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Time has come for Gov. Edwards to turn his attention to ongoing attempts by State Police to consolidate power

Posted in Boards, Commissions, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, State Police on August 10, 2016| 10 Comments »

Seriously, Gov. Edwards, it’s time you pulled your head out of the sand and took a long, hard look at the Department of Public Safety (DPS), notably the Louisiana State Police (LSP), beginning at the top.

The longer you wait to take action to rein in this runaway agency, the more certain it becomes you are going to be embarrassed at some point in the future.

Take tomorrow’s (Aug. 11) meeting AGENDA, for example.

Even as Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne was warning earlier this week that we can expect another budgetary shortfall, Item 5 on tomorrow’s commission agenda is to rescind a general circular relative to the revision of the Uniform Pay and Classification Plan. This is so that state police, already the recipients of two major pay increases totaling 50 about percent last year, may get yet another raise. It’s worth noting that state classified employees have gone without pay raises of any description for six years now.

Then there is Item 7 which calls for the creation of an additional unclassified position of Lieutenant Colonel as Deputy Superintendent, Chief Administrative Officer especially to accommodate Maj. Jason Starnes—the same Jason Starnes who briefly was allowed to live rent-free in the State Police Training Academy barracks when he separated from his wife.

That would bring to something around one and one-half Lieutenant Colonel positions but more significantly, this is a thinly-veiled attempt by State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson to consolidate his power at LSP.

This is a move to circumvent a complaint filed in May over Edmonson’s promotion of Starnes as Interim Undersecretary of Management and Finance, even going so far as to post his “new” position on the State Police Web page.

Starnes, a classified member of LSP, was transferred by Edmonson to the unclassified non-state police service position. That move, the complaint said, was in violation of Rule 14.3(G), which says:

  • No classified member of the State Police shall be appointed, promoted, transferred or any way employed in or to any position that is not within the State Police Service.

The proposed creation of the new unclassified position will place Starnes in direct supervision of his estranged wife, Tammy, Audit Manager for LSP.

We first announced the proposed appointment of Starnes by Edmonson in May https://louisianavoice.com/2016/05/16/mike-edmonsons-appointment-not-official-yet-senate-committee-set-to-consider-his-confirmation-on-tuesday/ and in June we announced that Edmonson had pulled the promotion following filing of the complaint. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/06/06/starnes-promotion-pulled-by-edmonson-after-complaint-governor-fails-to-sign-lsp-pay-plan-rescinded-by-lspc/

LouisianaVoice was first to report two years ago that Edmonson had orchestrated an attempt to tack an amendment onto a House bill on the final day of the 2014 legislative session which would have given him an additional $55,000 per year in retirement pay in contravention of an irrevocable option he had exercised years before that froze his retirement at a lower level. https://louisianavoice.com/2014/07/11/generous-retirement-benefit-boost-slipped-into-bill-for-state-police-col-mike-edmonson-on-last-day-of-legislative-session/

More recently, the executive director of the Louisiana State Troopers Association (LSTA) was found to have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to political campaigns on behalf of LSTA. https://louisianavoice.com/2015/12/09/more-than-45000-in-campaign-cash-is-funneled-through-executive-director-by-louisiana-state-troopers-association/

While individual state troopers, like their civil service counterparts in state government, are prohibited from taking part in political campaigns, including making campaign contributions, LSTA Executive Director David Young made the contributions in his name and was reimbursed by the association. https://louisianavoice.com/2015/12/09/more-than-45000-in-campaign-cash-is-funneled-through-executive-director-by-louisiana-state-troopers-association/

An attorney and former state legislator, Taylor Townsend of Natchitoches, was given a $75,000 contract to conduct an investigation of the money laundering scheme. But true to form for ethics investigations in Louisiana (an ethics complaint against LSP has been pending for months with no indication of a ruling forthcoming any time in the foreseeable future), Taylor made a 10-minute presentation at last month’s meeting in which he recommended that no action be taken. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/07/14/expectations-of-state-police-commission-report-on-lsta-campaign-contribution-probe-dies-with-a-pitiful-whimper/

A recording of the Troop I Chapter of LSTA was made available to Townsend but he has refused to release a copy of that recording in which it was admitted that the LSTA was in violation of state law in making the contributions. Taylor’s refusal to release the recording was based on his assertion that the tape “was never entered into evidence,” an explanation that makes no sense whatsoever in terms of conducting a thorough investigation.

