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Doughty, Stephens connections to Ellington, Abraham, and Vantage Healthcare: same old politics as usual in Louisiana

Posted in Congress, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Judges, Lawsuits, Legislators, Politicians, Senate, Vitter on December 28, 2017| 15 Comments »

When Judge Robert James moved to senior status on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on May 31, 2016, State Judge Terry Doughty of the 5th Judicial District Court (Franklin, Richland and West Carroll parishes) made one call.

That call, to U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, a fellow member of the First Baptist Church of Rayville, to express his interest in a federal judgeship, proved productive, but not right away. He was interviewed by U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy and David Vitter but his nomination was not taken up by the Obama Administration.

But following the elections of Vitter’s successor John Neely Kennedy to the Senate and Donald Trump to the presidency, things changed. Follow up interviews took place, this time with Cassidy and Kennedy, and upon the recommendation of Cassidy and Abraham, Doughty was interviewed by the White House in April 2017 and officially nominated on Aug. 3.

If one follows the connections between Doughty, Abraham, and former 5th JDC Judge James “Jimbo” Stephens (since elected to the Second Circuit Court of Appeal) back far enough, some old familiar names start to pop up.

Names like former State Legislator (both the House and Senate) and now Legislative Director for Gov. John Bel Edwards NOBLE ELLINGTON, Bobby Jindal and Vantage Health Plan.

(Major League Baseball, which once held franchise rights on recycling coaches and managers, has nothing on Louisiana politicians. Edwards, when in the legislature, was a thorn in the side of Jindal but when he became governor, he couldn’t resist reappointing many of Jindal’s foot soldiers—people like like Jimmy LeBlanc, Burl Cain, Mike Edmonson, Butch Browning and Ellington.)

Now Ellington’s son, Noble Ellington, III, whose own home health care BUSINESS failed, now works as Director of Shared Savings for Vantage Healthcare in Monroe. Could politics have played a part in his hiring? We will probably never know, but the pieces were certainly in place.

AFFINITY HEALTHCARE, an affiliate of Vantage Health Plan, Inc. and which shares the same address at 130 DeSiard Street in Monroe, purchased the medical practice of Abraham’s MEDICAL CLINIC, formerly of 261 Hwy. 132 in Mangham (now the address of Affinity Health Group).

So, what’s the big deal about Vantage Healthcare?

Nothing much except back in October 2014, LouisianaVoice did a fairly comprehensive STORY about how the Jindal administration and Sens. Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe), Rick Gallot (D-Ruston), Neil Riser (R-Columbia), and Francis Thompson (D-Delhi) conspired to circumvent the state’s bid laws in order to allow Vantage to purchase a state office building in downtown Monroe on the cheap even though there was another serious buyer interested in the property.

That building, the old Virginia Hotel, constructed in 1935, is a six-story, 100,750-square-foot building that cost $1.6 million when built. It underwent extensive renovations in 1969 and again in 1984 and was being used as a state office building when it was sold to Vantage for $881,000, a little more than half its cost when it was built more than eight decades ago. One might have expected the building, if properly maintained, to appreciate in value over the years, not depreciate by 45 percent.

The state could afford to unload the building because it owns another six-story office building containing nearly 250,000-square-feet of floor space a couple of blocks away, at 122 St. John Street in Monroe, but that seems little justification for selling the Virginia at fire sale prices.

But even with 109,000 square-feet of vacant office space available in the building on St. John, where do you think Judge Stephens and fellow Appeal Court Judge Milton Moore chose to locate their offices?

In the Vantage Healthcare building, of course.

NELASOB REPORT

LouisianaVoice has made public records requests to determine the cost to the state of housing the judges in the Vantage building instead of the state-owned building with all that available space but those records have not been forthcoming yet.

Regardless, someone in Baton Rouge needs to explain why the state is paying rent to a private entity for office space in a building which that entity received at bargain basement prices—from the state—as some sort of underhanded political favor—orchestrated by the Jindal administration’s circumvention of the state bid laws, aided and abetted by four North Louisiana legislators.

