisiana is the state that gave the U.S. Congress Clay Higgins.

Dignity and decorum are passe to these two. You could throw both into a sack, shake it up and the only way you could tell the difference between the two when you poured them out would be the orange hair and a money clip.

Trump is an insufferable egomaniac and we may as well accept that fact. Higgins is an insufferable buffoon and we may as well accept that fact.

Higgins has been in office just a tad more than six months and he’s already making transcontinental junkets.

A mere six months in office seems a little soon for him to be taking one of those “fact-finding” trips for which members of Congress are famous.

So what I’d really like to know is this:

  • What was he doing in Poland?
  • Was he on official business?
  • If so, what was the nature of that business?
  • Or was part of the official support group for the Tweeter in Chief’s Poland trip?
  • Did U.S. taxpayers pay for that trip or did he receive a free trip from some campaign supporter or lobbyist?

Or perhaps he was just hot on the trail of a St. Landry Parish drug lord.

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As recently as 2015, Lockheed Martin LOCKHEED MARTIN, with $36.2 billion in contracts, was the single largest Pentagon contractor, more than double Boeing’s $16.6 billion.

There is little reason to believe that those numbers have changed significantly in the last two years.

With three large cost-plus contracts for testing and maintenance support services, Lockheed Martin has a commanding presence at NASA’s primary rocket propulsion facility at the STENNIS Space Center just over the Louisiana state line in Mississippi.

But as history has shown (remember the $600 toilet seats and the $100 screwdrivers?), the potential for ABUSE with such large contracts that seem to carry little apparent oversight, is overwhelming.

Now two Louisiana residents, one former Lockheed employee and the other a former contract employee for Lockheed, are bringing suit in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans under the federal FALSE CLAIMS ACT.

The two, Mark Javery of St. Tammany Parish and Brian DeJan of New Orleans, claim that they were first given no duties and then fired from their jobs after reporting cost overruns and safety and performance issues.

They are represented by Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith, III.

DeJan was a project engineer for a Lockheed subcontractor, Camgian Microsystems, Inc. He was supervised by Javery, who was an infrastructure operations manager for Lockheed. As part of their respective jobs, they were to monitor preventive maintenance metrics and to report the results of their findings to NASA employee Reginald “Chip” Ellis, Deputy Program Inspector for the Rocket Propulsion Test Program.

In April 2014, DeJan and Javery began investigating “unexplained cost overruns and performance issues with the maintenance of test facilities.”

Their lawsuit says that during their investigation, they received “credible information that maintenance and charges related to NASA’s agreement with Space Exploitation Technology were being charged “inappropriately” to the Test Operations Contract for which Lockheed was the prime contractor.

They reported their findings on April 22, 2014, to Ellis and to their immediate supervisor, Terrance Burrell.

On April 28, Lockheed Martin suspended Javery during “pendency of an informal investigation and disciplinary process,” and on April 29, Lockheed requested that Camgian remove DeJan from the Test Operations Contract “until further notice,” which Camgian did.

On May 20, Lockheed terminated Javery’s employment and requested that Camgian “remove DeJan from the Lockheed Martin contract.” Camgian terminated DeJan on May 21.

The two claim that their actions were protected under the False Claims Act, enacted in 1863 over concerns that suppliers contracted to supply the Union Army with goods were defrauding the Army.

Javery and DeJan are seeking reinstatement, double their back pay, compensation for any special damages and attorney and legal fees.

Lockheed, like most defense contractors, has a history of overcharges and the occasional penalty. In 2011, it settled a whistleblower LAWSUIT for $2 million in another False Claims Act at the Stennis Space Center.

“Companies that do business with the federal government and get paid by the taxpayers must act fairly and comply with the law,” said Tony West, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Whistleblowers have helped us to enforce the law by bringing to light schemes that misuse taxpayer dollars and abuse the public trust by undermining the integrity of the procurement process.”

West, of course, was describing life in a perfect world. In the real world, things are quite different and the “schemes that misuse taxpayer dollars and abuse the public trust” are rarely reported and even more infrequently punished.

The occasional fine is a mere fraction of illicit profits gained through overbilling and outright fraud.

That’s because no one seems to be watching and because members of Congress passionately protect the contractors domiciled in their districts.

And that’s why contractors continue to belly up to the public trough.

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When I found him this morning in the booth in the back in the corner in the dark at John Wayne Culpepper’s Lip-Smackin’ Bar-B-Que House and Used Lightbulb Emporium in Watson, Louisiana, Harley Purvis was in his usual mood, i.e. nasty.

