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Democrat Justin DeWitt only Graves challenger to file federal campaign finance report; refuses PAC money

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Congress, Elections, Ethics, House, Politicians on July 12, 2018| 31 Comments »

Justin DeWitt is the only challenger to 6th District U.S. Rep. Garret (one “t”) Graves to meet the July 8 Federal Election Commission (FEC) deadline for financial reporting and unlike the incumbent he is challenging, you won’t fine any PAC contributions in his report.

Democrat DeWitt, the only openly LGBTQ candidate to ever seek a congressional office in Louisiana, has raised a little more than $23,000 in a grassroots effort to dislodge Republican Graves, whose federal campaign finance report reads like a Who’s Who of Political Action Committees:

Airlines for America PAC, Allied Pilots Association PAC, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association PAC, Ally Financial, Inc. Advocacy PAC, Amazon PAC, the American Academy of Dermatology Association’s SKINPAC, American Academy of Physician Assistants PAC, American Airlines Inc. PAC, American Bankers Association PAC, American Air Liquide Holdings PAC, the American Cable Association PAC, American Chemistry Council PAC, American Commercial Lines PAC, Acadian Ambulance Service Employee PAC, Action Committee for Rural Electrification, AECOM PAC, Agricultural Retailers Association PAC, Airline Pilots Association PAC, Airbus Group PAC.

And those are just the first three pages. The entire list of PAC contributors is 38 pages long.

That $23,000 isn’t nearly enough to mount any kind of campaign and DeWitt is keenly aware of that fact but he says he’s running “because I flooded in ’16. I lost everything and got nothing but TAPs (thoughts and prayers) from Graves.”

Thousands of people lost everything in that flood, so what inspired him when no one else is running for that reason?

“I’m running because I’m pissed. Graves wants to take FEMA appropriations for victims and funnel that money into the Amite Diversion Canal. Those victims need help now.

“I want to change the entire flood insurance program,” he said. “We need an overall disaster insurance program. Instead, we have a national flood insurance program that has rates that are impossible for the average family to afford. It’s evil to profit off people who are suffering.

“I’m a political newcomer,” the 30-year-old member of a surveying crew says. One news report identified him as a surveyor—he’s not—and to show how those with power work to protect each other, the Louisiana Professional Engineering and Land Surveying Board threatened DeWitt with disciplinary action. “I never described myself as a surveyor because I’m not,” he said, “but that didn’t deter the board from trying to take action.”

He describes himself as “a working man from a working-class background” as opposed to Graves, who, like his mentor Bobby Jindal, never worked in the private sector.

He said if he is elected, “I will continue to work hard for all the people of the 6th Congressional District, Louisiana, and the nation—not for the corporations and special interest groups. I will work to protect our environment and the rights of all people, and to protect the vital program that ensure a good quality of life for working and middle-class people. That includes healthcare for all who need it and, importantly, Medicare and Social Security for our seniors who have paid into those programs for a lifetime and who should not have to fear a future without the financial resources to live comfortably.”

He said one of the biggest problems with congress and any other elective office is the influence of money from special interests. “The PACs have drowned out the voice of the people to the point the average person cannot be heard over the lobbyists and special interests,” he said. “That’s why you won’t see any PAC contributions in my finance reports. And it’s not because they haven’t offered—they have. We turned them down. We’re depending on social media to get our message out.”

Candidate qualifying runs from July 18 to July 20.

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Iberia Parish sheriff sued yet again; details of vendetta against clerk, his indictment, and local politics emerge

Posted in Audit Reports, Auditor, Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, Lawsuits, Politicians on July 4, 2018| 8 Comments »

Sometimes with local politics, you need a program, an organizational chart, a genealogical diagram, and perhaps even DNA data to keep up with who’s allied with whom and who’s got a vendetta against whom.

So much has been written about Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal that when another local courthouse politician finds himself in trouble, it’s natural to assume that Ackal’s name would come up somewhere in the mix.

After all, Ackal has been indicted and acquitted and there’s talk that the name on his office door may be changed from “Sheriff” to “Defendant.” The sheriff’s department has paid out judgments or settlements that equate to $23,000 per month for every month of his 10-year tenure ($2.8 million total), and that doesn’t even include the $600,000 settlement with the family of Victor White III, the 22-year-old who authorities said got hold of a gun and fatally shot himself in the chest—while his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Nor does it include the lawsuit just filed against Ackal and three of his deputies. The plaintiff, Rickey Roche, claims the deputies beat him and planted drugs on him during a retaliatory traffic stop following an altercation between Roche and one of the deputies. (Nary a word has been written by the local paper about this lawsuit, by the way.)

