Louisiana Voice

For those of you who claim to support our troops and law enforcement, the near shutdown of government services could have been especially significant.

You may want to remember the names of Clay Higgins and Mike Johnson during the 2024 voting. They are two of six members of the Louisiana House of Representatives delegation. While members Garret Graves, Julia Letlow, Steve Scalise and Troy Carter all voted in favor of the last-minute bill to avert the shutdown, Johnson and Higgins each voted against passage of the emergency measure.

Not only could about 2 million active-duty servicemembers be required to continue working with no paycheck, but certain law enforcement activities would cease entirely. There are a lot of military personnel who live in Johnson’s district and Higgins likes to boast of his experience as a cop. Seems a bit ironic — and hypocritical — that they would vote against those interests.

That was the very real threat facing America if the right-wing Republican push for a shutdown had occurred at midnight Saturday. And it still could happen because the temporary funding bill passed at the 11^th hour (Congress seems to favor working that way) only provides temporary funding of government for 45 days, or until Nov. 17.

After that, who knows? It could still happen in much the same manner as the shutdown orchestrated by Newt Gingrich in 1995 or the Donald Trump paralyzing shutdown of 2018-2019.

Should that happen, mail delivery could come to a halt, and we could see a significant slowdown in social security and Medicare/Medicaid complaint resolutions, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program meals for women, infants and children (WIC). Food pantries and food banks would be overrun (again) as federal employees from law enforcement to health care workers would find themselves without paychecks.

Air travel could be adversely impacted because of a shortage of air traffic controllers and TSA lines could become bogged down if screeners begin staying home because of no paychecks.

Had Speaker Kevin McCarthy not cratered, thus infuriating the MAGA-right wingnuts, we would have seen an ugly repeat of the disruption of our lives on a scale similar to ’95 and 2018-19. For those of us with short memories, it would’ve been a jolting reminder.

The likes of Matt Gaetz, Boebert and MJT wouldn’t really care: their staff members would keep working – without pay, of course. But federal and state joint task force efforts to stop drug and human trafficking would come to an abrupt halt, as would anti-terrorist investigations.

Federal disaster assistance (remember those fires, the earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, and the occasional tornado? Those are all disasters where the federal government steps in to help victims.) would come to a screeching halt.

But that’s still okay. Johnson and Higgins preferred a shutdown over sanity.

Jeff Landry wants it both ways.

Problem is, perception is everything and the perception, his double-speak notwithstanding, is that he is simultaneously suing a state agency and appointing the assistant attorney general wo will defend that agency.

That doesn’t quite pass the conflict-of-interest smell test.

Moreover, he penned a letter to another Baton Rouge lawyer earlier this week in which he put his long-standing character of non-professionalism on vivid display,

Of course, he probably thought the contents of that letter would remain shrouded in secrecy like a few other shadowy activities:

• The hiring the daughter of a third-place opponent in 2015 primary election to the AG’s FRAUD SECTION despite her past conviction and suspended prison sentence on three counts of … credit card fraud,
• The hiring Harvey Gulf executive Shane Guidry as a “special agent/investigator,” who in turn appointed Landry to the Harvey Gulf Board at a salary of between $50,000 and $100,000, a move that the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission called “A PRETTY CLEAR CONFLICT” since state law forbids work outside the AG’s office.
• His pet project for FINDING MISSING CHILDREN turned out to be a scheme concocted by a grifter that drew support from a number of heavy-hitting Texas politicos as well as Landry. While attracting influential support, the program didn’t actually find any missing children.
• He was part of a $17 million scam to hire MEXICAN WELDERS and pipefitters under H-2B visa rules through three companies owned by him and his brother, Ben Landry.

So, as you can see by the above examples, our attorney general-governor wannabe is not above twisting and distorting the rules governing his office so it should come as no surprise that has set his office up as both plaintiff and defendant in a lawsuit against Gov. John Bel Edwards and the State Pardon Board in an effort to stop capital clemency hearings requested by Edwards.

And when Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith, III had the temerity to to suggest that Landry might have a conflict of interest in serving in both capacities, Landry’s response was a few light years from being professional.

Landry opened his two-page letter by saying, “Your letter indicating that a conflict exists calls into question your competency as a lawyer.”

