Louisiana Voice

The Republican Party, for lack of a better term, is an institutional oxymoron.

Put in the poetic vernacular, perhaps three lines from the Kris Kristofferson classic, The Pilgrim sums up the philosophy of the party:

He’s a walking contradiction
Partly truth and partly fiction
Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home

Before you break out the torches and pitchforks, I remind you that I am a recovering Republican (33 years). Accordingly, like the recovering alcoholic, I have looked the devil squarely in the eye and decided it was time to change and I’ve been sober for 13 years now.

It’s no big secret that the Republicans are opposed to Social Security and Medicare (Sen. Rick Scott wants to phase both out completely, which might not sit well with his senior constituents in Florida. He is supported in his privatization plan by fellow Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.)

In 1935, Republican congressman John Taber claimed Social Security was “designed to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.”

In 1964, Ronald Reagan said his opposition to Social Security and Medicare is why he switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. He branded Social Security as “welfare” and lamented the passage of Medicare, saying, “One of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

(He neglected to explain how Social Security was “welfare,” when it is a program Americans pay into their entire working lives.)

Any time any program is proposed to help lower-income Americans, the Republican Party’s automatic response is “Socialism!” Yet, that same Republican Party has no problem doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in special federal programs that benefit corporations and their board members.

In fact, if one were to put the pencil to a comparison of fraud perpetuated by the so-called “welfare queens” vs. corporate welfare fraud, one would see a system heavily weighted in favor of the corporate cheats.

So, what is the DIFFERENCE?

• Democrats support tax cuts for the middle- and low-income families while Republicans prefer to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
• Democrats generally favor choice, gun control, and gay marriage while Republicans are universally opposed to all three propositions.
• Democrats support organized labor. While burdened with a history of corruption, labor unions have nevertheless been instrumental in creating the American middle class. Republicans detest organized labor even though certain Republican (read: Richard Nixon and the Teamsters) manage to get in bed together from time to time.
• Republicans have expressed their desire to abolish the Department of Education, saying that should be left to the states. As an alternative to that goal, they support school choice through charter schools and school vouchers. Yet, they demand a say in what is taught in schools.
• Republicans bitterly oppose any government-run single-payer health care system.
• The fact that Nixon created the EPA notwithstanding, Republicans are opposed to any legislation supporting environmental protection. A lot has changed in that regard since Republican Teddy Roosevelt advocated conservation and created the National Park Service.

Republicans, to put it in as simple terms as possible, just want the government out of our lives.

So they say.

But truth be told, they only want government out of their lives, but not necessarily out of everyone else’s.

As evidence of this, I offer Exhibit One:

The passage of draconian anti-abortion laws in several states that allow no exceptions for incest or rape. In states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida, for example, a woman has absolutely no say-so over her own body. That right has been usurped by men, most of whom have never been pregnant. In Texas, despite Republican’s insistence on less governmental interference, they encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors in cases of abortions (kinda reminds one of nazism and fascism).

Exhibit Two:

Saturday’s headline in THE WASHINGTON POST: “Florida rejects math books with ‘references’ to critical race theory.”

Wait. What?!!? I thought Republicans wanted less guvmint interference in our daily lives.

How the ever-lovin’ hell can a math book contain CRT? And do the imbeciles in Florida even have the faintest concept of what CRT is? When I was in electronics school in the US Air Force back in the ‘60s, it stood for cathode ray tube, but I kinda doubt that’s what it means today. Do they even make tubes for electronic equipment anymore?

Perhaps the illustration below is what they mean by CRT in math textbooks in Florida:

Exhibit Three:

Another WASHINGTON POST headline: “Censorship battles’ new frontier: your public library.”

Yep, not satisfied with purging objectionable material from those communistic, sex-saturated, woke-filled math textbooks, attention is being turned to our public libraries and the equivalent to the old practice of book burning. Can’t have all that propaganda being made available to innocent children. I suppose it never occurred to society’s self-appointed censors that the kiddies will get all that they need from the Internet.

One Bonnie Wallace, a church volunteer, wrote the Llano, Texas, library about the “pornographic filth” she found in the library. She must have been really searching hard because she compiled an Excel spreadsheet of some 60 books that she found offensive. Betcha anything the Harry Potter books, with all their sorcery and witchcraft, were on her list. I’ll go one further and bet you she never read a one of them.

It reminded me of a church lady I knew when I was a kid. She and her husband ran a small grocery store. One day, a man came in and asked for a beer. Of course, Lincoln Parish was dry at the time and she curtly told him she didn’t sell beer. “I’m kidding,” he said. “I just want a root beer.”

