Louisiana Voice

Well, it’s official.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has bestowed upon the right-wing lobbyist group the Family Research Council (FRC) the official status of a CHURCH and Tony Perkins (not the late actor, but the former Louisiana legislator from Greenwell Springs) as its religious leader, or pastor, as it were.

A church.

The agenda of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who says it is a “MISCONCEPTION” that the founding fathers wanted the separation of church and state, notwithstanding, there can be no earthly way to see FRC in any light other than as an association established – and functioning – as a lobbying organization.

That FRC actively lobbies against abortion and LGBTQ rights and in favor of exemptions to civil rights laws should prohibit it from either being designated as a church or in participating in partisan politics.

And it doesn’t – or shouldn’t – matter which side of a given issue it advocates. If it promoted abortion or LGBTQ rights or took a hard line on the enforcement of civil rights laws across the board, it still should not be designated as a church.

To do so makes a mockery of the Constitution.

Just to be clear for the trolls out there who will attempt to pick this post to pieces, I will repeat: It does not matter which side of an issue you happen to espouse. If you are involved in ANY politcally-charged issue, no matter which side you advocate, you should not call yourself a church.

To be clear, I have no issue with its status as a non-profit organization. The American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are non-profits.

But they are not churches.

FRC, it should be noted, is also against gender-affirming (transgender) SURGERY – in other words, changing one gender designation to another. But it has not seen fit to take a public stance against the slaughter of school children other than for Perkins to blame the shootings on “RECKLESS RHETORIC.”

Sometimes silence can be deafening.

But calling a multimillion-dollar organization established for the sole purpose of lobbying Congress and state legislatures on any politically-volatile issue a church?

C’mon, folks. Let’s use a little common sense here.

We may as well designate the New Orleans Saints a church. I mean, look at some of the people in the stands during a Saints home game. If that isn’t worship, I don’t know what you’d call it.

How about the gas pumps at Sam’s Club? The rush to those pumps during the recent spike in gas prices resembled some religious tent revival services I’ve seen. And Waffle House. Those poor overworked wait staff employees are louder than any preacher and the hungry crowds are just as fervent as any amen corner.

Might as well make them churches, too. And don’t forget the Tiger Athletic Foundation out at LSU. The influence they have over the hiring and firing of coaches has to be divinely-inspired. And they’re as skilled at fund-raising as any televangelist

And of course, there’s the most obvious of all: Mar A Largo, a Mecca-like destination for the Frump devotees. And he’s exhibited something of a huckster’s skill at raising funds.

I probably shouldn’t have suggested that last one because some reader may actually get that suggestion to him.

But back to FRC and its president, Tony Perkins.

In 1996, then-State Rep. Woody Jenkins was waging a spirited campaign for the US Senate. His campaign manager was Perkins. Perkins signed off on a check for $82,000 for the purchase of a robocall campaign from a guy named David Duke. The money to be paid to the former KKK leader was routed through another firm in order to conceal the Duke connection.

Perkins explained to the Baton Rouge Advocate: “We didn’t want any appearance that we had any connection to Duke.”

No s**t? You didn’t want an appearance that you were in bed with the KKK?

While Perkins insisted to The Advocate that the campaign had complied with federal election law, the Federal Elections Commission felt otherwise and fined the Duke campaign $3000 for illegally concealing the deal with Duke.

On another occasion, Perkins, who at the time was a reserve Baton Rouge police officer, learned in advance of the potential of violence at a scheduled protest against a Baton Rouge abortion clinic. Because he also worked as a reporter for Jenkins’s weak-signal television station, “Woody Vision,” he neglected to inform his superiors at BRPD. Instead, with a camera crew in tow, he waited in hopes of getting the anticipated melee on film. There were many arrests but fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Perkins, though, was suspended from by the department for violating his oath of office and subsequently resigned.

The SPLC in 2010 designated FRC as a HATE GROUP because of its trashing of LGBTQ people and for spreading “harmful pseudoscience about them.”

Rather than embracing the Christian doctrine of love and acceptance, FRC has instead advocated the criminalization of homosexual conduct, an official position that certainly seems to validate its hate group status.

But a church?

