Louisiana Voice

Retired attorney Fred Mulhearn of Ruston is also a part time cartoonist of considerable talent, not to mention a good friend. But please, don’t hold that against him.

Following his retirement, he and wife Roxanne pulled up stakes in Denham Springs (not long before the disastrous flood of August 2016—talk about timing!) and moved back to Ruston, which is also my hometown.

Fred peddles his cartoons to newspapers across the state and also will soon be coming out with his second book of cartoons chronicling life in Looziana.

You can purchase copies of both of his cartoon books by clicking on the blue “I support my local bookstore” icon to the right of this post. That will take you to Cavalier House Books in Denham Springs and they will ship the book to your door (did I mention I support local businesses over the big box stores?)

Fred will also be signing copies of both his books at the Louisiana Book Festival to be held on the State Capitol grounds in downtown Baton Rouge on Saturday Oct. 28. I’ll be there, but not signing books—just roaming around, trying to look intelligent and hobnobbing with real writers.

Anyway, Fred has graciously consented to allow LouisianaVoice to post some of his cartoons from time to time. The one below is especially timely.

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One week to go.

Stories like the two below this shameless request for financial contributions are what I do here at LouisianaVoice.

As Baton Rouge radio talk show host Jim Engster observed during one of my appearances on his show, the flood of August 2016 destroyed my home but it didn’t get my computer. LouisianaVoice continued its quest for stories other media ignore or don’t know about.

I’m not the greatest reporter to come down the pike. Far from it. I can think of several right here in Baton Rouge who are far better than I. But for the most part, they are constrained in what they can pursue by sheer economics as newspapers, suffering from the loss of ad revenue, are cutting back exactly where they shouldn’t: in the news room. This puts a strain on small staffs to cover all the news. Consequently, some deserving stories get what my grandmother described as “a lick and a promise.”

I am a retiree with nothing but time on my hands and a pickup truck and a computer at my disposal. I can dig deeper than a reporter on a deadline can. For me, it’s not a sprint to beat a deadline, it’s a marathon to reach the finish line with the full story.

But to do so, I need your help. As I said, I’m a retiree on a fixed income and this blog does incur expenses. Anything you can contribute, no matter how large or small, would be appreciated more than you could ever know. Your contribution helps us to defer expenses of paying for copies of records, gasoline, auto repair, computer maintenance, printer cartridges, etc. Everything you give goes to gathering and reporting news of corruption, graft, ethics violations, and general mismanagement of your tax dollars.

Please help by clicking on the yellow “DONATE” button at the right of this post and give by credit card or by mailing a check to:

LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, LA. 70726

And thanks so much!

Tom Aswell, publisher

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Corruption, abuse of public office, scams, Ponzi schemes, politicians shamelessly bought by campaign funds, lobbyists who drown out the voices of the people, salary inequities, fraud, Wall Street manipulation of our very lives, adverse audits of public agencies we trust with our funds and resources, poor quality of living, poor national rankings, education as a political football, State Police corruption, questionable activities at the Office of State Fire Marshal, lawsuits, adoption fraud that’s frighteningly close to human trafficking, profiteering at the expense of taxpayers…

These are samples of the stories LouisianaVoice covers on a daily basis—of advertisements or subscription fees.

That’s why we hold two fundraisers a year—to solicit your generous support of what we do.

It doesn’t take much, but it does require financial resources to keep our work going. Just so you know, I do not take a salary from LouisianaVoice. Zero.

The contributions you make are plowed right back into the work of investigating public corruption, fraud, and ethics violations.

We’re heading into our final week of our fall fundraiser. Time is running out for our final push of 2017.

Please do what you can. All contributions are appreciated. Click on the yellow “DONATE” icon at the right and give by credit card or mail your check to:

LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, LA. 70726

And thanks.

Tom Aswell, publisher

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Folks, please don’t forget that LouisianaVoice is presently conducting its fall fund drive and I desperately need your help in keeping the flow of fresh, thorough, investigative stories coming. I’m about to embark on a field I’ve never covered before but which has been brought to my attention: human trafficking of babies for adoption.

Adoption scams are about the worst type of criminal activity out there, with the exception of the trafficking of young girls for prostitution—another area not previously covered by LouisianaVoice but certainly not immune from our examination.

It doesn’t matter if you have ever adopted a child, know an adopted child, or ever intend to adopt. If there are people profiting from illegal activity in this field, you should want it exposed.

We live in a sick society, as evidenced by the proliferation of drugs, high crime rates, extreme poverty even as the 1 percent get wealthier, violence such as the Las Vegas shootings, lax enforcement of criminal violations by those with money and influence by authorities from the U.S. attorney general to the Louisiana attorney general and to local district attorneys, and, of course, human trafficking.

Not to be overly boastful, but LouisianaVoice the only medium that is working to expose wrongdoing on a consistent basis. Others do so sporadically but as soon as the next hot news story comes along, it’s forgotten, pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.

Please help me to continue doing this. Click on the yellow “DONATE” button to the right of this post and give what you can by credit card or send a check to:

LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, LA. 70727

As always, thanks for your support.