After he left, Church Lady, properly offended, took a knife and scraped the word “beer” off every single bottle of root beer in her store.

But back to Bonnie Wallace. She insisted that every book containing any reference to gays, sex, or race be removed from the library shelves.

Which brings up a small problem called the Holy Bible.

Gay couples in the Bible: David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18); Ruth and Naomi (Ruth 1); Daniel and Ashpenaz (Daniel 1), and the Centurion and his beloved servant (Matthew 8). And just for lagniappe, there is the Ethiopian Eunuch in the New Testament.

Incest in the Bible: Okay, this one’s a little dicey. How did Adam and Eve’s children procreate? Or Noah’s children, after everyone else on earth was destroyed in the flood? And what about Lot and his two daughters who got him drunk and seduced him?

Other sexual exploits in the Bible: Two angels visit Sodom and stay with Lot’s family. That night, the men in town come for the angels. Instead, Lot offers them his two daughters “who have not known any man.” (Lot appears to be some kind of serious sexual deviate but somehow is deemed to be the only righteous man around and is saved.)

Genocide in the Bible: Well, there are just too many to list here, but two of the most well-known involve an ark and an Egyptian plague but there are references to cannibalism (when two women make a bargain to eat their own children, 2 Kings 6:24-33), murder, dismemberment, and human sacrifice.

Misogyny in the Bible: Just read Leviticus.

Slavery in the Bible: Schools are prohibited from teaching about slavery in many states now, but there are several references to it in the Bible, primarily in Exodus.

Adultry in the Bible: I give you Abraham, who fathered a son, Ishmael, with an Egyptian servant named Hagar and then a second son, Isaac, with wife Sarah. Ishmael became founder of the Islamic faith and Isaac founded the Jewish nation.

Witches and sorcery in the Bible: (“Do not allow a sorceress to live,” Exodus 22:18); Leviticus 19:31, Deuteronomy 18:10-12.

I realize with all due clarity that this is going to get me into a lot of trouble with my church-going friends who will condemn me to eternal darnnation but I feel it’s important to make this comparison in order to properly drive home the point that Republicans generally insist on:

• Cherry-picking those issues with which they agree or disagree and to blow those issues completely out of proportion so that a smokescreen may be established that obfuscates other, more important issues;
• Less interference in our daily lives by government – unless that interference advances their agenda, of course;
• Gaining control over what we read, watch, hear, experience, and understand so as to secure complete control over as many aspects of our lives as possible through selective indoctrination, and
• Advancing the big lie of compassion and understanding.

In Louisiana politics, there’s always a back story, like the background LouisianaVoice provided below on the story about the resignation of State Sen.-sometimes congressional candidate-sometimes head of the State Democratic Party-and apparently always a full-time lawyer and powerful politician Karen Carter-Peterson.

Things are never as they appear on the surface in this state. That’s why her explanation of mental depression and a chronic gambling addiction just didn’t seem to fit comfortably into what we knew about her tenure as head of the Democratic Party and Gov. John Bel Edwards’ quiet moves to remove her from that position.

That’s what LouisianaVoice does and that’s why we hold two fundraisers each year – one in April and another in October. We skipped October in favor of asking you to contribute to your local food bank in the wake of Hurricane Ida’s destruction in Louisiana but now we’re back, hat in hand, asking for your help.

We can’t promise you a reward in paradise or even some vague reference to some financial blessing you’ll receive in return for giving us your last dime. That’s not our style. Nor do we promise some legislative bill that will allow you to reap millions in tax dodges or give you the right to destroy our environment.

What we do promise is that we will do our ever-lovin’ best to hold the feet of those in power to the fire and to be held accountable.

To do that takes money – money for document copies, money for travel, money for legal expenses, and money to get an occasional burger and fries while on the road in pursuit of another story.

Please click on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post to contribute by credit card or send a check to Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.

Those giving $100 or more will get a signed copy of my new book, It’s All TheIRS, the story of a man who decides enough is enough and fights back when unfairly hit with mega fines and penalties by the IRS. While fiction, it does include actual cases of IRS abusive power plays against ordinary citizens who, unlike corporations, cannot afford a staff of tax lawyers to work all the angles for them.

Your contribution won’t bring you a blessing or unexpected riches, and it may even bring scorn down upon you. But you will be helping the cause of a dying enterprise: investigative reporting.

I thank you.

