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Iraqiscam only part of the Billy Nungesser story; there is so very much more: what a man, what a legend, what a shame!

Posted in Auditor, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Lawsuits, Politicians, Public Records, Supriya Jinda Foundation on April 18, 2016| 9 Comments »

Iraqi oil scams, critical compliance audits, litigation over the misappropriation of public funds, questionable land deals, botched Wal Mart deal involving Bobby Jindal’s father-in-law.

They’re all just another day at the office for Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser.

When Baton Rouge Advocate reporters Rebekah Allen and Richard Thompson did some good old-fashioned journalistic digging last week to report that hysterical Iraqi oil scam perpetrated by Nungesser and political ally State Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere, it threw LouisianaVoice into a scramble mode. http://theadvocate.com/news/politics/15398751-125/lt-gov-billy-nungesser-gop-chairman-roger-villere-work-to-recruit-unlikely-iraq-to-louisiana-busin

In short order we found that Nungesser and Villere had fallen for a similar con run by the same company (Alexandros, a corporation registered in Delaware), but instead of the State of Louisiana and Nungesser and Villere, the targets were the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and former Baton Rouge Metro Council member Darrell Glasper. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/04/12/louisiana-has-a-new-clown-prince-but-its-egg-not-a-pie-all-over-lt-gov-nungessers-face-after-succession-of-blunders/

But by the time the light came on in Nungesser’s head, Krusty had already been cued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzLHU6S4oic

By then, however, it was too late. He had fired off letters to Secretary of State John Kerry, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones and to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and even issued a press release to (thankfully) only one news outlet, The Washington Post which (again, thankfully) did not run with the story.

Oh, and he also passed himself off as the one man in state government responsible for economic development (quick: someone let Secretary of Economic Development Secretary Donald Pierson know) and he said he was acting on the directive of Gov. John Bel Edwards (he wasn’t).

Sources tell LouisianaVoice that when Edwards heard about the two-man theater of the absurd, he had two state troopers interrupt Nungesser during an address to a group of businessmen and escort him to the governor’s office where he had a little come-to-Jesus meeting with Edwards. We weren’t able to get a confirmation or denial of that story

Nungesser, of course, did the only logical thing: he first blamed his staff, saying the letters should never have reached his desk. He then tried to throw Villere under the bus by saying the state GOP chairman had requested the letters from him. Finally, in an appearance on the Jim Engster radio show, he said the letters were in the middle of a stack of thank-you notes and he didn’t actually read them.

Did he learn his lesson? Apparently not. Even after the Iraqi letter-writing frenzy blew up in his face, he then told another group that Edwards had put him in charge of coastal restoration.

Nice.

Trying to imagine Nungesser sitting at his desk feverishly signing all those thank-you notes, it’s difficult not to visualize Gov. William J. Lepetomane signing a succession of documents handed him by aide Hedley Lamarr in the movie Blazing Saddles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm1Jyusyoqk

Back during those heady days as Plaquemines Parish President, Nungesser decided he’d like to bring a brand spanking new Wal Mart to the lot at the corner of LA. 23 and LA. 406 in Belle Chasse.

The only problem was there was a moratorium on big box stores on the books that the parish council had passed and by the time it expired about a year later, the tide of opinion on the council had turned against Nungesser’s proposal.

The land in question was—and is—owned by several former employees of Freeport McMoRan, one of whom is Jatinder (Jay) Jolly.

Jolly is the father of Supriya Jindal, wife of former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

After the deal collapsed, only a small building owned by Freeport McMoRan sat on the property but now it has been torn down and only a concrete slab remains, leading to speculation that the Wal Mart proposal may be resurrected.

A 2010 compliance AUDIT conducted by the Legislative Auditor’s Office while Nungesser still served as parish president is especially telling.

A compliance audit is different from a routine annual audit in that a compliance audit is an audit for compliance of laws, regulations and other guidelines that a governmental entity is required to follow.

In short, the compliance audit found that:

  • The Parish may have violated the parish Charter and a local ordinance by entering into two contracts pertaining to recovery operations.
  • The Parish Administration may have violated the Local Government Budget Act by not including Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants within the Parish budget.
  • The Parish’s attorney may not be properly approved by the Council as required in the Parish Charter.
  • The Parish President (Nungesser) may have violated the Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics through real estate transactions between his trust and the owners of two Parish vendors.

In that last finding, auditors said in January 2008, the owners of two companies doing business with the parish “were also involved in a private real estate transaction with a trust whose beneficiary is Parish President William Nungesser. These transactions may constitute a violation of the Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics and therefore will be referred to the Board of Ethics for its consideration.”

