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‘Big boy pants’ ranks with exorcism story, State of the Union response as Jindal political lows: but shoe lifts? Who knew?

Posted in Governor's Office, Politicians on June 27, 2013| 8 Comments »

“We need to stop being simplistic. We need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults. We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.”

“No more self-analysis; we’ve had our catharsis. The season for navel gazing has passed. At some point, the American public is going to revolt against the nanny state and the leftward march of this president. I don’t know when the tipping point will come, but I believe it will come soon. In the meantime Republicans, hold fast, get smarter, get disciplined, get on offense and put on your big boy pants.”

Contradictory? You bet. Fuel for political debate? Well, it should be except that all three statements were uttered by none other than Bobby Jindal, guvnor of the gret stet of Looziana.

There was a time when observers believed he couldn’t possibly do or say anything that would overshadow the disaster of his 2009 Republican response to President Obama’s State of Union address.

Remember that train wreck? His performance evoked comments like “laughable,” “amateurish,” “Awkward with a capital A,” “I am absolutely stunned” (MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow), “Oh, God,” (MSNBC’s Chris Matthews), “It was a flop,” and best of all (or worst of all, depending upon your political leanings), “After watching Jindal, I’d pay a lot of money to be back watching a (Sarah) Palin speech.”

Ouch. Yes, it would seem difficult to say or do anything more underwhelming than that.

Well, those observers were all wrong. Of course it got worse, much worse. It’s the Jindal karma.

Bobby Jindal is the Paula Deen of Republican pundits; the Yogi Berra of political philosophy. His utterances make Les Miles sound downright scholarly.

When Rick Perry forgot the Department of Education as one of three agencies he would abolish as president, it was uncomfortably amusing.

But recent comments by Jindal (who remember, endorsed Perry’s disastrous campaign for the Republican presidential nomination) are just embarrassing—to everyone but Jindal and his handlers (read: Timmy Teepell), apparently.

Last November, right after Obama defeated Mitt Romney, it was Jindal who jumped in front of a one-man parade to say, “We need to stop being simplistic. We need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Less than three months later, in January of this year, Jindal gave the keynote address at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting. He said the Republicans don’t need to change values but “might need to change just about everything else we are doing.”

It was in that address that he dropped the now-infamous “stupid party” bombshell.

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults,” he said. “We had a number of Republicans damage the brand (so now the party is a “brand,” like so much laundry detergent or toothpaste) this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.”

Well, not quite yet. With Jindal, there never seems to be “enough of that.”

On June 18, he did it again, this time in an op-ed piece in Politico. While apparently wearing his John Wayne hat and his six-guns, he admonished his Republican brethren to “put on their big boy pants.”

Jindal, executing a perfect 180, said, “How about we take all of this energy being spent on autopsies and focus it on painting a picture for the American public, particularly for young people, of what a free and prosperous American future will look like with smart conservative policies?”

He said that Democrats, among other things, believe the earth is flat, that the IRS should violate our constitutional rights and that reporters should be spied on. And while he accused the left of other transgressions as well, those three should warrant particular attention because it was Republican Richard Nixon who used the IRS against his enemies and who spied on reporters and it is the church-affiliated charter schools, using the Bob Jones University text books who teach that the earth is only 7,000 to 10,000 years old, that Moses was 500 years old when his first son was born, and contrary to conventional teachings that it took thousands of years for man to develop written language, man was able to write from the beginning because Adam wrote a poem to God—before eating from the tree of knowledge.

“Eventually Americans will rise up against this new era of big government and this new reign of politically correct terror,” Jindal said. “In the meantime, Republicans—hold fast, get smarter, get disciplined, get on offense and put on your big boy pants.”

Avik Roy, writing Wednesday, June 26, for the National Review, offered a defense—of sorts—describing Jindal as “the brainiest Republican of our time” while acknowledging that he “has a few things to answer for.”

If Jindal is indeed “the brainiest Republican of our time,” as Roy suggests, then the party is in far deeper trouble than anyone could imagine.