Moreover, Townsend, in additional attempts to prevent his “findings” from being made public, did not prepare a written report to the board on which to base his recommendation of no action.

Which brings up a little problem regarding Commission Rule 16:18 regarding LSPC investigations. That rule says the following:

So for $75,000, we have a so-called “investigation,” but no written report, no written decision, nothing apparently submitted into evidence, and a recommendation of no action.

Really? I could have done that for $10,000 and given the commission change back.

There is only one person in the entire state who could have neutered that investigation in such a manner.

And we thought Bobby Jindal was underhanded and secretive.

John Bel Edwards is a man who confided in me of his intentions to run before he officially announced for governor. For whatever reason, he wanted my feedback. He then ran on the West Point Honor Code. He even told me he had no intentions one way or another as to the reappointment of Edmonson. Obviously, he was being less than truthful.

Now, it seems, he cares little for others’ opinions—unless they are members of the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association. His West Point Honor Code has somehow morphed into a code of political expediency, expedience dictated by the sheriffs’ association.

Edwards needs to turn his attention from the sheriffs’ association’s whispers in his ear and direct his focus more on appointees who are working surreptitiously to build an impenetrable wall around their fiefdoms designed to enhance their own power bases.

Beginning with that abortive pension increase amendment and continuing through the personnel debacles in Lake Charles, to administering little or no discipline in cases of troopers having sex in their patrol cars while on duty, to sneaking underage women into a casino in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to allowing the LSTA to make campaign contributions (do you really think the LSTA would do something like that without his blessings?), Edmonson has brought a succession of embarrassments down upon the LSP.

The question now becomes: How much more is Edwards willing to tolerate?

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Former OMV Director, now a Confidential Assistant to Mike Edmonson, benefits from free housing at LSP SDC Barracks

Posted in Governor's Office, State Police on August 7, 2016| 12 Comments »

Stephen F. Campbell has been around quite a while in a number of capacities within the Department of Public Safety (DPS) and now he’s back as something called a Confidential Assistant to Louisiana State Police (LSP) Superintendent Mike Edmonson at the Joint Emergency Services Training Center (JESTC) in Zachary—with a benefit package that includes free room and board.

Campbell is a former Deputy Secretary of DPS in the Transportation and Environmental Safety Section. Following his retirement in 1987, he served as a public safety and transportation advocate in Washington, D.C., where he represented the American Trucking Association, the Motor Freight Carriers Association and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.

On July 11, 2011, he returned to LSP as Training and Development Program Staff Manager at $84,000 per year.

He remained at that position just over a year, terminating on July 31, 2012. Five days later, on August 5, 2012, he was appointed by Bobby Jindal as Commissioner of the Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) to succeed former State Sen. Nick Gautreaux.

http://kpel965.com/new-director-for-the-office-of-motor-vehicles/

He started out at a salary of $99,000 but on July 1, 2015, during a time state civil service employees were going yet another year without pay increases, he was bumped up to $104,000.

But political realities being what they are, Campbell’s position as head of OMV was destined to be short-lived. Four months later, Democrat John Bel Edwards was elected governor and in December, the governor-elected pegged former Democratic State Rep. Karen St. Germain of Plaquemine to the position and Campbell appeared to be out.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/john_bel_edwards_appointees.html

But wait. When you’re a FOE (Friend of Edmonson), you’re never out.

Campbell had no sooner cleaned out his desk than Edmonson appointed him as his Confidential Assistant on January 11, coincidentally, the day Edwards was inaugurated as Governor.

Edmonson attempted to negotiate a salary for Campbell that was comparable to what he was making as OMV director but was told that Campbell was not qualified for that salary grade.