Since Nungesser was a political ally of Jindal and the Board of Ethics members are appointed by Jindal, nothing came of that referral.

Nungesser, in typical fashion, saw no fault in his actions and fired off a defiant 12-page letter of response to the state auditor in which he painted himself as the savior of a parish devastated by hurricanes and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He even managed to tell auditors what their job was in his response, saying they had “no authority” to second-guess his decision as to when a state of emergency was ended.

If he could find no fault, members of the Plaquemines Parish Council certainly could (with the exception of Council Chairman Kirk Lepine.)

On Oct. 15, just nine days before the Oct. 24 primary election last fall, the Plaquemines Parish Government filed suit against Nungesser in 25th Judicial District Court in Plaquemines Parish.

The lawsuit accuses Nungesser of causing “the misappropriation of public property and public services” by having Plaquemines Parish employees perform work on private property.

The suit says he ordered parish employees of the Heavy Equipment Department to transport limestone, sand aggregate and asphalt belonging to the parish to two private roads in the parish and to cut trees and dig out a drainage ditch prior to installing a drain pipe with an 8-by-20-foot culvert and then backfill on private property on LA. 23 in Belle Chasse.

Now Lepine has offered up a motion for the parish to drop the lawsuit.

Perhaps it’s only coincidence that Lepine’s stepdaughter works for Nungesser.

CLOWN IN CHIEF

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Louisiana has a new Clown Prince but it’s egg, not a pie all over Lt. Gov. Nungesser’s face after succession of blunders

Posted in Business, Cartoons, Contract, Contracts, Earl Long, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, Governor's Office, Huey Long, Incentives, Media, Politicians, Public Records on April 12, 2016| 23 Comments »

CONSEQUENCES OF VOTING

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR:

Melvin L. “Kip” Holden (DEM)             Defeated         506640            45%

“Billy” Nungesser (REP)                     Elected            628876            55%

Turnout: 40.2% 

We’re not yet halfway through the 2016 legislative session in which lawmakers and Gov. John Bel Edwards are struggling to close a $2 billion budget gap for the coming fiscal year but attention has been diverted from that knotty problem by one of the most bizarre political behavior since Earl Long’s mental crash of 1959, accompanied by a whirlwind tour of the Southwest and his fling with stripper Blaze Starr.

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser fell for a phishing scam that’s been around at least three years and in doing so, proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that Louisiana’s electoral legacy of a revolving door for scalawags, con men, thieves and clowns is securely intact. And while we’re at it, let’s not leave out outright idiots and demagogues.

You’d think we had at least partially rid ourselves of that ilk with the exit of Bobby Jindal, but you’d be oh, so wrong. There apparently is no shortage of egos or stupidity to go around and sadly, we keep electing them. The legislature is riddled with those who have set themselves apart from reality.

Thanks to the diligence of Baton Rouge Advocate reporters Rebekah Allen and Richard Thompson, we are now assured that Billy Nungesser is heir-apparent to the title of Chief Clown in residence—a worthy successor to Jindal, we might add.

The two reporters on Sunday (April 10) broke an astonishing story that Nungesser, abetted by state Republican Chairman Roger Villere, not only fell for a huge scam involving a supposed agreement between a Delaware-based corporation, a Lake Charles refinery, and the Iraqi government, but he did it without the knowledge or consent of Gov. John Bel Edwards on whose behalf he claimed he was acting. http://theadvocate.com/news/politics/15398751-125/lt-gov-billy-nungesser-gop-chairman-roger-villere-work-to-recruit-unlikely-iraq-to-louisiana-busin

For sheer audacity, it even surpassed Huey Long’s classic “Round Robin” pledge by 15 senators to block his impeachment back in 1929. Huey, after all, was battling for his political life while Nungesser was only feeding his inflated ego like a ravenous wolf devouring a fresh deer carcass. And he fed it with a story that had no basis in fact. And he did it for all the world to see. And then he apologized. Sort of.

While Baton Rouge was metaphorically wiping its eyes and laughing at this buffoon, we did a quick Internet search and found that a former East Baton Rouge parish councilman and failed mayoral candidate fell for a variation of the same scheme involving the same Delaware corporation three years ago. More about that later.

