Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Finances’ Category

OIG expenses for out-of-state conferences, conventions far exceeds that spent on in-state investigations, records show

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Finances, Transparency on December 8, 2016| 29 Comments »

The Louisiana Office of Inspector General spent more than twice as much on attending conferences and conventions for fiscal years 2012-2016 than it did on travel for investigating public corruption, the job it is charged by statute with doing, according to RECORDS obtained by LouisianaVoice.

A former investigator for the OIG, which has experienced unusually high turnover among its investigative agents, said Inspector General Stephen Street was always “very secretive” about revealing the agency’s budget to subordinates. “He never let us see any of the agency’s finances,” the former investigator said.

By combining the yearly budgets, the totals reflect that OIG had a five-year budget of $45,475 for all (in-state and out-of-state) field (investigative) travel compared to a combined budget for all convention and conference travel of  $75,450, a difference of almost $30,000.

Five-year expenditures for both field travel and conference and convention travel fell well below the respective figures budgeted but conference and convention travel expenditures of $63,735 were more than double the $30,011 spent on investigating reports of wrongdoing by public officials.

By breaking the budgets down to expenditures for only in-state field travel and out-of-state conferences and conventions, the contrast was even more glaring.

Only $11,200 of a total budget of $30,315 was spent on in-state field travel for the five years (an average of $2,240 per year) while the $52,535 spent on out-of-state conferences and conventions ($10,509 per year) exceeded its $42,135 total budget for that purpose by nearly 25 percent.

In looking at yearly budget line items, Street’s office exceeded its budget for out-of-state conferences and conventions by 50 percent in 2013 and by 68 percent the following year.

The budget for travel to out-of-state conferences and conventions was $10,210 for each of those years but in fiscal year 2013, Street’s office spent $15,350 and spent even more—$17,181—in fiscal 2014 on non-investigation related out-of-state travel

Also for both 2013 and 2014, the OIG’s budget for in-state field travel was $11,933 but the agency spent only $2,811 in 2013 and $4,447 in 2014 for that purpose.

TRAVEL RECORDS provided by the OIG’s office show that beginning in August 2012, Street, often accompanied by as many as three or four other OIG personnel traveled on the state dime to such places as West Palm Beach, Clearwater, Destin and Jacksonville, Florida; Austin and San Antonio, Texas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston, Detroit, Memphis, Baltimore, Charlotte, Washington, D.C., Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Newark, New Jersey.

Of those 22 trips taken by Street and OIG staff members, five (taken by someone other than Street) were described as “investigation related.” All the others were said to have been for training or for Association of Inspectors General (AIG) functions.

Street is the AIG national president and also serves as an adjunct instructor for the National White Collar Crime Center and the Inspector General Investigator Academy. “Whenever I teach for those organizations,” he said, “they cover 100 percent of travel and lodging.”

Still, at the end of the day, one has to wonder how an agency charged with investigating public corruption in a state so riddled with public corruption as Louisiana can possibly justify racking up expenditures for out-of-state convention and conference travel that more than doubles that spent on in-state investigative travel.

But then again, we may have answered our own rhetorical question with that “so riddled with public corruption as Louisiana” line.

Read Full Post »

FEMA trailers sold by Henderson affiliated company used as permanent housing purposes against posted disclaimers

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Media, Public Records on December 4, 2016| 1 Comment »

By Robert Burns

Guest Columnist

It has been over a decade since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005. When the levees broke, much of the lower sections of New Orleans flooded. Many people were left without any form of housing because their previous homes had been inundated with water.

That’s when the Federal Government (FEMA) sprang into action. Recognizing the massive need for housing assistance, FEMA ordered an astounding 120,000 travel trailers, at a cost of $2.7 billion, from 60 different suppliers. For the next several years, these FEMA trailers would serve as temporary homes for the tens of thousands of residents who’d lost their homes as they rebuilt or, in some cases, opted to relocate and be bought out by FEMA.