The Greater Livingston Parish All-American Redneck Male Chauvinist Spittin’, Belchin’, and Cussin’ Society and Literary Club (LPAARMCSBCSLC) had scheduled an emergency meeting for 10 a.m. and only two of the six members (that would be Harley and me) had arrived. As president, Harley was not one to brook tardiness.

But there was something else on his mind today as I slid into the booth opposite him. I can always tell the degree of his consternation by the amount of coffee he’d consumed and the condition of the day’s newspaper. Today, I could tell he was on at least his fourth cup and the Baton Rouge Advocate looked as though a squirrel had chosen today’s edition for a nest.

You don’t rush Harley when something is weighing on his mind. He will speak when he’s ready, so I ordered a cup of John Wayne’s high-octane coffee brewed from yesterday’s leftover grounds that went down more like Number Two West Texas Crude. And I waited.

Finally he spoke.

“If you want to sum up the complete worthlessness of Congress, I can do it in two sentences,” he said.

“Based on my current income, if I retire at 65, I will qualify for about $3,500 per month in social security.”

That surprised me because I never knew Harley made that kind of income, let alone reported it to Uncle Sam. He went on.

“My wife, Wanda Bob, is a school teacher and a damn good-‘un but if I die before her, she will get maybe a couple hundred bucks a month in Social Security spousal benefits.”

“Wait, what?” I managed to stammer. Two sentences and I was floored.

“That’s right. Because Louisiana is one of 15 states in which have their own retirement systems and in which public employees do not participate in social security, there’s this thing called the Government Pension Offset (GPO) passed way back in the Carter administration.”

“Government Pension Offset?”

“Yeah. Stay with me. It was passed in 1977 and it’s called the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). It was passed ostensibly to prevent double dipping but as usual, it was passed without any real consideration of the consequences and it turned out to be a penalty for public service like the teaching profession.”

“A penalty? How so?”

“Simple. If she’d worked in the private sector at something like banking or a CPA, she would be entitled to my full Social Security benefits if I died first. Hell, even if she didn’t work at all and was a stay-at-home mom and housewife, she’d still be entitled to my full benefits. But because she chose to work as a teacher, she will penalized if I die first. Does that seem fair to you?”

I had to admit it didn’t. I asked him why something hadn’t been done to correct this egregious injustice. I should have known better than to ask.

“Hell, I can give you 535 reasons right up front!” he exploded. “That’s the 435 House members and the 100 Senators. They don’t give a rat’s patooty about us. Never have, never will. It’s like everything else they do: they give lip service but never follow through. Every member of Congress, with the possible exception of Clay Higgins and Ted Cruz is fully aware of this but they continue to sit on their butts and do zero about it. And they wonder why they have such low approval ratings.

“They’ve had bills introduced for years to do away with the WEP and enough members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors because it looks great to the folks back home. The problem is, they won’t bring it up for a vote. That’s their way to come back home when they run for re-election and to tell the good voters that they tried to help them but couldn’t get other members to go along. That’s crap but it works and they can then concentrate on raising campaign funds and catering to the special interest. Meanwhile, we’re left holding the bag.”

“What can we do about it?” I naively asked.

“Not a damned thing! You think Garrett Graves or Mike Johnson or John Kennedy or Bill Cassidy has ever given a thought to this? Hell no, there’s no campaign contributions to go with it. And Clay Higgins is such a dumbass he wouldn’t know unless it was an NRA issue. He thinks GPO stands for Guns and Preemptive Ops and WEP stands for Weapons of Extreme Prejudice.”

“That’s pretty strong,” I said, taking a sip of my now-cold coffee.

“Well, I stand by it. There are 46,000 public school teachers in Louisiana and some 60,000 other state employees and the same rules apply each one whose spouse works in the private sector and pays into Social Security. I’d guess at least 75,000 or 80,000 are adversely impacted by this B.S.

“You tell me if you think it’s fair for me to pay into Social Security all my working life, die a few months after retirement and my widow get nothing? That’s money I paid into the system and because she chose to become a teacher and worked to enrich the minds of children by teaching them to think and reason, she’s entitled to nothing. Meanwhile, my next door neighbor’s wife who chose to stay home and not work is entitled to her husband’s benefits after he dies. Is that fair?”

I had to admit it wasn’t. And he was correct: he had summed up the complete worthlessness of Congress in two sentences.

I wanted to ask more questions but two more members of LPAARMCSBCSLC had arrived, giving us a quorum. Harvey, as president, pounded his gavel, bringing the meeting to order.

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As a state and nation, we’ve lost our minds.

As weary as I get of writing one negative post after another (believe me, I’d love to write something really upbeat sometime), here I am once again wringing my hands and wondering how we ever arrived at this point in our history.