But the minor issue of where his office is housed doesn’t seem to be the type of thing that would bother Stephens anyway. After all, there is a photo, apparently posted on his Facebook page that shows him holding up the antlers of a deer he shot—at night? One person commented, “Illegal to hunt at night, ain’t it?” to which Stephens replied, “It’s illegal to get caught.”

And when he was running for the appellate court in 2016, there were more than 160 people who signed onto a newspaper ad endorsing his candidacy. Among them was one Donna Remides.

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

In December 2013, a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans said Ms. Remides was sentenced to 40 months imprisonment for lying in order to secure loans to hide more than $600,000 in thefts from the federally-funded non-profit Northeast Delta Resource Conservation and Development Council (NDRC&DC).

She was employed as a project coordinator by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) through the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to work for the council in Winnsboro. From January 2001 to December 2010, she used the NDRC&DC accounts to pay herself $640,000 without authorization. She wrote herself and her private business checks during the 10-year period and obtained loans in the name of the council to cover the thefts.

Granted, Stephens has no control over who purchases a newspaper advertisement to endorse his candidacy. But that, coupled with the controversy over his refusal to recuse his pal Doughty from a trial involving a LAWSUIT against a bank with some questionable links to Doughty, the flippant remark about illegal night hunting, the office space at Vantage, the same personalities tying both judges to Vantage, Abraham and Ellington…

But then again, maybe that’s what qualifies both judges for their positions in the political climate in which we currently find ourselves.

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Sen. John Kennedy, aka ‘The Chameleon,’ sinks judicial nominees, conjures up memories of Kristofferson classic

Posted in Congress, Education, Governor's Office, Judges, Media, Politicians, Senate on December 19, 2017| 6 Comments »

Sometimes you just have to give the devil his due.

I have hammered John Kennedy pretty hard on his record and on his campaign for and his performance in the U.S. Senate, particularly in regard to his unquestioning subservience to his lord and master, Donald Trump.

But recently, in the words of my grandfather, he kicked over the traces (it’s a term about plowing the good earth with an insubordinate mule, for the more unsophisticated among you) regarding the Trumpster’s court nominees.

It was both a long time coming and something of a shock to see Kennedy undergo the delicate medical transplant procedure that involved replacing jelly with a spine—he certainly displayed no symptoms of having a backbone regarding the Republican shell game called tax reform or of challenging any of the other administration agenda items.

But his questioning of Federal Election Commission Chairman Matthew Spencer Peterson, one of Trump’s nominees for a federal judgeship, showed just how shallow Peterson is and how slipshod Trump’s aides are in vetting nominees for lifetime positions on the federal bench. In short, they made it almost too easy for Kennedy.

If I had to sum up Peterson’s performance in a single sentence it would be this:

Based on his lack of knowledge of the most basic principles of law, he should return to his alma mater and demand a refund.

The questioning by Kennedy and Peterson’s feeble responses were at once comical and painful.

I have never set foot in a law school class but after working as a sub-mediocre claims adjuster for the Louisiana Office of Risk Management for 20 years, even I know that the Daubert Standard is used by judges to qualify expert witnesses during trial.

Even I know that a Motion in Limine is a legal maneuver (more commonly employed by the defense counsel and always discussed outside the presence of a jury) to bar certain evidence from admission in trial.

Peterson drew a blank on both questions as he did when Kennedy asked if he had ever actually tried either a civil or criminal case at the state or federal court level. He did say that he “may have” participated in a handful of depositions early on in his legal career—that is, if you can legitimately call his experience an actual career.

Kennedy, who has a knack for mouthing nonsense like “I’d rather drink week killer,” actually had a jewel during an interview with New Orleans TV station WWL when he said, “Just because you’ve seen My Cousin Vinny doesn’t qualify you to be a federal judge.” In the words of Larry the Cable Guy, that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.

