Louisiana Voice

I plan to promote one of my readers for the office of vice president. I came to this decision after he sent me an interesting message that revealed that he is far more astute, far more intelligent and possessive of far more plain old horse sense that that guy from Ohio/West Virginia.

The reader, a retired Navy veteran, noted that he watched on network news as J.D. Vance said, somewhere among his hillbilly rambling about childless cat women, that the federal income tax system needed to be change to tax childless couples at a higher rate than those with children.

“Really?” my friend wrote. “Seems that this is exactly the system that’s been in place for a long time! More kids equals more deductions [and more deductions] equal less tax. Singles bear a much higher tax on identical incomes.

“[The news clip] would have been more powerful if the newscaster had mentioned this stupid JDV oversight,” he wrote.

What a maroon!

Hmm. Don’t think there’s much to add to his observation except to wonder if it really was an oversight or an insight into his general ignorance.

The Republicans say crime is exploding and they’re attempting to capitalize on that claim in the 2024 election campaigns.

The Democrats are saying that crime is down and they’re pointing to that to promote their agenda in the 2024 elections.

Who is correct?

Well, it might be difficult to say because 31 percent of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the U.S. failed to report crime data to the FBI’s national database in 2022, the latest year for which figures are available.

That’s an improvement, however, over the nearly 40 percent who failed to submit data in 2021, according to the MARSHALL PROJECT, an online news services.

In Louisiana, cooperation of local law enforcement is hard to come by. Fully 42 percent of the state’s agencies failed to report any crime data in 2022 and only 37 percent reported a full year’s crime data.

The largest jurisdiction in the state and the one with one of the highest crime rates in the state, New Orleans, failed to submit any data at all in 2022, according to the report, which said that 394,000 people live under the New Orleans Police Department’s jurisdiction. That’s 8 percent of all the people living in Louisiana.

Of the state’s 238 law enforcement agencies, which includes sheriffs, municipal departments and Louisiana State Police, only 137 submitted reports to the database in 2022. That represented 3.4 million of the state’s 4.6 million people, leaving data on crime data for the remaining 26 percent unreported.

Overall, Louisiana had the 11^th lowest reporting rate in the nation. Florida was the worst, with only 8 percent of its agencies submitting data. Mississippi was 7^th lowest with 48 percent of agencies not reporting. Delaware and Oklahoma tied for first, each with 100 percent participation.

Let’s all stand and welcome the newest member of the Over-the-Top Conspiracy Club – not that it’s any surprise that he’d choose to jump on board what sounds like some passé Q-Anon tripe being bandied about that is so last year.

Scott McKay, aka MacAoidh, is advancing the absurd theory that Donald Trump was set up by the Secret Service, FBI, or some other deep state group, to walk into an assassination trap that failed only because of “divine intervention” (McKay’s words, obviously picked up from all those frothing evangelicals who think Trump was sent as our redeemer).

In today’s post on The Hayride, of which McKay is publisher, he eagerly latched onto a conspiracy version that rivals the actual conspiracy that surrounded the assassination of GRIGORI RASPUTIN on Dec. 30, 1916 as a run-up to Russia’s Bolshevik revolution. Now there was a real conspiracy.

In doing so, he advances the idea that rather than sheer incompetence, the Secret Service was somehow complicit in some bizarre plot to lure Trump into some false sense of security in order to “bait the trap.”

It’s not even worth the effort to elaborate on the Secret Service SNAFUs which he lists as “proof” in his effort to convince that the Secret Service “or elements within” were “involved in facilitating that assassination attempt.”

Yes, Scott, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was far too vague and elusive in her answers to the House Oversight Committee hastily convened to investigate the agency’s failings.

But with any conspiracy, there needs to be a scapegoat. Do you really believe that shooter Thomas Crooks would willingly sacrifice himself to abet some cockamamie scheme that left far too many holes in it to have been hatched by professionals like the Secret Service.

Crooks had a weapon, all right, but not nearly of the sophistication of those being held by Secret Service sharpshooters. If there was some plot to take down Trump, why not employ one of the sharpshooters if they were part of some intricate plot? They wouldn’t have missed.

It makes just as much sense to speculate that the entire event was staged by an ex-reality show host (read: entertainer) who, upon hearing the cue of gunshots, dropped to the floor and slapped camsules of “theater blood” to his ear to make it all look real to a national television audience. But that scenario would require an agreement by the Secret Service and 20-year-old Crooks – a registered Republican, no less – to make the supreme sacrifice to carry the ruse out to its end goal, as well. The others who were hit, including one fatality – well, they’re just collateral damage. Of course that version is a load of horse hockey, as well.