Soon after, many residents complained of temporary memory loss, irritating sore throats, sneezing episodes, and similar ailments. The culprit was determined to be formaldehyde, which the National Institute for Health assessed prolonged exposure at rates exceeding eight parts-per billion (ppb) to be a known carcinogenic risk. Formaldehyde testing began to be conducted by the Center for Disease Control, and those results showed average formaldehyde levels of 40 ppb, or more than five times the level considered safe for extended exposure. Some tests revealed readings 40 times the acceptable level. Concerned about the health risks to the public, FEMA suspended sales of the trailers to the public in July of 2007, almost two years after Katrina made landfall. That moratorium expired on January 1, 2010.

FEMA then had a problem on its hands. Incurring storage costs of $130 million a month, the agency needed to unburden itself of its cumbersome inventory of unoccupied trailers. FEMA opted to hand them off to the General Services Administration which, in turn, auctioned them off in massive quantities per lot for a total price of $133 million, approximately seven cents on the dollar for what FEMA originally paid for the trailers. Buyers purchased the trailers for just under $1,000 per unit on average.

Henderson Auctions, located in Livingston, Louisiana, purchased approximately 23,000 of the FEMA trailers, or about one-sixth of all the trailers deployed. To facilitate the acquisition, the principals of Henderson Auctions, Jeff Henderson and Janet Henderson Cagley, the two children of Henderson Auctions’ founder Marvin Henderson, formed a company called the Lottie Group.

Lottie served to pool the resources of several investors to purchase the trailers for the purpose of liquidating them individually to consumers through successive auctions of hundreds at a time since the ban on sales to the public had been lifted. Accomplishing that turned out to be a tricky proposition, however, when the FDA announced that anyone caught reselling contaminated FEMA trailers could face criminal prosecution. The reselling process was also problematic because some states, Mississippi in particular, strictly forbade the resell of the FEMA trailers due to health concerns over the formaldehyde issue.

The first obstacle faced by Lottie and Henderson Auctions was where to store the 23,000 trailers. That problem was solved by the purchase of the old Evangeline Downs racetrack in Carencro in Lafayette Parish. An entity controlled by Jeff Henderson and Janet Henderson Cagley, Evangeline Properties, LLC, recently sold the old Evangeline Downs property for $11 million in a transaction in which their father, Marvin, notarized the Act of Sale for the sellers when, as a convicted felon, he is ineligible to hold a notary license.

The Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB) recently addressed the issue of Henderson’s apparent illegal notarizations but concluded that its hands are tied. The matter has been referred (by the Louisiana Secretary of State) to Livingston Parish District Attorney Scott Perrilloux for appropriate action.

As part of the sales agreements between GSA and buyers such as Lottie/Henderson, GSA insisted upon agreements being signed that the trailers would not be sold for housing purposes but rather only for “storage or recreational” use.

GSA placed stickers on the trailers in all caps declaring the trailers were “NOT TO BE USED FOR HOUSING.” Lottie/Henderson began conducting a series of auctions entailing several hundred trailers at each auction and, despite the fact that representations were made that the trailers were being sold “as is, where is” with all faults and that they should only be purchased for recreational uses such as hunting camps, it didn’t stop many environmentalist bloggers fromlambasting the auctions as well as criticizing the local media for failing to even point out the potential health risks associated with purchasing the trailers.

Selling the FEMA trailers to the public turned out to be a task that took more than three years for Lottie/Henderson to accomplish. Along the way, and in an effort to expand the geographic marketing to consumers in states beyond the Gulf Coast, Henderson reached out to some fellow auctioneers to sell many of the trailers. Once, Charles Easler of South Carolina, a long-time friend of Marvin Henderson, agreed to assist in the effort by accepting over 300 trailers to be auctioned from his facility in South Carolina. That episode, however, didn’t turn out as initially planned as Henderson filed suit against Easler on December 21, 2015 alleging that his one-time friend failed to make payments or account for approximately 60 of those trailers. Easler denied all of Henderson’s allegations.