First, here is what has transpired thus far:

  • Villere, the state GOP brain bust…er, trust, apparently approached Nungesser for a new billion-dollar deal that involved a plan by Alexandros, Inc. http://alexandrosinc.com/index.html to partner with Pelican Refinery of Lake Charles http://www.pelican-refinery.com/index.html in signing a 25-year agreement to become the exclusive shipping company for the Iraqi government’s oil marketing arm, interchangeably called the State Organization for Marketing Oil and the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO). The plan called for the transporting of up to 150 million barrels of Iraqi oil each month. http://www.alexandrosinc.com/shipping.html
  • Alexandros, headed by CEO Markos Fuson of California, proposed reopening the former Avondale Shipyard on the Mississippi River near New Orleans. The facility shut down in 2014.
  • Alexandros also proposed building more than 40 new ships, “super-tankers,” capable of hauling 200 million barrels of oil per month.
  • Fuson supposedly committed to investing 100 percent of his profits from the venture in Louisiana’s motion picture industry and to then invest his share of film profits into an as-yet-to-be-created charitable foundation that would provide education, health care and housing assistance to Louisiana’s minorities.
  • Pelican Refining’s role in the scenario was unclear, given the fact the Lake Charles facility only produces asphalt and road oil. It has not processed sweet or heavier crude oil in more than a decade, The Advocate quoted the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources as saying.

If all that sounds implausible enough, consider this: Nungesser, salivating over the prospects of establishing himself as the state’s economic emancipator, then took matters into his own hands. In quick succession, he:

  • Issued a press release in March saying that Iraqi’s export agency had signed off on Alexandros’s request to partner with Pelican Refining to purchase light and heavy crude oil from SOMO.
  • Inexplicably sent the press release only to the Washington Post which, recognizing a con when it saw one, chose not to publish the release.
  • Represented himself in the news release as well as in letters to representatives of the Department of State and to Iraqi officials as Louisiana’s economic development recruiter (he’s not; that duty falls to the Secretary of Economic Development, in this case, Donald Pierson). “The honorable governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, has given me a directive to expedite economic stimulus for the state of Louisiana,” Nungesser lied in his letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, adding, “This request for Your Excellency’s advocacy is part of my office’s effort to fulfill that directive.”
  • Wrote similar letters to Stuart Jones, ambassador to Iraq, and to Secretary of State John Kerry in which he again passed himself off as the state’s key economic development leader. “It is with sincere gratitude that I, Billy Nungesser, as the lieutenant governor of the state of Louisiana, respectfully request the Department of State’s additional advocacy to the Republic of Iraq on behalf of the state of Louisiana,” he wrote to Kerry and Stuart.
  • Said in his letters that he copied Edwards with all correspondence. Not so, said a spokesman for the governor’s office, who said Edwards never received a copy.
  • With egg all over his face, denied reading, let alone writing the letters that he signed. Instead, he officially kicked off the blame game, saying first that Villere, an old friend and political ally, had told him he wanted a letter expressing the state’s interest.
  • In the lowest of lows, blamed his staff, saying the letters should never have made their way to his desk. “We’re changing the way some things flow in my office to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he was quoted as saying by The Advocate.
  • Apologized to Edwards. “I would have never used the governor’s name without his permission,” he added.

Falah Alamri, SOMO director general, said the entire deal was a scam, “a hundred percent not real,” The Advocate story says.

But wait. Jeff DeRosia, operations manager for Grand Isle Shipyard in Galliano, says otherwise. “I know they’re real. One hundred percent,” he said. DeRosia, it should be noted also is executive vice president of domestic sales for Alexandros, according to Alexandros documents.

So just where does Villere figure in this entire sordid mess? Who knows? He did, however write his own letter back in February to the Iraqi prime minister and the minister of Oil, Adil Abd al-Mahdi in which he laid out the “urgent next steps that the state of Louisiana and the United States insist upon.” Some of those steps included SOMO’s granting legal authority and the issuing of contracts to Pelican Refining.

It’s still unclear how Villere considered himself in a position to insist on anything on behalf of the United States or Louisiana governments.

The three—Nungesser, Villere and DeRosia—would have been wise to do even the slightest bit of investigation before going off the reservation the way they did.

Our own quick search found a Web site called Ripoff Report in which a Baton Rouge writer in February 2013 warned of a similar scheme by Alexandros. http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Alexandros-Inc/Highland-California-92346/Alexandros-Inc-Attempt-to-Defraud-with-Fake-Documents-Highland-California-1053139

In that report, Terry Easley produced a letter purportedly from the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization attesting to a professional relationship between Alexandros, Inc., Fuson, and the Iraqi government. The letter was signed, supposedly by Sarmad H. Abd, SOMO general manager of contracts, and John Percy de Jongh, Jr., governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Easley pointed out discrepancies in the letterhead of that sham letter, comparing it to one he received on April 29, 2013, from SOMO Director General Alamri. The Alamri letter, he said, was on the correct letterhead, complete with correct logos, addresses and contact information in both English and Arabic. Here are the contents of that letter:

TO: Mr. Terry L. Easley

Email: [REDACTED]

Subj./Fraud Document

Reference to you letter dated 26th April 2013.

