Louisiana Voice

The offenses are listed as misdemeanors but Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office is spending a lot of state resources pursuing the wife of a blogger who once criticized the Terrebonne Parish power structure.

And apparently, he’s not above being used by others to do their dirty work for them.

Wayne Anderson, a Houma Police officer, you may remember, had his home raided some time back by Sheriff Jerry Larpenter who seized his and his children’s computers.

Here are links to a few of the stories that appeared online then:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160805/04434835163/sheriff-uses-unconstitutional-law-to-raid-home-seize-electronics-belonging-to-watchdog-blogger.shtml

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/04/sheriff-raids-house-to-find-anonymous-blogger-who-called-him-corrupt/

https://reason.com/blog/2016/08/12/louisiana-sheriff-doesnt-like-critical-b

https://www.offthegridnews.com/current-events/blogger-criticizes-sheriff-so-sheriff-raids-home-and-takes-computers/

Anderson and his wife Jennifer, promptly filed suit in federal court and after the presiding judge chewed on Larpenter’s backside for a while, Larpenter decided to SETTLE with the couple for an undetermined amount but which is believed to be about $250,000. Also settling were co-defendants Parish President Gordon Dove and the parish government after a $50,000 settlement of their part of the litigation.

Lesson learned, right? Don’t mess with people’s right to freedom of speech.

Well yes and no.

Jennifer Anderson subsequently was arrested for DWI. Deputies said she had a child in the vehicle at the time but she insists there was no child in the car with her. It’s not for us to say whether or not she was drinking and driving. That should be decided in a court of law, but it should be done so properly and according to legal procedures.  Instead, what has ensued is a series of missteps on the part of prosecutors and those blunders have shown just how vindictive the local power clique can be when crossed.

District Attorney Joseph Waltz, Jr. recused himself from the DWI matter because he was prominently mentioned in Wayne Anderson’s blog Exposedat. That was the proper thing to do and the case was referred to Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office.

But when the Assistant Attorney General handling the case, one Angad Ghai, failed to appear for Anderson’s arraignment on four separate occasions, 32^nd Judicial District Court Judge John Walker dismissed the case. Dismissals usually are handed down after two misses but the court gave the state every opportunity to prosecute its case in this matter. LouisianaVoice, by the way, was told Monday (June 12) that Ghai is no longer employed by the attorney general’s office.

LouisianaVoice does not condone drinking and driving and this is not a defense of Jennifer Anderson by any stretch. But when prosecutors neglect to show up in for courtroom proceedings not once, not twice, not three times, but four times, then the onus is on them.

Over and done on a technicality, right? Wrong. It’s not a technicality when prosecutors are negligent—or inept. Accordingly, Attorney General Jeff Landry should have simply tucked his tail, admitted his office’s incompetence and skulked back to Baton Rouge.

But no. Landry is an ego-driven politician, so he sent Assistant Attorney General Molly Lancaster into the fray to re-file charges on March 15 of this year—15 months after Anderson’s Jan. 20, 2017, arrest.

It was the classic example of re-filing as a means of judge-shopping and this time the AG got a different judge, Judge George Larke. We don’t know if that was an advantage to Landry or not. It really doesn’t matter.

What does matter is who initiated the new charges.

That would be the parish president, Gordon Dove, which makes no sense since he is not an attorney and, on the surface of it all, has no dog in the hunt. But that wouldn’t stop Dove.

For a little background on Dove, consider this:

• Dove is a former legislator who not only served on the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment but was its chairman of that committee.
• Dove also was owner of Dual Trucking Co. which was cited by the Montana Department of Environmental Equality for dumping oilfield radioactive waste from the nearby Bakken Oilfield.

How ironic.

• But wait. Dove also owns Vacco Marine, Inc., which was the subject of several investigations, negative reports, citations, and compliance orders by and from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) over a period of several years.

More irony.

• And while serving on the House Natural Resources Committee and while sitting as a member of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, he joined with 12 other members of the Natural Resources Committee in passing an amendment to a Senate bill that made the prohibition against suing oil companies for damages to the state’s wetlands and marshes retroactive.

Still more irony.

For a more complete dossier on Dove, go HERE.

But now we have Gordon Dove who is so concerned about the safety and welfare of the good folks of Terrebonne Parish (if not the good folks in Montana) that he goes out of his way to pursue charges (which had already been dismissed) against a woman whose husband had the audacity to criticize the political structure of the parish, a structure that features Dove in the mix, along with others already mentioned.

And they’ve got good ol’ Jeff Landry carrying the water for them while the attorney general ignores citizen complaints about the Jennings City Council’s refusal to allow citizens to speak at its meetings without prior approval of a secret “pre-meeting” where the agenda is drawn up.

(LouisianaVoice will have more on that in the days to come. But the point is that Jeff Landry likes to cherry-pick the causes he fights for, generally opting to help political allies and ignore anyone who can’t advance his career.)

