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LOSFM botches two fire investigations, with one involving suspicious death, aother producing bogus criminal charges

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Politicians, Public Records, State Fire Marshal on July 20, 2017| 27 Comments »

LouisianaVoice has been receiving reports of questionable expenditures and inadequate training of inspectors and investigators at the Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal (LOSFM) for several months, the most serious, of course, being the charges of inadequate and improper training.

Rebuilding from last August’s flood has delayed the story, which understandably involves considerable time with investigations and interviews.

But now, fires in two different areas of the state—one involving a suspicious death which resulted in the angry resignation of a top LOSFM inspector, and the other which resulted in the arrest of an innocent nurse on 77 counts in five separate fires at a nursing home—have clearly illustrated not only that the claims of inadequate training or accurate but that there may be a serious argument for malfeasance in office on the part of LOSFM upper command.

That’s a strong accusation for LouisianaVoice—or anyone—to make, but let’s examine the facts.

In both cases, a residential fire in which the wife of a local fire chief was found dead in the St. Tammany Parish town of Lacombe, reportedly with a bullet wound to her head, and the multiple fires at Bayou Chateau Nursing Home in Simmesport in Avoyelles Parish, LOSFM failed to send a certified arson investigator, assigning instead fire marshal inspectors who are not certified as arson investigators or qualified to perform those duties.

In the case of any homicide investigation such as the death of NANETTE KRENTEL, 49-year-old wife of St. Tammany Fire District No. 12 Chief Stephen Krentel, the fire marshal’s office is required by law to assign as its lead investigator a certified arson investigator. Instead, Henry B. Rayborn, a 10-year veteran LOSFM inspector was given the assignment.

“He (Rayborn) is one of the very best inspectors the fire marshal’s office has,” one former co-worker told Louisiana

Voice. “Everyone considers him as top-notch, but he is an inspector, not an arson investigator. There’s a huge difference. He was in over his head and he tried to convey that to Chief Brant Thompson.”

The former co-worker said that during a conference call between Rayborn, Thompson and other unidentified participants, Thompson became abrasive and Rayborn responded by telling Thompson he could consider the conversation as his resignation.

Reports from LOSFM indicate that State Fire Marshal Butch Browning, apparently fearing Rayborn will talk to the media, is pleading with him to reconsider his resignation.

When a series of fires broke out at Bayou Chateau Nursing Home late last year and earlier this year, LOSFM Inspector Kevin Billiot was dispatched to investigate. Like Rayborn, Billiot, a part-time minister, is not qualified as an arson investigator and sources say he never removed any articles from the fires for analysis.

LPN BRITTANY DUPAR, 27, of Simmesport, was subsequently arrested on two counts of attempted first-degree murder, five counts of aggravated arson and 70 counts of cruelty to the infirm.

The first fire was on Nov. 10, 2016. Two fires were set on March 25, at 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., and two more on March 26, at 10 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. Two of the fires were to bedding. Others were under a bathroom sink, to a supply closet, and in an undisclosed location in a patient’s room.

“He was also in far over his head,” a former arson investigator said of Billiot, who has been with the fire marshal’s office only a short time.

When other personnel began their own investigation, the time sheets of Dupar were pulled and it was learned that on the days of four of the fires, including the one in December, she was not even at work.

Moreover, a lighter was found in a patient’s bed.

Meanwhile, the Louisiana State Board of Practical Nurse Examiners has SUSPENDED Dupar’s license pending the outcome of her criminal charges.

Evidence such as her time sheets and the lighter discovered in the possession of a patient, in legal parlance, is called exculpatory evidence, meaning it is evidence that would held an accused in proving his or her innocence and under law, those accused are entitled to all such evidence.

But with an Avoyelles Parish Grand Jury scheduled to consider the charges against Dupar next Thursday (July 27), that evidence has yet to be given the district attorney’s office.

A recent email thread between Thompson, son of State Sen. Francis Thompson, and other LOSFM personnel reveal a disturbing lack of concern for Dupar on the part of Thompson.

Asked if the DA’s office should be informed of LOSFM findings that would clear Dupar, Thompson declined, suggesting that the office should let events “play their course with the Grand Jury.”

Thompson, something of a political survivor and apparently one with all the right connections, would appear to be more concerned with protecting the image of his office than in protecting the rights and the career of a wrongly-accused woman.

Perhaps the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney would find that email thread interesting reading.

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John Kennedy, in addition to embarrassing Louisiana and himself, has hitched wagon to a falling star named Trump

Posted in Congress, House, Senate, Politicians, Senate on July 14, 2017| 29 Comments »

John Sachs, a good friend and an old—and I do mean old (flies leave fresh dog poop just to follow us around) Ruston High School classmate (Class of 1961) is something of a political activist.