That op-ed piece and the big-boy pants line, which Jindal may well come to regret as much as the account of his exorcism while a student at Brown University, prompted Public Service Commission member Foster Campbell to say on public radio’s Jim Engster Show on Monday that Jindal “needs to quit thinking about personal politics and do his job. There are so many problems in Louisiana that he should be worried about instead of running all over the country giving speeches. He hugged up to Romney during the campaign in an attempt to get chosen as his vice presidential running mate and two weeks after the election, turned on him.

“He’s so ambitious to be vice president or president,” Campbell said. “He should get back here in Louisiana and do the job the people elected him to do. We have people in Louisiana who are hurting and he’s running around the country talking about bed wetting and big boy pants.

“He’s like a little dog barking and trying to catch up with a car.”

Campbell said the vision of Bobby Jindal telling someone, anyone, to stop bed wetting and to put their big boy pants on is something he could not comprehend.

“If he has his big boy pants on, he shouldn’t need a large state police security detail with him when he travels,” he said. “One or two (bodyguards) should suffice.”

And if Jindal is a big boy, Campbell said, “He wouldn’t need lifts in his shoes.”

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Cart ahead of the horse? CMS letter to Sen. Ben Nevers continues to leave Jindal hospital plan approval up in air

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Privatization, Revenue, Transparency on June 26, 2013| 6 Comments »

A week after the Dallas office of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) confirmed to LouisianaVoice that the state still had not answered questions about the proposed privatization of state hospitals, the Washington, D.C. office has weighed in with similar concerns in a letter to two state senators.

On Monday it was announced that Health facilities in Houma, Lafayette, Lake Charles and New Orleans had been turned over to private operators as part of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s drive to privatize the university-run hospitals and clinics.

A three-page letter from Cindy Mann, Director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS), to State Sen. Ben Nevers (D-Bogalusa) addressed seven questions posed by Nevers and State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans) and the answers were no more encouraging to the Jindal administration than those of the Dallas office on June 12.

“In your letter, you raise questions concerning plans by the state to enter into public-private partnerships with Louisiana State University (LSU) and University Medical Center in Lafayette and LSU and Louisiana Children’s Medical Center, and questions related to the Affordable Care Act,” Mann wrote in her June 19 letter to Nevers.

The entire privatization deal would appear to revolve around the first question posed by Nevers: “Will CMS approve the large up-front lease payment arrangements as proposed in the attached public-private partnership lease agreements in Louisiana?”

“The Centers for (CMS) has concerns over the large up-front lease payments described in the Louisiana public-private partnership agreements,” Mann wrote.

A spokesperson for Mann’s office said nothing had changed since the June 19 letter.

“However, at this time, the state has not submitted state plan amendments (SPA) proposing to fund Medicaid payments through the agreements and CMS cannot offer formal determination as to whether the arrangements would conflict with the requirements described in (the Social Security Act,” Mann said. “Once the state submits the SPAs, CMS will request necessary supporting documentation and explanations from the state to demonstrate compliance with these provisions of the statute and regulations.”

Nearly 4,000 state employees were laid off because of the privatization of the facilities that care for the uninsured and which provide training for the state’s medical students.

Nevers, contacted in California where he was attending a conference, said he had never seen a situation where policies needing federal approval were undertaken and finalized before that approval was forthcoming. “It’s premature, to say the least, to do this without written approval in hand,” he said. “The private partners won’t stay in this deal if there are no payments and if CMS doesn’t approve the state’s plan, the whole thing falls apart.”

Nevers said his primary concern was continued health care delivery for the state’s poor. “In any business venture, you would not jeopardize services based on ‘maybes.’”

He said Jindal may well have more information than he has, “but the people who make the decisions do not have the information. Moving forward is something we should not be doing at this time.

“Neither should the LSU Board of Supervisors have agreed to a major contract for the transfer of the hospitals that contained 50 blank pages,” he said.

Mann, in her letter said that while the lease agreements themselves would not be subject to CMS approval, “to the extent that the lease agreements contain financing arrangements that are involved in the state’s funding of its Medicaid program, CMS will review the lease arrangements to insure compliance with federal Medicaid laws and regulations.”

She said any SPA request by the state to modify its Medicaid service payments will be reviewed by CMS to insure compliance with federal Medicaid laws and regulations. “This includes the source of non-federal funds used to fund the service payments,” she said.