The June 11 hearing on the continuance motion for Anderson’s case was one for the books. Anderson was arraigned, she wasn’t arraigned. No one knew for sure. The court’s minute clerk’s records said the case was allotted to Division A, another official said Division B. No one knew for sure (It was finally determined the case was allotted to A).

And during all this, Anderson was somehow never served with any notice of Landry’s renewed efforts.

But never mine, Jeff Landry is happy to dance the two-step with Gordon Dove.

Isn’t it rich, isn’t it queer
Losing my timing this late in my career
But where are the clowns – send in the clowns
Don’t bother they’re here.

—Frank Sinatra: Send in the Clowns

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Long before anyone ever heard of such right-wing zealots as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, David Duke, Pat Robertson, or Ted Nugent, there was a bona-fide mouth-frothing, fire-breathing purveyor of conspiratorial fascist-speak who could put them all to shame.

(Well, maybe not ALEX JONES. He probably has no peer for sheer detestable stupidity but you get the idea.)

A say all this as a preface to the story of a current-day fear-monger named John Guandolo, a former FBI agent once assigned to New Orleans and who figured prominently in the investigation and prosecution of former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson when he became romantically involved with a witness in the case. But I’ll get to Guandolo in a bit.

It was back in the very early 1960s that a Tulsa radio evangelist named Billy James Hargis exploded onto the nation’s airways with his daily 30-minute Christian Crusade broadcasts which were introduced by the full-throated strains of a choir singing, “Glory, glory Hallelujah.”

What invariably followed was anything but any Scripture-based sermon but a ranting, screaming diatribe directed at the Democratic administration of John F. Kennedy and all those “godless communists” running our country. Hargis, if you can imagine it was even possible, advanced his communist conspiracies even further than had Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

For those too young to remember, the communists were the target of the hate groups after the Native Americans and blacks and before the invasion of those hordes of Mexicans and Islamics took their place as threats to the white man’s rule. (On that note, I have to wonder how the Native Americans might feel about border protection against undesirables encroaching on their land and their way of life.)

Paranoia, in fact, seems to be ingrained into the American culture these days, especially whenever it involves anyone with dark skin pigmentation.

I caught a Billy James Hargis address upstairs in the Louisiana Tech Student Center (the Tonk) back about 1961 and he was everything I had imagined—namely a lunatic—as I listened to his noon broadcasts over KRUS, that throbbing 250-watt AM station where I would later find employment as a manic disc jockey (people knew my voice all the way to the edge of the city limits).

But there was one small problem with the good reverend. Well, actually two problems but that second one would not arise until more than a decade later, after Hargis had already fallen somewhat out of favor.

The first came after Hargis allied himself with GEN. EDWIN WALKER, another darling of the right ordered against his will by President Eisenhower to enforce the historic 1957 desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. Walker would join the John Birch Society two years later and would then go on speaking tours with Hargis.

The problem was that in 1960, Hargis became a suspect behind a series of five bombings of Little Rock public schools. The bombings were a message to civil rights leaders even as Walker was supposed to be keeping the peace. FBI special agent Joe Casper believed Hargis was planning to bomb the Methodist Church-affiliated Philander Smith College in Little Rock, a historically black university.

Then, in 1974, Tulsa, the so-called “Christian Fundamentalist Capital of the World,” was rocked when it was revealed that two students at Hargis’s Bible college married and on their wedding night, confessed to each other that each had had sexual relations with the good reverend. Hargis was forced into premature retirement by the scandal.

Now to JOHN GUANDOLO, the former New Orleans FBI agent-turned hysteria-spreading-profiteer-of-Islamophobia in the grand style of Hargis, Alex Jones, et al.

Guandolo, who has made his Understanding the Threat presentations to law enforcement groups in Hammond, Alexandria, and St. Charles Parish—you know, the really troublesome hotspots for Islamic activity—at a cost of about $12,500 a pop.

But here’s the real kicker responsible district attorneys and sheriffs should be concerned about:

Guandolo recently (on May 4) held one of his SESSIONS for 27 “students,” primarily police officers and sheriff’s deputies in a San Angelo, Texas, Baptist Church (ministers were allowed to attend free of charge).

Trouble is, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE), which serves as the state’s law enforcement accreditation agency. DECLINED TO APPROVE Guadolo’s course for credit, saying the daylong course (during the event, Guandolo repeatedly plugged his more expensive three-day and week-long courses and offered to sign copies of his book at his “product” table) “painted an entire religion with an overly-broad brush” and “provided no training value for law enforcement attendees.”

Besides enlightening attendees on ways to spot jihadis in their midst (beards without mustaches, apparently, are a dead giveaway), Guandolo shared his interpretations of 14^th-century Islamic law, gave tips on how to identify a jihadi job applicant, and how to thwart the Muslim Brotherhood in its conspiracy to topple America.

Pretty exceptional qualifications for a former FBI agent who couldn’t seem to keep his pants zipped around a star federal witness he was supposed to be…. well, handling.

