“I do not want my picture in your offices: the President is not an icon, an idol, or a portrait. Hang your kids’ photos instead, and look at them each time you are making a decision.”

–Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his 2019 inaugural address (if only we had leaders with that mindset today…if only. Instead, we’re stuck with megalomaniacs like the tangerine toddler and his devotees.)

The wheels of justice always turn slowly but in the case of Mangham contractor Jeff Mercer, it’s pretty obvious that “justice” has become stuck in a rut and there’s no apparent hurry to call a tow truck.

In other words, there appears to be a concerted effort to delay justice and to simply out-wait Mercer in his pursuit of money that is legitimately owed him. After all, he has to die someday and the State of Louisiana will have won its 30 pieces of silver.

To say there seems to be some major collusion at play here would be to overstate the obvious.

Collusion between whom, you ask?

To answer that, just ask yourself who has the most to lose in this ongoing drama.

That would be the State of Louisiana, through the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD), which was hit with a $20 million judgment in December 2015. And Mercer is no nearer receiving his money today than he was when the judgment was handed down six years ago.

Every time state district court Judge Wilson Rambo rules in Mercer’s favor, the Louisiana Supreme Court reverses. The plain, simple truth of the matter is the state has no intention of ever paying the judgment.

How do I know this? Because for 20 years, I worked as a claims adjuster for the Louisiana Office of Risk Management (ORM), the insurance agency for claims against various state agencies.

And while the claim that I “worked” might well come under a valid challenge, considering my less-than-stellar, yet accurate, performance evaluations, there is one important bit of information I picked up along the way.

You see, one of the very first cases I inherited upon embarking on my 20 years at ORM in January 1991 was a class-action suit against the state by victims of the 1983 flood that destroyed a number of residences and businesses in Tangipahoa Parish.

The suit was filed by Jean Boudreaux on the premise that the construction of I-12 through the parish acted as a dam that backed water up onto occupants on the north side of the interstate.

The case of BOUDREAUX v STATE of TRANSPORTATION and DEVELOPMENT is coming up on 40 years of residing in legal purgatory with no resolution in sight.

DOTD was hit with a $91.8 MILLION judgment in 2006. With judicial interest, that award has swollen to more than $300 million.

But before my 2011 retirement, it was brought to my attention by those a little further up the food chain than I that the state had no intention of ever paying the judgment.

And that 2016 flood? Plaintiffs were told by the Louisiana Supreme Court that they waited too late to file their claim even as Boudreaux has been waiting nearly four decades for justice.

So, there you have it, Mr. Mercer. You are left twisting in the wind while the courts play legal chess, denying a single motion at a time rather than taking all the motions as a group and issuing a single ruling. By doing it the way they are, they can stretch things out indefinitely – and that’s precisely what they’re doing.

Funny thing is, Mercer recently recorded a conversation with the general counsel for Second Circuit Court of Appeal who confided in him that former appellate court judge Henry N. Brown, who wrote the opinion overturning the $20 million award to Mercer told her, “Yeah, I woulda challenged it, too.”

She was referring to Mercer’s allegation that Brown, whose father had worked for DOTD for 44 years, should have recused himself from the matter because of a conflict of interest.

It wasn’t Brown’s only brush with a CONFLICT of INTEREST. Another one actually cost him his position on the court as he was forced into retirement after it was revealed he had created a hostile environment toward colleagues who were hearing the appeal of a civil lawsuit against one of his friends from whom Brown had purchased a home.

Mercer is no fool, but he has a point to prove. He was extorted as a contractor for DOTD and DOTD refused to pay him for his work. He has already had to sell off all his equipment and his future as a contractor is worse than bleak.

But the bottom line is he is an honest man who tried to give the state an honest day’s work. The least the state could have done was reciprocate. Instead, DOTD allowed its employees to rip Mercer off and then refuse to pay him more than $9 million for work performed.

And now, it’s more than obvious that the state has no intention of ever paying him for the work or for the $20 million judgment awarded unanimously by a 12-member jury of his peers.

It kinda makes you wonder if there is mischief afoot.

Who the hell is protecting our children?

