Posted in Politics on January 18, 2015| 12 Comments »
At the repeated suggestions of several readers, we have added a feature to LouisianaVoice which we hope will increase our readership. (At least that’s what we’ve been told.)
At the bottom of each story we now have links readers may go to share our stories with others via Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Linkedin, and others.
And I personally have never really gotten into social media, there is even a button readers may click on to “like” us—whatever the heck that is. My car, after all, still has an 8-track player and my cell phone has a rotary dial and I still watch movies on Beta tapes—though they and the 8-tracks are getting harder and harder to find.
After adding these links we scrolled through a few stories to see what kind of hits we were getting and found that our story on U.S. Rep. Steve Scalese’s speech to David Duke’s group has already been forwarded more than 3,000 times on Facebook.
And that’s a good thing…we think.
At any rate, please feel free to avail yourselves to the new LouisianaVoice feature.
As for us, well, we’ll just keep writing about good ol’ Louisiana politics.
—Tom Aswell, Editor
Posted in Politics on January 13, 2015| 13 Comments »
It took a while but we have an update on Chance McNeely, the 26-year-old who recently made the quantum leap from a policy analyst for the governor’s office to Assistant Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Office of Environmental Compliance.
Before we get to that, however, let’s review a couple of items.
What’s it been, five years now that state classified employees have gone without a pay raise?
And didn’t the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) recently raise premiums and reduce benefits, all because Gov. Bobby Jindal manipulated premiums to help cover gaping holes in his state budget, thereby reducing the OGB reserve fund from more than $500 million to something like half that amount?
And hasn’t Jindal issued two expenditure freezes and two hiring freezes within the past 12 months, even specifying that no agency could “use employee transfers, promotions, reallocations or the creation of new positions” in order to circumvent the freezes?
So how is it that Chance McNeely, with a degree in agricultural business and all of four years’ experience (three of those as a legislative assistant for the U.S. House of Representatives. And just what does a legislative assistant do in Washington?), is deemed to be qualified to oversee something as critical as environmental compliance?
As this is being written, there is a federal trial ongoing in Baton Rouge over leaks of toxic chemicals at a DuPont chemical plant in Ascension Parish. But it’s a whistleblower suit, not one initiated by any regulatory agency. And does anyone remember the 1978 death of a truck driver at Bayou Sorrel? That happened when the driver exited his truck and was overcome by lethal chemical fumes.
Most of the state’s environmental issues are situated in South Louisiana, primarily along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans—the corridor that has been dubbed, deservedly so, as Cancer Alley.
But North Louisiana is not immune. The most controversial issue in the state right now is that proposed open tray burn of 15 million pounds of M6 artillery shell propellant at Camp Minden. Experts say cancer-causing emissions could be spread from Shreveport to Monroe.
We don’t know Chance McNeely, but it is the position of LouisianaVoice that given our track record in protecting Louisiana’s air and water, the job of environmental compliance should be entrusted to (a) someone with an environmental background and (b) someone with vastly more experience.
And the position most certainly should not have been handed to someone who purportedly is planning to walk away come next September in favor of entering law school.
But, adding insult to injury, McNeely’s salary, according to State Civil Service records, just increased by a whopping 57 percent—from $65,000 per year to $102,000.
This for someone who has worked in the governor’s office as a policy analyst (we don’t know what that entails, either) for all of nine months when there are thousands of state employees who have been working for decades for much less than half that.
And DEQ Secretary Peggy Hatch can stand on top of the State Capitol and proclaim (as she already has, but not from atop the Capitol) that McNeely was her first choice for the job, but we aren’t buying it for one nano-second. She hired McNeely at Jindal’s specific instructions and was given her talking points as well.
If, as she claims, it was her idea to recruit someone with no experience for a position as important as environmental compliance for the entire State of Louisiana, then we contend she is no more qualified for her position than he.
But again, we know whose decision it was to make this horribly ill-advised move. And if the citizens of Louisiana were not already aware of how Jindal has turned his back on this state in favor of his own self-promotion, then this move should underscore it.
It’s the biggest slap in the face of the state’s four million citizens since, well, since 1996 when Gov. Mike Foster appointed a 24-year-old named Bobby Jindal as head of the Department of Health and Hospitals.
Posted in Politics on December 21, 2014| 30 Comments »
If I were to write non-stop between now and the 2016 presidential election, I could never capture the accuracy or the relevance of Lamar White’s CenLamar post of today.