Tom Aswell, publisher

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With 478.7 diagnoses per 100,000 population, Louisiana has the third highest cancer rate in the nation.

The data, released by 24/7 Wall St., a digital business news website which publishes more than 30 news articles per day, only last week released a report showing Louisiana as the fourth-worst education state in the nation.

The news doesn’t get any better with the state ranking 4^th highest in the rate of cancer deaths per 100,000 population (186.1), 10^th highest in lung cancer deaths per 100,000 population (68.8) and 7^th highest in the number of adults who currently smoke (21.9 percent).

The only hint of good news, if one could call it that, was the breast cancer diagnoses per 100,000, (19^th lowest) which was the most common incidence of cancer for the nation and for all but Louisiana and Mississippi.

Only Delaware (488.1) and Kentucky (513.7) had higher cancer rates than Louisiana. Delaware had the 5^th highest rate of breast cancer diagnoses (136.9).

But Kentucky, in addition to having the highest overall cancer rate, also was highest in cancer deaths per 100,000 (199.1), lung cancer deaths per 100,000 (91.4) and in the number of adults who smoke (25.9 percent). Kentucky is also the 5^th worst educated state

West Virginia, rated as the worst-educated state last week, had the 13^th highest overall cancer rate, but was second in cancer death rate, lung cancer death rate and in the number of adult smokers.

And then there’s Mississippi, coming in last week as the second-worst educated state, right behind West Virginia with the 12^th highest overall cancer rate, 3^rd highest cancer death rate, and 4^th highest in both lung cancer death rate and in the number of adult smokers.

Arkansas, the 3^rd worst educated state, while only 17^th in overall cancer rate, was 6^th in overall cancer death rate, 3^rd in both lung cancer death rate and the number of adult smokers.

In addition to having high cancer rates, low educational attainment, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia are also among the poorest states in the nation.

Throw in Alabama, with its low educational ranking and high poverty figures (its cancer rates were somewhat better than its neighboring states) and there definitely appears to be a correlation between smoking-related cancer rates and poverty.

And there’s another statistic that goes right along with that: incarceration rates.

Louisiana, of course, leads the civilized world with 1,420 prisoners per 100,000 population but right behind Louisiana are Oklahoma (1,300), Mississippi (1,270), Alabama (1,230) Georgia (1,220), Texas (1,130) Arizona (1,090) and Arkansas (1,010).

Isn’t it funny how the same states keep popping up in these surveys?

Yet the politicians in each of these states—not to mention congress and whoever may happen to be president—continue to ignore the real problems while appeasing campaign contributors and pandering to the latest hot button political issue, be it immigration, crime, drugs, border walls, a minimum age for strippers, kneeling during the national anthem, the latest quick fix for education, open carry legislation, or ramping up the next non-winnable war.

Yet they somehow manage to overlook the root cause of most of our problems: poverty.

Where there’s poverty, there’s crime; where there’s poverty, there’s unemployment; where there’s poverty, there’s low educational achievement; where there’s poverty, there’re major health issues.

Do you think it mere coincidence that Hammond and Monroe rank as the 4^th and 6^th most dangerous cities, respectively, in America, according to 24/7 Wall Street? Or that Monroe (11^th) and Hammond (32^nd) are among the poorest cities in the U.S., according to the same source?

Is anyone embarrassed by the fact that also ranked among the poorest cities in the nation were Shreveport-Bossier City (9^th), Lake Charles (28^th), Houma-Thibodaux (25^th) and Lafayette (36^th)?

And where it can be found anywhere, it seems that political corruption thrives best in an environment of abject poverty. Where there is an atmosphere of poverty and desperation, where people care only about where their next meal is coming from and little else, corruption is free to breed.

Nursing homes prosper when their beds are full of old people. Nursing home operators contribute generously to political campaigns and bills to encourage home care for the elderly stall.

Sheriffs and private prisons rake in the dollars that prison labor brings through the door. Businesses get cheap prison labor via work release, plus a $2,000 tax credit for each prisoner they work. Consequently, the war on drugs continues so we can keep our prisons and jails filled to maximum capacity. It’s all about the penalties for drug use, not the treatment for the problem. That doesn’t fill the jails.

Rather than address the core problem of crime, we arm our police to the teeth with military weapons meant for war and mass destruction.

Yes, I am keenly aware of what happened in Las Vegas, but did all that military firepower accessible to law enforcement there prevent the attack?

Might tighter gun control laws governing the purchase of the kind of weapons the killer had at his disposal have made it a little more difficult for him to have executed 59 people with such ease? We’ll never know. Lawmakers refuse to address the issue because they quake in the presence of the NRA and they grovel for NRA campaign cash. They’re the NRA’s bitches.

Arming the 22,000 concert goers, would, in all likelihood, have produced far more casualties but that’s the approach of lawmakers and the NRA: more guns for everyone!

“Poverty? What poverty? Where? We don’t need to increase the minimum wage. Anyone can feed a family on $7.75 an hour.”

Only trouble is, that’s being said by those who don’t have to and never had to.

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