Louisiana Voice

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Considerable negative coverage has been given the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in recent weeks following the deaths of at least three toddlers in the Baton Rouge and Houma areas and the sexual abuse of boys living in a dilapidated foster home in Baton Rouge.

But the problems besetting DCFS go back several years and can be laid at the feet of former Gov. Bobby Jindal, who, in typical Republican fashion, chose to abandon the most vulnerable of Louisiana’s citizens by slashing funding for the agency, producing a turnover rate of nearly 25 percent in 2014 that in turn resulted in a 33 percent reduction in the number of DCFS employees.

Jindal’s gutting of the agency made it virtually impossible for case workers to perform their jobs properly, according to a 77-page report: A Review of Child Welfare, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.

At one point, a caseworker in Ouachita Parish was arrested and booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison after being accused of filing false reports about mandatory monthly in-home visits with children in foster care.

That was in February 2016. A month earlier, LouisianaVoice received a confidential email from a retired DCFS supervisor who revealed a disturbing trend in her former agency.

“I served in most programs within the agency, foster care, investigations, and adoptions,” she wrote. “Over my career I witnessed the eight years of Jindal’s ‘improvements.’

“Those ‘improvements’ endanger children’s lives daily. The blight is spread from the Secretary to the lowliest clerical worker in the agency. People are overworked and underpaid but it’s not just that. People are so distraught from the unrelenting stress that children are in danger. Add to that the inexperience of most front-line workers and their supervisors’ inability to properly train new staff.”

She then dropped a bombshell that should serve as a wake-up call to everyone who cares or pretends to care about the welfare of children—from Gov. John Bel Edwards down to the most obscure freshman legislator:

“In the Shreveport Region, the regional administrator (recently) told workers that they may make ‘drive-by’ visits to foster homes, which means talking to the foster parents in their driveway. Policy says that workers will see both the child and the foster parent in the home, interviewing each separately (emphasis added). A lot of abuse goes on in foster homes. Some foster families are truly doing the best they can but they need counseling and guidance from their workers. The regional administrator’s answer to that one? Have the foster parent call their home development worker—another person who can’t get her job done now.”

She wrote that she heard of two separate incidents “where a child new to foster care was taken to a foster home and left without paperwork, without contact information for the person in charge of the case, and without knowing even the child’s name.”

You may read the entire 2016 LouisianaVoice post by going HERE.

Adoptions is another area in which there are serious questions about DCFS. A Baton Rouge couple, Christy and Craig Mills, know first-hand the frustrations of trying to get the agency to take action on their behalf in an adoption attempt that went all wrong.

In October 2013, they successfully adopted a baby girl, Morgan, after she was born to a homeless couple, Thomas and Carol, with whom the Mills were working. In February 2014, Thomas and Carol contacted the Mills to inform them they were expecting again and wished to adopt that baby out as well.

The Mills, wishing to keep the natural siblings together, quickly agreed.

Working through the DeColores Adoptions International in Lake Charles and its representative, adoption attorney/social worker Lisa Perquet Harell, the Mills began providing shelter, food, transportation to and from medical visits, and a cell phone for Thomas and Carol.

Four days before the baby boy was born, with Harell’s assistance, Thomas and Carol were suddenly relocated to an undisclosed hotel in New Orleans. It turned out, unbeknownst to the Mills, the expectant couple was also receiving financial assistance from a Denham Springs couple who eventually adopted the infant.

The Mills filed a formal complaint against Harell for an alleged conflict of interest. Included in the package containing the complaint was a copy of a 2005 consent agreement and order in which Lisa Perquet, then a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) admitted to falsifying documents attesting that she had conducted home visits of adoptees on three occasions and that she failed to maintain fee charges and other billing information for the required six years.

The now eight-year-old complaint pointed out that DCFS’s own child placing agency standards say that “Placement of siblings as a family group is usually the preferred placement.”

“Adoption fraud dominates conversations in the adoption industry and has negative effects on families across the country,” the complaint by the Mills says. “We know first-hand how an alleged wrongful adoption has impacted our own lives today and will impact these two children’s lives once they are old enough to learn that a group of adults and adoption professionals licensed by the State of Louisiana, in our opinion intentionally kept them from being together for the purposes of their own monetary gain.”

That complaint and accompanying documents can be seen in their entirety at the beginning of this post.

You need a program to keep up with all the lame excuses the former guy has tossed out to justify his possessing more than a dozen boxes of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home/golf club/resort.

First it was “homework,” that he was just taking the documents with him to continue working on them. Well, first, he has never been one to do “homework” in his entire life and second, when you are no longer president, you no longer are responsible for handling affairs of state.

Then, he proclaimed that Obama took 30 million classified docs with him when he left office. Not so. The documents were taken by the National Archives and Records Administration to a NARA facility in the Chicago area where they remain in exclusive possession of NARA.

As a third “alternate fact,” he claims he gave the order to “declassify” all such documents on his way out the door in January 2021. Again, not so, according to those who FORMERLY WORKED FOR HIM. There’s a process that must be followed and that process is very detailed and meticulous.

Finally, he claims that everything was packed in a hurry and he didn’t have time to go over everything that was thrown into cardboard boxes.

That is probably closer to the truth. After all, he had already determined he wasn’t going quietly or willingly, so why pack to leave?