Meanwhile, amidst all the banking transactions entailed with the trailer sales, Lottie/Henderson found itself in the crosshairs of its own bank, First Guaranty Bank (FGB) of Hammond.  Lottie/Henderson sued, claiming that FGB officials failed to adequately safeguard against their account usernames and passwords from being obtained to execute nearly $1 million in allegedly fraudulent wire transfers. The dates, amounts, and beneficiaries of the alleged fraudulent transfers are summarized in the following table:

 

Date Acct # / Name Amount Beneficiary
       
9/23/11 4767/Lottie $77,000 Golden Door
9/27/11 4767/Lottie $187,400 Time Imports, Inc.
9/28/11 4767/Lottie $5,000 Time Imports, Inc.
9/28/11 4767/Lottie $125,500 Golden Door V & L, Inc.
9/29/11 5806/JAH* $485,740.80 Emirates NBD
10/3/11 5806/JAH* $45,000 VTB 24
10/3/11 8510/JAH* $45,000 Citibank

* JAH is a limited liability corporation doing business as Henderson Auctions.

The lawsuit was not filed until September 22, 2014, well beyond the one-year prescription period to file suit since the final alleged loss was on October 3, 2011. FGB attorneys openly wondered the same, asserting prescription in their answer as one of 27 itemized defenses to the lawsuit. FGB attorneys also claimed that “Plaintiffs are the cause of any loss they have suffered due to their negligence, inattention, failure to investigate, lack of review, lack of management, and/or lack of supervision of the operations of JAH Enterprises, Lottie Group, LLC, including the actions of its members.”

So, where did all these FEMA trailers end up and how are they being used? Environmentalist journalist Heather Smith revealed in her documentary that a good number of these trailers have managed to find their way to North Dakota where the trailers are being routinely utilized as permanent housing for cashiers, fry cooks, and others who have become transplants in North Dakota. Several trailer tenants interviewed said they were lured to North Dakota by the prospect of $17-per-hour jobs as Wal-Mart cashiers (vs. $7-per-hour in their home states). One of the tenants acknowledged that the $1,200 rent on his FEMA trailer is high, but added that it’s the only housing he can afford where costs are so high because of the oil boom in North Dakota.

The VIN of one tenant’s travel trailer was traced in order to learn its origin. It was one of the 23,000 trailers purchased by Henderson Auctions.

The trailer of one tenant was tested and the occupant was told that his formaldehyde count is 30 ppb, or nearly four times the level considered safe for extended exposure. Tenants were encouraged to vent their units clean air from outdoors to dilute the concentrations of formaldehyde—hardly an option for the frigid North Dakota winter months. Shapiro questioned if the $17 per hour wage was worth the health risks to which these FEMA trailer tenants are unwittingly exposing themselves.

 

Read Full Post »

Washington think tank lists major recipients of government-sponsored corporate socialism; Louisiana definitely a player

Posted in Business, Congress, Corruption, Economy, Ethics, Exemptions, Incentives, Finances, Fraud, Grant, Grants, Health Care, Incentives, Jobs, Taxes on November 23, 2016| 11 Comments »

Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C.-based national policy resource center, has released an extensive study entitled Megadeals: The Largest Economic Development Subsidy Packages Ever Awarded by State and Local Governments in the United States.

Louisiana, with giveaways totaling $3,169,600,328, ranked sixth behind New York, Michigan, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington in the total dollar amount of so-called megadeals, the report shows, $65 million more than much-larger Texas, which had $3,104,800,000.

Louisiana, with 11, tied with Tennessee for fifth place in the number of such budget-busting deals behind Michigan’s 29, New York’s 23 and 12 each for Texas and Ohio.

