Louisiana Voice

Holy conspiracy theory, Batman, break out the Batmobile, Clay Higgins is up to his old tricks!

You remember Clay Higgins, right? He’s the dangerously deranged congressman from Louisiana’s zany Third District who alluded in a committee hearing a few years back to the thousands of arrests he’d made as a law enforcement officer (his former boss, St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz, said he could recall only two or three “at most”).

He’s also the one who violated protocol – and any shred of decency and respect – when he made a political video outside AUSCHWITZ back in 2017.

Higgins had a habit of EMBARRASSING himself and law enforcement agencies for which he worked, however brief his tenure might have been..

And oh, he’s also one of only two Louisiana members of the US House who just yesterday voted no on the emergency funding bill so as to avert a government shutdown at midnight Friday (Garret Graves, inexplicably, was the other to vote nay).

Social security recipients, federal employees, active military, retired veterans and anyone else potentially affected by a shutdown might want to remember that.

(By the way, over in Mississippi, two of that state’s three House Republicans voted nay while its only Democrat member voted in favor of the bill while the third, Republican Mike Ezell, went fishing and did not vote. All four of Arkansas’s Republican delegation voted in favor.

But not Higgins and Graves. With Clay (“Cajun John Wayne,” as he likes to be called) Higgins, nothing else was expected. It’s what one might anticipate from a moronic mindset. Graves? Frankly, I’m surprised. Perhaps he will be forthcoming with his reasoning in the days ahead.

But as important as those votes were, that’s not what this is about.

It’s about “ghost buses” that Higgins purports to have the inside skinny on.

It seems, according to photos just now coming to light, that white “ghost buses” furtively transported FBI INFORMANTS into Washington on January 6, 2021, to mingle with and to stir Capitol demonstrators’ emotions to frenzied heights in order to cast those thousands of otherwise peaceful tourists into disrepute as so many hooligans and ruffians.

Such a diabolical effort to undermine the very foundations of democracy! To prove the indisputable truth of his allegations, Higgins waved pictures in front of FBI director Christopher Wray last Wednesday that depicted buses in the Union Station parking garage that were (gasp!) painted completely white, which damned well removed all doubt as to their being of the “ghost” consignment.

Wray, whose job it is to track questionable activities, was flummoxed at the new term, which is now destined to become the new Republican buzzword, ranking right up there with “fake news,” “witch hunt” and “MAGA.” Wray was forced to admit, that he was “not sure” that he’d used that term before. It must’ve been embarrassing for him not to be on the cutting edge of the latest conspiracy theory.

But, hell, Higgins had the proof right there in his hands – the same hands that had slapped the cuffs on thousands of dangerous criminals during his storied career as the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office’s PIO. And just so we’re clear, that’s not private investigations officer – it’s public information officer. He was a PR hack. You don’t arrest many perps sitting in front of a computer terminal (and lest anyone try to make the obvious comparison, I’ve never laid claim to arresting thousands of criminals, so there’s that).

Higgins, undaunted, persisted. “These buses were nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters deployed unto our Capitol on January 6,” he asserted.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia), chairman of a House subcommittee investigating the investigation of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), former co-chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the US Capitol (or was it merely a tour of the Capitol?), was confused at Higgins’s claim.

Loudermilk, when first asked by a reporter about the Higgins claim of the ghost buses, thought the reporter was asking about the movie franchise Ghostbusters.

He could certainly be excused for that misunderstanding. After all, just about any subject might be broached at any given time in Washington and when you think about it, Discussions are already taking place inside the Beltway about space aliens, so, Ghostbusters probably makes as much sense as ghost buses.

If ever Winston Churchill’s quote about “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside and enigma,” could be applied to any individual today, that individual would almost certainly be new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

House Republicans, desperate to the point of outright panic, chose Johnson after the toppling of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and after being embarrassed by failures to install abrasive Gym Jordan of Ohio and House Whip Steve “KKK” Scalise, like Johnson, of Louisiana.

But Johnson could eventually become the biggest embarrassment of all because he brings to the Speaker’s chair an agenda that borders on religious fanaticism, a zealotry of Christian fervor that can be off-putting, if not downright dangerous should he attempt to impose his particular brand of Christianity on the nation.

Slide bar to the right to center picture

This diatribe is not to be considered as an attack on one man’s beliefs. After all, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion or, as a reader observed today, “I’m no attorney of any kind, but I believe the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that everyone in the United States has the right to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all.”

The reader could not have been more succinct – or accurate.

Johnson’s evangelical passion is sure to prove more embarrassing to Louisiana than the buffoonery of his fellow Congressman, Clay Higgins. Not since Edward Edwards’s faux pas in the early 1970s has the state looked so bad in the glare of the public spotlight. That’s when Edwards, addressing a group of Italian-Americans on Long Island, told an ill-advised joke about twelve Italians who were going to rape a German woman until she cried out, “Nein, Nein.” “Three of them left,” the governor said. Predictably, no one laughed – nor should they have.

But there are other interesting nuggets about Johnson that, if not outright disturbing, at least are of legitimate concern.

In 2010, Johnson was named dean of a Christian law school that didn’t exist. Two years later, he resigned and the law school at Louisiana College, a Baptist school in Pineville, disappeared after the college spent $5 million to renovate the former federal courthouse in Shreveport which was to be the campus of the Paul Pressler School of Law that never was.

The school was even named in honor of former Texas Judge Paul Pressler, who was a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention. That may have been an unfortunate choice: Pressler, it later turned out, was named in a lawsuit in which multiple men claimed that he sexually assaulted them, some when they were defenseless children.

None of that deterred the active support of the law school planned to rival that of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., by such notables as former Gov. Bobby Jindal, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

In fact, the whole concept wound up resembling a script for a “B” movie. The feasibility plan for the school ended up gathering dust in the back of a file drawer. It turns out it was a mishmash of speculative – and useless – data aimed at supporting the vision of creating an army of Christian-thinking, right-wing “warrior-attorneys” to fan out across the country to spread the gospel of Biblical law. It’s curious to see the so-called believers in the one who advocated peace and love cloak themselves in the mantle of “warrior.” The warrior concept was the brainchild of former Louisiana College President Joe Auguillard.

Auguillard laid the blame for the law school’s failure squarely at Johnson’s feet, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. He said in a memo to a board member that Johnson’s resignation in 2012 was a selfish decision, made so that he could pursue a “dream job” with the then-named Alliance Defense Fund, now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in Dallas. He said Johnson’s resignation was also to blame for delays in the law school’s opening.

Aguillard, however, had his own administrative problems at the school. In addition to the law school failure, questions arose about the allocation of funds for a school in Africa, unsuccessful efforts to start a medical school, million of dollars in repairs needed to the school’s physical plant, a student strike, theological disagreements, and conflicts with the school’s board, administrators, faculty and donors.

Aguillard was ousted as president in 2014 and sued the college, claiming mistreatment and discrimination under the federal Civil Rights Act. His suit was denied in 2021.

What bank account?

As if there were not enough questions about Johnson’s affiliation with a school that lost its accreditation while trying launch a failed law school, there is the question of his lacking a bank account.

The Washington Post reported that Johnson, on his financial disclosure forms reported neither a BANK ACCOUNT, nor any assets. Period.

Not to disparage one for possibly having financial difficulties, but gosh dang it all, it’s just unheard of for a lawyer cum US Representative cum Speaker of the House to function in today’s society without a bank account.

The WP report said there are “no retirement accounts, no money-market funds, no stocks, no crypto or even your basic, garden-variety checking or savings accounts” all the way back to 2016, the year he was elected to Congress.

His explanation, given in a Fox News interview? “I’m a man of modest means.” A member of Congress laying claim to being a man of “modest means” is rare in its own right, but even those of us of even more modest means have checking accounts and some of us even have savings and retirement accounts. I sincerely hope no one I know is stuck with any crypto currency.

But what really puzzles me is trying to figure out how he handles his tithes to Jesus. I mean, surely he keeps track for the purposes of tax deductions – and he’d likely need canceled checks for that. And his church is gonna want to be sure he’s giving his full 10 percent.

I suppose it’s not unprecedented. After all, a Plaquemine attorney purchased a life insurance plan a few years ago and when asked for a voided check for the purpose of setting up a monthly withdrawal of the premium, she informed the stunned insurance rep that she didn’t have a checking account, that she operated her office on a cash basis.

But a member of Congress? That’s a jaw-dropper. Of course, it could be that he simply was not entirely forthcoming in his financial report – also cause for concern. But then he did have the foresight to have apps installed on his and his son’s cell phones so that they could monitor each other’s porn video activity. The apps are ostensibly a safeguard against either yielding to the temptation to check out online porn. But it’s still weird and more than a little creepy. The very thought of the son growing into manhood and marrying before he discovers he’s got a thumb drive while his wife is port-equipped. The poor kid probably doesn’t know the difference between pointers and setters, between outboards and inboards. And it’ll be game on when he discovers boobs.

Somehow, though, you just knew in your heart of hearts that when someone from Louisiana would finally claim center-stage in that Washington soap opera, it would bring down more embarrassment to the state than even Edwin Edwards ever could have with an inappropriate joke.

There was an interesting story in Friday’s Baton Rouge Advocate that correctly identified the problem of a growing backlog for mental health treatment for persons accused of a crime but who are deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. You can read that story here:

It’s a legitimate problem, no doubt. But the burning question, besides the problem of how are nearly 200 of these people going to receive the treatment they so desperately need, is how did we get to the current situation of having only a single forensic psychiatric facility in the state of Louisiana?

For that answer, we have Bobby Jindal to thank.

The LSU Reveille said on APRIL 16, 2015, as Jindal’s eight years in the governor’s office were winding down (and as he pursued his silly quest for the Republican presidential nomination), that his legacy “leaves out the mentally ill.” The article cited a report by the American Mental Health Counselors Association that said that in 2014, there were 18,400 mentally ill Louisianians who went without treatment.

Jindal and the Republican legislators, the article said, “trapped them within a health care coverage gap when they refused the program’s expansion.”

But going back to 2012, when Jindal was just beginning his second term, he CLOSED the Greenwell Springs Hospital which had been serving as a mental health facility. The closure was done in the name of budgetary cutbacks and cost savings.

That was in March 2012. Four months later, in July, it was announced that SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA HOSPITAL, a psychiatric facility that became somewhat famous as a stopping-off place for then-Gov. Earl Long during his 1959 historic, if not hysterical, mental breakdown, would be SHUTTING DOWN. That closure denied care for 176 patients who had to go elsewhere for treatment.

To no one’s surprise (except perhaps to Jindal, who was most likely oblivious and/or uncaring) a totally predictable SPIKE in the demand for mental health services occurred as those seeking treatment found there was no room available for them as one treatment center after another shuttered its doors as a direct result of the Jindal budget cuts.

Of course, Jindal attempted to shift the blame by DENYING that his administration requested any specific cuts to mental health or substance abuse programs at LSU Interim Hospital but the fact is $150 million was slashed from the facility’s budget, necessitating cuts. The closures of Southeast and Greenwell Springs that followed that February 2012 denial belied any pious posturing on Jindal’s part.

Oh, he attempted to mitigate the damage by privatizing Southeast but like everything Jindal touched, that, too, proved disastrous to mental health patients when the facility, operating under the new name Northlake Behavioral Health System, lost its Medicare eligibility just nine months into its operation as a private hospital because of serious deficiencies.

That information came courtesy of a LouisianaVoice POST way back in July 2013. We tried to tell you what he was doing 10 years ago, yet here we are.

So, as for yesterday’s ominous revelations by The Advocate about the shortage of beds for those needing mental health treatment notwithstanding, it’s not like we weren’t warned ahead of time.

All the red flags were there for us to see but the state was apparently too infatuated with Bobby Jindal to fully comprehend what he was doing to this state. We felt the effects on mental health care then and we’re feeling them now, in spades.

And all the signs are indicating that we are in for more of the same for at least the next four years.

Quite frankly, I don’t see the likelihood that the new Republican administration of Jeff Landry will place a high priority on the needs of the mentally ill – especially those accused of crimes.

It’s just not in the cards for this cadre to exhibit compassion for anyone but those who can help the party with their checkbooks. They would much rather attack such hot – but safe – issues as libraries and some abstract issue they call woke.

It’s ironic that every time there’s a mass shooting, Republicans deflect the blame away from the easy access to guns by proclaiming in unison that the shootings are a mental health problem. Yet, guns and mental illness are conjoined issues the GOP consistently refuses to address.

Shawn Wilson as president of Grambling State University? That’s the skinny we’re picking up from the Rumor Mill, a fine-tuned source perfected by the late John Hays, publisher of the now-defunct Morning Paper of Ruston.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, one of five members of Southern University’s 1925 graduating class, was hired by mistake that same year by Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute founder Charles P. Adams. Eleven years later, he would be elevated to president of what would later become Grambling State University. He remained in that position for 41 years.

Jones played the white legislators in Baton Rouge like a fiddle in order to build Grambling from little more than an afterthought backwater glorified high school to a real college. He employed his special brand of humor in order to get the school’s name changed to its present identity.

“We won our conference in football last year and as much as we respect our friends at Louisiana Normal, in Natchitoches (known today as Northwestern State University), we’d prefer to get our congratulatory mail instead of it going to them first,” he began in his petition to lawmakers. “Besides, during football season, by the time our cheerleaders could yell, ‘Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute, hold that line,’ the other team done scored.” When they finished laughing, the name change to Grambling was approved.

But while Jones was amusing the white politicians in Baton Rouge, he always got the last laugh as he quietly built the school into turning out alumni like New York Times columnist Charles Blow, Grammy Award-winner Erykah Badu, actress Natalie Desselle-Reid, former Oregon legislator Margaret Carter, Ohio politician Alicia Reece, former U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley, Missouri politician Raychel Proudie, retired LSU professor Alma Dawson, major league baseball players Ralph Garr and Tommie Agee, and NBA legend Willis Reed.

Eddie Robinson was another example of Grambling’s reputation of stability, having served as the school’s head football coach for an unprecedented 56 years, from 1941-1997, with only a two-year break during World War II to interrupt his tenure. More than 200 of his former players would go on to NFL careers.

Grambling’s Tank Younger became the first player from a historically black college to play in the NFL when he signed with the Los Angeles Rams in 1948. Dozens more would follow and at one point, in the early 1970s, Grambling had more active players in the NFL than any other school in the U.S. – including such powerhouses as Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Ohio State, USC, and Michigan. Former GSU quarterback Doug Williams was the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl in 1989 and was the first quarterback ever to throw four touchdown passes in a single quarter in a Super Bowl on his way to being named the game’s MVP.

Ruston Daily Leader sports editor, the late O.K. “Buddy” Davis helped put Grambling and Robinson become national household words and Howard Cosell featured the schools legendary football program in Jerry Izenberg’s ABC-TV special titled “Hundred Yards to Glory” in 1967.

Since the retirements of Jones (1977) and Robinson (1997), the offices of both head football coach and school president have had to install revolving doors to accommodate the arrivals and departures of both positions. There have been, for example, eight different presidents of the school since Jones retired – an average stay of only 5.75 years.

The latest, Rick Gallot, president of the school since 2016, has been named to head the University of Louisiana System, leaving the president’s office vacant once again. His seven years there, set him apart as one of the longest-tenured GSU presidents since Jones retired. It may have helped that he was a native of Grambling and that his father, Richard Gallot, Sr., was a respected Grambling businessman and former mayor of the town of Grambling. His mother was also a professor at GSU for more than 35 years and was a member of the UL System Board of Supervisors from 2005-11.

But fear not, LouisianaVoice has learned from usually reliable sources that Department of Transportation and Development Secretary and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Shawn Wilson will succeed Gallot as Grambling 11th president and the school’s 9th since 1977.

Here’s hoping when they do, they’ll spell his first name correctly, something that I failed to do before being corrected by a couple of sharp-eyed readers.

Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s oh-so-easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, second-guessing decisions and non-decisions.

But. It just seems that someone in charge should have known that conditions on I-55 were not conducive to safe travel Monday morning. Those conditions included:

• Heavy fog, described by officials as a Super Fog, and
• Smoke from area fires.

In my 23 years of teaching defensive driving to traffic offenders, one of the things I stressed was the dangers inherent in driving in areas where smoke blanked the roadway.

Fog is bad enough as a visibility inhibitor, but dense smoke cuts visibility to zero. The combination of fog and smoke creates a lethal blanket and should have prompted the closure of I-55, the interstate highway that begins in LaPlace in St. John the Baptist Parish and runs north through Hammond and on to Jackson, Mississippi and points further north.

The area in question here is an elevated 20-mile portion of interstate that runs over swampy waters of Lake Maurepas.

Monday morning, 168 cars and trucks were involved in a massive wreck that claimed eight lives, injured 63 more and left twisted, burned out, unrecognizable cars clogging the interstate which remains closed as this is being written. When viewing the carnage, it seems a miracle that more weren’t killed.

The Cars have been cleared out, but the cleanup of debris is ongoing and then the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) will have to inspect the roadway way to be sure its integrity isn’t compromised by the hundreds collisions and dozens of fires.

Who should’ve been responsible for closing the highway? It’s apparently DOTD’s job to determine when conditions warrant closure of the highways of the state. The Bonnet Carre Spillway and Lake Pontchartrain Causeway were closed for a time Monday morning. Who made the decision to close those elevated highways? Why not I-55?

DOTD maintains that it is just not feasible to make such determinations given the frequency of foggy conditions and the number of elevated roadways and bridges in the state.

But the National Weather Service had warned of heavy fog on Sunday afternoon, according a story in today’s Baton Rouge Advocate.

The spate of lawsuits that is certain to follow in the next few days, weeks and months will most likely name both DOTD and LSP as defendants. Lawyers generally throw everything against the wall to see what will stick. No matter which one is ultimately held responsible, the state is likely to be shelling out a lot of money in judgments and settlements – but not before the defense attorneys get a chance to run up their tabs filing the usual denials, objections and interrogatories.

The arguments in defense of the state will likely be that common sense should have dictated that one should not have ventured onto the roadway in such treacherous conditions and that the state did not have sufficient notice in which to act. It will be an opportunity for attorneys from both sides to get well on hourly fees, settlements and judgments before this mess is concluded.

And it will be you, the taxpayer, who ultimately will foot the bill for somebody’s indecision.

And lest someone take it upon themselves to accuse me of encouraging litigation against the state, I am certain that Morris Bart, Gordon McKernan, Spencer Callahan, Dudley DeBosier, et al, are fully capable of functioning without my assistance.

You can pretty much bet that lawyers all over Southeast Louisiana have already begun diving into the law books and state regulations pertaining to hazardous driving conditions.

It didn’t help when a state official said DOTD would be considering protocols that could be implemented to address foggy conditions. That raises the immediate question of why hasn’t that already been done in a state as prone to hazardous foggy conditions as Louisiana?