Nevers, in his letter to Mann, asked if Louisiana were to expand its Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) “are there any federal provisions that would prohibit Louisiana from withdrawing from such an expanded Medicaid program at any time, including after participating in the 100 percent federal funding available in 2014, 2015 and 2016?”

Mann responded in the affirmative: “A state may choose whether and when to expand, and if a state covers the expansion group, it may later decide to drop the coverage, without any federal penalty.”

The Louisiana Civil Service Commission approved the contracts for the takeover of four hospitals in Houma, Lafayette, New Orleans and Lake Charles on June 10 despite the lack of CMS approval of the state’s privatization plan.

Commission member Scott Hughes of Shreveport said the approval was based on the state budget approved by the legislature which he said assumed the privatization of the hospital. That action, he said, would leave no money available to operate the hospitals through LSU if the deals had been rejected.

While that is not among the criteria that the Civil Service Commission is supposed to consider when layoff plans are submitted by state agencies, it left unanswered the question of what will happen if CMS does not ultimately approve the state’s plan.

A CMS spokesperson in Dallas said on June 12 that CMS does not play any role in the actual privatization of the hospitals. “However, as part of the privatization, the State of Louisiana is modifying the Medicaid reimbursement to those hospitals. The change in reimbursement requires the submission of State Plan Amendments (SPA). CMS currently has received some of the necessary SPA and they are under review.”

Last Jan. 30, Bill Brooks, associate regional administrator for the CMS Division of Medicaid and Children’s Health Operations in Dallas, sent a six-page letter to Ruth Kennedy, director of the Bureau of Health Services Financing for the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) in which he requested additional clarifying information which he cautioned had the effect of “stopping the 90-day clock” for CMS to take action on the proposed SPA which “proposed to revise the reimbursement methodology for inpatient hospital services to establish supplemental Medicaid payments to non-state-owned hospitals in order to encourage them to take over the operation and management of state-owned and operated hospitals that have terminated or reduced services.”

He said a new 90-day clock would not begin until his office had received satisfactory responses to his requests.

One of the requirements that Brooks cited was one which said CMS “must have copies of all signed standard Cooperative Endeavor Agreements.” He also asked the state to provide all Intergovernmental Transfer (IGT) management agreements and “any other agreements that would present the possibility of a transfer of value between the two entities.”

He said, “CMS has concerns that such financial arrangements meet the definition of non-bona fide provider donations as described in federal statute and regulations.

“Detailed information needs to be provided to determine whether the dollar value of the contracts between private and public entities had any fair market valuation. There can be no transfer of value or a return or reduction of payments reflected in these agreements,” he said.

“Additionally, whether the State is a party to the financial arrangement or not, the State is ultimately responsible to ensure that the funding is appropriate.”

Brooks asked, “How many entities does the State anticipate will participate in this arrangement? Please submit a list of all participating hospitals, all transferring entities doing the IGT, and the dollar amount that the transferring entities will IGT. Please describe how the hospitals are related/affiliated to the transferring entity and provide the names of all owners of the participating hospitals.”

In the case of the Leonard Chabert Medical Center in Houma, the lessee is listed as Terrebonne Medical Center of Houma but in reality, Ochsner Medical Center of New Orleans will be taking over operations of Leonard Chabert.

“What is the source of all funds that will be transferred?” Brooks asked. “Are they from tax assessments, special appropriations from the State to the county (parish)/city or some other source?

“The State plan methodology must be comprehensive enough to determine the required level of payment and the Federal Financial Participation (FFP) to allow interested parties to understand the rate setting process and the items and services that are paid through these rates,” Brooks said. “Claims for federal matching funds cannot be based upon estimates or projections. Please add language that describes the actual historical utilization and trend factors utilized in the calculation,” he said.

Brooks also asked if the private hospitals destined to take over operations of the state facilities are required to provide a specific amount of health care service to low income and needy patients. “Is this health care limited to hospital only or will health care be provided to the general public? What type of health care covered services will be provided?” he asked.