Please note the following:

1-The Document attached to your above letter is fraud and has never been issued by SOMO.

2-SOMO has no business relationship whatsoever neither with a company named “Alexandros, Inc.” nor with a person called “Sarmad H. Abd”.

3-Our policy is to deal directly and exclusively with End Users (refining system owners) and not through traders or middlemen.

Best Regards,

Dr. Falah J. Alamri

Director General

/04/2013

Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) Fax: + 964 1 7726 574 / + 964 1 7742 979

PO Box 5118 Email: info@somooil. Gov. Iq

Baghdad – Iraq Web: www.somooil. Gov. Iq

The fake letter that precipitated the above response from Alamri, Easley said, was also copied to one Darrell Glasper of Baton Rouge. Glasper, for those outside the Baton Rouge area, was a member of the Baton Rouge Metro Council and ran for mayor-president against incumbent Kip Holden in 2008. He later admitted to paying for a campaign flier during that election which included doctored photos depicting Holden after being severely beaten by the husband because of an affair between the two.

Ironically, seven years later Nungesser would defeat Holden in an election for the lieutenant governor’s office.

The Baton Rouge media and a prominent blogger lost no time jumping all over the hapless and apparently clueless Nungesser.

Reporter Stephanie Grace, saying on Tuesday (April 12) that Nungesser had gone rogue, pointed out that in a 2011 forum between lieutenant governor candidates, Jay Dardenne pounded Nungesser on the duties of the office while Nungesser countered by saying he was one who followed his gut and “thinks outside the box.” http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/15457076-133/stephanie-grace-nungesser-goes-rogue-on-whacky-economic-deal

Grace said in his first big move after taking office in January, he “proved he’s thinking much further outside the box than anyone could have imagined.”

Saying that Nungesser “has no authority over economic development, no right to speak for the governor, and no place contacting the U.S. government, a national news organization, or a foreign head of state” on behalf of Edwards, she did give him a backhanded compliment in noting that he “basically fessed up to have had no idea what he was doing.”

She suggested that Nungesser make a call to Dardenne, who now serves as Commissioner of Administration. “I’m guessing he’d (Dardenne) would be perfectly happy to, once again, school Nungesser on what the day job entails—and what it doesn’t.”

Political blogger Lamar White wasn’t quite as kind.

In his post today (April 12), White suggested that far from being funny, Nungesser’s actions are impeachable. https://cenlamar.com/2016/04/12/lt-gov-nungessers-scam-deal-isnt-funny-its-impeachable/

I disagree. I think to save himself further humiliation, he should take it upon himself to resign.

Even more biting, however, was White’s quote from Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project, another political blog: “I always used to wonder what kind of person fell for those Nigerian prince email scams. This says a lot.”

White called Nungesser’s actions “an enormous embarrassment to Louisiana, a blatant usurpation of the statutory power of the Lt. Governor’s office.” He said it also “demonstrates both an enormous disrespect to Gov. John Bel Edwards, for whom Nungesser deliberately misrepresented as working under his authority and blessing, and a fundamental and damaging misunderstanding of the duties of his office.”

He referred to Nungesser’s claim of never having read the letters he signed and his blaming of his staff as “pathetic.”

Not overlooking the role of the state GOP chairman in the fiasco, White said Villere’s “intimate involvement, at the very least, warrants an investigation into criminal conspiracy.”

But then he observed, perhaps correctly that Nungesser need not fear the consequences. “Louisiana is too busy laughing at him to worry about actually holding him accountable.”

There is a lot of stupid to go around in Baton Rouge but with this stunt, Nungesser may have laid claim to franchise rights.

And that is particularly pathetic.

CLOWN IN CHIEF

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LouisianaVoice reveals pair of frustrating episodes that reveal problems of state hospital privatization, closures

Posted in Contract, Contracts, DHH, Earl Long, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Privatization on February 17, 2016| 26 Comments »

Bobby Jindal: the gift that keeps on giving.

It’s bad enough that colleges and universities are facing the threat of temporary closures, cancellation of summer school, and loss of accreditation. But coupled with the bad news on higher education is an equally grim outlook for health care.