You mean competency like sitting on the Harvey Gulf board? Like hiring a convicted felon (for fraud, no less) to your office’s fraud division as payback for her mother’s endorsement? Or maybe owning a company that supplied foreign workers to a contractor for a large pipeline project?

Ever heard of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau? CFPB is a federal agency charged with protecting consumers from predatory lending and banking practices. In July, 26 Republican attorneys general signed a PETITION asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow them to intervene on behalf of lenders who were suing to ABOLISH CFPB. Guess who one of those attorneys general was? I’ll save you the intrigue: Jeff Landry.

For that answer, you may wish to check the rankings of the 32 states that still offer little or no regulation of predatory lenders. Just as an example, one who borrows $500 in LOUISIANA  from one of these lenders can expect to be required to repay a total of $935 after just four months. That’s an annual percentage rate of 405 percent, 7^th highest of the 32 states. (Idaho borrowers would be called upon to repay a total of $1,500 on that $500, an annual percentage rate of 652 percent, highest of the 32 states.)

And Landry is one of the 26 attorneys general who wants abolish the only agency standing between lenders and these plunderers. Does that sound like a candidate who really has the best interest of Louisianans at heart?

But back to that Sept. 26 letter. Landry goes to great pains to explain how the Louisiana Constitution dictates that he (a) is suing the board to enforce the state’s open meetings laws because he said the board hired Smith’s firm illegally (without a vote and without the hiring being on the board’s meeting agenda) and (b) the ethical rules for private law firms “are not necessarily applicable to the Attorney General’s Office.”

Otherwise, he said, “every employee, department, and appointed or elected official in state government could raise a potential conflict if it ever received legal services from the Attorney General.”

“There is no constitutional or statutory mandate for the Attorney General’s Office to represent the board,” Landry wrote. “As a courtesy, there has been a longstanding practice of the Attorney General providing an Assistant Attorney General to provide general advice and legal representation as needed.”

Consider his solicitor general, Liz Murrill, who is seeking his job now that he’s trying to move across the lake to the Capitol. The Baton Rouge law firm Taylor Porter currently has several contracts with the state totaling $865,000. Her husband, John Murrill, is a partner in the firm.

Smith was terminated after only one day of defending the pardon board and replaced by Joshua Force of the New Orleans firm Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert.

And while the choice of contract attorneys to serve as assistant attorneys general is the responsibility of the attorney general, it’s somewhat interesting to note that Sher Garner has made $10,500 in campaign contributions to Landry in 2015 and 2020 and currently has four state contracts worth $790,000, including two with the attorney general’s office valued at $270,000.

So apparently, ethics and conflicts of interest, like beauty, are in the eyes of the beholder and Landry is quickly becoming beholden to a lot of special interests that appear to call his ethics into question.

Not sure what this helicopter cost, but the cost of that cup of coffee or whatever this driver wanted at the truck stop down the street probably isn’t going to cover it. The driver attempted to exit at Denham Springs this morning and to negotiate a left turn under Interstate 12, apparently en route to a local truck stop. Unfortunately, neither he nor his escort driver accounted for the lack of clearance under I-12 and the resulting collision separated the chopper’s rotor housing. That’s it in the foreground. Needless to say, traffic, already a mess in Denham Springs during morning rush hour, was pretty much backed up.

oil stains the plastic covering over the helicopter that once was attached to the rotor housing (left) that was knocked to the pavement when the truck driver discovered the hard way that there was insufficient clearance under I-12 in Denham Springs this morning. Deductions from the driver’s paycheck aren’t likely to cover the damage.

Every election cycle I end up asking the same rhetorical questions:

• Are these current candidates the best we have to offer?
• Why, instead of so damn many attack ads, don’t the candidates put forth more effort in explaining exactly how they would go about addressing our myriad problems?
• What is the real motive behind all the PAC money being poured into the various campaigns?

I say these are rhetorical questions because for the most part, we pretty much know the answers and they’re not answers that do us proud as a supposedly free society.

On the national front, which is a year away yet, we have critics on one side saying a candidate is too old for the job. On the other side, people are saying with equal conviction (no pun intended) that someone with 91 felony counts pending against him should not be even eligible to run for the position of CEO of the most powerful country in the world.

But the 2024 presidential election aside, let’s consider the current campaign for governor and some of the other statewide and legislative offices up for grabs next month.