The report, authored by Philip Mattera and Kasia Tarczynska, is somewhat dated in that it was published in 2013 but it still offers some valuable insights into how states, Louisiana in particular, was more than willing to give subsidies worth millions upon millions of dollars to corporations in the name of new jobs that rarely, if ever, materialized.

The subsidies included in the report, it should be noted, do not include tax incentives, which is another type of inducement. Accordingly, Wal-Mart, which has received more than $1.2 billion in total taxpayer assistance, is not included because its deals were worth less than $75 million each. Good Jobs First has documented giveaways to Wal-Mart in a separate report.

The single biggest example of corporate socialism contained in the report is the 30-year discounted-electricity deal worth an estimated $5.6 billion given by the New York Power Authority to Alcoa. In all, 16 of the Fortune 50 corporations (excluding Wal-Mart) were included as recipients of the report’s megadeals.

The biggest single deal for Louisiana—and the fifth-biggest overall—was the $1.69 billion subsidy in 2010 for Cheniere Energy in the form of property tax abatements and other subsidies for the Sabine Pass natural gas liquefaction plant. That project, the report said, created 225 new jobs—a cost to the state of more than $7,500 per job, the largest single cost-per-job project contained in the report.

Shintech, received a 2012 deal worth $187.2 million in subsidies to the company. That project was said to have created 50 new Louisiana jobs at a cost of $3,744 per job.

One of the biggest recipients of governmental largesse since the year 2000 has been General Motors with more than $529 in subsidies nationwide. Yet, it was General Motors who pulled up stakes pulled up stakes in 2012, leaving upwards of 3,000 former employees without jobs.

The megadeals cited by Good Jobs First in its report were dwarfed, however, by the seemingly insane subsidies given to banks and investment firms since 2000.

Of the top 21 recipients of bailouts by the federal government, the smallest was that of a company most probably never heard of: Norinchukin Bank, a Japanese cooperative bank serving more than 5,600 agricultural, fishing and forestry cooperatives from its headquarters in Tokyo—and it received $105 billion (with a “B”).

That’s nothing when compared with the heavy hitters. In all, 12 foreign corporations received loans, loan guarantees or bailout assistance from a generous federal U.S. government, led by the $942.7 billion received by the United Kingdom’s Barclays.

But Barclays ranked only fifth in terms of subsidies received in the form of federal bailouts:

Consider, if you will, the top four:

  • Bank of America $3.5 trillion;
  • Citigroup $2.6 trillion;
  • Morgan Stanley $2.1 trillion;
  • JPMorgan Chase $1.3 trillion.

All of this, of course, was the direct result of deregulation pushed by a congress whose members were supported by generous campaign contributions from CEOs, officers and stockholders of those very firms.

And yet we have elected officials—and citizens—who dare to rail against so-called welfare cheats, the costs of illegal immigrants, and the costs of health care for the poor.

These are the same people who wring their hands at the cost of social programs yet justify the expenditure of billions of dollars per day in military contracts to campaign contributors to support wars with no apparent objective (other than political payback) and with no end in sight.

These are the same ones who look us in the eye and tell us they support free market capitalism.

But pure capitalism doesn’t give away the public bank in order to entice some company that was probably coming to your state anyway. After all, if Louisiana truly has all these rich oil and gas deposits (and it does), does anyone really believe the oil and gas companies are going to locate their refining plants and pipelines in Idaho in order to mine for Louisiana’s resources?

You can check that box “no.”

What is the logic behind subsidies to lure an industry just so it can exploit cheap labor? Wouldn’t it be smarter to invest in public education and higher education so that our citizens might be capable of demanding higher wages for their knowledge and skills? Why would we opt to perpetuate the cycle of poverty by sacrificing taxpayer dollars to the advantage of some faceless corporation who cares not one whit for our citizens?

Free market capitalism doesn’t reward corporations with these kinds of subsidies while the recipients are simultaneously sending job oversees, depriving Americans of job opportunities.