So, his salary is $64,500 per year and while his official title is Confidential Assistant, he is assigned to JESTC as an assistant manager, a position that never existed before. Observers at JESTC insist that he does little, if anything, to earn his salary.

One insider said, “An assistant manager was never needed during those years that JESTC was training foreign officers, nor when Triple Canopy had a large portion of the property leased for their training operations.”

Triple Canopy, founded in May 2003 by veteran U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers, is a private security company that provides risk management, security, and mission support services for corporate, government and non-profit clients.

“There have been no outside agencies doing substantial business with JESTC since Triple Canopy moved away a couple of years ago,” our source added.

A search by LouisianaVoice of current and expired contracts turned up no contracts between LSP and Triple Canopy, so the terms of the lease agreement remain obscured. LouisianaVoice has made a public records request for that lease agreement.

The JESTC features a Staff Development Center (SDC), a motel-type facility. SDC rooms are commonly assigned to troopers when they arrive from out of town for extended training. The rooms are assigned by the SDC staff during normal office hours and by an LSP Barracks supervisor after normal office hours. Rooms are also rented by outside agencies which use the facility for various activities, including training.

LouisianaVoice has been told that the Barracks Lieutenant assigned Room 613 to Campbell, apparently on something other than a temporary basis because a recent mix-up stirred the ire of Campbell.

Recently, the Control Room Supervisor at the LSP Barracks received an irate call from Campbell. Edmonson’s Confidential Assistant, it seems, was complaining that Room 613—his room—had apparently been assigned to another trooper by mistake. Campbell told the supervisor that the room was reserved for his exclusive use only and was not to be assigned to anyone else in the future, according to our sources.

This is reminiscent to our story a couple of month ago which revealed that State Police Major Jason Starnes, subsequent to his separation from his wife, was residing in the LSP Training Academy’s VIP quarters, aka the “Charlie Dupuy Suite,” so named because Edmonson’s Chief of Staff Charlie Dupuy also resided there during his own divorce.

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/06/06/starnes-promotion-pulled-by-edmonson-after-complaint-governor-fails-to-sign-lsp-pay-plan-rescinded-by-lspc/

There seems to be a developing pattern here: If you are a FOE and in need of a place to crash, there’s plenty of rent-free space available, complete with all the amenities, including meals, at the LSP cafeteria.

These are perks not available to anyone outside Edmonson’s tight little circle.

Rank does have its privileges.

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Book signing for my Jindal book set for Perkins Rowe Barnes & Noble in Baton Rouge from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. this Saturday

Posted in Book Review, Governor's Office on August 4, 2016| 4 Comments »

For those who live in the Baton Rouge area and don’t yet have a copy (and for those who wouldn’t mind driving a few miles), I will be signing my book, Bobby Jindal: His Destiny and Obsession, at the Perkins Rowe Barnes and Noble Booksellers from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. this Saturday (Aug. 6).

In case you haven’t been keeping up, this book is not a puff piece promoting Jindal. Instead, it is an accurate account of the eight years of wanton destruction he inflicted upon this state as governor in absentia and wannabe Republican presidential candidate.

The book, which includes chapters written by such notables as:

  • Former Director of the Louisiana Budget Office Stephen Winham (“Jindal’s Policies: Fiscal Failure or Mission Accomplished?”);
  • Director of Admissions at a Louisiana university Bridget Jacobs (“Bobby Jindal and Louisiana’s Higher Education”);
  • CenLamar blogger, recent law school graduate and political consultant Lamar White (“Jindal’s Fool’s Gold Standard: Why Ethics Reform Failed in Louisiana”);
  • Former Department of Education employee, former candidate for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and education blogger Jason France, aka Crazy Crawfish (“Smoke and Mirrors: Education Reform under Jindal”), and
  • New Orleans Gambit Chairman and Political Editor Clancy Dubos: (“Jindal’s F-Word Tour”).

Of course there also are about 40 chapters written by yours truly, none of which can be considered complimentary of the one once praised by the likes of Rush Limbaugh but whose once-shining political light was snuffed out by his own blundering economic, education, ethics, and political ineptness.