A sample of the legacy left us by Jindal’s hospital privatizations and closures:

In Baton Rouge, the closure of Earl K. Long (EKL) Medical Center had a ripple effect on the low income residents of North Baton Rouge. The emergency room patient care shifted onto Baton Rouge General Regional Medical Center Mid-City became such a money loser that it closed its emergency room on March 31, 2015. That moved emergency room care 30 minutes further away to Our Lady of the Lake (OLOL) Medical Center, located in largely white South Baton Rouge. One emergency room doctor confided to the author that it was his feeling that Jindal wanted to create “a medical wasteland north of Government Street.” Government Street, which traverses Baton Rouge in an east-west direction is a roughly-defined dividing line between South and North Baton Rouge.

Mid-City was hemorrhaging $2 million a month through its emergency room because Jindal refused to expand Medicaid and rejected any idea of putting up state money to keep the facility open. With the closure of its emergency room, residents of North Baton Rouge, which is largely low-income black in its demographic makeup, had few medical choices. With Our Lady of the Lake so far away, the alternatives were two urgent care clinics operated by the partnership of LSU and Our Lady of the Lake. The clinics were located on North Foster Street and Airline Highway. The North Foster clinic has no onsite doctor and the main Airline High clinic has a doctor onsite only until 7:00 p.m.

The same emergency room doctor who related the “medical wasteland” story told of the tragic case of an elderly African-American couple. “I felt sick reading this report,” he said. He said it involved “an old black couple who were paying $40 per month on their existing medical bill” to another Baton Rouge hospital.

The report read said the decedent was found “supine on bedroom floor. His wife told EMT personnel that her husband had congestive heart failure and that fluid had been building up. He did not go to the emergency room because the couple owed money to the hospital. She said he had been short of breath through the night and when she awoke, he was not breathing. CPR and advanced cardiac life support were initiated but were terminated after no response. “If he had gone to the LSU urgent care center, likely as not, no doctor would have been on duty,” the ER doctor said.

The closure of EKL and the decision by Baton Rouge General Mid-City to close its ER necessarily imposed a heavier workload on OLOL which entered into a partnership with the state for treatment of Medicaid patients. That increased workload has understandably also produced greater pressure on doctors and staff which in turn has apparently led to lapses in quality of care.

Consider the following brief email thread:

“Please see the email below sent from one of vascular consultants to our Associate Chief Medical Officer Dr. (redacted). My purpose for forwarding this email to you is not to criticize anyone nor is (it) to elicit a string of email responses. The sole purpose is to make all of us aware of the perception some of our consultants and primary care teams have of us. Increasingly of late, I am getting this type of feedback, be it real or otherwise.

“Doctors, we must elevate our game to meet the expectations of all our physician colleagues. I know you guys are working hard, but I am asking each of you to pay attention to the finer details.

“As Dr. (redacted) aptly said to me last night, our physician colleagues are our customers; we need to put ourselves in their shoes, be their voice, the voice of our customer.

Dr. (redacted)”

The email to which he referred read:

“I had a very irritating call last night from the ER. It bothers me that the environment around our hospital is deteriorating into a stereotypical dysfunctional training facility that we are all too familiar with and probably chose to go into private practice to avoid.

“I received a call at about 11:30 p.m. The answering service informed me who the call was about. When I called back a resident picked up and started telling me about ‘an endostent that had an endoleak with pain, transferred from Lake Charles.’ Knowing I was on city call, I figured I’d investigate this to expedite patient care. The resident told me they had already spoken to a doctor but it didn’t make sense when I couldn’t get the specifics I was asking for. At that point, I asked to speak to the attending whom (sic) was able to figure out they got the wrong guy. However, it’s a little disheartening that he didn’t readily know who the surgeon was they had spoken to that was assuming responsibility for the patient. He did mention ‘Dr. (redacted)” who is our resident (redacted)—but I’m not sure he knew it was a resident. It’s my feeling that in a patient potentially critical as this one—the attending should have his finger on the pulse a litter better than it appeared last night.

“After those 15 minutes I again informed the attending I was Dr. (redacted)…returning a page. At this point the attending gave me to ‘Dr (redacted), first year (emergency room) resident.’ The resident reports a consult on a patient with WBC (white blood cell) 19, blisters on cellulitic foot…When I ask asking info, it turns out the patient ‘has been on the board over 7 hours.’ When I ask to speak to attending who saw the patient—no longer working. At this point, I’m given back to the same attending who gave me to the first year resident he was covering. This attending was covering the resident, had taken sign-out, and expected the resident to call me and report but had never seen the patient. This reminds me of something I would get from the old ER at Mid-City, not what I would have received from OLOL in first 12 years of practice.