The CMS spokesperson on Wednesday said if CMS disapproved an amendment, “there would be no federal dollars provided for the changes proposed in the State Plan Amendment.”

“No federal dollars” could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars for a state already wrestling with suffocating budgetary constraints.

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Where was Jindal on decision to name Shetler to University of Louisiana Board? Answer: counting campaign donations?

Posted in Boards, Campaign Contributions, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Politicians on June 20, 2013| 4 Comments »

Carl Shetler is a survivor and now he serves on the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors after having helped place one of the universities he now helps govern on NCAA probation a quarter-century ago.

For three years, in 1971-1974, Shetler served as an assistant coach and main recruiter for the McNeese State University (MSU) basketball team during his tenure.

You’d think he would know better than to openly flaunt NCAA rules but it was learned that others took ACT tests for two prospective basketball players.

Edmond Lawrence, who first said he would sign with the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL—now the University of Louisiana Lafayette), changed his mind after he was promised money if he would sign with McNeese.

Shetler and then head basketball coach Bill Reigel were fired in 1974 but in 1986 Shetler, who by then owned an automobile dealership, was among a group of Lake Charles businessmen who provided illegal jobs, money and cars to McNeese basketball players.

The other businessmen, as identified in a June 15, 1992 letter from McNeese Athletic Director Robert Hayes to SLC Commissioner Bill Belknap, included Henry Carter, owner of a local Popeye’s Chicken franchise; Johnny Abraham, owner of a Lakes Charles grocery story; local attorney William Baggett, former construction company owner Bobby Nicholson and Bob Keyes, whom Hayes said he did not know.

Joe Dumars, who would go on to star with the Detroit Pistons, was one of those who received money from the boosters.

Another player, Mike Marshall who transferred from the University of Kansas to McNeese, said he was paid “thousands of dollars” by Cowboy boosters when he played for McNeese.

The NCAA and Southland Conference (SLC) Commissioner Dick Oliver placed McNeese on two years’ probation in 1987 and the SLC forced McNeese to disassociate itself from Shetler and the other businessmen.

McNeese was also forced to forfeit rights to all revenue generated by SLC members during the 1986-87 and 1987-88 academic years in men’s basketball and its number of scholarships was reduced to 11 for both years.

The NCAA further instructed the university:

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate what steps were taken by the institution to advise them of the conference penalty. Please include with your response the dates such action occurred and all relevant written material including, but not limited to copies of correspondence to the disassociated boosters, internal memorandum and news releases;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate what ongoing efforts were made by the institution to ensure that the university’s relationship with these individuals remained severed. Please include all copies of all relevant written materials;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate each and every contribution, whether monetary or otherwise, made by them to the McNeese athletics department, an athletics booster organization of McNeese, or any other non-profit association affiliated with McNeese. In connection with this request, please provide a list for the years 1986-97, 1987-88, 1988-89, 1989-90 and 1990-91 of all individuals making contributions, whether monetary or otherwise, the McNeese athletics departments, an athletics booster organization of McNeese, or any other non-profit association affiliated with McNeese;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate whether they have employed McNeese student-athletes. In connection with this response, please provide a list of all those employed and (the) dates of employment;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate whether they have been involved in the promotion of McNeese athletics in any way including, but not limited to, membership in booster organizations, associations with coaching staff members, attendance at booster functions, advertising in McNeese publications, signage at McNeese facilities or the sponsorship of radio/television programming involving McNeese or any staff member of McNeese.

But even that crackdown didn’t last. Shetler, through former athletic director Sonny Watkins and MSU President Robert Hebert, was soon calling the shots again.

His presence was so obvious that MSU soon began to mean Mr. Shetler’s University, one reporter wrote at the time. Coaches and athletic directors came and went—all while Shetler called the shots from his auto dealership on LA. 14. Another joke emerged as Northeast Louisiana University and USL were changing their names to the University of Louisiana Monroe (ULM) and University of Louisiana Lafayette (ULL), the same reporter wrote: McNeese, the line went, would become the University of Louisiana at Highway 14.

Shetler even prevailed upon Hebert to hire Kirby Bruchhaus as head football coach. Bruchhaus resigned after only one season when it was revealed that he regularly bet on professional and college football games, a major NCAA violation.