There are a lot of inconsistencies. That’s true enough and no one is denying that. But to turn a bumbled assignment into some sinister plot when you are not part of any investigative unit is to join the Flat Earth Society and those Mississippi fishermen who claim they were beamed up and anally probed by aliens.

“…[O]ur government was involved. It’s very difficult to see things any other way,” McKay wrote.

Only if your head happens to be conducting that anal probe.

U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson continues to be an embarrassment to Louisiana.

Our extinguished Speaker of the House, that guy who, along with his son, monitor each other’s porn proclivities via some app that allows each to keep tabs on the other, that guy who, while professing to be a devout Christian, has sold his soul to Donald Trump, the very personification of the seven deadly sins. Yeah, that guy.

At the same time that he visibly shines his halo, he piles on an old, feeble man. Where’s the love, man, that Jesus bade us display every waking minute of our lives? Where’s the compassion for the poor, the hungry, the homeless, or more important, those without the financial resources to contribute five- and six-figure dollar amounts to political campaigns and PACS? Where’s the Party of Lincoln that long ago sold citizens out in favor of (read moneyed) corporate interests?

I’m alluding to, of course, Johnson’s statement on CNN that Joe Biden should immediately resign from office.

The exact quote: “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately.”

But wait. Johnson, that man who has no problem whatsoever in abandoning his evangelical beliefs if it benefits the Repugnantcan Party, took it a step further by implying that he would prefer that Biden remain in the race:

“Having invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans who selected Joe Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, the self-proclaimed ‘party of democracy’ has proven exactly the opposite,” Johnson said.

Wait. What? Is Johnson, in the same interview, only seconds apart, saying on the one hand that Biden should resign the presidency and on the other that he should remain in the race?

Apparently so. Bear in mind that Johnson, from up in Benton in northwest Louisiana (when I was growing up in Ruston, we considered that to be part of East Texas), told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “THIS WEEK” that he thought it would be wrong to disregard the 14 million people who voted for Biden in the Democratic primaries to suddenly have their choice pulled from them.

Of course, being the self-proclaimed constitutional scholar, Johnson said he thought it well might be unlawful “in accordance to some of these states’ rules for a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they’re, they don’t like the candidate any longer. That’s not how this is supposed to work. So I think they would run into some legal impediments in at least a few of these jurisdictions,”

Yeah, well, I can see where Trump and his toadies might want Biden to remain in the race after that abysmal debate performance last month. And truth be told, Biden is obvious slipping – much in the same fashion that Trump has “slipped.” I mean, Trump is the one who wanted to draw a hurricane’s path with a Sharpie. He’s the one who wanted to nuke hurricanes. He’s the one who suggested that we rake forests to prevent forest fires, and he advocated cutting open people’s lungs and pouring disinfectant on them an letting them dry in the sun to cure Covid. He’s the one who praised our Air Force for its heroic work during the War of 1812. He’s the one, during a Pearl Harbor Day observance, who didn’t know the significance of the USS Arizona.

And most recently, when Biden came up with a border security measure that Repugnantcans – including Johnson – found acceptable, it was Trump who called Johnson and directed him and the Repugs to reject the plan until after the election, apparently so Trump could claim the credit. I guess finding a solution to the border crisis wasn’t so urgent after all.

And of course, he’s the one who was going to eradicate the federal deficit in what, six weeks? Instead, he increased it by $7 trillion – that’s trillion with a T. Of course, all those socialism haters are probably ecstatic that he wants to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – except those who are benefitting or plan to benefit from the programs, which includes just about everyone.

I have never, in my 65 years of following politics (I developed a keen interest in government around 15, thanks to my high school civics teacher Ervin Ryland) witnessed an entire culture (Repugnantcans) like we now have, from the local level all the way up to Congress and the Supremely Unscrupulous Court, so intend on dismantling the 248-years of our democratic republic the way I’m now seeing.

Whenever I hear Johnson and people like Jeff Landry, those self-anointed paragons of virtue and holiness, motherhood and marriage covenants, speak it reminds me of one of my favorite Earl Long quotes. Speaking of 1947 gubernatorial opponent Same Jones, Uncle Earl quipped that Jones was “the only person I know who can talk out of both sides of his mouth and whistle in the middle.”