We have a president who’d rather tweet about how great he is than to actually act as a public servant.

We have a U.S. Senator (John Kennedy) who expressed a preference for weed killer over Obamacare.

We have a congressman (the Cajun Barney Fife, 3rd District Rep. Clay Higgins) who is $140,000 behind on his child support payments but who wants to kill all “radical Islamics,” even though he neglects to specify who—or what—defines “radical.”

And now we have a congressman (4th District Rep. Mike Johnson) who wants to throw teenagers in federal prison for a minimum of 15 years because he feels he is an instrument of God.

This is the same Mike Johnson, by the way, who, as a member of the Louisiana Legislature, tried to push through his “Marriage and Conscience Act.” That bill died in committee so Bobby Jindal promptly issued an executive order to enforce the act, which upheld discrimination against gays. Gov. John Bel Edwards rescinded that order last year.

Introduced by Johnson, the “Protection Against Child Exploitation Act of 2017,” would punish not only adults found guilty of sexting explicit photographs to minors, but also would subject minors found guilty of sexting to other minors to federal prison sentences of up to 15 years.

Johnson, like Higgins and Kennedy, is a Washington newcomer (all three took office in January of this year for the first time). In defending his bill, he says, “In Scripture, Romans 13 refers to the governing authorities as ‘God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.’ I, for one, believe we have a moral obligation as any just government, to defend the defenseless.”

If imprisoning teens for sexting is what he means by defending the defenseless, I shudder to think what his punishment might be, for example, for teens actually engaging in sex? And it’s not like that doesn’t occur.

So he wants to set himself as judge, jury and executioner. Well, I’m not at all comfortable with that. Who gave Mike Johnson franchise right on judging anyone’s moral code?

Okay, I know the answer to that because he’s already said so. He’s God’s servant.

Well, let’s go straight to the Good Book and review.

“But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.” (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21)

Well, there you go, Mike. And yet…and yet…didn’t Jesus rescue a prostitute from being stoned to death? I’m confused, Mike.

“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” (Psalm 137:9)

I dunno, Mike. That seems a bit extreme to me. But, hey! It’s right there in the Bible.

“Master, Moses wrote unto us, ‘If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.’” (Mark 12:19)

Guys, you may want to talk that over with your wife first. Unless, of course, you also subscribe to this little ditty:

“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection” Timothy 2:11, also translated as: “I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent.”

And, Mike, don’t expect your wife to defend you because she will be punished if she does. It says so, right here:

“When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.” (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)

By the “secrets”? Now, there’s a visual for you.

Here’s my favorite, Mike:

“For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or anything superfluous, Or a man that is broken-footed, or brokenhanded, Or crookbacked, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken. No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.” (Leviticus 21:18-21) 

So what it’s saying here, Mike, is that heaven isn’t for people like Helen Keller, Ray Charles, Franklin Roosevelt or anyone who wears glasses or contacts.

Paraphrasing, Here a few more, offered without comment:

  • Don’t have a variety of crops on the same field. (Leviticus 19:19)
  • Don’t wear clothes made of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19)
  • Don’t cut your hair nor shave. (Leviticus 19:27)
  • Any person who curseth his mother or father, must be killed. (Leviticus 20:9)
  • If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a result, he must be punished. But he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property (Exodus 21:20-21)
  • Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh (I Peter 2:18)
  • Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property (Leviticus 25:44-45)
  • When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment(Exodus 21:7-11)

So, Mike, exactly what is your position on slavery these days?

The last thing this country needs now is for some little holier-than-thou despot to assert himself as the moral police over our teenagers—or over anyone else, for that matter.

Sexting is a disgusting practice I wouldn’t want my grandkids participating in. And to be sure, it is against the law—and should be. Adults who sext minors should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. We can all agree on that. But you don’t toss a 15-year-old in federal prison for that. Like it or not, teens are going to do what teens do. Back when I was in school, They did their experimentations in the back seats of ’57 Chevys. At least they can’t get pregnant using an iPhone.

Only a sanctimonious jerk would seriously advocate federal prison for that.

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I found my friend Harley Purvis in his usual spot at John Wayne Culpepper’s Lip-Smackin’ Bar-B-Que House and Used Lightbulb Emporium in Watson, Louisiana—in the booth in the back in the corner in the dark. Also as usual, his mood matched the lighting. Not much brightens Harley’s moods these days.