Pure capitalism would dictate that each and every business in America succeed or fail on its own merit, without having to depend on governmental handouts.

Anything else has to be considered as something akin to (gasp) ….socialism.

But insisting on capitalism for the poor and socialism for corporations and the wealthy is a formula for disaster if ever such formula existed. The two philosophies are simply not compatible

And you will never get that lesson from the disciples of Ayn Rand.

Read Full Post »

Nevada governor reins in that state’s rogue dental board’s Gestapo tactics; Louisiana’s, however, remains unchecked

Posted in Auditor, Boards, Contracts, Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, Judges, Legislature, Legislators on November 18, 2016| 15 Comments »

The Republican governor of Nevada has done what Bobby Jindal for eight interminable years refused to do and what Gov. John Bel Edwards should have already done.

Gov. Brian Sandoval, saying, “There’s something not right here and it needs to be fixed,” ordered Nevada’s state dental board on Nov.8 to address—and fix—problems of corruption, bullying and extortion rampant in the board’s patient-complaint/resolution process.

A STORY in the Las Vegas Review-Journal sounded eerily familiar to a number of LouisianaVoice stories dating back to March 2014 about abuses perpetrated by the Louisiana State Board of Dentistry through harassment, intimidation, and exorbitant penalties—including ruined careers—for minor infractions and sometimes none at all.

https://louisianavoice.com/2014/03/07/state-board-employs-intimidation-harassment-to-generate-funds-to-pay-for-lucrative-contracts-worth-millions-of-dollars/

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/18/like-dental-board-louisiana-board-of-medical-examiners-survives-on-fines-and-incentive-to-punish/

https://louisianavoice.com/2014/03/23/appeal-court-slams-lsdb-tactics-in-reversing-kangaroo-court-license-revocation-board-attorney-rules-on-his-own-objection/

And should Edwards take it upon himself to rein in the rogue dental board, he may well also wish to take a long hard look at a few other boards that have gone off the reservation over the years.

  • Here are just a few that warrant a closer look:
  • The State Board of Cosmetology;
  • The Auctioneers Licensing Board;
  • The State Board of Medical Examiners;
  • The State Board of Examiners of Psychologists

Each of these boards has been the subject of considerable controversy over the manner in which they investigate complaints and assess penalties without giving their targets the benefit of the same due process to which accused criminals are entitled under 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Several dentists and dental hygienists protested a $500,000 increase in the contract for the Nevada dental board’s outside legal counsel, John Hunt and their testimony quickly escalated to shouting a crying by those who said Hunt coerced them to acknowledge wrongdoing and to pay money to the dental board.

Several of them accused Hunt of benefitting from money collected by the board.

As we said earlier, eerily familiar.

https://louisianavoice.com/2015/11/16/dentistry-board-facing-difficult-future-because-of-policies-contracts-with-attorney-private-investigator-are-cancelled/

At least in Nevada, complaints by victims of the dental board led to action.

A legislative audit of the board concluded that the board imposed excessive penalties on those it was investigating and also took issue with the board’s handling of Hunt’s contract. The board’s handling of patient complaints, it said, left targets of investigations with the belief that they either had to accept a settlement agreement or risk steeper punishment if found guilty in a final board hearing.

“That’s where the allegation of extortion comes in,” State Assemblyman Glenn Trowbridge, a member of the subcommittee that conducted the audit, said in June. “Either pay me now or we’ll look into it deeper and you’ll pay me more.”

Again…eerily familiar.

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/07/18/case-of-slidell-dentist-illustrates-unbridled-power-of-dentistry-board-to-destroy-careers-for-sake-of-money/

Sandoval appoints the members of the dental board. He said the time has come for the 11-member board to address the problem. Citing his experience with other state boards during his political career, he said, “I’ve never seen …people as upset as they are.”

The board, following Sandoval’s scolding, postponed action on Hunt’s contract amendment.