More on that later, but first the confusion surrounding the June 8 indictment of Iberia Clerk of Court Michael Thibodeaux by M. Bofill Duhé, the local district attorney who loves to indict people on BOGUS CHARGES.

The indictment on 14 criminal counts of perjury, racketeering, malfeasance, theft of advance court costs, filing false/altered public records was handed down by M. Bofill on the basis of an admittedly nasty INVESTIGATIVE AUDIT.

But the fact that the indictment came a full 20 months after the release of the October 2016 audit should raise eyebrows. And considering a blindfolded man could turn around three times and spit and most probably hit a legislative audit report at least as serious as this one which produced not even a slap on the wrist, and you really start wondering about the local political affiliations.

Among other things, the state audit said that from May 2013 to May 2016, the clerk’s office “improperly retained $314,495 in unused advance court costs that state law required to be refunded to the persons who originally deposited those monies. Of this amount, the Clerk of Court transferred $218,021 from the advance deposit bank account (advance deposit fund) to the Clerk of Court’s salary fund bank account (salary fund) to pay Clerk of Court salaries and other expenses. The remaining $96,924 represents monies currently in the Clerk of Court’s advance deposit fund that should be returned to the persons who made the original deposits.”

The misuse, misapplication, mismanagement and/or the misappropriation of more than $300,000 is a serious offense, one which should never be taken lightly and the DA’s office took the appropriate action in pursuing its own legal investigation once the audit came to light.

But the question must be asked: where was the DA’s office when prisoners were being abused and killed while in custody of Sheriff Louis Ackal? Yes, Ackal was indicted, but it was a federal indictment. Duhé was nowhere to be found.

But here’s Thibodeaux’s cardinal sin: Ryan Huval was an employee of the clerk’s office and Thibodeaux terminated him. The official reasons are not known and Thibodeaux is prohibited from discussing it because of privacy issues.

But the reasons, whether justified or not, don’t matter. Ryan Huval is the son of Ricky Huval.

Ricky Huval is the parish assessor and he was not happy with his son’s firing. And Ricky Huval and District Attorney M. Bofill Duhé are tight.

As a sidebar, unconfirmed rumor has it that certain property belonging to one Michael Thibodeaux might also have been reassessed by Huval’s office.

So, for a change, a local political story in Iberia Parish does not involve Sheriff Ackal.

But then, he has all he can handle with that latest lawsuit by Roche who says that after his confrontation with Lt. Col. Gerald Savoy the sheriff’s office targeted Roche with surveillance and pulled his vehicle over without probable cause. He says he was kicked, punched, choked and beaten with a baton and flashlight by then-deputies Byron Lasalle, Jason Comeaux, and Wade Bergeron and that they planted drugs on him.

All four deputies eventually were indicted for prisoner abuse, entered guilty pleas and testified against Ackal, who was acquitted.

Bergeron was sentenced to 48 months in prison while Comeaux received sentences of 40 and 30 months, Lasalle got 54 months on each of three counts to run concurrently, and Savoy was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison.

All this is not to claim either that Thibodeaux is guilty or that he’s as pure as the driven snow, but it is rather curious that Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal was never indicted by Duhé’s office for some of the transgressions he was accused of—little things like turning vicious dogs loose on defenseless prisoners or forcing prisoners to simulate oral sex with deputies’ nightsticks.

Here are a few other lowlights of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, as itemized in a letter to then U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch by U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond of New Orleans, none of which attracted the diligence of Duhé’s office:

  • In 2005, a former inmate alleged that deputies beat him so badly when he was booked into jail that he had to spend two weeks in a hospital.
  • In 2008, a man alleged that a deputy beat him so badly during an arrest that he coughed up blood and then a muzzle was put over his mouth. The man later settled a suit with the Sheriff’s Office for $50,000.
  • In 2009, Michael Jones, a 43-year-old man who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, died in the jail after an altercation with then-Warden Frank Ellis and then-lieutenant Wesley Hayes. This year, a judge ruled that two Sheriff’s Office employees were responsible for Jones’ death. The judgment in the case totaled $61,000.
  • In 2009, former inmate Curtis Ozenne alleged that officers began a contraband sweep by forcing him to remain in the “Muslim praying position” for nearly three hours. Mr. Ozenne alleged he was kicked in the mouth multiple times, threatened with police dogs and then his head was shaved. In his complaint, Mr. Ozenne also alleged that Sheriff Ackal threatened him with a dog and watched as an officer struck him with a baton for smiling. Mr. Ozenne’s suit against the Sheriff’s Office was later settled for $15,000.
  • In 2009, Robert Sonnier, a 62-year-old mentally ill man, died as the result of a fatal blow delivered by an IPSO Deputy in the course of a physical altercation. After Mr. Sonnier was unable to receive a psychological evaluation authorized by his wife, he was left in a wheelchair to stew in his own waste for several hours. He eventually became agitated which led to altercations with Deputies that resulted in Sonnier being pepper sprayed twice and eventually leading to the fatal blow.
  • In 2012, Marcus Robicheaux, an inmate at Iberia Parish Jail, was pulled from a wall and thrown to the ground as IPSO correctional officers ran a contraband sweep. A deputy’s dog then attacked Mr. Robicheaux, biting his legs, arms and torso, as the deputy stomped and kicked the prone inmate. The whole three-minute incident was captured on video from the jail’s surveillance cameras.
  • In 2014, Victor White III died as the result of a fatal gunshot wound while handcuffed in the backseat of an IPSO car. The sheriff’s deputies who arrested Mr. Victor (sic) alleged that he wouldn’t leave the car and became “uncooperative.” They say he pulled out a handgun, while his hands were cuffed behind his back, and shot himself in the back. However, the full coroner’s report indicated that Mr. White had died from a single shot to his right chest, contradicting the initial police statement that he had shot himself in the back.

But Duhé was right there when Ackal needed him to help shut up a New Iberia black man who initiated a recall petition after the Victor White shooting.

On July 8, 2016, Broussard was rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver In Lafayette Parish who minutes later collided head-on with an 18-wheeler and was killed in adjacent Iberia Parish.

Yet it was Broussard who was indicted on a charge of manslaughter by an Iberia Parish grand jury on March 19, 2017, just nine days before the seven deputies were sentenced.

So just how did Broussard find himself in Ackal’s crosshairs? On July 1, a week before the auto accident, Broussard committed the unpardonable sin when he became the impetus behind a recall of Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal.

Broussard, an African-American, was one of the organizers of The Justice for Victor White III Foundation which filed a petition on July 1 to force a recall election. White was the 22-year-old who died of a gunshot wound while in the back seat of a sheriff deputy’s patrol car in March 2014. The official report said the gunshot was self-inflicted. The coroner’s report said he was shot in the front with the bullet entering his right chest and exiting under his left armpit. White’s hands were cuffed behind his back at the time.

Ackal, of course, skated on that issue and was later indicted, tried and acquitted on federal charges involving beating prisoners and turning dogs loose on prisoners, as well. But when you’ve got retired federal judge and family member Richard Haik helping with the defense, you tend to land on your feet.

But hey, Ackal also didn’t fire Ryan Huval.

 

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Trend of women seeking high political office reaches Baton Rouge as Democrat Andie Saizan goes after Garrett Graves

Posted in Congress, Elections, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, State Agencies on June 23, 2018| 16 Comments »

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the victory by Donald Trump has resulted in more women making the decision to seek public office.

And if more women are participating in the political arena, it’s not necessarily because of any positive influence from the Trumpster. In some cases, it’s the indignity of seeing a misogynist in the nation’s highest office that has triggered women’s decision to run for office.

For ANDIE SAIZAN Andie Saizan, the idea of watching U.S. Rep. Garrett Graves as he obediently went along with virtually everything put forward by Trump was just too much.

The Holden Democrat was repulsed by Graves’s blind loyalty to Trump, including unconditional support of the NRA, proposals to scale back Medicaid/Medicare benefits, repeal of internet neutrality. And the treatment of children of illegal immigrants was just too much.

The 37-year-old mother of four is officially a candidate for the 6th District congressional seat now held by Graves.