If you drive along I-10 between Baton Rouge and Lafayette on a regular basis, you’ve most likely experienced the frustration of being caught in one of those exasperating traffic snarls caused by a wreck, usually on the notorious 18-mile stretch over Henderson Lake, a stretch with no exits – or bathrooms.

Well, take heart. State authorities have finally, at long last, realized there’s a problem along that stretch and they’re cracking down on speeders who zip along while ignoring the 60-mph speed limit.

Unless your name is Lamar Davis, of course. The enforcement by Louisiana State Police, which can carry fines of up to $1,000, does not apply to Lamar Davis.

Oh, Lamar Davis, by the way, goes by the title of Colonel and he’s the superintendent of Louisiana State Police. As in head honcho, the boss, Louisiana’s Top Cop.

It seems that Col. Davis, who was appointed to straighten out a rogue outfit that had seemed to have lost its moral compass, was running a little late for a 3 p.m. meeting in Lake Charles on June 28.

He was clocked at 91 mph in that 60mph speed zone along that infamous 18-mile stretch at 2:11 p.m. (he’s not going to make that 3 o’clock).

He was pulled over by a (ahem) state trooper whose identity was not immediately available but rest assured, he was already in over his head, severely outranked as he was.

Dash cam footage didn’t pick up any audio but the meeting was quite brief, probably just long enough for Davis to ask, “Do you know who I am?” to which the trooper most likely answered, “Gulp.”

“Yes, Sir. You have a good day now, Sir.”

Davis activated his own emergency lights (those blue ones that strike dread in your heart when you see them in your rear view mirror) in an apparent attempt to discourage the trooper who probably – mistakenly – thought he might be making a major bust only to discover that he’d pulled over his commander.

Speeding at a rate of 25 mph or more in excess of the posted speed limit is what is known by police as a 14:99 i.e., reckless operation, punishable by fines up to $200 and/or 90 days in jail.

A spokesman for LSP wrote to LouisianaVoice, “The Trooper utilized his discretion and did not issue a citation.”

If ever there was an understatement in invoking the word “discretion,” that would certainly qualify.

But it’s good to know troopers are free to use their “discretion” in matters such as this. If ever I get pulled over for speeding (which has not occurred since 1969 in Little Rock, Arkansas), I’ll be sure to ask the trooper if he can use his “discretion” and let me go with a warning – which I’ll bet he didn’t even do with Davis. I mean, would you “warn” your boss, especially when you couldn’t pull a 16-penny nail out of your butt with a John Deere tractor.

Seven dead in Buffalo; 21 killed in Uvalde, 7 more fatalities at Highland Park. The killing, it seems, never stops, never slows, as America more and more becomes an angry nation with its citizens harboring personal demons and innocent bystanders caught in the middle.

It makes no sense. It’s insanity. It’s some sort of fetish for assault weapons on the part of serious demented individuals.

Yet, with all the mass killings elsewhere, Louisiana has the SECOND-HIGHEST gun death rate in the US, according to a story in the Louisiana Illuminator, the only publication I’ve seen that published the grim statistics.

Let that sink in. We’re killing each other at an alarming rate, in random acts of one-on-one slaughter. Enough that our murder rate of 26.3 per 100,000 population ranks only behind that of Mississippi’s 28.6 per 100,000.

That’s Mississippi, the state that also boasts the highest infant mortality rate, the nation’s highest poverty rate, the nation’s worst nutrition, that ranks AMONG THE WORST in the nation in pre-natal care and where the governor recently declared June 2022 as “SANCTITY OF LIFE MONTH.”

But let’s get back to Louisiana and that Illuminator story, written by Wes Muller.

Muller correctly points out that while some states have attempted to enact stricter gun control laws, Louisiana’s moribund legislators have seen fit to do little other than approve a resolution to study the pros and cons of arming school employees (the biggest and overriding con that I can come up with is children being caught in the crossfire of a Dodge City shootout between a panicky teacher and a deranged killer who doesn’t give a damn about his own life.)

And I won’t even get into a discussion about the macho hillbilly Green Beret wannabe who wrote in to assure me that he would have my back in such a scenario.

In order, the top five (or should that be the bottom five) in gun-related death rates are: Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, and Alabama.