I am also extending an invitation to those named above who so graciously agreed to write chapters—and to whom I will be forever grateful—to come by and also sign copies of the book.

Besides writing their respective chapters, they are also valuable resources for information and policy on whom I have called many times for assistance and advice.

And even if you already have a copy of the book, come on by and say hello. I always love to meet and hear from readers of LouisianaVoice.

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Political back scratching questions will test our ‘Nothing Gets Done’ (admittedly cynical) lesson in Louisiana civics

Posted in Attorney General, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, DOA, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Governor's Office, Health Care, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Media, Politicians, Privatization, Public Records on August 3, 2016| 5 Comments »

quid pro quo

ˌkwid ˌprō ˈkwō/

noun

A favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something.

Unless decisive action it taken over the next few days, our theory that nothing gets done about official chicanery, shady dealings and outright corruption will have been validated at the highest levels of state government.

And lest there are those who think I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, let me assure them that I will keep pounding the keyboard as long as I am physically and mentally able to put the glare of the spotlight on them and their deeds.

At one point in 2015, someone said to me, “Once Bobby Jindal leaves office, you won’t have anything to write about.”

Not a chance.

Unfortunately, as long as politicians are intoxicated by money and power, there will be plenty to write about. And, as Johnny Mathis sang his song The Twelfth of Never, “that’s a long, long time.”

Take Kristy Nichols, for example. Someone, please. (Sorry, Henny Youngman.)

Or, just for fun, compare the strikingly similar cases of Ascension Parish President Kenny Matassa and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

Kristy, as LouisianaVoice reported last September, jumped the Jindal ship to join Ochsner Health System as Vice President of Government and Corporate Affairs (read: lobbyist).

https://louisianavoice.com/2015/09/17/more-on-kristys-new-job-it-seems-ochsner-gets-17-6-million-for-running-chabert-hospital/

The only problem with that was that as Commissioner of Administration for Jindal, she presided over virtually every facet of state government except the legislative and judicial branches, but worked closely with those as well. State law prohibited her from lobbying the administrative and legislative branches but apparently there was nothing to prevent her from lobbying local governmental entities.

On November 5, 2015, less than two months following our story, Kimberly L. Robinson, an attorney with the Jones Walker law firm, acting on behalf of Ochsner, requested an advisory opinion on the question of whether or not Kristy could legally lobby the state.

A month later, Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards named Robinson as the new Secretary of the Department of Revenue, prompting her resignation from Jones Walker.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/john_bel_edwards_appoints_kimb.html

Robinson was replaced by R. Gray Sexton as counsel for Kristy.

Sexton was an obvious choice, given his years as Chief Administrator for the Louisiana Board of Ethics. His knowledge of the system was so keen that in 2007, he pulled his own end-run when he resigned and the board immediately rehired him in a new capacity which allowed him to skirt a requirement under a newly-passed ethics law that he disclose clients in his private law practice (how’s that for irony?).

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/ethics_administrator_quits_the.html

But back to Kristy’s dilemma.

On December 16, Sexton submitted a request to the ethics board to withdraw the request for an advisory opinion. Then, on January 22, 2016, Sexton submitted an Application for Declaratory Opinion on behalf of Kristy. That was followed by a request to withdraw the Application for Declaratory Opinion on March 31. The board granted the request to withdraw at its April 15 meeting.

The chronology was provided to LouisianaVoice in an e-mail Tuesday (Aug. 2) from Deborah S. Grier, Executive Secretary for the Board of Ethics. Here is that email:

——– Original message ——–

From: Deborah Grier <Deborah.Grier@LA.GOV>

Date: 8/2/16 9:14 AM (GMT-06:00)

To: azspeak@cox.net

Subject: RE: Opinion on Kristy Nichols: Public Records Requests

Good morning, Mr. Aswell:

Pursuant to your public records request of July 29, 2016 regarding an opinion issued by the Board with respect to former Commission of Administration Kristy Nichols’ employment as a lobbyist by Ochsner Health System, please be advised of the following:

A request for an advisory opinion dated November 5, 2015 was submitted by Kimberly L. Robinson with the Jones Walker law firm on behalf of Ochsner Health System and Kristy Nichols.  Ms. Robinson subsequently left the private practice of law and was replaced by R. Gray Sexton as counsel for Ms. Nichols as indicated in correspondence to our office from Mr. Sexton dated December 11, 2015.  On December 16, 2015, a request to withdraw the request for an advisory opinion was submitted to our office.  The Board considered and granted the request to withdraw the request for an advisory opinion at its December 18, 2015 meeting.