She is part of the wave of women seeking public office, much of that being a reaction to Trump and his policies, said Jean Sinzdak of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Andrea Dew Steele, president and founder of Emerge America agrees. She says there was an “immediate uptick in interest in our work” following Trump’s election. “And it has persisted through today. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

Since the 1971, the year before Watergate, there has been a steady increase in the percentage of female office holders. Statewide elected offices have seen an increase in women from about 7 percent in 1971 to a high of 28 percent in 2000. Today, females make up about 24 percent of statewide elective offices. That percentage is about the same for state legislatures.

During that same time period, the number of women in Congress has gone from about 3 percent in 1971 to 20 percent today.

Saizan acknowledges that hers is an uphill fight because of what she describes as the “good old boy system” that she says “needs to be taken out.”

And she knows a thing or two about overcoming stiff odds. “At the age of 24, I had two children and was pregnant with a third when my husband walked out on me. Working for the Continental Kennel Club, I didn’t have a high-paying job. But they stood with me and supported me.

“I was on food stamps and everyone was telling me I couldn’t go back to college, but I did.

“Republicans love to talk about welfare queens but because I fought the system and got an education, today I pay more in taxes every year than I ever took in food stamps.”

Saizan, who works in the computer industry, believes that everything elected officials do should be geared toward empowering people. “When we turn our backs on people in need, we cannot call ourselves Christians,” she says.

Her quest may not be as quixotic as it might appear at first glance. “Edwin Edwards, a convicted felon, received 40 percent of the vote against Graves,” she said. “He can be beaten and he can be beaten on his own record.”

Saizan doesn’t give all the credit for her decision to run to Trump. It was Graves himself, she says, who pushed her to run, albeit inadvertently.

“Garrett convinced me to run when he trashed Medicaid/Medicare,” she says. “If I can’t bring my child to the doctor when she’s sick, something’s wrong with the system. Healthcare is too important to treat as some sort of political football. We use public dollars for insurance companies to bet against the health of Americans, and that’s wrong. If there’s something wrong with the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care), then fix it, don’t abandon it for some political philosophy.”

She said she and Graves differ in their stands on guns. “We are gun-owners at our house. I’m pro-Second Amendment. But we need laws that sponsor responsible gun ownership. Garrett doesn’t want that.”

As for Graves’s stance on net neutrality, she says he “either misled voters or he doesn’t understand net neutrality. It’s far worse than simply slowing down internet service. Say, for example, you’re on a cruise ship. The cruise line can make internet service a-la cart so you have to buy a specific service provider—and they charge more for it.”

She fired a broadside at both Graves and former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin when she said, “We must be able to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs.” Tauzin, a Democrat-turned-Republican from Lafourche Parish, as one of his last official acts as a member of Congress, pushed through a bill that prohibited the federal government from negotiating the prices of prescription drugs under Medicaid/Medicare.

Following that little coup, he promptly resigned and went to work as the chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry.

Saizan is particularly incensed at the manner in which the Trump administration has gone about separating children from their parents on the nation’s southern border. And she isn’t shy about expressing her contempt for the president. “Any man who would try and justify separating children from their mothers like this is simply a coward. This is immoral! It was wrong when Hitler did it and it’s wrong now!

“I am not for open borders but I do know that we can treat this situation in a more humane manner. The fact that this is what we have come to only reiterates that America needs comprehensive immigration reform without racial bias or classism.”

She said the Democratic Party is the “party of the people but we don’t get our message across.”

She’s working on that.

 

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Terrebonne Sheriff Larpenter proves to be adept at spending other people’s $$ in 30 year-tenure; $130K on golf tourneys

Posted in Attorney General, Audit Reports, Campaign Contributions, Ethics, Media, Politicians, Prison on June 19, 2018| 7 Comments »

Louisiana’s campaign finance reports can be very revealing—and awfully embarrassing—when certain contributors are linked to business relationships with the candidate.

And just as eye-opening can be an accounting of how campaign funds are spent.

Take Jerry Larpenter, the sheriff of Terrebonne Parish these past 30 years, for example.

From 2012 through 2017, a period of six years, Larpenter dished out more than $130,000 in campaign funds to pay for golf tournaments, golf tee shirts, embroidered shirts for golf tournaments, camo hats and koozies for golf tournaments, golf trophies, golf bags, insurance for golf tournaments, cups for golf tournaments, signs advertising golf tournaments, guns for golf tournament prizes, food for golf tournaments, cracklings for golf tournaments, golf tournament brochures and envelopes, food for golf tournaments, and $15,482 paid to Web Corp. of St. Charles, Missouri, for bulletproof vests for deputies (the only problem with that is Web Corp. is a web design company, not a bulletproof vest company).