He learned well at his father’s knee. Dr. Tony Sachs, longtime head of the Louisiana Tech University Department of English had something of a liberal bent at a time when it was extremely unfashionable in north Louisiana, a trait he passed down to son John and daughter Elizabeth.

The word liberal has been turned into something nasty over the years but all it really implies is that its adherents believe that the poor that are entitled to the same rights as the rich, that people of color are entitled to the same protection under the law as whites, that women deserve the same opportunities—and pay—as men, that gays are entitled to the same consideration as straights, that the religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) are personal and should not be infringed upon, and that no one—NO ONE—should be deprived of his or her rights under the law.

In short, the liberal is rock steady in his support of non-discrimination in all areas of society—a resolve difficult to find in so-called conservatism, particularly of the Republican stripe.

After all, it is a document called the Declaration of Independence that proclaims:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

That brings us to the point of all this:

What gives Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan or anyone else the right to deny a dying child critical health care?

All those Republican members of the House and Senate who pay lip service to our military men and women but want to scrap Obamacare without a viable replacement are little better than pathological liars.

Let me explain.

Have you ever been to the Vietnam War Memorial Wall where the names of 58,000 Americans killed are inscribed? Well, there would be a lot more names had it not been for the Hmong, an ethnic tribe of the Golden Triangle of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar (formerly Burma).

The Hmong were America’s secret weapon. They protected our radar stations in Southeast Asia and rescued and cared for downed pilots. Without their assistance, many more Americans would have died in that terrible war.

After the war, many Hmong settled in the U.S. One particularly intelligent Hmong girl, a teenager, fell ill with a rare illness that was extremely expensive to treat. She lives in Minnesota and Obamacare got her the medical care she so desperately needed. With the scrapping of Obamacare, she loses her insurance and with a pre-existing condition, it will be cost-prohibitive to get insurance—if she can get it at all.

Thanks Mitch, thanks Trump and thanks John Kennedy.

The reason I single Kennedy out when all of Louisiana’s congressional delegation but Rep. Cedric Richmond, a New Orleans Democrat, voted to kill Obamacare, is that John Sachs wrote Kennedy to plead with him to consider all the ramifications of repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Of course, there was much wrong with the ACA but there are also weaknesses—glaring weaknesses—in our tax code, our sentencing guidelines for criminal acts, our campaign finance laws, and the laws enacted to protect American citizens from predatory Wall Street greed mongers, to name only a few. If there is a problem with a law, the duty of Congress is to address specific problem areas and pass bills to eliminate the flaws, not scrap the law in its entirety.

I have yet to see a single Republican member of the House or Senate rushing to tweak a tax code heavily weighted in favor of the wealthy, or advocating revamping the criminal code, or reining in Wall Street (to be completely fair, it was Obama’s own Attorney General Eric Holder who punted his responsibility to prosecute the criminal element that brought about the 2008 financial crash). And other than McCain-Feingold, there have been precious few attempts by either party to reform campaign finance laws.

After John Sachs sent his letter to Kennedy, this is the canned (but typical) response he received from Louisiana’s junior senator:

Thank you for contacting me in opposition to repealing the Affordable Care Act. I appreciate hearing from you.

Obamacare was sold as something that would provide millions of uninsured Americans with access to affordable healthcare.  Unfortunately, Obamacare failed on those promises.  Americans were promised lower health insurance premiums.  In reality, premiums will increase by an average of 25 percent this year for the millions of Americans in the exchanges.  Americans were promised “if you like your plan you can keep it.”  What really happened is that 4.7 million Americans were kicked off their health care plans by Obamacare.  Americans were also promised more choice when purchasing health insurance, but a large part of the country has only one insurer offering plans on the Obamacare exchanges.  That’s not choice. 

Americans deserve better.  I am focused on repealing Obamacare and replacing it with personalized, patient-centered health care that will be affordable.  Americans should not be forced to buy insurance they don’t like, don’t need, and cannot afford.  I’m working to make sure they won’t have to for much longer.

As you know, the House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act on May 4.  Also, a draft Senate bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, was released on June 22.  I am carefully studying it in its entirety to see how it would impact Louisianans.  As I am reviewing, I will be sure to keep your concerns in mind.  Thanks again for writing.

If he is really that appreciative, why didn’t he conduct town hall meetings during a recent recess? Instead, he was nowhere to be found.