Fortunately, but too late to avoid abject humiliation, The White House withdrew Peterson’s name for consideration but not before he managed to turn insult into further self-inflicted injury when he said, “I had hoped my nearly two decades of public service might carry more weight than my two worst minutes on television.”

John Sachs of Ruston summed that remark up rather succinctly: “A garbage collector is performing public service but that doesn’t qualify him to serve as a federal judge.”

For your entertainment, here is a VIDEO of that exchange between Kennedy and Peterson that is certain to instill unshakable confidence in the Trump administration, especially among all those nasty critics in the media who harbor unreasonable expectations of real leadership from our POTUS—or at least sporadic signs of lucidity.

Of course, all that leaves unanswered the burning question of what prompted Kennedy’s sudden display of intestinal fortitude. After all, he had shown all the aggression of a three-day-old kitten when questioning Betsy DeVos during her confirmation hearings for Secretary of Education.

As a footnote, perhaps it should be noted that Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also pulled two other nominees for district court judgeships. It turns out that one nominee, Brett Talley, was a horror book author who has taken part in ghost-hunting activities but never tried a case. Worse, he posted a message board comment in 2011 defending the Ku Klux Klan. Jeff Mateer, who had been nominated for a judgeship in Texas, is on record as advocating discrimination against the LGBT community and as calling transgender proof that “Satan’s plan is working.” Kennedy also had opposed the nominations of both Talley and Mateer.

As to his motivation for torpedoing Peterson, the Washington Post on Tuesday had a lengthy analysis of how this particular testy little scenario played out.

It turns out it may have been as much revenge against White House Counsel Don McGahn on Kennedy’s part as for any philosophical principle or anything having to do with qualifications. Talley is married to McGahn’s chief of staff, so Kennedy’s smack down dug his spurs in a little deeper.

It all started about three weeks ago, wrote Post reporter James Hohmann, when Kennedy first made known his dissatisfaction with the manner in which the White House was ignoring his concerns about the less-than-stellar qualifications of some of Trump’s judicial nominees.

Kennedy was more than a little miffed when Trump refused to nominate Kyle Schonekas, Kennedy’s first choice for U.S. attorney in New Orleans. McGahn, you see, oversees that process.

And then, Kennedy has complained that he was never consulted prior to Trump’s selection of Kyle Duncan for a 5th Circuit judgeship in New Orleans.

It didn’t help smooth the trouble waters when White House spokesman Hogan Gidley (whoever that is) said last Friday that Kennedy humiliated Peterson because he, Kennedy, is one of “the president’s opponents” and was “trying to distract from the record-setting success the president has had on judicial nominations.” Now, anyone with any memory of that ugly 2016 senatorial election, will vividly remember Kennedy blatantly running as an unabashed Trump supporter, so any suggestion that he is Trump’s opponent is typical balderdash from the Trump White House.

Finally, wrote Hohmann (and this is key), Kennedy wants to be Louisiana’s next governor and he feels his sudden flash of independence might boost his chances. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that Trump’s approval rating is around 34 percent, which is below even that of Bobby Jindal just before he left office (officially left in January 2016, that is; in reality, he left shortly after his re-election in 2011). Kennedy can read the tea leaves and he’s certainly aware that Trump’s star is in descending mode.

And there you have it: the underlying reasons for Kennedy’s emerging from the shadows as a freshman senator to dare show up Donald Trump on the national stage as a demonstration to the folks back home that he is his own man.

While State Treasurer, he took on Bobby Jindal, a governor from his own party, by repeating his mantra that the state did not have a revenue problem, it had a spending problem. In Washington, where he could just as easily be lost in the crowd, he has elbowed his way to the front in order to face down a president from his own party by challenging the credentials of judicial nominees.

Kennedy, in summation, can be best described by quoting from The Pilgrim, a wonderfully poetic Kris Kristofferson song:

He’s a walking contradiction,

Partly truth and partly fiction,

Taking every wrong direction

On his lonely way back home.