So how is it that Shetler, who has displayed little concern for rules, came to be appointed not once, but twice, to the University of Louisiana System Board?

He was first appointed by former Gov. Edwin Edwards in June of 1992, less than two weeks after Hayes’ letter to the SLC that identified the businessmen who paid McNeese players. His appointment took effect on Jan. 1, 1993. Shetler even served as board chairman and chairman of the athletic committee where he was in charge of overseeing the very rules he so openly violated.

Parenthetically, in case you think the names Edwards and Shetler ring a bell, they do. Shetler’s son, Ricky Shetler was a casino consultant and close friend of Edwards’ son, Stephen Edwards and when the cheese got binding in his 1998 federal grail, the younger Shetler turned on his friend, cutting a deal with prosecutors to testify against Stephen in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Carl Shetler was again appointed to the board in July of 2008, this time by Jindal.

That raises the obvious question: did anyone in Jindal’s camp make even a token effort to vet this appointment?

The same question could be asked of Edwards.

The difference, of course, is Edwards never hid behind a façade of wholesomeness and all things good. He was a rogue and didn’t care who knew it. It was that candor that endeared him to voters.

Jindal, on the other hand, tries to project an aura of respectability and goodness, a “gold standard” of ethics, if you will.

So where was the application of that “gold standard” in this case?

For that answer, as always, follow the money.

Shetler, besides lavishing money on athletes at McNeese, is not above tossing a little cabbage in the direction of Jindal.

Shetler, Rosier Shetler (same address), Shetler Rental Service, Shetler Rental Properties and McDrig’s, Inc. (same post office box as Shetler Rental Properties) all combined to pour some $48,000 into Jindal’s gubernatorial campaigns of 2003, 2007 and 2011.

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Campaign finance ethics fines mount up; collections? not so much since Gov. Jindal’s ethics ‘reform’ hyperbole of 2008

Posted in Commissions, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, Transparency on June 19, 2013| 10 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal loves to travel across the country telling anyone who will listen about the “gold standard” of ethics reform he singlehandedly passed to strengthen Louisiana’s ethics laws as one of his first acts upon taking office in 2008.

Except it simply isn’t so.

There are more than 981,000 reasons that indicate Jindal’s boasts are just so much hot air, devoid of any substance.

More than 300 candidates for local, state and national offices, many of them attorneys (and more than a few disbarred attorneys) owe more than $891,500 in fines for filing campaign finance reports late or not at all.

Moreover, 25 political action committees (PACs) owe an additional $90,000, according to figures provided by the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

So, just how is it that so many fines and such a large amount—at least four candidates had accrued penalties in excess of $25,000 each—have managed to go uncollected for so long (some dating as far back as 1999)?

For the answer to that, we have to go all the way back to January, 2008, Jindal’s first month in office. One of his first acts was to call a special session of the legislature to pass his “ethics reform” package that effectively gutted the State Board of Ethics. Ten of the board’s 11 members resigned in protest—seven of those because the “reform” legislation transferred ethics enforcement power from the state ethics board to administrative law judges, a move that rendered the board useless.

Next question: What’s so wrong with turning enforcement power over to administrative law judges? Well, for starters, the administrative law judges are selected by an appointee of the governor, hardly a hands-off, arms-length, non-political approach to ethics. In fact, Elliot Stonecipher, a Shreveport demographer and political analyst, observed the Jindal package created a situation in which “we could have people with a relationship with the governor (enforcing ethics laws).”

For decades the ethics commission had full authority to bring charges, hear cases and impose penalties on public officials accused of wrongdoing. No more.

Former Ethics Chairman Frank Simoneaux, who has been critical of the manner in which the ethics board and the administrative judges have interacted on issues, said he agrees that the responsibility for investigating and deciding ethics cases should be split but that administrative judges are not the method that should be employed.

Oh, and there’s this: Jindal proposed the legislation while he was under investigation by the Louisiana Board of Ethics. The timing of his “reform” measures has to be considered at least somewhat suspect, given that the ethics commission cited Jindal’s campaign for campaign finance disclosure violation just before Jindal pushed through his package.