There’s no mistaking that Kennedy is in complete lockstep with Trump and that’s really strange. If you recall, Kennedy fought Bobby Jindal during Jindal’s entire eight-year reign of error, goading Jindal to cut contracts and repeating the mantra, “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” And now we have Crump who is Jindal 2.0 and Kennedy practically wets his pants trying to make Grump happy. Witness Kennedy’s fawning over Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions during their confirmation hearings. DeVos was a horrible person to put in charge of educating our children and Sessions is a throwback to Southern demagogues Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.

Kennedy invokes the Chump mantra of 4.7 million Americans being kicked off their health care plans by Obamacare, yet he conveniently ignores the fact that McConnell’s plan would strip 23 million Americans of their healthcare.

How can Kennedy reconcile those numbers and still call himself an advocate of Louisiana citizens? Is this his idea of compassion?

Is he an intimidated, frightened, cowering little man afraid to stand up to the bully or is his behavior an indication of blind, unquestioning loyalty to Frump in the belief that it will enhance his own political career?

If the latter is the case, I would strongly suggest that Kennedy has misread the tea leaves and hitched his wagon not to a falling star but a plummeting one.

 

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Tom Schedler and Clay Higgins offer clear illustration of the abyss that separates class behavior from crass boorishness

Posted in Congress, Ethics, Politicians, Uncategorized on July 6, 2017| 17 Comments »

Two Louisiana elected officials, both Republicans, have demonstrated starkly contrasting examples of responsible leadership this week.

First, the good news about an elected official doing the right thing.

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler staunchly refused a request from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to provide it with highly personal information about Louisiana voters, including social security numbers, birth dates, and certain family history.

The commission was formed by President Frump in investigate what he claims was fraud in the presidential elections last November. Could anything have been so inappropriately named? It’s like calling the KKK a commission on human dignity and equal rights.

President Grump seems to think that widespread voter fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote. That claim seems a tad far-fetched, given the fact he lost the popular vote by about three million. Next thing you know, the Trumper will be trying to convince us that pro wrestling is real.

About two dozen states have refused outright to provide such information and another 20 or so have either not made a decision or only partially complied with the request.

Mark Ballard, writing in the Baton Rouge ADVOCATE, quoted Schedler as saying, “The President’s Commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that I have, time and time again, refused to release. My response to the Commission is, you’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data, and if you are, then you can purchase the limited public information available by law, to any candidate running for office. That’s it.”

Louisiana’s public voter list, Ballard wrote, includes only names, addresses, party affiliation and voter history. Voter history only indicates whether or not people participated in previous elections but not how they voted.

Schedler deserves credit for making the decision to comply with state law instead of trying to see if he could circumvent the law and cater to the wishes of a president who seems to have taken a ride on the Disoriented Express and checked into the Hotel Silly.

Too bad the same can’t be said of U.S. Rep. Clay (Barney Fife) Higgins, that rootin’-tootin’, gun-wavin’ former deputy (as in public information officer) sheriff who once threatened to single-handedly take out all the drug lords of St. Landry Parish only to wind up being forced to resign by an embarrassed sheriff.

Higgins somehow managed to get himself elected as something of a wannabe Trumpette and now the good folks of the Third District are saddled with him for the next 18 months. Surely, common sense will prevail and he will be denied a second term—unless, of course, they feel sorry for him and want to keep him in office until his $200,000 in delinquent child support payments are caught up.

In the meantime, he has advocated murdering all radical Islamics, radical being a relative term most likely applicable to all Islamics in Higgins’ demented mindset.

And now, this ignorant ass-clown has tried to turn a visit to the AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL into some kind of personal political statement in violation of posted plaques that requested respectful “mournful” silence inside the most infamous concentration camp where more than a million Jews were gassed by Nazis during World War II.

Higgins posted a video on YouTube in which he walks through different areas of the Poland camp, explaining that it took only about 20 minutes to kill the Jews inside the gas chambers. “This is why Homeland Security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible,” he said on the video.

“The world’s a smaller place now than it was in World War II,” Higgins said. “The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this. It’s hard to walk away from gas chambers, ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment, unwavering commitment, to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world.”

The Auschwitz Memorial tweeted, “Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage.”

Well, the folks at the Auschwitz Memorial need to quit wasting their time with tweets about Higgins’ lack of decorum. They have to realize that this is the country that gave the world Donald Trump and Louisiana is the state that gave the U.S. Congress Clay Higgins.

Dignity and decorum are passe to these two. You could throw both into a sack, shake it up and the only way you could tell the difference between the two when you poured them out would be the orange hair and a money clip.

Trump is an insufferable egomaniac and we may as well accept that fact. Higgins is an insufferable buffoon and we may as well accept that fact.