There’s a lot of wrong directions

On that lonely way back home.

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Even as Gov. Edwards appoints his sexual harassment task force, BR woman says Edmonson once sexually molested her

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Governor's Office, State Police on December 15, 2017| 23 Comments »

As more and more high-profile stories about sexual harassment begin to emerge, a Baton Rouge woman has come forward to say she was sexually assaulted by former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson more than three decades ago.

The woman, who identified herself to LouisianaVoice, has asked that her identity be held in confidence because the sensitivity of her occupation and to shield her teenage children from embarrassment and possible peer intimidation.

She said her husband knows about the incident but the rest of her family does not.

She said her motive in coming forward is not to get attention for herself. Instead, she said, she wants to expose him because her experience with Edmonson has been “a bitter pill” she has lived with for 35 years and that she knows “how he operates.”

“I want you to know what a fraud and phony he is,” she said, adding that she watched him as he rose through the ranks of Louisiana State Police (LSP) over the years. “I cannot imagine I am the only person who has been in a similar situation with him.” She said acquaintances of hers who also know Edmonson have told her how “handsy and flirtatious he is.”

Coincidentally, her revelations come on the same day that Gov. John Bel Edwards announced the appointment of members of his Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Policy Task Force which is charged with the responsibility of reviewing the sexual harassment and discrimination policies of each state agency within the executive branch.

The woman said she was 19 at the time and Edmonson was “probably 25 or 26.” She said her parent’s home was in the same neighborhood as Edmonson’s parents’ home. “I know the family well,” she said. I have known them since I was about in seventh grade.”

She said her family was visiting the Edmonsons and Mike Edmonson asked if she would like to ride to New Orleans with him. “I was very reluctant because I really didn’t know him that well and because of my being 19, he seemed like an ‘older man.’ Another person at the gathering sort of talked me into going, so I went. I’m thinking, ‘Well, I’ll be in good hands because he’s a policeman.’ How naïve I was.”

She said Edmonson took her to Pat O’Brien’s in the French Quarter and bought her Hurricanes with “extra shots.”

“I was probably 5-foot-two and may 115 pounds at the time, so you can imagine the effect this had. After I was completely wasted, he brought me back to his car and headed for home.”

She said Edmonson was not driving his personal vehicle, but a State Police patrol car at the time. She said he had the emergency lights on the entire trip to Baton Rouge.

“But he didn’t bring me back to my parent’s house,” she said. Instead, she said he took her to his home which at the time was in a subdivision north of I-12, just off Millerville Road.

“So, he had me, wasted, in his bed, and (he) proceeded to take off my clothes,” she said. “I was petrified and humiliated (and) I can remember just hugging myself in a ball so that he would leave me alone. He succeeded in getting some of my clothes off, but I guess it got to be too much trouble and eventually, (he) just left me alone.

“The more I think back on this, especially having a teenage daughter of my own now, the more I see how predatory this was. He knew exactly what he was doing.

“I’m still afraid of him, though, because he still has powerful friends. But real men, good men, do not ply women with alcohol to try to take advantage of them.”

LouisianaVoice sent an email to Edmonson in an effort to afford him an opportunity to respond to the woman’s allegations but he did not respond to the email.

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Edmonson predictably tries to spin LSP audit release as Gov. Edwards, like Lady Macbeth, tries in vain to remove the spot

Posted in Audit Reports, Auditor, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, Media, Public Records, State Police, Transparency on December 14, 2017| 16 Comments »

Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera has released the investigative audit of Louisiana State Police (LSP) pursuant to receiving an undated letter from former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson in which Edmonson said he felt “constrained” to notify Purpera to release the audit to the State Senate.

At the same time, Edmonson said he would submit his official response to the audit’s “various contentions” by Jan. 15, 2018.