Some of Larpenter’s campaign contributions were also rather interesting. There was $2,500 from City Tele Coin of Bossier City back in 2014. City Tele Coin, according to its WEB PAGE, provides telephone services for correctional facilities. There has been considerable discussion on the Louisiana Public Service Commission about the high rates charged inmates’ families for collect phone calls by these companies.

Another $4,500 came from Anthony Alford Insurance. Tony Alford’s company held a contract with the sheriff’s office and with the Terrebonne Parish Council for insurance coverage. Alford and Dove are business partners in a company called PALOMA ENTERPRISES. With Dove as a business partner while simultaneously serving as parish president, such a business arrangement between Alford and the parish council would appear to be an ethics violation.

Moreover, Larpenter’s wife Priscilla is listed as an officer for both ALL PROPERTY & CASUALTY SERVICES and A&L PROPERTY & CASUALTY SERVICES. Alford is also listed as an officer for both companies.

Louisiana Workforce of St. Francisville (now defunct) and Security Workforce, LLC, of New Roads, both run by Paul Perkins, combined to contribute more than $6400 to Larpenter’s campaigns. The two firms provided prison labor for local jails to hire out to businesses, a practice many equate to legalized slavery.

Perkins is a former BUSINESS PARTNER and subordinate of former Angola warden Burl Cain and current Public Safety and Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc. Before Louisiana Workforce went under, David Daniel worked as a warden for the company while it contracted with the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Office for prison labor. The sheriff of West Feliciana is Austin Daniel, David Daniel’s father.

Louisiana Workforce was at the center of a controversy in 2010 when a state investigation revealed that documents were being FORGED to alter dates on work release agreements. In all, 68 documents were altered or signatures forged so that they would pass state inspections. A 2016 STATE AUDIT called for better oversight of the program.

Correctional Food Services, Inc. of Dallas, about which precious little is known (the company does not have a Web page), but which is presumed to provide food for prisoners, contributed $3,760 to Larpenter’s campaign.

But the most curious contribution was the $3000 from the Terrebonne Men’s Carnival Club of Houma. Larpenter’s campaign finance report indicated that the $3000 came from a “winning ticket” purchased from the Krewe of Hercules.

But if there’s one thing that can be said of Larpenter, it’s that he is not short on imagination when it comes to spending other people’s money.

Take the old FLOWER FUND, run for years by Larpenter—and his predecessor. It was run in a manner eerily reminiscent of Huey Long’s legendary “deduct box,” the scam that required state employees to contribute a percentage of their state salaries to Huey’s campaign fund whether they liked it or not.

The flower fund was a virtual clone of the deduct box and while Larpenter didn’t initiate the practice—it was already in place when he became sheriff—he carried on the tradition in the grand tradition of his old boss, the late Sheriff Charleton Rozands.

Each month, the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office’s 299 employees “contributed” $1 of their pay checks to the flower fund which was occasionally used to actually purchase flowers but which more often went for gifts for the sheriff at Christmas, on his birthdays and on boss’s days. Larpenter was the only member of the sheriff’s department who did not contribute to the fund.

Larpenter became sheriff in April 1987 and the practice continued at least until 2001 and it wasn’t until 1999 that employees learned for certain through an attorney general’s opinion that the “contributions” were not mandatory.

In the interim, flower fund expenditures included:

  • $1,462.41 for s stereo system for Larpenter;
  • $1,000 for Larpenter’s account at a furniture store;
  • $978.53 for a trolling motor, two batteries, and accessories for Larpenter’s birthday;
  • $183 for building materials from Lowe’s (records indicate it was spent for Larpenter’s Christmas present);
  • $631for fishing gear as a gift for Larpenter;
  • $44 for a gift for Larpenter’s first wife;
  • $186 for hunting gear;
  • $220 for fishing equipment for Larpenter for a Boss’s Day gift;
  • $60 for perfume;
  • $258 for a man’s watch;
  • $400 for the purchase of a trolling motor for Larpenter as a combination Boss’s Day and birthday gift;
  • $585 for nine watches from the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, which Larpenter said were gifts for 20-year employees of his office;
  • $110 for flowers for a memorial for a deputy who died in the line of duty.