When State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans) announced her immediate resignation from the legislature last week, she attributed her decision to depression and a chronic gambling addiction.

While the reasons for her decision were rooted in facts, the truth may be a bit more complicated, it now seems.

Political writers Gordon Russell and Tyler Bridges wrote on Saturday that Carter-Peterson was the subject of a federal investigation and hinted that the probe might well be tied to her tenure as head of Louisiana’s Democratic Party from 2012 to 2020.

Carter-Peterson has been a lightning rod of sorts, having used her veto power to squelch the reappointment of Ronnie Jones as head of Louisiana’s Gaming Board and former House Speaker Pro Tem Walt Leger, who was bumped from his appointment as chairman of the Ernest M. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

She invoked an obscure rule that allowed her to personally torpedo five of 11 gubernatorial appointments, including Jones and Leger, because each of the five had managed to piss her off by some perceived slight. And Karen Carter Peterson was not the type to forgive and forget.

She offered her full-throated support for Mike Noel to succeed Jones because, she said, Jones had been there too long (seven years) despite the fact that Noel had been involved in gaming regulation for more than 15 years. Moreover, she was in full support of the guy who was in charge of the day-to-day operations of LSP during the time of the Ronald Greene cover-up.   

Funny how things sort of have a way of working out.  

LouisianaVoice, in June 2020, ran a story about her stormy tenure as head of the state Democratic Party. Following is an excerpt from that story:

“One of her first acts as the new Democratic State Chairperson in 2012 was to nullify all parish executive committee appointments made during her predecessor Buddy Leach’s term.

“Once the Democratic Executive Committee was stacked with Peterson appointees, the committee awarded her an annual stipend of $36,000, plus expenses. This was done without the approval of the Democratic State Central Committee, most of whom were unaware of the stipend. [Wonder if some her mileage expense payments correspond to travel for which she is paid by the Senate?]

“Peterson’s sister, Eileen Carter of Houma, was paid $13,000 during October and November 2015 for “organizational/grassroots consultation,” according to figures provided by the Louisiana Ethics Commission. That’s a per-annum rate of $78,000.”

And there’s this from a Nov. 7, 2017 LouisianaVoice STORY:

“…[T]he biggest concern to several Democratic Parish Executive Committee (DPEC) members is the lack of membership on no fewer than 29 parish executive committees, a condition critics attribute to Peterson’s lack of timely appointments.”

“There are 29 parishes which have five or fewer members on their committee,” one DPEC member said. “There should be at least 15 members of each parish executive committee. That’s nearly half the state that has non-existent or non-functioning DPECs. Livingston Parish has only seven of 15 seats filled. One member of the Livingston DPEC has been working since February to get the seats filled but that still hasn’t been done even though names have been submitted.”

And nearly two years into Peterson’s second term as state chairperson, there are 33 DSCC vacancies. “If she fills positions at all, it’s usually with her minions,” another DSCC member said.

Parishes with one or more vacancies in DSCC representation include Caddo, Bossier, DeSoto, Sabine, Lincoln, Union, Ouachita, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, West Feliciana, Caldwell, Catahoula, Franklin, LaSalle, Tensas, Concordia, East Carroll, Madison, Tensas, Rapides, Lafayette, Vermilion, Calcasieu, Acadia, Iberia, St. Martin, East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Tangipahoa, Washington, St. Tammany, and Jefferson.

“Karen Carter Peterson is an ambitious politician of questionable loyalties who has used her chairmanship of DSCC to build a fiefdom and to launch a national career, all at the expense of the organization she was elected to build and serve,” a DSCC member said.

In case you’re not predisposed to cough up a contribution for Louisiana State Police (see post immediately below this one), LouisianaVoice can certainly put your generosity to good use by pursuing more state investigative stories.

We are into our semi-annual fundraising campaign. We do this every April and October, though last October I suggested that you give to your local food bank because of the destruction brought about by Hurricane Ida.

LouisianaVoice is currently investigating several key stories, including, of course, the ongoing probe of Louisiana State Police and the killing of Ronald Greene in May 2019. But we’re not a one trick pony. There are other stories that merit exposure and we’re doing all we can to bring the details to light. One of those is a study of the jury selection process in a Louisiana judicial district which potentially could negate hundreds of criminal convictions.

But to be honest, we need your support. Gas prices are up, meaning travel costs more. State law calls for a charge of 25 cents per page for copies, but the last two requests I’ve made of the Secretary of State, I’ve been hit for $20 per page. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal as hell, but I’m having trouble getting straight answers. Legal fees aren’t cheap, either.