Edmonson, in his rambling, grammar mistake-laden letter, continued to cling to the claim that the audit was released prematurely by Purpera’s office.

Simultaneous to the release of the audit, Gov. John Bel Edwards released a curious two-paragraph statement of his own concerning the findings of the audit report. In his statement, Edwards managed to avoid mentioning Edmonson by name, referring to him instead as LSP’s “previous leader.”

“I have welcomed this investigation from the beginning and instructed the Louisiana State Police to fully cooperate,” Edwards said. “The Legislative Auditor’s report uncovered some troubling findings and serious problems with past abuses of power from its previous leader who left his post in March. I believe that public servants must always hold themselves to the highest ethical standards,” the governor said. “That being said, our men and women of the State Police are honorable public servants who do a tremendous job protecting the citizens of Louisiana, often under very dangerous circumstances. Through the leadership of Col. Kevin Reeves (Edmonson’s successor), who took the helm of this department in March of this year, the department has already taken significant steps to restore public trust and accountability. Col. Reeves is one of the finest individuals I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and I am confident that he is already leading the State Police in a new, positive direction.”

Well, Gov. Edwards, I’m sorry, but you don’t get off that easily.

You have been governor now just a couple of weeks shy of two years. I have been writing about Mike Edmonson since June 2014, beginning with that bill amendment sneaked into the legislature on the last day of the 2014 session which would have given Edmonson an illegal boost to his retirement of about $100,000 per year. You voted for that amendment but then, to your credit, called for an investigation when the ruse was exposed by LouisianaVoice.

That story, which LouisianaVoice was first to break, put you and every other member of the Louisiana Legislature on notice of just what Edmonson was capable of. You knew from that day forward that despite his denials, he had encouraged Sen. Neil Riser to slip that amendment into the bill.

But LouisianaVoice didn’t stop there. We kept writing stories about Edmonson’s mismanagement:

  • About his promotion of a supervisor who was hooked on prescription drugs;
  • About his promotion of a trooper who tried to sneak an underaged woman (not his wife) into a Mississippi casino;
  • About his lack of disciplinary action when a trooper had sex (twice) with a woman in his patrol vehicle while on duty;
  • About a trooper who was allowed over an extended period of time to work a fraction of his shift before going home and going to bed;
  • About how he lied to the State Police Commission about the creation of a lieutenant colonel position for a specific member of his inner circle;
  • About how he lied when he said the raises he pushed through for State Troopers would not benefit him or the command officers immediately under him (they did);

There were dozens more such stories published by LouisianaVoice.

Yes, Governor, I wrote consistently about Mike Edmonson for the year before you were elected and for the two-plus years since. You knew what the problems were. Still, you re-appointed him.

You even danced the old bureaucratic shuffle on that issue when I emailed you on Oct. 27, 2015, following your election:

“Please tell me your intentions as to the re-appointment of Mike Edmonson.”

Your response:

“I don’t intend one way or the other.”

But you did intend. You already knew, thanks to your endorsement by the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association, that you had no choice other than to re-appoint him.

Edmonson himself told the Baton Rouge Advocate that you told him on the night of the election, at a party at the Hotel Monteleone, “that he had never even considered another candidate for superintendent.”

But you did have a choice. You had the West Point Honor Code to fall back on. You could have done the right thing and cut Edmonson loose because you already knew he was a liability.

Still, you re-appointed him. The Sheriffs’ Association endorsement meant a lot, didn’t it?

So please, Governor, don’t try to take the high road on this issue. The auditor’s report did not uncover a single problem that had not already been publicized on LouisianaVoice.

For three years.

And now, like Lady Macbeth, you’re trying to get the spot out. But it won’t wash.

But enough of that. Back to Mike Edmonson’s letter.

“As you of all people know,” he wrote to Purpera, “the protocol used…is to provide the recipient (of an audit), whether it is an individual, a public board, or another public body, with a confidential draft report to afford the responding party and opportunity to address the statements in the draft report before it is publicly disseminated.