“I do realize we are a training facility but you and I both recognize that happens to a private practice service when run by residents. I’m sure the ER has exploded with new personal (sic) during this growth phase, but part of their responsibility is to know who the doctors are that routinely admit to this facility. To say the least, I was discouraged at the attending’s ‘finger on the pulse’ of what he was responsible for last night.

“This email is not to condemn any individual but to raise flags over the environment. Please forward to the appropriate people.”

(Sender’s name redacted)

Such is life in the aftermath of Bobby Jindal’s grand state hospital privatization scheme.

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LouisianaVoice, guest columnists unite in effort to hold Louisiana Legislature accountable during special session

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, Guest Columnist, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Revenue, Taxes, Transparency on February 14, 2016| 35 Comments »

The time has come to stop blaming Bobby Jindal. (Yeah, I know, I probably won’t. The man simply spread too much carnage during his eight clueless years occupying one office in theory while running for another in runaway delusional fantasy.)

But now it’s a new day and the torch of ineptness has been passed to his enablers, holdover members of the Louisiana House and Senate.

Legislators convened in Baton Rouge Sunday in special session to address a $900 million budget deficit for the remainder of this fiscal year and to take steps to head off a $2 billion budgetary shortfall for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

They have one chance to get it right. One chance, and one only.

If their performance over the last eight years is any indication, they won’t. Here’s why:

Louisiana elected officials who have signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge
Paul Hollis* State Representative Republican
John Alario State Senate President Republican
Jack Donahue State Senate Finance chairman Republican
Gerald Long State Senator Republican
Fred Mills State Senator Republican
Barrow Peacock State Senator Republican
John Smith State Senator Republican
Steve Carter State Representative Republican
Greg Cromer State Representative Republican
Cameron Henry State Representative Republican
Dorothy Hill State Representative Democrat
Valarie Hodges State Representative Republican
Sam Jones State Representative Democrat
Dee Richard State Representative No Party
Alan Seabaugh State Representative Republican
Scott Simon State Representative Republican
John Schroder State Representative Republican
Kirk Talbot State Representative Republican

*Paul Hollis signed the federal Americans for Tax Reform pledge when he was running for U.S. Senate. He is not listed as one of the people who signed onto the state government pledge.

These are returning legislators who swore an oath to a man who does not live in Louisiana, who has never held office. Yet, he appears to command loyalty from a handful of legislators who feel it is more important to serve his interests over those of their constituents, the ones who elected them to office. (Rep. Dee Richard of Thibodaux told LouisianaVoice last year that when he signed the pledge, he had no idea who Norquist was and had never heard of him.)

The late C.B. Forgotston called it “the lowest of a lot of low points” in Louisiana’s sorry legislative history. He said legislators, who had “already abdicated their constitutional responsibility to Bobby Jindal” were pleading with a non-resident of Louisiana “for help doing their jobs.”

Eleven state representatives—we called them “The Elastic Eleven” at the time—turned their collective backs on their constituents in particular and on the state in general in order to suck up to Norquist and to advance their own political agenda. In short, they were afraid to take a bathroom break without Norquist’s permission.

Their letter to Grover Norquist sought his blessing before they voted to pass the Student Assessment for Valuable Education, or SAVE credit program, which created money out of thin air via a higher education tax credit to cover a nonexistent student fee. https://louisianavoice.com/2015/06/08/eleven-republican-members-of-house-ways-and-means-committee-go-groveling-to-grover-norquist-for-direction/

Now, thanks to that little shell game, Louisiana’s colleges and universities teeter on the brink of unmitigated disaster. It’s not as if we were never warned: https://louisianavoice.com/2015/06/05/save-guest-columnist-wonders-if-grover-norquist-holding-compromising-videos-of-louisiana-legislators-bobby-jindal/

So why should we expect a different outcome now?

For one thing, we no longer have a delusional governor hell bent on leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight for the White House. Now we have a grownup on the fourth floor and not a gaggle of adolescent Milton Friedman theorists who refuse to acknowledge the obvious.

LouisianaVoice offers a guest column by Dayne Sherman on the threat to higher education as well as this link to Stephen Sabludowsky’s Bayou Buzz political blog: http://www.bayoubuzz.com/bb/item/1061467-jon-bel-edwards-dogged-by-kill-lsu-save-the-tigers-mentality

Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula. He is the author of two novels and he blogs at http://talkaboutthesouth.com/

Below is his guest column:

Don’t blame the messenger for TOPS crisis

Similar to Rip Van Winkle, Louisiana just awoke from a long sleep. Eight years to be exact. While Jindal wrecked the state, the citizens snoozed, except for a few political watchdogs here and there howling in the night to no avail.