 Mr. Sexton, by correspondence dated January 22, 2016, submitted to the Board an Application for Declaratory Opinion on behalf of Ms. Nichols.  A request to withdraw the Application for Declaratory Opinion was received by this office on March 31, 2016.  The Board considered and granted the request to withdraw the Application for Declaratory Opinion at its April 15, 2016 meeting.
No opinion has been rendered by the Board with respect to this issue.
Should you have any questions or need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Deborah

Deborah S. Grier
Executive Secretary
Louisiana Board of Ethics

So, what does all that mean?

Could it be that Ochsner and Kristy have decided to let sleeping dogs lie? After all, if she proceeds with lobbying efforts and no one files an official complaint, then it’s no harm, no foul, right? That would certainly run true to form for Jindal’s Gold Standard of Ethics.

A quick check by LouisianaVoice, however, revealed that Kristy is not registered among any of Ochsner Health System’s 10 lobbyists. Sexton told LouisianaVoice today that Ochsner had apparently decided not to pursue the matter and it was his understanding that the company was pursuing “other plans” for Nichols. “Ochsner has a number of other lobbyists,” he said.

So if she is not a registered lobbyist, then just what is it that she does to earn her keep as Vice President of Government and Corporate Affairs?

Or was her employment simply some form of payback as we initially suggested in light of the $31 million Ochsner received in takeover of the Leonard Chabert Medical Center by Southern Regional Medical Corp. and Ochsner as part of Jindal’s haphazard state hospital privatization plan?

https://louisianavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/terms-of-the-ochsner-deal-at-leonard-chabert-medical-center.pdf

We’d no sooner received Ms. Grier’s email on Tuesday than the Baton Rouge Advocate posted a couple of stories, also on Tuesday, that caught our eye.

The first involved a claim by Gonzales City Council candidate Wayne Lawson that Ascension Parish President Kenny Matassa and Gonzales businessman Olin Berthelot attempted to bribe him not to seek a city council seat against incumbent Neal Bourque.

The Pelican Post news website first published the report that Matassa and Berthelot had offered Lawson $1,200 and a parish job if he would withdraw from the race. The deadline to withdraw was last Friday (July 29) at noon. Lawson, after posing for a photograph with the cash, a parish job application form and candidate withdrawal forms, returned the money and documents to Berthelot’s office without completing either of the forms.

http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/communities/ascension/article_d9fda80a-58df-11e6-884c-d3779607197c.html

Ricky Babin, District Attorney for the 23rd Judicial District, said his office would investigate Lawson’s claims. He said the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office are also investigating the allegations.

The Attorney General’s Office may be in something of a quandary as it embarks on that investigation, however.

The second Baton Rouge Advocate story, by reporter Gordon Russell, conjured up the ethics complained filed against Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal.

http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_6f7a7990-58e9-11e6-9cd1-a36f0eb42bbf.html

https://louisianavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ethics-complaint.pdf

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/03/between-beating-guilty-pleas-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-and-ethics-complaint-iberia-sheriff-louis-ackal-has-his-plate-full/

https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/09/one-week-after-louisianavoice-story-feds-hand-down-three-count-indictment-of-iberia-parish-sheriff-ackal-top-deputy/

In his story, Russell said that Landry, after trailing incumbent Buddy Caldwell by two percentage points in the primary election for Attorney General last October, received the endorsement of third place finisher Geri Broussard Baloney of Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish, who had polled 18 percent.