• The former sheriff of St. Tammany Parish has been sentenced to four life sentences after being convicted on four counts of aggravated rape, two counts of aggravated incest and one count of sexual battery and indecent behavior with a juvenile.
• A Hammond police officers has been arrested for sex crimes against a juvenile.
• At almost the same time, a St. Tammany deputy sheriff was arrested for possession of kiddie porn and sexual abuse involving animals.
• A former Ascension Parish deputy spent time in jail after his arrest for attempted child pornography possession. Soon after he was paroled, he became a fugitive after becoming wanted on three counts of carnal knowledge of a juvenile, computer-aided solicitation of a minor, and unlawful use of social media in his solicitation of a teenage boy in another parish.

JACK STRAIN, former sheriff of St. Tammany Parish, will die in prison for his actions that spanned four decades.

BRAD CORE’S fate remains to be seen since he has yet to be arraigned. A former Hammond police officer, he was arrested Wednesday night on charges of sexual battery, oral sexual battery, carnal knowledge of a juvenile, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

A deputy with the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office since 2006, CHRISTOPHER CASSIDY faces 28 counts of possession of pornography involving children under the age of 13 and 110 counts of sexual abuse involving animals. Word of Cassidy’s arrest actually popped up in my computer as I was writing this post.

Former Ascension deputy sheriff ERIC TRIPP was fired in 2013 for attempted kiddie porn and indecent behavior with a juvenile. Convicted, he was sent to prison and released on parole in 2019 only to become a fugitive in 2020. The Sorrento native was captured in South Carolina.

And then there is the sordid story of former Livingston Parish deputy sheriff DENNIS PERKINS and his schoolteacher wife Cynthia.

For those who don’t know that sick story, Perkins was head of the LPSO SWAT team who was indicted, along with his wife, on a combined 150 counts, including first-degree rape, attempted rape, sexually battery of a child under the age of thirteen, video voyeurism, mingling harmful substances, obscenity, possession of child pornography, producing child pornography and sexually abusing a dog.

It’s not that there were no red flags before his being hired by the sheriff’s office even though he had resigned from the Walker Police Department after admitting to theft of merchandise from a local store.

Cynthia eventually COPPED A PLEA a plea and received a 41-year sentence.

And if you think Louisiana is unique, think again. Following are a few headlines from around the U.S. You can click on the headline to read the entire stories if you have the stomach for such.

Former Newport school resource officer accused of lewd conduct, sexual abuse of a minor

Chicago Police Officer Charged With Sexual Abuse of a Minor

Togiak Police Officer Arrested for Sexual Abuse of a Minor

There are more, plenty more. You can google “cops sexually abusing minors” yourself if you wish.

These are people we appoint or elect to protect us and our families.

I know, I know, these are the exceptions. The typical law enforcement officer would never think of committing such heinous acts.

But do we know that for certain? How are these people screened and vetted for their positions? Are sufficient background checks run on every applicant? How did Dennis Perkins get hired by the sheriff’s department when he had resigned from a municipal police department in Livingston Parish almost in spitting distance from the sheriff’s office?

It’s bad enough when state troopers, sheriffs’ deputies and city cops beat the living hell out of some poor dude they’ve arrested for possession of a joint, but when you add sexual abuse of children to the equation, that compounds the problem.

Yes, these monsters are exceptions, but we cannot allow these exceptions to worm their way into our law enforcement agencies with such ease. Too much is at stake to let some political friend’s son or brother in just because of who he is.

We have seen the manner in which the sons of state police administrators and the sons of sheriffs are welcomed into the Louisiana State Police Academy and we’ve seen the results of that practice. We’ve seen pals hired as deputy sheriffs and we got Dennis Perkins as a result.

We cannot afford such slipshod methods of hiring cops. Our children are far too valuable to risk their safety and their innocence to such barbaric predators.