The moment Louisiana resurrected was Thursday, Feb. 11 at 4 PM. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced TOPS payments to universities were being suspended. TOPS, college scholarships, is the most beloved socialist welfare program in Louisiana history.

Residents went from deep slumber to screaming in minutes. With college football also on the chopping block, we now know the dead can indeed rise from the grave.

It’s time to face the facts. Louisiana has an enormous structural deficit, approximately $1 billion this year, and $2 billion next fiscal year.

However, despite a Republican governor in Jindal and a Republican dominated House and Senate who created this fiscal crisis, some are incredibly, amazingly, and even ignorantly blaming the new governor—just a month in office—for these cuts.

It can’t be said enough, as everyone should realize, Jindal and the senators and representatives we elected are to blame for this fiasco. John Bel Edwards was one of those heralding voices who fought the foolishness, and he was elected to fix the mess.

Look, Edwards wants to protect TOPS and higher education. But Louisiana can’t cut its way to prosperity, nor can the state print money. The special legislative session ironically starts on Valentine’s Day, though love will not be in the air.

This budget crisis can be fixed with responsible tax increases and realistic cuts, which is all Edwards has suggested. It’s simple but will take intestinal fortitude.

The Republicans in the House, led by Taylor Barras (the figurehead Speaker) and Cameron Henry (the real Speaker), have done nothing but try to hamstring the Edwards administration in order to score political points. Sources say plans have been crafted to end the session as soon as it starts and go home with nothing accomplished as a way to cripple the new governor.

Therefore, I am calling for a new Speaker vote on the first day of the session. Remove Barras and send Henry to the kiddie table where he belongs. I don’t care which Republican takes the helm, as long as he or she is willing to work with Edwards and quit playing obstructionist games detrimental to Louisiana.

My advice for those who care about Louisiana is to go see their legislators. Look them straight in the eye and say the Washington-style politics is over. Fix the budget and protect TOPS or resign. Raise taxes, craft a responsible budget, and save the state. No more failures. No more excuses. Put Louisiana first.

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LouisianaVoice holding first ever ‘Boob of the Year’ contest

Posted in Attorney General, Boards, Broadband, Internet, Budget, Campaign Contributions, Charters, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Courts, DOA, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, Health Care, Higher Education, Lawsuits, Legislature, Legislators, Office of Group Benefits, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, PACs, Politicians, Privatization, Retirement, State Police, Taxes, Vitter, Vouchers on December 11, 2015| 61 Comments »

As we face the end of eight years of ineptitude, deceit, and whoopee cushion governance, LouisianaVoice is proud to announce our first ever election of John Martin Hays Memorial Boob of the Year.

There are no prizes, just a poll of our readership as to whom the honor should go in our debut survey.

Hays was publisher of a weekly publication called appropriately enough, the Morning Paper in Ruston until his death last year. He relished nothing more than feasting on the carcasses of bloated egos. He single-handedly exposed a major Ponzi scheme in North Louisiana, sending the operator to prison. That got him some major ink in the Atlanta Constitution and the New York Times.

The problem of course, is trying to narrow the field to make the final selection manageable.

The obvious choice for most would be Bobby Jindal, but there are so many other deserving candidates that we caution readers not to make hasty decisions. After all, we wouldn’t want to slight anyone who has worked so hard for the honor.

So, without further ado, here are the nominees, along with a brief synopsis of their accomplishments.