I don’t even have to discuss the PAC motives. Money talks, BS walks and when an industry’s political action committee pours money into a campaign there’s always a reason. A $3 million outlay might net a $100 million return if the right candidate wins. So, having cleared the air on that question, let’s take a look at the other two.

Again, is this bunch of wannabes the best this state has to offer? Probably. Because what decent person would want to expose himself to the half-truths and outright lies about his character and his political philosophy?

Take, for instance, the race for attorney general. Liz Murrill is likely to succeed her boss Jeff Landry who is the odds-on favorite to be the next governor. Apparently not taking anything for granted, someone has begun a vicious attack ad campaign against State Rep. John Stefanski of Morgan City who is also seeking the office along with three other hopefuls. If you take those ads to heart, you’d think Stefanski had a key to every jail in Louisiana and that he personally was turning killers loose to prey on the rest of us. Never is it mentioned that under our form of government, every person, even those accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable, is innocent until proven guilty and is entitled to legal representation.

I don’t know John Stefanski and I know nothing about him other than he must be the epitome of all that is evil, according to the TV ads. But TV political ads are known to distort facts and that’s patently unfair not only to the targeted candidate, but also to voters. Of course, that doesn’t matter if it helps a candidate get elected.

Murrill, on the other hand stands foursquare in favor of law and order. Well, hell, who isn’t? How many candidates have you heard run on a platform of anarchy?

The empty banter reminds me of every election for mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish for the past 20-30 years. You can count on candidates to run on a platform of improving public education in Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish. The problem with that pledge is that the mayor-president has zero authority in public education. That’s the exclusive turf of the East Baton Rouge School Board, not the mayor’s office. But inconvenient facts don’t inhibit candidates’ from claiming they’ll solve public education’s problems.

Which brings up another sticking point with me. Judges. I don’t know of any judicial elections on the Oct. 14 ballot but invariably when there is one, candidates will promote themselves as “tough on crime,” ones who “put criminals behind bars,” and who “will cleanse the streets of the criminal element.” All well and good, of course – if you’re running for district attorney. A judge’s job is not to pre-determine who is unfit to be walking among the rest of us. A judge’s job is to administer justice in a fair and impartial manner, not to be an advocate for anyone.

Now to the governor’s race. Thanks to the attack ads, we now know in no uncertain terms that Landry is a scoundrel, Stephen Waguespack is a political hack posing as an outsider, and Shawn Wilson, the current Secretary of the Department of Transportation and Development, is inept as an administrator. All you have to do to know that is to drive on Louisiana highways.

Louisiana’s roads and highways have been in deplorable condition for as long as I’ve been driving (I’m 80 now and I’ve been driving since I was 15), so it seems a bit unreasonable to expect wholesale improvements in four years.

So, thanks to all those informative TV attack ads, no one is fit to serve in any position of trust in state government and I’m certain as the presidential campaign heats up, we will learn the same enlightening but depressing news about national offices — from U.S. Representative and Senator to President.

Of course, the way politicians – on the state and national levels – bend and sway to the latest political breeze instead of attempting to address the very serious issues of poverty, hunger, inflation, education, crime (including white collar) and civil rights, to say no one is fit to serve might not be too far from the truth.

These state clowns have a little more than three weeks to offer up sound, well-thought-out solutions to Louisiana’s problems. Merely saying they’re for law and order, lower taxes, and jobs just doesn’t cut it as a platform. And TV ad footage of legislators strolling majestically into an empty House or Senate chamber is amateurish at best and insulting at worst.

Everyone who is above room temperature wants law and order, better jobs, education and roads. Tell us how you plan to make college more affordable, how you plan to increase the minimum wage, how you plan to stem outward migration, how you plan to keep homeowner and auto insurance affordable, how you plan to increase teacher pay, what are your plans for protecting the environment, how you plan to move us away from having one of – if not the – highest incarceration rates in the civilized world, how you would protect our disappearing coastline and how you would address the backlog of maintenance and repairs so desperately needed on our university campuses?

That’s just for starters. Being governor, insurance commissioner or legislator should not be a popularity contest; it should be a decision based on which candidate can most reasonably address these problems.

So, stop the asinine attack ads. We’re sick of them and they serve no purpose. Just stop. Give us some real solutions, dammit!