For all those wonderful, warm supporters of Agent Orange down in Mar-A-Lago who were so quick to brand me as a communist whenever I dared to criticize any treasonous actions by the former guy, I offer this in rebuttal: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-praises-putins-genius-incursion-into-ukraine-234001858.html

And this: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/22/1082478790/trump-praises-putin-as-savvy-amid-new-escalations-on-russia-ukraine-border

And this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/analysis-donald-trump-sides-with-vladimir-putin-as-joe-biden-tries-to-stop-a-war/ar-AAUbFqd

And this: https://news.yahoo.com/while-donald-trump-praises-vladimir-140025863.html

More? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-calls-putin-genius-and-savvy-for-ukraine-invasion/ar-AAUdce8

I’ve got plenty: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/trump-putin-genius-russia-ukraine-crisis

You get the idea. Your hero has once again proven himself to be Putin’s lackey that we all knew he was. Well, “we” being a relative term. Some, about 40 percent of Americans, refused to believe such a thing.

Never mind that the Republican Party was supposed to be the conservative, anti-communist bulwark of American politics and those Hillary-loving Democrats were the ones who were giving the country away to the commies.

For the record, I have never been affiliated with nor sympathetic to communism but I do know the difference between capitalism, socialism, and communism. The fact that I support programs that benefit people doesn’t attach any label to me other than perhaps humanitarian and to that, I plead guilty.

But an inconvenient statistic for those who think the Repugnantcan Party is the answer to all our woes can be found in a recent WALLETHUB survey. The reddest states, those with the most avid supporters of the former guy, are the states most beholden to Washington.

New Mexico is the state that is most dependent upon the federal government and it is a blue state. The next nine are all red states. That’s correct: the reddest states, those with the most avid supporters of the former guy, are the states most beholden to Washington. Kinda hard to square that up with the drain the swamp philosophy when you are the swamp, isn’t it?

Here are the states, in order, most dependent on the Washington teat, in order:

Alaska, fourth-highest in both state government and state residents’ dependency;

Mississippi, third-highest in government and seventh-highest in residents’ dependency;

Kentucky, eighth-highest in government and fifth-highest in resident’s dependency (where y’at, Mitch and Rand Paul?)

West Virginia, 12^th-highest in government and second-highest in residents’ dependency;

Montana, 14^th-highest in government and second-highest in residents’ dependency;

Arizona, 10^th-highest in government and seventh-highest in residents’ dependency;

Indiana, eighth-highest in government and 11^th-highest in residents’ dependency;

South Carolina, 17^th-highest in government and 6^th-highest in residents’ dependency (hello, Lindsey Graham);

Louisiana, the highest in government and 24^t- lowest in residents’ dependency (any comment, John Kennedy?)

Oh, and just in case you need more evidence that the red states seem to be the ones needing the most federal help, here’s a look at state economic RANKINGS which show Louisiana firmly entrenched near the bottom (49^th).

But of course, I digress from my MAIN POINT and that is the crickets emanating from the corner over there where the former guy’s supporters usually congregate to throw stones at and otherwise troll this site.

But then, they’ve been relatively quiet for some time now.

As a follow-up to the ongoing – and expanding – Ronald Greene saga, it was recently disclosed that State Police cell phones were erased, or “sanitized” en masse in accordance with some obscure policy that had never been invoked prior to last July.

It’s more than a little interesting to note that this policy was suddenly put into place just as the investigation into the beating death of Greene on May 10, 2019

“Prior to July 2021,” Louisiana State Police (LSP) said in response to a public records request by former attorney Ashton O’Dwyer, “LSP did not have a policy specific to sanitizing phones when they were returned to the Department from employees (emphasis mine). At that time, pursuant to Section II, I, (2) of the DPS Property Control Procedure Manual, LSP followed the State Office of Technology Services policy, which requires the sanitization of all state employee assigned phones upon their return to each respective state department under the Office of Technology Services. Both policies are attached for your review and provide for the sanitization of data from electronic devices.”

Those words in boldface are critical. Phones are generally “returned” only upon separation from duty (retirement, resignation, termination) or when newer upgraded phones are purchased and even then, the data is required to be transferred to any new phone assigned the individual.

There’s just one little problem with that. Lt. Col. Doug Cain, the second in command and one in position to steer the direction of the investigation into Greene’s death, also had his phone “sanitized.”

And he has not resigned, retired or otherwise terminated his employment with LSP.

Just sayin’.