Louisiana Voice

I’ve said it before and I’ll state my conviction again that Louisiana Tech University will never swim with the big fish in college football.

My alma mater, which gave the world such notables as country singers Kix Brooks and Trace Adkins and athletes like Karl Malone, Terry Bradshaw, Fred Dean and Phil Robertson, has deluded itself into believing it can compete in bog-time football.

It can’t.

I love the Bulldogs and I still bleed red and blue more than 50 years after graduating Magna Cum Barely. And I yelled myself hoarse at the exploits of Bradshaw and company. I can still remember that hail Mary to Ken Liberto that beat Northwestern State in the closing seconds of the annual State Fair game in 1967.

But here’s the thing. Since Tech has insisted on going “big time,” the State Fair game that sold out State Fair Stadium each year now is but a memory because a great intrastate rivalry has been terminated. Oh, Tech played Northwestern in 2022, I believe it was, but that was just a blip on the radar screen and not a regular event like before.

The annual battle between Tech and NLU filled the schools’ respective stadiums. Now, they don’t play, choosing to ignore each other’s very existence even though they’re only 30 miles apart. Another great in-state rivalry is dead and attendance is flat.

Meanwhile, Tech, NLU, Grambling, ULL and every other school in the state lines up to get their brains beaten out by the likes of LSU, Nebraska, Texas, Mississippi State, Alabama, Auburn and Florida who are more than happy to pay the smaller schools $250,000 or so for a “rent-a-win,” which in reality is little more than an intrasquad scrimmage.

 Do the math. The stadiums of the bigger schools are sold out no matter who the opponent is. It’s a win-win for the bigger schools in that it awards what for the bigger school is a token payout for a guaranteed win. It’s a win-lose for Tech, et al. A big payout (relative to its far more modest home attendance figures) but at the expense of getting its team to serve as blocking dummies for the big boys. (And no, I’m not calling anyone’s players “dummies,” so don’t even go there.)

Tech (3-9) ULM (2-10), McNeese (1-10), ULL (6-6), Nicholls State (6-5), Grambling (5-6), Southeastern (3-8, Northwestern State (0-6) and Southern (6-5) combined for a lackluster 32-65 won-loss posting, an anemic winning record of 33 percent. Only two of the teams, Southern and Nicholls had winning records (barely) while ULL broke even. Northwestern cancelled its season midway through its schedule and head coach Brad Laird resigned following the tragic death of safety Ronnie Caldwell.

NLU and Southern jettisoned their coaches and it would surprise no one to see similar terminations at Tech, McNeese or Grambling. Since the retirement of legendary Grambling coach Eddie Robinson after 56 years at the helm, there’s been a coaching carousel at the school.

Tech pays head coach Sonny Cumble something in the neighborhood of $900,000 a year, which is a pretty good neighborhood for a place like Ruston where the average household income is considerably less. That computes to $300,000 for each of Tech’s three wins this past season. Again, do the math. Tech’s paltry attendance figures simply don’t justify that kind of expenditure.

But the obvious question is why do I so firmly believe that Tech (and other state schools) should forget about any aspirations of big-time football despite the occasional wins over the bigger schools (NLU and Tech can each lay claim to having beaten Alabama and Tech has thumped Mississippi State a couple of times)?

I offer the transfer portal as Exhibit A.

For Exhibit B, I offer NIL (Name, Image and Likeness).

The two are intertwined to lure top players away from the smaller schools. And as they gravitate to the larger, powerhouse schools, the smaller schools will continue to suffer.

I don’t like the transfer portal because its very name guts the concept of commitment. The image of a kid out of high school donning the cap of the school he chooses for the benefit of television press conferences is rendered meaningless by the transfer portal.

He enrolls at Tech or McNeese or ULL and immediately makes an impact with outstanding play. Then, LSU, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma and other major schools will cast covetous eyes on the player who might help them win a national championship. And that lustful gaze will be returned by a kid who suddenly has visions of the riches and fame of playing on a bigger stage.

It’s just too easy to jimp ship these days. It was bad enough that players could become draft eligible before their senior years but the transfer portal doesn’t give fans a chance to even learn the player’s name before he’s gone.

And why not. NIL gives players a chance to profit on the use of their names, images or likenesses but what is the potential of capitalizing on NIL in Ruston, Monroe, Natchitoches, or Thibodaux? Or Hammond or Grambling or even Lake Charles or Lafayette?

Well, perhaps there’s some potential in Lafayette – when the oil patch is prospering. But the grass (or the money) is a lot greener in the bigger markets so a stellar player, say, a reincarnation of Terry Bradshaw, is going to see that and as soon as he can cram his clothing into his backpack, he’s gone.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition. The late F. Jay Taylor had visions of greatness for Tech and he accomplished so much as president of the school. He once told me that when it came time to hire a football coach, he had only one candidate in mind and he was damn well going to get him. And get him he did and Maxie Lambright built an outstanding small college program at Tech.

But after the Lambright era, Tech began to dream too big too fast and the results have been less than rewarding. I may be in the minority, but I would far rather see Tech as a swaggering, snarling bulldog in a small yard than to be a toothless chihuahua in a big yard.

Even Slippery Rock, another of my favorite teams, knows the wisdom of staying within itself. The Rockets are 10-1 this year and in the NCAA Division II playoffs by knowing they are small and staying small.

Amanda Jones may have lost her opening skirmish against those who unfairly attacked her but the fight is very much alive and she continues to get rave reviews from national media for her courageous stand in defense of the First Amendment right to choose what we want to read.

Jones, a school librarian in Livingston Parish had the temerity a couple of years ago to attend a meeting of the Livingston Parish Library Board in the capacity of a private citizen in opposition to proposed book banning.

Her battle has been chronicled by NBC News, The Hill, Education Week, The Independent, The American Library Association, NPR, HuffPost, The New York Times, Library Journal, Education leader Diane, Ravitch’s blog, and of course, The Baton Rouge Advocate and LOUISIANA VOICE, among others.

But now she has achieved the ultimate accolade. Last night, Oprah Winfrey was the keynote speaker at the 74^th National Book Awards ceremony in New York City. Regardless of your opinion of Oprah, when she speaks, people in positions of power listen. One endorsement from her can turn a book into an overnight bestseller.

Last night Oprah took the occasion to heap words of praise on Amanda Jones and her battle for the right to read. To hear what she said, click HERE.

Jones, the 2021 National Librarian of the Year and former president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, was pilloried unmercifully by detractors whose only tactic in their efforts to censor books was to attack her for her defense of the First Amendment. The verbal assaults weren’t in support of the idea of censorship – that cannot be defended – but rather, they consisted exclusively of character assassination of Amanda Jones.

That social media criticism sank to the sorry level of outright defamation but the district court ruled that Jones was a public figure and tossed her lawsuit. That curious decision is currently under appeal. Public figures, as per the landmark US Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, have a higher bar to clear in order to advance defamation lawsuits. The ruling was intended for elected officials and appointed officials of authority, not librarians.

As an illustration of just how far the morality police are willing – and able – to go in their absurd decency quest to rid library shelves of anything with objectional words or themes, a book was removed from school libraries in Alabama recently because the author’s name was…Gay. That’s right, his last name was Gay and that was sufficient to ban the book.

But Jones nevertheless trudges onward, determined to fight efforts to pick and choose which books to ban – what we are allowed to read. Books like To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the best books ever written.

When I first moved to Livingston Parish in 1981, the Livingston Parish Library was housed in a single tiny, cramped room in the rear of a one-story medical building. Today, we boast a proud parish-wide library system that is the envy of surrounding parishes. It is my fervent hope that we can keep the facilities open.

Jones, contacted this morning, had this to say about her experience, the Oprah plug and to endorse a tax renewal – not a new tax, but a renewal – this Saturday to fund the parish library system.

“For the past year and a half, I have been publicly lied about on social media by a group of hate-filled individuals hell bent on silencing me. My crime? Speaking out as a resident on behalf of the Livingston Parish Public Library. They lie and say I was advocating for certain books to be in children’s sections, but I never spoke about a particular book. I spoke about censorship in general and reminded the public that our library has policies in place to challenge books they object to in our local library. They’ve twisted my words to suit their narrative in an effort to defund our public library and scare everyone in the community into silence. The harassment forced me to take a medical leave of absence from my job as a school librarian, which is a job I love with my whole being.

“I refuse to be silent and I refuse to back down. They are bullies. I do not back down to bullies. I filed a defamation lawsuit. They will tell you that I am trying to silence two parents’ voices. One of those parents doesn’t even live in our parish and the other parent never spoke out at that meeting. All he had the courage to do was lie about me online from behind a screen. I do not know these people. I have never spoken to them or interacted with them online. I do not object to them voicing their opinions, but I do object to them posting the lie that I advocate the teaching of anal sex to children and want to give pornography to children.

“Last night, Oprah recognized me for my efforts to save our public library at the National Book Awards. To say I am shocked is an understatement. Oprah is the reason I know about authors like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Dr. Maya Angelou–authors who all shaped the person I am today. It’s Oprah. She has helped shape the book industry. I will cherish her recognition forever. However, even more important to me is our public library. I believe in the freedom to read. I believe that libraries should serve all members of the community. I believe that libraries are for everyone and have faith in the dedicated professionals with library science degrees. Our libraries are community hubs open to all. Help us save it before it is too late.

“Do you love our Livingston Parish Public Library? Vote YES to the millage renewal on November 18th. This is not a new tax. Otherwise, our public libraries will close by 2026 and that’s the real travesty.

“Don’t believe what I’m telling you? It’s all in the court motions. Check it out for yourself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-mEI4baXZsvPdpbslQ_1FbP8uGoPDLIz/view . Do you also stand against censorship? Join us at Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship: https://www.la-cac.org/  Want to know more about our efforts to save the Livingston Parish Library? Visit https://www.lplalliance.com/, 

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.