A 1980 U.S. Supreme Court specifically addressed the issue of excessive penalties in the case of U.S. Secretary of Labor v. Jerrico, Inc.

In that case, the Supreme Court reduced a $103,000 penalty to $18,000 in that the higher penalty constituted an unconstitutional risk of bringing “impermissible factors into the prosecutorial decision.”

In an earlier, even more pointed decision, the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that “board members’ pecuniary interest disqualified them from passing on issues.”

In citing an Alabama case in which the Board of Optometry revoked the licenses of all optometrists employed by corporations such as Lee Optical, the court said, “Because the Board of Optometry was composed solely of optometrists in private practice for their own account, the District Court concluded that success in the board’s efforts would possibly (contribute) to the personal benefit of members of the board, sufficiently so that in the opinion of the District Court, the Board was disqualified from hearing the charges filed against the appellees.

“It is sufficiently clear from our cases,” the court continued, “that those with substantial pecuniary interest in legal proceedings should not adjudicate these disputes.”

As simple to understand as that ruling is, one must wonder why, 43 years later, the Louisiana Board of Dentistry and other licensing boards in the State of Louisiana are still allowed to operate their own respective fiefdoms with carte blanche.

Are their legal counsels not able to read and understand the law?

Is there not a single board member among them with the decency to say, “This isn’t right”?

Read Full Post »

Boustany receives contributions from Dem. Senate opponent: Could he be a ‘dummy’ to torpedo Dems. Campbell, Fayard?

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Finances, House, Senate, Politicians, Senate, Transparency, Vitter on October 17, 2016| 24 Comments »

Colorful. Vindictive. Unorthodox. Illegal. Underhanded. Flamboyant. Egotistical. Unethical. Dishonest. Freewheeling. No holds barred. Down and dirty. Deceitful. Unprincipled. Crooked. Bombastic. Pompous. Arrogant. Self-serving. Zealous.

These are just a few adjectives (believe me, there are many, many more) used by various news reporters down through the ages to describe Louisiana politics and its practitioners.

It may not compare to the quote about U.S. Rep. Claude Pepper by George Smathers, his opponent for the U.S. Senate in Florida way back in 1951:

“Are you aware,” Smathers told a rural, largely unsophisticated gathering, “that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy and that he and his wife matriculated together before they were married.”

But there are other ways to undercut a political opponent without ever resorting to smear tactics, half-truths, or innuendo and U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, a Republican, may have just found a way to damage the aspirations of two of his Democratic opponents for the U.S Senate seat being vacated by David Vitter.

Besides the descriptions applied to Louisiana politics in the opening paragraph, astute politicians—particularly conservative Republicans—have allowed two other words to creep into the political lexicon: Evangelicalism and Privatization—as homage to two blocs that have gained considerable stroke in recent years: the religious right and disciples of Milton Friedman’s free market economy.

Boustany, however, also is effectively employing Subterfuge and Misdirection in the tried and true fashion of a slight of hand stage magician and no one has noticed.

Until now.

So, in light of his somewhat low-key TV ads, how is he attempting to obtain an edge through furtive means?

Two words: Joshua Pellerin.

Since 2012, Pellerin, manager of Pellerin Real Estate Holdings and of Pellerin Energy Corp., has contributed at least $8,800 to Boustany’s campaigns for the U.S. House and, since 2015, another $6,800 to his campaign for the Senate.