Higgins has been in office just a tad more than six months and he’s already making transcontinental junkets.

A mere six months in office seems a little soon for him to be taking one of those “fact-finding” trips for which members of Congress are famous.

So what I’d really like to know is this:

  • What was he doing in Poland?
  • Was he on official business?
  • If so, what was the nature of that business?
  • Or was part of the official support group for the Tweeter in Chief’s Poland trip?
  • Did U.S. taxpayers pay for that trip or did he receive a free trip from some campaign supporter or lobbyist?

Or perhaps he was just hot on the trail of a St. Landry Parish drug lord.

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Lockheed Martin, which already settled one whistleblower suit at Stennis Space Center for $2 million, hit with another

Posted in Congress, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud, Lawsuits, Politicians on July 4, 2017| 18 Comments »

As recently as 2015, Lockheed Martin LOCKHEED MARTIN, with $36.2 billion in contracts, was the single largest Pentagon contractor, more than double Boeing’s $16.6 billion.

There is little reason to believe that those numbers have changed significantly in the last two years.

With three large cost-plus contracts for testing and maintenance support services, Lockheed Martin has a commanding presence at NASA’s primary rocket propulsion facility at the STENNIS Space Center just over the Louisiana state line in Mississippi.

But as history has shown (remember the $600 toilet seats and the $100 screwdrivers?), the potential for ABUSE with such large contracts that seem to carry little apparent oversight, is overwhelming.

Now two Louisiana residents, one former Lockheed employee and the other a former contract employee for Lockheed, are bringing suit in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans under the federal FALSE CLAIMS ACT.

The two, Mark Javery of St. Tammany Parish and Brian DeJan of New Orleans, claim that they were first given no duties and then fired from their jobs after reporting cost overruns and safety and performance issues.

They are represented by Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith, III.

DeJan was a project engineer for a Lockheed subcontractor, Camgian Microsystems, Inc. He was supervised by Javery, who was an infrastructure operations manager for Lockheed. As part of their respective jobs, they were to monitor preventive maintenance metrics and to report the results of their findings to NASA employee Reginald “Chip” Ellis, Deputy Program Inspector for the Rocket Propulsion Test Program.

In April 2014, DeJan and Javery began investigating “unexplained cost overruns and performance issues with the maintenance of test facilities.”

Their lawsuit says that during their investigation, they received “credible information that maintenance and charges related to NASA’s agreement with Space Exploitation Technology were being charged “inappropriately” to the Test Operations Contract for which Lockheed was the prime contractor.

They reported their findings on April 22, 2014, to Ellis and to their immediate supervisor, Terrance Burrell.

On April 28, Lockheed Martin suspended Javery during “pendency of an informal investigation and disciplinary process,” and on April 29, Lockheed requested that Camgian remove DeJan from the Test Operations Contract “until further notice,” which Camgian did.

On May 20, Lockheed terminated Javery’s employment and requested that Camgian “remove DeJan from the Lockheed Martin contract.” Camgian terminated DeJan on May 21.

The two claim that their actions were protected under the False Claims Act, enacted in 1863 over concerns that suppliers contracted to supply the Union Army with goods were defrauding the Army.

Javery and DeJan are seeking reinstatement, double their back pay, compensation for any special damages and attorney and legal fees.

Lockheed, like most defense contractors, has a history of overcharges and the occasional penalty. In 2011, it settled a whistleblower LAWSUIT for $2 million in another False Claims Act at the Stennis Space Center.

“Companies that do business with the federal government and get paid by the taxpayers must act fairly and comply with the law,” said Tony West, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Whistleblowers have helped us to enforce the law by bringing to light schemes that misuse taxpayer dollars and abuse the public trust by undermining the integrity of the procurement process.”

West, of course, was describing life in a perfect world. In the real world, things are quite different and the “schemes that misuse taxpayer dollars and abuse the public trust” are rarely reported and even more infrequently punished.

The occasional fine is a mere fraction of illicit profits gained through overbilling and outright fraud.

That’s because no one seems to be watching and because members of Congress passionately protect the contractors domiciled in their districts.

And that’s why contractors continue to belly up to the public trough.

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Two cases show justice difficult to obtain when state holds all the cards in terms of legal staff and financial resources

Posted in Attorney General, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, Judges, Lawsuits, Politicians, Public Records, State Agencies, Uncategorized on June 23, 2017| 6 Comments »

Were political considerations behind separate decisions by a state district judge to prohibit a contractor from seeking public records or a Second Circuit Court of Appeal judge to overturn a $20 million judgment against the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD)?