Examples of outstanding ethics fines for late campaign finance reports include:

• Richard C. Bates, a 2006 candidate for 24th Judicial District Judge (Jefferson Parish) who has since been disbarred: $2,600;

• Michael Bell, former legislative assistant to former Sen. Wilson Fields (now a district judge) and himself an unsuccessful 2011 candidate for the state senate: $3,260;

• District Judge Wilson Fields, unsuccessful 2010 campaign for First Circuit Court of Appeal: $1,000;

• William Bowman: unsuccessful 1997 candidate for St. Helena Parish Clerk of Court: $2,720;

• Raymond Brown: unsuccessful 2004 candidate for Orleans Parish Sheriff: $9,500;

• Douglas Castro: unsuccessful 2005 candidate for Orleans Parish Clerk of Court: $10,420;

• Albert Donovan, former legal counsel to Gov. Edwin Edwards, 2003 unsuccessful candidate for Secretary of State: $39,500;

• James Fahrenholtz: 2000 and 2004 candidate for Orleans Parish School Board: $41,000;

• Sandra Hester: unsuccessful 2004 candidate for Orleans Parish School Board: $10,660;

• Percy J. Marchand: unsuccessful 2007 candidate for Orleans Parish state representative: $26,600;

• Robert Murray: unsuccessful 2003 and 2007 candidate for state representative: $16,900;

• Donald Ray Pryor: unsuccessful 2002 candidate for Orleans Parish Registrar: $36,200;

• Gary Wainwright: unsuccessful 2007 candidate for Orleans Parish District Attorney: $30,700;

The Ethics Commission is so weakened by Jindal’s 2008 ethics revamp that it is not only unable to collect outstanding fines but it is even powerless to prevent those with unpaid fines from running in subsequent political races.

Enforcement is just as ineffective with political action committees.

The United Democratic Ballot, Inc., for example, owes $14,000 in unpaid fines dating back to 2002.

Others include:

• The Westbank Independent Coalition (Jefferson Parish): $8,000 in 2003;

• The African American Voters League: $9,000 in 2002;

• Baton Rouge Youth Movement: $8,000 in 2011 and 2012;

• Home Builders Association of Central Louisiana: $8,000 in 2010;

• Independent Rx PAC: $3,500 in 2010;

• Shreveport Committee on Political Education: $4,400 in 2006 and 2010;

As a reward for his comments critical of Jindal’s ethics reform package, Simoneaux was not re-nominated to another five-year term on the board—effectively fired—by the Committee on House and Governmental Affairs in April of 2012.

Ethics, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. Put another way: those who have the gold are making the rules.

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Jindal’s criticism of IRS investigations of conservatives is more of the same notoriously lame, hypocritical hyperbole

Posted in ATC, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Public Records, Transparency on May 30, 2013| 6 Comments »

It was with more than a little amusement that we read a couple of weeks ago that Gov. Bobby Jindal had called for jail time for any Internal Revenue Service officials found to have unfairly targeted conservative groups to be put in jail.

As usual, Jindal made his indignant, self-righteous proclamation at an out-of-state forum. This time, it was in a speech to Virginia Republicans in yet another stop in his 2016 presidential campaign that would be better suited for a Saturday Night Live parody skit than serious political discourse.

Oh, it’s not that we don’t agree with Jindal on this one point. The IRS certainly is far too powerful and is a force to be feared if one happens to be on the wrong end of a tax audit.

But coming from Jindal, it is simply yet another example of the “reform” governor’s façade of pseudo-transparency—hypocritical at worst, the subject of stinging ridicule at best.

“You do not take the freedoms of law-abiding citizens, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom,” the Boy Blunder opined. “When you do that, you go to jail.”

But here’s the thing, Guv: It was only last March 11—not even three months ago—that we learned that one of Bobby’s boys, one Troy Hebert to be precise, director of the Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC), had ordered a background investigation on LouisianaVoice editor Tom Aswell (that would be me). Here is the link to that post:

https://louisianavoice.com/2013/03/11/atc-director-troy-hebert-orders-background-investigation-of-louisianavoice-publisher-tom-aswell-but-did-we-pass/

Normally, we would not hold Jindal accountable for the actions of a rogue department head. But now the question must be asked if Hebert’s investigation was truly the action of a rouge department head, of someone who went “off the reservation,” or if the investigation may have been ordered by higher-ups.