There you have it. Five states with the most lax gun laws in America and three are from the Deep South where they things like “You kin have mah gun when you pry it from mah cold, dead hands,” and “Praise John Wayne and pass the ammo.”

But not to worry. Baton Rouge just happens to boast the single largest weapons distributor in the nation, though it’s not known if any of the weapons used in Buffalo, Uvalde, or Highland Park were sold here.

Lipsey’s, located in Baton Rouge, bills itself as “one of the largest independently-owned shooting sports distributors in the country offering a full catalog of firearms.” That “full catalog” includes companies like Daniel Defense, Century Arms, Wilson Combat, Colt, H&K, and Barrett, all of which offer AR-15s like those used in recent mass shootings.

Five 18-wheeler truck-size cargo bays off I-10 in the Industriplex allow for the loading and dumping of more civilian assault weapons into our country than any other private enterprise.

The founder of Lipsey’s is Richard Lipsey, who formerly sat as chair of the Louisiana Board of Regents for Higher Education. His daughter Laura Lipsey Aronson is now the Chairwoman and CEO of the family business and like her father before her, serves on the LSU BOARD OF SUPERVISORS.

A caller on the local NPR affiliate radio talk show asked Mr. Lipsey two important and concise questions. (1) “Would you support a ban on military assault weapons? “(2) Would you assess a small fee on the price of guns at the distributor level to fund mental health initiatives?”

He answered “no” to the ban on assault weapons while launching into a nostalgic history of military weaponry, citing AR-15s converted into “modern sporting rifles.” His dismissive response to the second question was that he was absolutely against “taxing our gun owners” for mental health funding, wryly suggesting instead that maybe we could “tax toothbrushes or milk.”

An organization called 10,000 Women Louisiana recently sent the following letter to Laurie Lipsey Aronson asking that Lipsey’s cease distribution of the AR-15 weapon:

Dear Ms. Aronson:

We are asking for your help. We recognize that you hold an important leadership role as the Chairwoman and CEO of Lipsey’s LLC., the largest firearm distributor in America. Your actions can set the standard for other gun distributors, retailers and elected officials.

Given the recent traumatic AR-15 gun violence tragedies around the country, we ask you to consider what you can do as a mother, a community leader and as a recognized philanthropic business leader.

We ask Lipsey’s to stop the distribution of automatic and semi-automatic (assault-style) weapons created for the military. You personally can change whether civilians can acquire these weapons, magazines and ammunition that are being used for the murder of innocent children and adults. We understand that Lipsey’s also distributes or sells to government and law enforcement entities, both domestic and foreign. Our intent is to ban access to the weapons, magazines and ammunition to the general population.

Your swift action could decisively change the national availability of these weapons. You alone could have a profound effect on the safety of our communities. Additionally, your role as the President of the Board of the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW) and the Board of Governors of the National Shooting Sports Foundation gives you a unique opportunity to shift the narrative for this industry. In your role on the LSU Board of Supervisors, we ask that you consider the issue of gun safety for educational institutions.

We the undersigned friends, neighbors, community leaders, advocates and citizens implore you to take action barring access to military-style weapons for purchase by the general public. Please make a public statement about how Lipsey’s can help address the gun violence epidemic.

Like the other 1.1 million Louisiana captive subjects of the marriage between electric utilities and the Louisiana Public Service Commission, I received my monthly Entergy bill the other day that included a fee of $18.76 cryptically notated as “Storm Restoration Charge.”

So, why am I upset over a charge of $18.76? For several reasons:

• My $18.76 was probably on the low side because my home is well insulated and we don’t set the thermostat very low. One reader said her charge this month was $51.13 (despite Entergy’s initial promise that the fees would run between $5 and $15 per month). Because the fee is presumably determined by usage, and considering there are 12,000 industrial and 142,000 commercial customers, I would guess that $50 would probably be a low average, meaning Entergy would be raking in at least $50 million per month for storm restoration.
• Why are the customers of Entergy being asked forced to pay for Entergy’s failure to plan for natural disasters when the company should have been placing its lines underground decades ago instead of leaving them suspended on poles and vulnerable to hurricane-force winds?
• Locked in for 15 years, Entergy projects it will collect $3.2 billion for storm restoration over that time. Who’s to say there won’t be more storms in those 15 years that will necessitate additional “storm restoration” fees? What are the odds of that and where does it end?
• What is the fate of that $450 million federal grant for which Entergy recently applied to make its power grid more reliable? Looks like double-dipping to me.
• Does Entergy not have sufficient business acumen as to have excess-coverage insurance policies in place to cover natural disasters? There’s a conglomerate of companies calling themselves Lloyd’s of London that is in business to write just such coverage. Hell, they even insured actress Betty Grable’s legs for a cool million bucks way back in the 1940s. But no, Entergy instead has gone the self-insured route and now is getting bailed out on the backs of its customers.
• Why did the Louisiana Public Service Commission (along with its counterparts in Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas) roll over for Entergy when the company requested approval of the special fee? Why didn’t members see fit to protect the interests of Louisiana citizens? The only one of the five PSC members to vote against approval was Foster Campbell of Shreveport, who tossed out some pretty pointed barbs Entergy’s way.

Which brings me to Campbell’s major STICKING POINTS raised when the PSC initially approved the surcharge back in February:

First of all, he felt it unfair to penalize customers in north Louisiana who didn’t feel the brunt of hurricanes, Ida, Laura, Delta, Zeta and winter storm Uri (I didn’t even know about that one) in 2020 and 2021.

Second, it kinda stuck in Campbell’s craw (and mine as well) to learn that Entergy, while suffering the economic impact of the storms, managed to find an additional $4 million in compensation for its CEO, Leo Denault, who pulls down a cool $16 million per annum.

And he was justifiably pissed when Entergy, in its news release, inplied that the PSC vote was unanimous. It wasn’t. The vote was 4-1, with Campbell casting the lone negative vote. He asked Entergy to clarify its news release but the company politely ignored his request.

Nor was Campbell overjoyed to know that Entergy, while in the throes of economic ruin, doled out $1.2 billion in dividends to shareholders. Would it not have been prudent to not declare dividends during this time of hardship and dedicate that $1.2 billion to storm recovery? “I’m just troubled by your company’s arrogance,” Campbell said, directing his criticism to Denault. “Absolute arrogance.”

Let’s say I owned a business, a retail store, that was damaged by a storm. Because I was self-insured, I thought it would be a great idea to simply impose a surcharge on my goods to pay for the damage. My customer base would shrivel and disappear and I’d be out of business in a week. That’s the way it is in a competitive world but not, apparently, with a monopoly like Entergy.

Oh, and my rhetorical question about investing that $1.2 billion in storm recovery was actually addressed by an Entergy spokesperson way back in 2006 who said, “It would not be prudent to invest shareholder money into the utility if there’s no chance of recouping the money.” Well, I thought investment brochures all carried the disclaimer that investing is a risk with no guarantees.

A lot of folks, mainly Repugnantcans, are preaching the gospel of self-sufficiency for the unfortunate among us while turning a blind eye to corporate welfare – like Commissioner ERIC SKRMETTA of Metairie describing Entergy’s handling of the storm as “impressive” and saying if the rate surcharge was not approved, it would make the state less attractive to corporate investment.

Less attractive than pulling Louisiana out of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a nonprofit association that manages the POWER GRID for 42 million people in 15 states and Manitoba Province in Canada? That was Skrmetta’s brainchild last November as he apparently forgot what happened in Texas – that precipitated Ted Cruz’s abrupt departure for Cancun.

Entergy, headquartered in New Orleans, boasts revenues of $12 billion and is the only Fortune 500 company left in Louisiana.

What happens when a legislator, so filled with an inflated sense of moral outrage and self-importance that [s]he goes completely off the rails and creates unnecessary work and aggravation for civil servants?

Of course, it’s a rhetorical question. Or is it?

Not necessarily. In fact, it’s far more commonplace than the average non-civil servant would ever experience because legislators, be they members of Congress, a state legislator, or a city council member from Bleeding Gums, Arkansas, feel the perpetual need to feed an insatiable ego by browbeating subordinates (read: civil servants) with demands and requests for, more often than not, trivial information that’s of no use to anyone.

Take the as yet still unidentified Louisiana legislator who got his/her panties in a wad over a link found on a Louisiana Department of Health web page.