If you do nothing else during the holiday season, please take the time to read this:
Posted in Politics on December 8, 2014| 51 Comments »
I found her in the middle of Range Avenue, aka LA. 16, the busy north-south thoroughfare that runs by my house in Denham Springs. She was a tiny black and tan puppy, probably no more than eight to 10 weeks old and her most prominent feature were those enormous ears.
At first we thought she might be a miniature pinscher but her ears were not trimmed nor had her tail been snipped as is common for the breed. Neither were her legs nearly long enough for a min-pin.
After considerable research, we finally determined she was a chiweenie, one of those so-called designer, or hybrid breeds—a cross between a Chihuahua and a Dachshund. She had the body of a Chihuahua and the ears of a Dachshund except instead of being floppy, they stood erect, large enough for a gust of wind to cast her airborne or so it seemed.
PENNY AT TWO YEARS, WITH FAVORITE TOY (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)
When I married Betty more than 46 years ago, I told her I would always have a dog—and I have. But Penny, as we soon named her, became our very first indoor dog. As a puppy, she would leap repeatedly, attempting vainly to jump onto our sofa and the day she finally made it was a breakthrough for her as she was no longer content with lying on the floor.
That was 15 years ago and she was eventually diagnosed with a heart murmur and our veterinarian, Dr. Michael Whitlock started her on a regimen of heart medicine and diuretics to help keep fluid from building up in her lungs.
With advancing age and with her weakened condition, she eventually became unable to jump onto the sofa so I would lift her up and she would wrestle with a blanket until she could burrow under it to keep warm. She hated thunderstorms. Trembling, she would seek refuge from the storms under that blanket.
We used to laugh at my uncle Pete for the manner in which he would walk around holding his beloved Pomeranians but soon my daughters were laughing at me as I walked around the house with Penny cradled on her back, perfectly relaxed, in the crook of my arm. And I long ago lost count of the times I would take my afternoon nap on the sofa with her curled up asleep on my stomach, usually under that blanket.
Her healthiest weight was around 12 pounds but the combination of the heart murmur and the medication pulled her weight down to about half that. Dr. Whitlock wanted her weight around five of six pounds to keep the fluids down, so that was okay.
When those fluids would build up, she would develop a cough that wracked her tiny body, so he prescribed even more medication that created a new problem: dehydration. For that, he occasionally had to inject fluids, which seems contrary to her best interests. But as Dr. Whitlock explained time and again, we were walking a fine line between too much fluid and dehydration—plus whatever damage the necessary drugs might be doing to her kidneys and liver.
Dr. Whitlock, it must be said, was—and is—one of the most compassionate, caring veterinarians I could have ever found for Penny. He would even call me at home to check on her and it was his dedication to her care and wellbeing that prolonged her life for at least a year—maybe two or three—beyond what she normally might have lived. There were times when I was certain the end was near but he would give her a steroid shot that would pick her up for weeks or months at a time. I will forever be grateful to him and his staff for giving us that extra time together.
Up until about last Thursday, she remained in good spirits and had a healthy appetite. But on Friday, she had begun to slip into a more lethargic state and by Sunday she seemed almost catatonic and unusually weak. When I took her outside to take care of her business, I could see after a few minutes that she was too weak to even walk back into the house, so I gently picked her up and carried to her bed in my office. She refused to eat all day and simply sat up, staring into space as if she was afraid to lie down.
Around 1:30 p.m. I picked her up to take her to the sofa for our customary nap. As I held her—on her back in the crook of my arm as usual—she let out three quick yelps. Then her weakened little body, reduced to about four, maybe five pounds and simply too feeble to continue the fight, jerked twice and she was gone. Apparently, she’d had a heart attack.
I laid her on her bed and stroked her head as she continued twitching for a few minutes even though I knew she was dead. And yes, I cried. We grow attached to these trusting little companions that depend on us for their care and though I have almost always had special connections to my dogs, I had grown to love her as no pet before. And as someone once said, their love is unconditional: they don’t care about social status, race or gender. Treated with kindness, they return the loyalty and devotion tenfold. We could all learn from that.
Daughter Leah, upon learning of Penny’s death, sent me this poem:
Nine-year-old granddaughter Baylee has already added to her Christmas list a request for a puppy “that looks like Penny because Grandma and Granddaddy are sad.” But there’s no way I would ever try to replace Penny. I couldn’t. Besides, I have a 17-year-old Chihuahua, Tia, which I inherited from daughter Jennifer and an outside dog, Blaze, a gift from granddaughter Lauren. Blaze is a chow-golden retriever mix and one of the friendliest dogs ever. He’s about two now. I’m 71 and if he lives a normal lifespan he could—and well might—outlive me, so I won’t be bringing any more dogs into my home.
The pain of losing Penny is just too great.