With her endorsement in his back pocket, Landry, a former U.S. Representative, easily won the November runoff over Caldwell (who can forget Caldwell’s concession speech?). Soon thereafter, Baloney’s daughter, Quendi Baloney, was given a $53,000-a-year job by Landry.

At the time of her hire, all would-be employees of the AG’s office were required to sign a form agreeing to background checks and were also asked, in writing, if they had any criminal record.

In her case, she did. In 1999, she was charged with 11 felony counts of credit card fraud and theft, eventually pleading guilty to three counts, according to court records from Henrico County, Virginia. She was sentenced to six years in prison, all of it suspended.

Her new job? Well, it’s in the AG’s fraud section. More irony.

But in the end, her background is of less interest, given that her conviction was 17 years ago, than the fact that she was given her job as apparent payback for her mom’s endorsement of Landry following the first primary election in October.

A spokesperson for the AG’s office, Russell wrote, did not respond to questions about whether other candidates had applied for Quendi Baloney’s job or whether Landry had hired any other convicted felons.

For her part, Quendi Baloney told The Advocate that her arrest and conviction were “devastating,” but had made her a “stronger, harder-working ethical adult…”

She forwarded to The Advocate a link to the state’s new “Ban the Box” law which prevents state agencies from asking applicants about their criminal records. That law, however, did not take effect until after she was hired.

It’s going to be more than a little interesting to see how Landry’s investigation of Matassa and Berthelot unfolds in light of the same day’s revelations about his own actions.

But we’re willing to wager that when the dust settles on the issues of Matassa, Berthelot, Nichols, Ackal (the state ethics complaint, not the federal indictment) and Baloney, we’ll still be able to say:

Nothing gets done.

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Certifiable nutcase claims BR cop shootings were fake; LouisianaVoice has forwarded his email to authorities

Posted in Crime, Governor's Office, State Police on July 31, 2016| 9 Comments »

You’ve seen ‘em in your email inbox: Those offers from the widow of a Nigerian prince to deposit millions of dollars into your account or some variation thereof—an offer that seems too good to be true (it is).

More recently, I’ve become the recipient of a blitz of text messages from someone who apparently thinks my cell number is that of the Beastie Boys, whatever a Beastie Boy is (oh, stop it. I know they’re a boy band even though I wouldn’t know them from those boys from the Backstreet).

Then there are those calls from Carmen representing something called Card Services and offering to reduce my credit card interest rate. Those wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so persistent as to call me four or five times a week.

And we’ve all received those emails that begin with, “This is a true story…” Right away, you know it isn’t.

But Saturday night I received the most despicable, outrageous, disgusting—and frightening—email yet. Out of an abundance of caution I have forwarded the email to State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson, Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux and Attorney General Jeff Landry.

Normally, when I receive these kinds of emails, they are asking me to pursue some kind of fantastic theory involving some conspiracy or other in hopes I will do a story—apparently to legitimize or validate their whack-o story, I immediately delete them. It is those from which I run fast and far.

The one I received Saturday falls into that category and normally would be deleted with never another thought. But this nut case is so out-there and offers up such an absurd, obnoxious scenario, I felt it necessary to write about it—not to appease him but to put others on alert that these people really do walk among us, albeit wearing aluminum foil hats.

In a nutshell (and we do mean nut), this is his story: There were no shootings that took the lives of three police officers and wounded three others, one critically. The entire thing was something called a “Multi-Jurisdictional X-Plan Drill” financed by Homeland Security and is an example of “stolen valor at its worst,” an “Oceans (sic) Eleven-style rip-off.”

If that enough to make your skin crawl, there’s more.

This weirdo’s objection was to the $250,000, plus $25,000 for each surviving child being paid to the widows of the three slain officers—and U.S. Rep. Garrett Graves and U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy are trying to secure an additional $340,000 for each of the three families, he points out, apparently blaming Cassidy for his daughter’s unsuccessful audition for a singing part in a 2010 Suess (sic) play (honest: that’s what he wrote).

And of course, he never reveals his identity, using only this email address:


batonrougehoax@gmail.com

“I need assistance exposing this hoax, which includes the entire State Government of Louisiana as well as the entire Government of the United States Corporation,” he wrote. “We need to move quickly before they get away with this gigantic pigeon drop game of theirs.”