“For inexplicable reasons, the confidential draft report regarding me and the Louisiana State Police was leaked to the media and the contents of the draft then was (sic) disseminated to media outlets throughout the State—all before I could respond to the various contentions (sic). Realizing the inherent unfairness to me, the residents of our State, as well as respect for the normal procedures, I trust your office has begun an investigation into this improper conduct and will soon report your findings.

“…Given the publication of large segments of a preliminary commentary, and the apparent breach of normal practices that seems to have disclosed the entirety of the confidential draft report, I am now constrained (sic) to notify you that you can release the report and provide your report to the Louisiana State Senate this week. I, in turn, will promptly deliver my response feeling confident the residents of this State will not prematurely reach conclusions until all of the facts are presented. That is the way the process works, that is the only impartial and objective approach, and I strongly believe that is what our fellow citizens expect.”

First of all, Mike, the contents of the audit were not disseminated to “media outlets throughout the state.” Two media outlets had it and they were news partners—the Baton Rouge Advocate and WWL-TV in New Orleans. That was it. Not throughout the state. Not even throughout Baton Rouge.

Second, there were only two copies of the audit. One went to LSP and the other to Edmonson. And the one to Edmonson was the only one with a cover letter to Edmonson himself—and that was the one that was released. WWL-TV even flashed a copy of that COVER LETTER on screen when it aired its story about the audit.

Ergo, there is only one way that audit could have been leaked: from Mike Edmonson himself or someone acting on his behalf. The motive could only be what Edmonson expressed in his letter: to allow him to claim he was treated unfairly and that his defense has been compromised by the prejudicial release of the audit before he could respond.

Unsurprisingly, when LouisianaVoice first called attention to WWL’s posting a copy of that cover letter, the station promptly took the story down. But screen shots of the letter were captured by viewers who apparently anticipated just such a move.

oOo

Editor’s Note: There’s a lot going on with this audit that cannot be covered in a single story. For example, Reeves and several of the troopers involved in that San Diego trip have responded to the audit in writing. One of those responses was 16 pages in length.

Plus, there was a meeting Thursday of the Legislative Audit Advisory Committee which had some interesting exchanges.

LouisianaVoice will be taking these on in separate stories over the coming days.

 

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If you remember nothing else about the tax bill, please remember what the House version says about teachers

Posted in Congress, Corruption, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Revenue, Senate, Taxes on December 9, 2017| 23 Comments »

Bobby Jindal said in a 2015 address to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) that teachers are still at their jobs only by virtue of their being able to breathe.

That was when he was touting his ambitious education reform package that was designed to promote and enrich the operators of charter and virtual schools by pulling the financial rug from under public education in Louisiana.

That, of course, only served to further demoralize teachers and to punish those students from low-income families who could not afford charter schools but all that mattered little to Jindal. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that his former chief of staff Steve Waguespack now heads LABI.

Lest one think that sorry attitude toward teachers and the teaching profession went away in January 2016 when Jindal exited the governor’s office, leaving a fiscal mess for his successor, John Bel Edwards, think again.

Here’s a little wakeup call for those of you who may have been lulled into a false sense of security now that the husband of a teacher occupies the governor’s office: That disdain for public education has carried over into the halls of Congress via this proposed new tax bill now being ironed out between the House and Senate.

Much has already been written about how the tax bill is supposed to benefit the middle class when in reality it does just the opposite—yet those blindly loyal zealots, those supporters of child molesters, those adherents of the Republican-can-do-no-wrong-because-they-wrap-themselves-in-a-flag-and-wave-a-bible-in-one-hand-and-a-gun-in-the-other mantra continue to drink the Kool-Aid and cling to the insane theory that Trump, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Bill Cassidy and John Neely Kennedy have their best interests at heart.