The legislator, doubtless a God-fearing, family-values Repugnantcan, saw the word “Pride” on the web page and promptly went into orbit under the assumption that the word itself was necessarily tied to gay rights.

Except the assumption was incorrect.

No matter. DHH Secretary Courtney Phillips was compelled to drop everything else she may have been working on and address this new crisis which naturally posed a threat to humanity in general and Louisiana in particular.

The result was an email last Wednesday (June 29) from LDH Press Secretary Michelle McCalope to four workers in the trenches who it was assumed might know the answer to the legislator’s inquiry.

“The Secretary (Phillips) has asked that we review the website to see if there are any Pride links to anything, anywhere, and have them removed,” the email began. “She got a call from a legislator saying there were Pride links on the website, but we don’t have any more details.” (Well, that’s typical: go off half-cocked with some off the wall complaint but don’t give any details that might lead to an easy resolution of the problem.)

“We’re asking you to review your program offices and other accounts that you are responsible for on the web to see if there are any Pride link on those pages,” the message continued. “If you find something, send it to me and Aly (LDH Communications Director Alyson Neel) and we’ll have it removed.”

Here it is in its entirety:

There you have it. The DHH secretary, Michelle McCalope, Alyson Neel and four unsuspecting civil service employees (that’s seven people, if you’re counting) were thrown into a whirling dervish of motion at the behest of a legislator with nothing better to do than to get all worked up over the word “Pride.”

Well, I checked and damn! There it was! A Louisiana Department of Health web page with a LINK to an outfit called NOLA Pride-WFH. But I did what the busy legislator obviously did not have the time to do: I googled NOLA Pride-WFH to see what they were all about.

Guess what? It’s a mental health clinic in Metairie. Or at least it was. The telephone numbers listed were no longer in service and the Secretary of State’s corporate records indicated that NOLA Pride’s corporate charter had been revoked. (Full disclosure: I was never able to determine what the WFH stood for.)

That was the only LDH page I could find that contained a link to the specific word Pride and it turned out that just a cursory search (without involving any other living, breathing individual) showed that it had nothing to do with any gay organization or gay pride parade.

But so what if it had? LDH deals with myriad health issues, including Coronavirus, HIV, nutrition, dental care, and hepatitis, to name just a few. There was even a link on another LDH WEB PAGE to information on the 2019 National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. But nothing anywhere concerning any Pride timeline. LDH’s mission is to provide equal access to health care to all Louisiana citizens, regardless of race, sex, age, or any other demographic cluster. Would the legislator wish to pick and choose those to whom health care services are made available?

Silly question. Of course [s]he would. That’s the very agenda of the Repugnantcan Party. Make. No. Mistake. About. That.

The person who sent me a copy of the email (it was not any of the recipients) asked, perhaps also rhetorically, “Who does Courtney Phillips work for, a random Republican (presumably) legislator who doesn’t want to see any ‘Pride’ content or the governor, who says that discrimination is not a Louisiana value?”

Ouch! Tough, yet fair question but small minds and hypocrisy invariably make for a bad combination. It’s like the story in the Daily Beast that a relative sent me on the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade:

Health professionals, it seems, “are permitted to discuss cases in general terms,” the publication said, and when asked about patients with anti-choice views there was no shortage of interesting tales about activists deeming themselves an exception to the rule.

“A family-medicine physician in Washington, recalled the time a woman ‘whose sister-in-law was the president of a big right-to-life organization’ had asked to be ‘snuck in the back door’ of the clinic where she was employed. Then there was ‘the picketer who brought her daughter in for a procedure and was back on the picket line the next week.’ On another occasion, a woman came in ‘and declared to a full waiting room that they were all sinners and should leave immediately.’

“When I drew her aside, I found out she was there for an abortion, too,” the doctor told The Daily Beast.

Now, I’m waiting until some married, pro-life Repugnantcan legislator or congressman sneaks around to get a back-door abortion for his girl friend who he’s gotten pregnant. It’s gonna happen. We may not hear about it, but it’s gonna happen.

Oops. Seems it already did.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/will-the-pro-life-gop-rep-scott-desjarlais-who-paid-for-an-abortion-ever-tweet-again

More than once.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pro-life-congressman-reportedly-asked-girlfriend-to-get-an-abortion