While definitive answers are difficult, there does seem to be sufficient reason to suspect that the lines between the judicial and administrative branches of government may have been blurred by the Second Circuit Chief Judge’s decision to negate the award to a contractor who a 12-person jury unanimously decided had been put out of business because he refused to acquiesce to attempts of bribery, extortion and conspiracy.

Judge Henry N. Brown, by assigning the case to himself and then writing the decision despite the fact his father had been a DOTD civil engineer for more than 40 years, may have placed federal funding for Louisiana highway projects in jeopardy.

And the RULING by 14th Judicial District Court Judge David A. Ritchie prohibiting Breaux Bridge contractor Billy Broussard from making legitimate public records requests of the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury or of the Calcasieu Parish Gravity Drainage District 8 would appear to be patently unconstitutional based solely on the state statute that gives any citizen of Louisiana the unfettered right to make public records requests of any public agency.

In Broussard’s case, he was contracted by Gravity Drainage District 8 to clean debris from Indian Bayou following Hurricane Rita in 2005. Work done by his company was to be paid by FEMA. Gravity Drainage District 8 instructed Broussard to also remove pre-storm debris from the bottom of the bayou, telling him that FEMA would pay for all his work.

FEMA, however, refused to pay for the pre-storm cleanup and Gravity Drainage District 8 subsequently refused to pony up. Broussard, represented then by attorney Jeff Landry, since elected Attorney General, filed a lien against the drainage district.

When Broussard lost his case before Judge Ritchie, he continued to pursue his claim and submitted this PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST to the drainage district and to the police jury. Those efforts resulted in a heavy-handed LETTER from attorney Russell J. Stutes, Jr., which threatened Broussard with “jail time” if he persisted in his “harassment” of Calcasieu public officials.

And the injunction barring Broussard from future records requests, instead of being filed as a separate court document, was sought under the original lawsuit by Broussard, which presumably, if Stutes’s own letter is to be believed, was a final and thus, closed case. That tactic assured that Broussard would be brought before the original judge, i.e. Ritchie, who was already predisposed to rule against Broussard, no matter how valid a claim he had.

That was such a blatant maneuver that it left no lingering doubts that the cards were stacked against Broussard from the get-go. Everything was tied up in a neat little package, with a pretty bow attached. And Broussard was left holding a $2 million bag—and assessed court costs of $60,000 to boot.

In Jeff Mercer’s case, federal STATUTE U.S. Title 49 specifically prohibits discrimination against Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE). It further requires that all states receiving federal funding for transportation projects must have a DBE program.

Mercer, a Mangham contractor, sued DOTD after claiming that DOTD withheld more than $11 million owed him after he rebuffed shakedown efforts from a DOTD inspector who demanded that Mercer “put some green” in his hand and that he could “make things difficult” for him.

Mercer suffers from epilepsy, which qualified him for protection from discrimination under Title 49.

His attorney, David Doughty of Rayville, feels that Brown should never have assigned the case to himself, nor should he have been the one to write the opinion. Needless to say, Doughty does not agree with the decision. He has filed an APPLICATION FOR REHEARING in the hope of having Brown removed from the case.

LouisianaVoice conducted a search this LIST OF CASES REVERSED BY 2ND CIRCUIT and the Mercer case was the only one of 57 reversals decided by a jury.

So it all boils down to a simple equation: how much justice can you afford?

When an average citizen like Broussard or Mercer goes up against the system, things can be overwhelming and they can get that way in a hurry.

Because the government, be it DOTD, represented by the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, or a local gravity drainage district, represented by the district attorney, has a decided advantage in terms of manpower and financial resources, giving the individual little realistic chance of prevailing.

In Broussard’s case, he did not. Mercer, at least, won at the trial court level, but the process can wear anyone down and that’s just what the state relied upon when it appealed.

With virtually unlimited resources (I worked for the Office of Risk Management for 20 years and I saw how an original $10,000 defense contract can balloon to $100,000 or more with few questions asked), the government can simply hunker down for the long haul while starving out the plaintiff with delays, interrogatories, requests for production, expert costs, court reporter costs, filing fees and attorney fees. Keeping the meter running on costs is the most effective defense going.

The same applies, of course, to attempts to fight large corporations in court. Huge legal staffs with virtually unlimited budgets and campaign contributions to judges at the right levels all too often make the pursuit of justice a futile chase.

And when you move from the civil to the criminal courts where low income defendants are represented by underfunded indigent defender boards, the contrast is even more profound—and tragic, hence a big reason for Louisiana’s high incarceration rate.

The idea of equal treatment in the eyes of the law is a myth and for those seeking remedies to wrongdoing before an impartial court, it is often a cruel joke.

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