PELLERIN’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOUSTANY’S HOUSE CAMPAIGNS:

boustany-1 boustany-2 boustany-3 boustany-4 boustany-5 boustany-6

PELLERIN’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOUSTANY’S SENATE CAMPAIGN:

PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC SEE MEMO ITEM/ VERIFIED NON-CORPORATE/CONTRIBUTION FROM PARTNERSHIP. PARTNERS EXCEEDING REPORTING THRESHOLD ITEMIZED AS MEMOS. LAFAYETTE LA 70503 08/06/2015 $1,000
PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC SEE MEMO ITEM/ VERIFIED NON-CORPORATE LAFAYETTE LA 70503 10/20/2015 $500 X
PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC SEE MEMO ITEM/ VERIFIED NON-CORPORATE LAFAYETTE LA 70503 08/06/2015 $1,000 X
PELLERIN, JOSHUA PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC OWNER SEE MEMO ITEM/ VERIFIED NON-CORPORATE/PARTNERSHIP ITEMIZATION MEMO BROUSSARD LA 70518 08/06/2015 $900 X
PELLERIN, JOSHUA PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC OWNER SEE MEMO ITEM/ VERIFIED NON-CORPORATE/PARTNERSHIP ITEMIZATION MEMO BROUSSARD LA 70518 08/06/2015 $100 X
PELLERIN, JOSHUA PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC OWNER [MEMO ITEM] PARTNERSHIP: PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC BROUSSARD LA 70518 10/20/2015 $500 X
PELLERIN, JOSHUA PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC OWNER [MEMO ITEM] PARTNERSHIP: PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC BROUSSARD LA 70518 08/06/2015 $900 X
PELLERIN, JOSHUA PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC OWNER [MEMO ITEM] PARTNERSHIP: PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC BROUSSARD LA 70518 08/06/2015 $100 X
PELLERIN, JOSHUA PELLERIN ENERGY GROUP, LLC OWNER BROUSSARD LA 70518 02/09/2015 $2,600

Pellerin also is the former manager of Preventive Vascular Screenings, LLC, and Pellerin Imaging Group, LLC.

Boustany is a cardiovascular surgeon, which makes the connection between the two men logical and explains why Pellerin would give financial support to Boustany’s campaigns for the U.S. House and now the U.S. Senate.

Wait. The U.S. Senate?

If you scroll down the list of the 24 candidates vying for the U.S. Senate, you will see that number 21 on that list (they’re in alphabetical order) is none other than Democrat Joshua Pellerin.

So we have a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate contributing $5,600 to the campaign of one of his leading opponents for the position—a Republican, no less.

That doesn’t make any since.

Unless….

Unless Pellerin is a “dummy” candidate inserted into the race in an effort to draw votes away from fellow Democrats—Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell and Caroline Fayard.

So who is the “dummy” candidate on the Republican side to draw votes from Boustany’s biggest challenger, fellow physician and Republican U.S. Rep. John Fleming? Why, that would be none other than the ultimate dummy, David Duke. Fleming and Duke are battling for much of the same constituency—the Trumpers—and while Duke is destined to finish near the bottom, Fleming’s biggest hope is to pull enough votes from the former high potentate, imperial wizard, exalted grand sovereign (or whatever they call themselves these days) to sneak into the runoff.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time such a dummy candidate has been propped up to split an opponent’s vote. There were rumors, denied by Edwin Edwards, that he had his supporters contribute to the campaign of Tea Party Republican Lenar Whitney two years ago in an attempt to boost her into the runoff which would have greased the skids for him to waltz into Congress. If true, it didn’t work as Garrett Graves ran a strong second to Edwards in the crowded primary and then easily defeated the former governor in the runoff.

The biggest problem facing Boustany is getting Pellerin’s name out there before a sufficient number of Democrat voters. For his part, Pellerin, who has amassed a war chest of only about $300,000 (as opposed to more than $4.3 million in contributions to Boustany), has been making the rounds of Democratic forums in South Louisiana.

With only three weeks before the Nov. 8 election and with such a meager bank account (much of which was contributed by several physicians in the Lafayette area), Pellerin’s best hope to gain name recognition will be those public forums. And with so few Louisiana voters inclined to vote for Democrats these days, it won’t take much chipping at the Campbell-Fayard base to deal crippling blows to their campaigns.

And typical for Louisiana, all it may take is a dummy.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »