Louisiana Voice

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?

It was just on September 5 that LouisianaVoice published a story about the Livingston Parish School Board filing a lawsuit against social media giants Meta, Instagram and TikTok, as well as cable television providers Charter Communications and Cox Communications for poisoning children’s minds and otherwise inflicting permanent damage to their psyche, their grades, and…well, their futures by making the social media platforms addictive.

If you will recall, LouisianaVoice made the not-to-difficult prediction that this would be the next big class-action litigation to rival the tobacco and opioids legal battles and to a lesser extent, the BP litigation. The prognostication was made then that other states and other school districts would become co-plaintiffs in the effort to take down the evil predators.

Well, today, the  STORY broke that 41 states have filed suit against Meta, claiming the tech giant has built “addictive features into Instagram and Facebook. For the time being, at least, TikTok has not be named a defendant but just wait, it likely will be added.

Anyway, it’s playing out pretty much as predicted and Louisiana, with our litigious attorney general soon-to-be governor is, of course, one of the 41 states listed as a plaintiff.

The one thing that is difficult – no, impossible – to comprehend is why there is so much redaction on the copy of the LAWSUIT that The Washington Post linked to in its article and to which we’ve attempting to link. Hope you can open it.

There should be no redactions in any public document like a lawsuit. Copies of lawsuits are supposed to be fully accessible to anyone who wants to go to the trouble of pulling them up and reading them.

Something smells here.

But it does cite a study by the AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION entitled Health Advisory on Social Media Use in Adolescence, published last May which supported the claims of the lawsuit.

Here are the states that have signed on thus far:

Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, George, Hawai’i, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

The states of Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawai’i, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey. New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia each listed its respective attorney as representing his or her state.

Just can’t figure out how Jeff Landry, who adores seeing his name in the media, managed to let that opportunity slip by.

Be that as it may, this is playing out just as we predicted less than two months ago. Look for a pretty big payout when the dust has settled.

All five Republican members of Louisiana’s House delegation voted for Gym Jordan for Speaker and Troy Carter joined the other 211 Democrats to vote for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The good news is no one as yet has voted for Clay Higgins as Speaker.

Here’s the BREAKDOWN for the entire House Vote.

“It’s time to take the sharp knives away from the children.”

–Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), on the dysfunction gripping the House of Representatives over the ousting of one speaker and its inability to choose a successor.

By John Rigol

Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.

                                                                                     Jeremiah 31:12-13

Jeremiah 31 is a beautiful vision represented at a distant period. And as part of that beautiful vision, God, Himself, endorsed dancing. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, in that chapter—and others too— does God mandate that dancing should be limited to praising Him.

Is the Republic being headlonged propelled into a parallel radical Islamic State? The Walker high School atrocity surely makes it looks that way. And I, for one, am nauseated…and afraid.

It was not within Mr. Si. Pierre’s scope of office to proselytize to Miss. Timonet. And worse, to do so in a two-hour, closed-door, bullying environment without one or both of her parents present.

And even if Mr. St. Pierre were functioning within his scope of office, why would he strip the young lady of her earned prerequisites and then have the temerity to condemn her to hell…for two hours, no less! It sounds like a modified form of waterboarding.

The “honorable” Christians (you know them, the fanatical righteous hypocrites, especially the Evangelicals), are probably glorifying Messieurs Jason St. Piere and Kelly Becnel. And when they are fired and hopefully criminally charged with child abuse (as they should be), the ‘honorable” Christians will proclaim them to be “martyrs for Christ.”

In the course of time, will there be heretical executions? Don’t laugh. Although the Roman Catholics hold the blue ribbon for those inhumanities, the Protestants can proudly lay claim to a vast number of them too. One night recall the Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Some Christians have said they’re in a war—a war for the redemption of souls—when in reality, it is an act of aggression against free thinking. And unless others stand up against the takeover, the rabid proselytizers will eventually rob the “non-believers” (i.e., those who do not think the way do) of their essences.

The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” which is the basis for the doctrine of separation of Church and State. Mr. St. Pierre and his assistant have not allowed that trivial impediment stand in the way of their twisted morality.

(Editor’s note: To view the video of Kaylee Timonet’s dance that so upset Principal St. Pierre – and to compare it with a school-sponsored pep rally dance routine, go HERE.)