Hey, even Henry Kissinger once said paranoid people sometimes have real enemies and recent events and revelations may well justify that paranoia. Read on.

On May 11, we sent a public records request to Superintendent of Education John White and we copied Department of Education (DOE) General Counsel Joan Hunt as is our practice when seeking records.

The request was straightforward enough: we asked for correspondence between White and his old New York boss Joel Klein dating back to July 1, 2011. Specifically, we were attempting to learn what communication the two had conducted relative to InBloom, the company Klein is now affiliated with and which was founded by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to serve as a “parking place” (in White’s words—a computer data bank, in more formal terms) for sensitive personal information on Louisiana students and teachers.

Hunt, subsequent to our request, fired off an email that same day to White, DOE attorney Willa LeBlanc and Hebert that said, “Troy, we need to reply and say that.”

But Hunt, most likely inadvertently, copied us into the reply as well.

Curious as to why Hebert would be included in the loop since he is about as far removed from DOE as possible (he’s under the Louisiana Department of Revenue) and equally curious as to what was supposed to have been said, we sent another public records request for all correspondence between DOE officials and Hebert.

The response to that request was even more puzzling:

“No Documents. Attorney-client privilege.”

Okay, first there are no documents but if there were, they would be privileged. That’s like the attorney who responded to a claim that his dog had bitten a passerby: “My dog does not bite. My dog was confined in the yard that day. I don’t own a dog.”

Really puzzled now, we sent another email on May 26 reiterating our request for correspondence between DOE and Hebert: “Inasmuch as you took the liberty to send your email to Troy Hebert, director of ATC and who is not an attorney nor is he a client of you or DOE, there is no client-attorney privilege.”

We also told Hunt that her provision of information about me to a non-involved third party constituted a “serious breach” that I was willing to report to the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Attorney Disciplinary Board.

Two days later we received another letter from the DOE legal office which said:

“As was indicated in the Department’s response dated and emailed to you on May 15, 2013, the Department has no public records responsive to your request. Any communications between the Legal Staff of LDOE and Troy Hebert would be privileged (attorney work product/privilege) and not subject to being released pursuant to a public records request. In addition, the Department is not in possession of any emails between Troy Hebert and John White.” There it is again: My dog doesn’t bite; I don’t own a dog.

We remained perplexed as to why Troy Hebert was brought into the conversation about our initial request. As the director of an agency completely removed from DOE, we knew there was no way possible that Hebert could be a client of either DOE or any of its legal staff and that fact only intensified our determination to learn what was going on.

Then we had occasion to interview Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe) Tuesday night about the Senate and Governmental Affairs deferral of a bill to protect state employee whistleblowers which had passed unanimously in the full House.

In that interview, Kostelka, a remarkably candid public servant, intimated that the committee had killed the bill to protect employees from supervisory reprisals for revealing official wrongdoing because one Troy Hebert had personally contacted each of the committee members to convey the message that the administration, i.e. Jindal, was not in favor of the bill. Kostelka, seeing the proverbial handwriting on the wall, did not object to the motion by Sen. Greg Tarver (D-Shreveport) to defer the bill.

It is not entirely clear why Hebert would be interjecting himself into legislative matters given the somewhat watery thin theory (in the case of Louisiana, at least) of separation of powers under which our state government proclaims to function.

He is, after all, a member of the administration, or executive branch and should not be lobbying the legislative branch. In fact, he is not even a registered lobbyist. And his dog doesn’t bite.

But at least we can now connect the dots as it all comes together. Hebert is one of those hangers-on—kind of like the new kid in town who hangs around the fringes of the playground hoping to make friends with the locals. He will do anything to curry favor with his boss—not exactly a wise career move at this point—including serving as a go-between messenger boy between the governor’s office and legislators.

…And between the governor’s office and DOE.

And Jindal now has the cajones to vilify the IRS for spying.

We bet Jindal doesn’t even own a dog.

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