These delusional people get all bent out of shape when a jock refuses to kneel at a football game because they consider it an affront to our military (it’s not) while this tax bill rips more than $40 billion from HUD, including programs that help provide housing for homeless VETERANS. How’s that for honoring our fighting men and women? Where the hell are your real priorities?

Any of you die-hard Republicans out there on Medicare? Are you ready to take a $25 billion HIT? You will under this tax “reform.”

All you Trump supporters who have been so critical of the federal deficit prepared to see that deficit increased by a whopping $1.4 trillion? Sens. Cassidy and Kennedy are. So are Reps. Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Ralph Abraham and Garrett Graves.

Those of you with college kids presently on tuition exemptions like TOPS might want to get ready; your son or daughter is going to have to declare those benefits as taxable income. Is that why you voted Republican?

And while all this is going down, you can take comfort in the knowledge that the proposed tax “reform” will eliminate the tax on inherited fortunes (you know, the kind that made Donald Trump Donald Trump) and will maintain the “carried interest” loophole which taxes the fees of private-equity fund managers (read: the mega-rich, Wall Street bankers, etc.) at low capital gains rates instead of the higher income tax rates.

But after all that’s said and done, the part of the tax bill that really turns my stomach, the part that sticks in my throat, is a provision that is of so small an amount as to be insignificant—if it weren’t for the principle of the whole thing.

Call it a carry over from Jindal, a snub of teachers, or whatever, it’s galling.

Here it is:

Teachers, particularly elementary teachers, traditionally spend hundreds of dollars per year of their own money on materials and supplies for their classrooms. And it’s not for them, it’s for the children. Keep that in mind, folks. While there are parents out there who would rather buy meth and booze and cigarettes than supplies for their kids, there are teachers who quietly enter the school supply stories and stock up so that kid will have a chance.

Call it personal, if you wish, and it might well be. When I was a student at Ruston High School, I was injured right after school one day. My English teacher, Miss Maggie Hinton, never hesitated. She led me to her powder blue 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air and took me to Green Clinic—and paid the doctor to patch me up. You never hear the Jindals of the world tell those kinds of stories. They don’t fit their agenda.

Under the present tax laws, these teachers, who on average spend $500 to $600 per year (school principals, by the way spend an average of $683 of their own money annually on snacks and other food items for students, decorations and supplies like binders and paper), can take a tax deduction of up to $250 for those expenditures. (And to interject a very personal story, once, while I was making a purchase for a school in Livingston Parish at Clegg’s Plant Nursery, the owner would not accept my money. He donated the items because he, too, supports public education.)

Now understand, that’s a tax deduction of up to $250, not a tax credit, which would be a dollar-for-dollar tax cut. A deduction benefits the teacher only $40 or so off her taxes. But at least it’s something.

The Senate version of the new tax bill would double that deduction to $500, thank you very much.

So, what’s my beef?

Nothing much…except the HOUSE version would eliminate the deduction in its entirety.

That’s right. While the Republicans want to take care of the fat cats (those in Trump’s income bracket would realize tax breaks of approximately $37,000), teachers, under the House version of this tax bill would no longer get even that paltry $40. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Thank you, Garrett Graves, et al.

That really angers me and it should anger every person in Louisiana with even a scintilla of a conscience.

Because teachers are my heroes. Nearly fifty-seven years after graduating from Ruston High School, my heroes are still named Hinton, Ryland, Perkins, Garner, Lewis, Peoples, Edmunds, Barnes,  Johnson, Garrett & Garrett (any I omitted is only because I took no classes under them). They took a personal interest in a kid with no real promise and made him a little better person. They and my grandparents alone have stood the test of what a true hero should be.

And I am proud to defend the honor of teachers everywhere in their memory.

And the fact that five Louisiana House members—who, by the way, are all up for reelection in 2018—voted for this tax “reform” bill that slaps my heroes in the face really pisses me off.

Did I mention those five are up for reelection next year? That’s 2018, less than a year from now.

A smart voter remembers who represents him.

Those not so smart should go fishing on election day.

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