Following the attorney general’s opinion and a federal investigation into the practice, Larpenter announced that the fund would no longer be used as a slush fund for gifts for him but would instead be used to benefit his employees and to fund two scholarships.

He added that while flower fund money would no longer be used to purchase gifts for him, it did not mean employees could not “put in” themselves to buy him gifts.

Now that’s subtle.

 

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For Trump, Sessions, Kennedy, Cassidy, rest of the family values clique, life begins at conception, ends at US border

Posted in Attorney General, Congress, Corruption, Ethics, House, Senate, Politicians, Prison on June 17, 2018| 35 Comments »

In the rancid, distorted, bigoted world of Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, human life begins at conception and ends at America’s southern border.

And I’m not so sure the same can’t be said of the ass clowns we refer to as our Louisiana Congressional delegation.

Another certainty is that Session’s quoting the Bible notwithstanding, neither man can lay legitimate claim to being a Christian. That right was forfeited the instant the decision was made that innocent children, some of them still breast-feeding, should be ripped from their mother’s arms and warehoused in an empty Walmart store in Brownsville, Texas.

Acquaintances have ridiculed me for previous comparisons of idiot Trump to Hitler. Those comparisons were never more valid than now. When is the last time you saw an American president:

  • Rip more than 1300 children from their families for no greater offense than seeking asylum?
  • Incorrectly cite a Bible verse as justification for doing so?
  • Express the desire to emulate China’s President Xi in becoming President for life?
  • Have his lackeys follow the example of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un’s lackeys by sitting at attention when Dear Leader speaks? (and before you try to tell me he was “just kidding,” save your breath. He wasn’t. He was dead serious.)
  • Call the media “America’s greatest enemy”? (Okay, that may not be Hitler, per se, but it’s pretty darn close to another mad man named Nixon.)

And while we’re on the subject, I wonder if anyone has bothered to check to see if these might be private prisons contracting to hold these kids—for a nice profit, of course.

Oh, and don’t even bother to invoke the names of Obama or Clinton. Obama had his flaws as any human does, but he never once pulled the stunts and uttered the nonsense Trump has and while he had some less than stellar appointments to his cabinet, not one of them was named Scott Pruitt or Mick Mulvaney or Ben Carson or Betsy Devos or Wilbur Ross (Ross is the Commerce Secretary who was head of the Bank of Cyprus, an acknowledged vehicle for massive Russian money laundering. No Russian collusion? You can do your own Google search). And Clinton is not, was not, and will never be President so don’t even try to bring her into the mix.

In other words, let’s keep the conversation about a man who:

  • Repeatedly declared bankruptcy but always came back—with other people’s money, much of it from the Deutsche Bank, another bank that plays ball with the Russians who have money to wash;
  • Has a bad habit of not paying his contractors;
  • Ran a bogus real estate college in Florida that bilked students out of millions while failing to deliver on its promises—a college that was under investigation by the Florida attorney general…until Trump made a generous contribution to her election campaign, and then the investigation was conveniently dropped;
  • A man who has no respect for women whatsoever (don’t take Stormy Daniels’ word for it; just listen to the Billy Bush tape);
  • A man who does everything in his power to discredit, insult, and humiliate his justice department, the FBI, the IRS, the media, Congress, and anyone else who dares criticize him;
  • A man who cannot, for the life of him, maintain any consistency in his positions on issues, positions which sometimes change hourly;
  • A man who steadfastly refuses to make public his income taxes (gee, what could he be afraid of?);
  • A man who uses his position to help his family and himself financially (just look at the way in which he gave the Chinese firm ZTE a big break on his tariffs just as his daughter got nine trademark approvals from the Chinese government.)

I could go on, but why bother? If you are a Trump devotee, you’re not going to change your mind if it were proven that he was a serial axe murderer. You would simply regurgitate his and Fox News’ favorite response: fake news.

So, I will just end by saying this: If you are going to run around spewing your mantra of family values—whether as a Republican candidate or as a supporter of said candidate—while looking the other way as children are torn from their families, then you, my friend, are a damned liar and a hypocrite.

That goes for John Neely Kennedy, Bill Cassidy, Garrett Graves, Clay Higgins, Steve Scalise, Mike Johnson, or Ralph Abraham.

You are lying cowards, one and all, if you can advocate family values on one hand and imprisonment of children on the other.

And you’re certainly no Christian.

 

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