What?!!? I mean, WHAT?!!???

            Hold on. It gets more bizarre. Much more bizarre. I’m telling you folks, this guy’s a few croutons short of a full salad. In need of a little more special sauce for his Big Mac. A couple of Thou Shalt Nots shy of a Commandment. Here is more of his claim :

  • “The ‘officers’ (meaning the three who were killed and, presumably, the one still in critical condition) are FAKE!!! They are not real people at all. These images (their photos, shown by media nationwide—and included with his incoherent rant) are photo-shopped (sic)!!!”

In his mind (or what’s left of it), he may somehow believe that. But I know for a certainty they are real. The three who were killed and the one who is still fighting for his life as I write this are all residents of Livingston Parish, where I live. I know the subdivision in which each lives. I know their neighbors. My daughters attended school with Nicholas Tullier who is a native of Denham Springs and who clings to life after multiple surgeries. He was shot in the head with a real bullet and he is a real person with a real family, this real idiot’s claim notwithstanding.

In a grassy knoll, we-didn’t-really-send-astronauts-to-the-moon twisted method of reasoning, he writes:

  • “You pay for the hoax, and then you pay for the protection. It’s the old Chicago-style mobster mentality…You pay for the initial Homeland Security Exercise, which scares the hell out of everybody because the media broadcasts it on the ‘news’ as if it’s real. And then you pay for militarized police protection from the boogie man. And then they get you out the back side with your feelings of compassion with their disgraceful and shameless pleas for donations for the ‘victims’ when they’ve got you pegged as the victim the whole time!”

Incredibly, he poses the rhetorical question, apparently forgetting for the moment that the shooter was killed at the scene: “If this were true, don’t you think that there would have been an arrest of some sore here? This is all fake scripted out nonsense designed to try and control and manipulate your emotional capacities. There is no truth to any of this. The entire drama that was acted out on the streets of Baton Rouge was a parade. And if you think it’s real…you have literally been played like a fiddle.”

Here’s more:

  • “…First, they scare the s–t out of everybody with their fake video shooting of Alton Stirling (sic) by the Baton Rouge City Police. Then they tie it together with this ridiculous, asinine video of the fake murder of Philando Castile by the police in St. Anthony, Minnesota. And to top it all off, we go to Dallas, Texas for that incredibly spectacular Multi-Jurisdictional X-Plan Drill, and then to top it all off (how many toppings was that?), we’re back here in Baton Rouge with the grand finally (sic): the exciting and dramatic event at the B-Quick on Airline Hwy.
  • “Truth is: No one shot. No one dead.”

DISCLAIMER: Folks, I remind you, the foregoing diatribe is in no way affiliated with LouisianaVoice or any of its representatives. It is the ranting of a demented person who is so full of venom and hatred as to be completely and totally disoriented—and potentially dangerous. Again, I remind you that the ONLY reason for presenting this (and this is the condensed edition of his rant, by the way) is to illustrate that there are those out there, probably next you in line at Wal-Mart or the drug store (check that: they’re probably off their medication), or next to you in traffic or perhaps even in the office cubicle next to yours who are riding on the Disoriented Express.

While our initial reaction to his frothing at the mouth may be to laugh it off as just another nut job, it isn’t funny in the least. This is very kind of thinking that prompts mass shootings at elementary schools that take the lives of the most innocent among us.

Times have changed. When I was in school, we had fire drills. Later, they had those ridiculously naïve atomic bomb drills where the kids would crawl under their desks (I missed out on that). Today, Louisiana State law requires that schools conduct lockdown drills within the first couple of weeks of the new school year and periodically thereafter in preparation for one of these maniacal assaults. Children shouldn’t have to concern themselves about what they would do to protect themselves from a shooter.

It would behoove us as adults to be ever-vigilant, to make ourselves aware of any action on the part of anyone what appears out of the ordinary. This person’s wild-eyed, profanity-laced invective is just the sort of thing that should keep us alert and aware.

 

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