All of which should really embarrass law enforcement officials in Rapides, Tangipahoa, and St. Charles parishes.

But probably won’t.

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Okay, here’s the deal.

I have written about a half-dozen novels, most of which are political in nature and all but one of which are situated in Louisiana.

While I have had two non-fiction books published and have edited two others that have been published, fiction is a completely different animal and it’s extremely difficult to interest traditional book publishers in a first-time fiction writer.

I refuse to self-publish but I would like very much to publish the novels as e-books.

The problem is, I am technically-challenged and haven’t the foggiest notion of how to format, publish, and market an e-book. Technology left me behind when they switched from Beta to VHS back in the ’80s.

I want to publish the novels and place them on Amazon and I will do what limited marketing I can on LouisianaVoice.

So, here’s my proposition:

I need someone in the Baton Rouge area (Baton Rouge, Central, Zachary, Livingston, Ascension or Tangipahoa parishes or the Felicianas to walk me through the process of formatting, cover design, and publishing. And while my financial resources are limited, I am willing to pay someone a fair fee for helping me do this with the first couple of publications and perhaps my feeble brain can absorb enough to do the others myself. If not, I’ll keep paying to have it done.

If you are reading this and possess the expertise and are willing to pick up a few bucks, please email me with your contact information (phone number, email address, etc.) at:

louisianavoice@cox.net

or mail me a letter the old-fashioned way (though I can’t imagine why) to:

LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, LA. 70727

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Even though no one appears to have taken notice of the fact, Bobby Jindal just won’t go away.

He’s like the little boy at the store trying to get his mom to buy him a candy bar but Mom has this way of ignoring him as only a long-suffering mother can.

You know the kid I’m talking about: “Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Maaaaaaaa-maaaa.”

Meanwhile, Mom just keeps on pushing the cart down the aisles as she shops for flour, sugar, roast, milk, etc.

Yeah, Bobby Jindal’s just like that.

While the rest of us go about our every day lives trying to make the mortgage payment, pay the utility bills and worry about how we’re going to pay for college tuition (thanks largely to Jindal’s having stripped state colleges of about 75 percent of their state funding), Bobby just keeps plugging along with his Wall Street Journal op-eds as if any of Louisiana’s beleaguered citizens were still listening.

It wasn’t enough that Jindal embarrassed the state with his Republican RESPONSE to President Obama’s State of the Union Address back in 2009 or that he humiliated himself with that numbingly silly ANNOUNCEMENT TO HIS CHILDREN in 2015 that he was running for President that he had the poor judgment to not only videotape but to upload to YouTube.

Nor is it sufficient that a few months back he found it necessary to summon his wife from their house to help him determine how the garbage can should be situated for curbside pickup. He had walked around the container several times in an attempt to figure out how it worked but finally gave up and called on Supriya’s engineering expertise, albeit hers is a chemical engineering degree.

And apparently, Bobby has yet to learn my email address because I still receive his missives, though they are appearing with less frequency than those daily updates about how well he was running in Iowa as he labored in vain to break through that 1 magical percent barrier in a crowded Republican field. Of course, if you went by his daily bulletins, you’d never have known he wasn’t a lock for the nomination.

So now, private citizen Jindal is churning out the op-eds for the WSJ. What remains a mystery is how the editors of a publication of such a stellar reputation as the WSJ could ever deem his opinions as being remotely relevant to the national debate. Bobby Jindal is history after having bankrupted this state for eight years.

Think back: When did he ever not have to institute midyear budget cuts? The answer? Never. Every one of his years was marked by draconian cuts to health care and higher education, a trend that has, despite the lessons that should have been learned, been carried forward by shallow-minded Republicans in the Legislature and a Democratic governor who has failed miserably in getting specifics of his message across to the voters.

On Sunday, I received this email from Jindal:

Dear Friend (“Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Maaaaaaaa-maaaa.”),

I recently wrote an oped (sic) for the Wall Street Journal discussing President Trump’s path to reelection.  Those who write-off his chances should be careful. Increasing extremism on the democrat (sic) side combined with the strong potential of a third-party candidate is just the scenario President Trump needs heading into 2020.

I hope you will take time to read the full article.

Best,

Bobby (“Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Maaaaaaaa-maaaa.”)

Kasich Could Be Trump’s Best Hope
An independent candidacy could split voters who dislike the Democrats but can’t abide the president.

The Wall Street Journal
Bobby Jindal

“…But the base isn’t enough to win, and Mr. Trump so far shows little sign of picking up new supporters. Thus, a challenger is not sufficient—Mr. Trump needs a candidate who siphons off not only Republican Never-Trumpers, but moderates who might otherwise vote for the Democrat. Fortunately for him, the Democrats are making themselves increasingly unattractive to those moderates.”

The email ended with a link to click on to read the rest of the article.

He was a lousy governor and an even lousier candidate for President. I had no reason to believe he’d be any better as a political pundit, so I didn’t bother.

“Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Maaaaaaaa-maaaa.”

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