So, if you can do so, please click on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post and contribute by credit card. Or you can send a check payable to CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE to P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.

Those contributing $100 or more will get a signed copy of my new book, It’s All TheIRS, a novel about a man who is wrongfully assessed a huge penalty by the IRS and decides to fight back.

The same day that this nice solicitation letter arrived from the Louisiana State Police Association, it was learned that the second in command at Louisiana State Police (LSP) headquarters had finally been put on administrative leave pending an internal investigation into how it came about that his work cell phone was wiped just as an investigation into the beating death of Ronald Greene was heating up.

At the same time, it was announced just over five weeks after LouisianaVoice first RAISED THE ISSUE, that a 19-year LSP veteran had been arrested on counts of malfeasance and injuring public records after falsely claiming to have been a hit-and-run victim in New Orleans when in fact, he had struck another vehicle the day before in St. Tammany Parish and fled the scene.

LouisianaVoice had also RAISED QUESTIONS as early as February about why the phones of several LSP higher ups, including Kevin Reeves, who had resigned as LSP superintendent, Mike Noel, who also resigned rather than undergo questions about the Greene matter during his confirmation hearings to head up the State Gaming Board.

The reason given for sanitizing those phones was that Reeves and Noel had left LSP employ and the phones needed to be restored to factory settings for re-issue.

The only problem was the phones of Doug Cain, promoted to Lieutenant Colonel by Reeves’ successor, Col. Lamar Davis, and former LSP executive counsel Faye Dysart Morrison were also sanitized and they are still employed, though Morrison has been reassigned to a lowed-salaried position.

This, even as LSP was being instructed not to destroy evidence in the Greene matter. Text messages about the beating and subsequent death of Greene, are considered evidence in any court jurisdiction in the country, something law enforcement personnel should know instinctively.

So, finally, on Friday, came the announcement that Cain, who once confided to LouisianaVoice his desire that he might one day be named LSP superintendent, had been placed on administrative leave, albeit paid leave, pending an internal investigation into what we will call, for lack of a better term, Phonegate.

“The decision to place him on leave was made in the best interest of the department to eliminate any questions into the integrity of the investigation,” Davis said. Integrity of the investigation? Seriously? State troopers beat, tased and kicked Greene to death, then lied that he died in an auto accident at the end of a police chase on May 10, 2019.

State police tried to say there was no body cam video. There was, but it didn’t surface for more than two years. Even then, detectives were thwarted in their efforts to get to the bottom of this act of pure brutality (it wasn’t the only one in LSP’s F-Troop). They (investigators) were told that a real investigation would bring trouble for LSP. They (those same investigators) were instructed to withhold evidence, including the belatedly-discovered body cam video from the district attorney.

And now Davis wants to allude to the “integrity of the investigation.”

Forgive me if I’m a tad jaded when Davis talks about “integrity of the investigation.”

As New Orleans Advocate columnist James Gill pointed out on Friday, if there had been even a half-assed investigation into the brutalization of New Orleans attorney Ashton O’Dwyer by “several of the same troopers” in the hours after Hurricane Katrina, then the sordid events up in Monroe’s F-Troop may well have been avoided.

So, after all that, in Friday’s mail was a letter addressed to me from the State Troopers Association that tried to appeal to the “difficult times” law enforcement is going through. “The men and women in the Louisiana State Police know our only mission is to protect, serve, and enforce the law,” read the third sentence in the letter.

Apparently, they forgot to include beatings and then texting about how much fun it was.

The letter said the LSTA was “grateful” to its supporters and wants to recognize supporters with LSP’s “official window decal and other gifts.”

For $35, a donor will receive two “official” 2022 LSTA window stickers, two 2022 LSTA Silver Member ID card, and a chance to win a vacation for two.

Bump that up to $50 and you get four window stickers, a 2022 Gold Member ID card, a new 2022 LSTA logo magnet and two chances to win that vacation.

Go all in with a hundred bucks and you’ll get four window stickers (don’t know where you’d put that many), a Gold Member ID card, the LSTA logo magnet, and four chances for that vacation, plus special recognition on the LSTA donation link.

Keep in mind this is the same LSTA that gave the boot to members who questioned the association’s practice of making illegal political campaign contributions – and then sent letters of solicitation to those same former members, seeking monetary donations.

I think I’ll pass my letter along to some of the victims of beatings up in F-Troop. Or maybe to Ashton O’Dwyer.