I’m no Nostradamus, not by a long shot (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night). Just to give you an idea of my ability to read tea leaves, in 2015, as I watched Donald Trump descend the escalator in Trump Tower as a theatrical prelude to his announcing his candidacy for the Republican president nomination, I smirked at my TV and said aloud to no one in particular, “He’ll crash and burn in six weeks.”

Well, we know how that turned out.

But yesterday, I wrote here that it was a certainty that the federal lawsuit filed by the Livingston Parish School Board against two social media giants would quickly mushroom into a class action case.

Little did I know at the time (honest) that it already had. Today, I learned that nearly 200 school districts (so far; one law firm claims the number is closer to 500 for his firm alone) have enrolled as plaintiffs in what is about to become the next big legal battle that has the potential to rival the lawsuits against big tobacco, the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the opioid litigation.

Yesterday, I WROTE THAT the Livingston Parish School Board was going after Instagram and its parent company, Meta, and TikTok and its parent, ByteDance.

Now we learn that those four defendants have been joined by co-defendants Snapchat, Google, Facebook and YouTube in the class action du jour.

The CLASS-ACTION STORY, posted by Reason, an online news service, quoted The Wall Street Journal as saying the 200 lawsuits have been consolidated in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California. The Journal said plaintiff attorneys (like Fayard Honeycutt in Denham Springs, which filed the action on behalf of the Livingston board) are soliciting school boards throughout the country to file lawsuits against social-media companies on allegations that their apps cause classroom disciplinary problems and mental health issues which divert resources from education.

It was not immediately clear whether the Livingston Parish action would be part of that consolidation. That lawsuit is 182 pages in length compared to 287 pages for the class-action PETITION.

I wrote yesterday that the local lawsuit appeared to be a “boilerplate” petition that did not originate locally. A so-called boilerplate document is one written for more than one entity and distributed to potential users who simply plug in local data and names to make it appear to be locally generated.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a frequent practitioner of boilerplate legislative bills it generates for state legislatures across the country. There have been instances when legislators, who are members of ALEC, didn’t bother to edit the “model legislation” closely enough have submitted bills without making proper edits, which made the bills inappropriate for a given state until they were amended and re-submitted.

The plaintiff attorneys in the larger class-action suit are claiming that:

• The social media defendants have targeted children as a core market;
• Children are uniquely susceptible to harm from social media apps;
• Defendants designed their apps to attract and addict youth;
• Millions of children use defendants’ products “compulsively”;
• Defendants’ apps have created a youth mental health crisis
• Defendants’ defective products encourage dangerous “challenges”;
• Defendants’ apps contribute to the sexual exploitation and “sextortion” of children;
• Defendants could have taken steps to avoid harming plaintiffs (but did not)
• Algorithms maximize engagement at a harmful level;
• Facebook and Instagram user interfaces are designed to encourage addictive engagement;
• Instagram encourages bullying, body-shaming and other negative social comparisons;
• Meta, YouTube and ByteDance (TikTok) have failed to implement effective age-verification;
• TikTok, Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have defective parental controls, and have “impediments” to discontinuing use;
• Snapchat’s defective features are designed to promote compulsive and excessive use;

The petition, like the Livingston School Board lawsuit, emphasizes the dangers of sexual exploitation posed by adult predators who surf social media looking for victims in order to produce and distribute child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). The class action suit said social media “can increase risky and uninhibited behavior in children, making them easier targets to adult predators for sexual exploitation, sextortion and CSAM.”

The lawsuit even lays the responsibility for teen deaths, ostensibly from suicide brought on by cyber-bullying.

As a general rule, plaintiff law firms in cases like this are rolling the dice and take most, if not all, of the financial risks, i.e., filing fees, expert fees, deposition costs, discovery, etc. and do not charge a fee up front, choosing instead to hope for a favorable decision or settlement and to take their fee on the back end, usually 25 percent to 30 percent of the award or settlement. And it’s usually then that the fun begins when observers can sit back and watch the lawyers fight it out amongst themselves over who gets what. That’s usually when it really gets nasty – and entertaining.

Now, having seen my prediction of a class-action lawsuit occur so quickly and with such deadly accuracy, I’m now on my way out the door to buy a Powerball ticket and to place my wagers on the Super Bowl champion.