  • Bobby Jindal: Mismanaged the state budget for an unprecedented eight consecutive years. At least there’s something to be said for consistency. In his eight-year reign of error (mostly spent in states other than Louisiana) he managed to cut higher education more than any other state; he robbed public education to reward for-profit charter schools and virtual schools; he gave away the state’s Charity Hospital system (he awarded a contract to the new operators—a contract with 50 blank pages which is now the subject of what is expected to be a prolonged legal battle; he appointed political donors to prestigious boards and commissions, including the LSU Board of Supervisors which, under his direction, fired two distinguished doctors, the school’s president and its legal counsel; He trumped up bogus charges against the director of the State Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) to appease mega-donor Tom Benson and to appoint the husband of his children’s pediatrician to head up the agency; he forced state offices to pay higher rent in order to again accommodate Benson by signing a costly lease agreement with Benson Towers; rather than consider alternative ideas, he simply fired, or teagued, anyone who disagreed with him on any point; he refused Medicaid expansion, thus depriving anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000 low-income citizens needed medical care; he tried unsuccessfully to ram through pension reform that would have been devastating to state employees; he insisted on handing out contract after contract to attorney Jimmy Faircloth who is still searching for his first courtroom victory after receiving well more than $1 million in legal fees; he spurned a major federal grant that would have brought high-speed broadband internet to Louisiana’s rural parishes; he stole $4 million from the developmentally disadvantaged citizens so he could give it to the owner of a $75 million Indianapolis-type race track—a family member of another major donor and one of the richest families in the state; he abandoned his duties as governor to seek the Republican presidential nomination, a quest recognized by everyone but him as a fantasy; he ran up millions of dollars in costs of State Police security in such out-of-state locations as Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and South Carolina; he had the State Police helicopter give rides to his children, and the list goes on.
  • Attorney General Buddy Caldwell: All he did was completely botch the entire CNSI contract mess which today languishes in state district court in Baton Rouge; He consistently turned a blind eye to corruption and violations of various state laws while ringing up what he thought was an impressive record of going after consumer fraud (Hey, Buddy, those credit care scam artists are still calling my phone multiple times a day!); and his concession speech on election night was one for the books—a total and unconditional embarrassment of monumental proportions.
  • Kristy Nichols: What can we say? This is the commissioner of administration who managed to delay complying to our legal public records request for three entire months but managed to comply to an identical request by a friendly legislator within 10 days; We sued her and won and she has chosen to spend more state money (your dollars, by the way) in appealing a meager $800 (plus court costs and legal fees) judgment in our favor; it was her office that came down hard on good and decent employees of the State Land Office who she thought were leaking information to LouisianaVoice (they weren’t); she first reduced premiums for state employee health coverage in order to free up money to help plug a state budget deficit all the while whittling away at a $500 million reserve fund to practically nothing which in turn produced draconian premium increases and coverage cuts for employees and retirees (and during legislative hearings on the fiasco, she ducked out to take her daughter to a boy-band concert in New Orleans where she was allowed to occupy the governor’s private Superdome suite.
  • Troy Hebert: appointed by Jindal to head up ATC which quickly turned in a mass exodus of qualified, dedicated agents; he used state funds to purchase a synthetic drug sniffing dog (hint: there is no such thing as a synthetic drug sniffing dog because synthetic ingredients constantly change; this was just another dog, albeit an expensive one); he launched a racist campaign to rid his agency of black agents; while still a legislator, he was a partner in a firm that negotiated contracts with the state for hurricane debris cleanup.
  • Mike Edmonson: Oh, where do we start? Well, of course there is that retirement pay increase bill amendment back in 2014; there is the complete breakdown of morale, particularly in Troop D; then, there was the promotion of Tommy Lewis to Troop F Commander three years after he sneaked an underage woman into a casino in Vicksburg (he was subsequently fined $600 by the Mississippi Gaming Commission but only after first identifying himself as the executive officer of Troop F and asking if something “could be worked out.”); allowing Deputy Undersecretary Jill Boudreaux to take advantage of a lucrative buyout incentive for early retirement (which, in her case, came to $46,000, plus another $13,000 of unused annual leave) only to retire for one day and return the next—at a promotion to Undersecretary. She was subsequently ordered to repay the $56,000 but thanks to friends in high places, the money has never been repaid (maybe incoming Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne would like to revisit that matter); consistent inconsistency in administering discipline to officers who stray—such as attempting unsuccessfully to fire one trooper for assaulting a suspect (even though the suspect never made such a claim) while doing practically nothing to another state trooper who twice had sex with a woman while on duty—once in the back seat of his patrol car.
  • David Vitter: what can we say? The odds-on favorite to walk into the governor’s office, he blew $10 million—and the election. His dalliance with prostitutes, his amateurish spying on a John Bel Edwards supporter, an auto accident with a campaign worker who also headed up the Super PAC that first savaged his Republican opponents in the primary, turning Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne and Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle irreversibly against him and driving their supporters to Edwards’s camp. In short, he could write the manual on blowing an election.
  • The entire State Legislature: for passing that idiotic (and most likely illegal) budget on the last day of the session but only after Grover Norquist was consulted about the acceptability of a little tax deception; for allowing Jindal to run roughshod over them on such matters as education reform, hospital privatization, pension reform and financing recurring expenses with one-time money; for being generally spineless in all matters legislative and deferring to an absentee governor with a personal agenda.

Those are our nominees but only after some serious paring down the list.

Go to our comments section to cast your vote in 25 words or less. The deadline is Friday, Dec. 18.

As much as you might like, you are allowed to vote only once.

 

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