Without bothering to look up as I slid into the booth opposite him, he said, “Idiots. We’re overrun with idiots.” It reminded me of Strother Martin’s line in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the outlaws fled to Bolivia to escort the payroll to the mines run by Martin. On the way down the mountain, Butch and Sundance were speculating where the banditos might be lying in ambush. “You idiots,” Martin scolded them, pointing out that they weren’t likely to be robbed going down the mountain when they had no money but on the trip back up when they would be transporting the payroll. “Imbeciles, I’m working with imbeciles,” he said as he spat a tobacco juice stream to the ground.

Without waiting for me to ask, Harley continued. “I remember when they first opened the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts up in Natchitoches. It was 1983 and it’s been the one shining star for Louisiana, something the state can be really proud of. Now they want to name it after a politician.”

The school, I already knew, was pushed hard by State Rep. Jimmy Long of Natchitoches, who passed away last August. I also knew that State Sen. Francis Thompson was pushing his SENATE BILL 1 which would rename the school as the Jimmy D. Long, Sr. Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts.

“That school has a great reputation and now they want to tack a politician’s name on it,” Harley grumped. “Is that gonna make the school better? I know Jimmy Long was the inspiration behind the creation of the school but there were others involved, too. There was State Sen. Don Kelly, Gov. Dave Treen and the Dean of the College of Education at Northwestern…what was his name?”

“Robert Alost,” I said. “His son Stan was a photographer for the Baton Rouge Advocate.”

“Yeah, whatever. Where they gonna put their names? Look what they did at Louisiana Tech, naming that Wyly Tower after Sam and Charles Wyly. Didn’t them boys get into a little trouble with the SEC and the IRS? Sam and the estate of his brother Charles owe the IRS something a little north of $3 billion, last I heard.

“Hell, why stop with that school? James Davison’s done a lot for Tech. Let’s rename it James Davison University. How about James A. Noe University in place of the University of Louisiana Monroe? Or Eddie Robinson University at Grambling?

“James Carville’s not even in the ball park wanting to erect a puny statute in honor of LSU’s first president. I say we just rename it the Gen. William T. Sherman University and get it over with.”

“What about McNeese, Nicholls State, ULL, Southeastern, UNO and Southern?” I asked.

He shot a withering look at me. “Dumbass, Nicholls and McNeese is already named after somebody. I ain’t give the others much thought yet, but I can come up with somebody appropriate if I tried. Next thing you know, somebody’s gonna have the bright idea to name Poverty Point the Francis Thompson Poverty Point State Park. An’ I bet Francis would like that. He’d probably lobby for it.”

Just as abruptly, he turned his wrath onto Congressman CLAY HIGGINS, who over the weekend, publicly advocated killing all “radicalized” Islamics. “This guy (Higgins) is a former reserve deputy city marshal and a former reserve deputy sheriff,” for God’s sake,” Harley said.

Shoving a folded newspaper at me, he pointed to the ARTICLE. I had already read the story in which Higgins advocated the killing of anyone even suspected of having links to terrorism. “The biggest problem with his plan, as I see it,” said Harley, “is that nowhere in this story does he spell out how such a suspect is to be determined. Looks to me like this former bastion of law and order is trying to set himself up to be accuser, judge and jury with no provision for due process. Does that sound like America to you?

“You know who he sounds like to me?

“Joe McCarthy,” he said, not waiting for me to reply. “He’s one of those clowns who, back in the 19th Century, would’ve sat up there in Washington and endorsed the wholesale slaughter of the American Indians. He would’ve been the first in line to put all Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII. I have a friend who calls that kind of fool an ass clown. I ain’t sure what it means, but I like the sound of it.

“Don’t get me wrong, we have to do something about these terrorist attacks. I wish I was smart enough I had the answer, but I don’t. But neither does Higgins—not with his kind of mindless B.S.

“I wonder how he feels about the radical wingnuts at Westboro Baptist Church?”

Harley noted that Higgins had once served as public information officer for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. “He made all those stupid macho PR SPOTS for television,” he said. “Called himself ‘America’s toughest cop.’ One of ‘em even went viral and was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Hell, he was a PR flack who called himself the Cajun John Wayne. Cajun Barney Fife is more like it. It got so embarrassing for the sheriff’s office, he had to resign only to be sworn in the next month as a deputy city marshal in Lafayette. Now the damn fool’s a congressman.”

“The man was sued during his campaign by his ex-wife who said he was in arrears on his child support to the tune of about 140 grand. Know what he said in response to that? If he got elected, he could afford to pay. Now that he’s in, he still hasn’t paid and his lawyer says it’s because he’s ‘busy.’ He’s busy, all right. Busy making a damn fool of himself and a laughingstock of the state.”

Harley took a long drink of coffee and set his cup down in disgust.

“Idiots. We’re overrun with idiots.”

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