But now, we have the most novel explanation of all and it’s only because it’s so ludicrous, so off the rails, so bizarre, that I give it any exposure here at all. After all, if you can get past the fact that some disturbed individual is actually passing it off as truth (and that some pitifully disillusioned souls are buying it), then it’s kind of funny. Sort of.

It’s the explanation given by the mysterious “Q” of QAnon infamy and (spoiler alert) it’s a doozy.

You see, thanks to Q, we now can rest assured in the knowledge that the FBI “raid” of Mar-a-Lago (and it wasn’t a raid; no guns were drawn, no doors busted down and the Secret Service was alerted beforehand – it was more of a “normal tourist visit”) was a ploy hatched by none other than…(wait for it)…Donald Trump.

Yep, that’s what [s]he says. But don’t take my word for it, here is the actual transcript, as posted by a retired history teacher from Denham Springs, who apparently buys what Q is selling:

Q: Trust Wray. Who leads the FBI?

(He’s talking about Christopher Wray, Trump’s appointee to head up the FBI.)

Q: How do you get evidence entered legally?

Answer, according to Q: A raid by the FBI gets it (evidence) on the record.

Q: Who has all the information?

Answer: DJT, the former guy.

So, there you have it. Trump conspired with Wray to “arrange” for Attorney General Merrick Garland to seek approval of a search warrant, which a judge signed, so that the FBI could take into its possession all that damning information that Trump has been holding for more than 18 months now that will absolve him of everything bad and cast a pall over Joe Biden’s administration.

And now that the FBI and the Justice Department have it, it’s officially “on the record” and will now become public knowledge.

God, the man’s a genius. We played right into his hands.

This is the same Q, by the way, who assured us that Trump would be restored to his rightful position of president on July 23 of this year. I think he has since pushed the date back to sometime in October.

Can’t wait to see what happens.

But of course, Q knew this all along.

On a related note, it seems I’m being recruited for consideration for possible membership in an outfit called the Cajun Guard (not to be confused with the Cajun Navy).

I did a STORY about the Cajun Guard, a local militia-type organization more than two years ago, in June 2020. In writing that story, I reached out to the organization to request more information about them in an effort to give them a chance to present their objectives.

The web site of one of the individuals I profiled in that story has since been taken down.

I finally got a response last Tuesday (Aug. 16), more than two years later, from a guy who identified himself only as “Kevin.” Kevin said he was “responsible for recruitment, among other things.”.

But rather than provide me with any information about the organization, I was invited for “lunch or coffee” to discuss the organization’s “vetting…select individuals/families to join our family,” adding that the Cajun Guard wishes “to expand the members and efforts to the entire state.”

Thanks, Kevin, but I think I’ll pass.

Twenty stabbing in the span of a single month.

Prisoners sharing a syringe issued for a diabetic prisoner.

Regular prisoner-on-prisoner beatings – and guards who refuse to intervene.

Beaten and stabbed prisoners who are allowed to go untreated or, at best, treated superficially.

These are just some of the problems plaguing the Catahoula Parish Prison in Harrisonburg, according to the family member of a prisoner.

One prisoner suffered a broken arm when beaten by other inmates and subsequently received no treatment for his broken arm. He was allowed to shower only twice in the next 28 days.

The 900-prisoner facility is operated by the Catahoula Parish Sheriff’s Office after severing its ties with the previous management firm, LaSalle Corrections, in May of 2021.

“No intake is conducted on prisoners when they come into the prison,” the source, who asked not to be identified because of a family member who is incarcerated there, said. “At the end of 2021, they put a prisoner in a headlock and sexually assaulted him with a knife.

“Guards tased a prisoner and threw him back in with other inmates who had just beaten him.”

One prisoner was attacked and stabbed in the neck. Prison officials treated the stab wound with super glue and put him back on the floor with the prisoners who had just attacked him, the source said. “They made no effort to confiscate the weapon.”

The source said shivs are made from paneling in the prison shower.

“Another prisoner was tased by guards who then threw him back with the inmates who had just beaten him.

“I’m concerned that someone is going to die there. There were 20 stabbings in the span of a single month and a syringe belonging to a diabetic is shared by inmates who have access to drugs. Something has to be done.”

Catahoula Parish Sheriff Tony Edwards did not return a call from LouisianaVoice.

Well, the lines appear to be clearly drawn, in Livingston Parish at least, over the ongoing battle over the availability of objectional literature at our libraries and so far, it’s really no contest.

A bunch of quacks, or self-appointed guardians of the moral of our youth, if you will, have taken it upon themselves to dictate morals to the rest of us heathens, sinners, and otherwise lost souls.

But those would-be censors made a big mistake. Well, two mistakes, actually. First, they turned their crusade into a personal vendetta against a middle school librarian and second, they picked on the wrong librarian.

Facebook posts by a Livingston Parish resident named Ryan Thames got nasty and then the nutcases picked up the attack and things got even nastier. Thames accused librarian Amanda Jones of trying to entice kindergarten children to the gay lifestyle and then came the smug announcement that her school had caught fire and part of it destroyed after being hit by lightning.

Jones is a middle school librarian and thus, has no contact with kindergarten children and that school? Well, that was the junior high school a couple of miles to the north of Jones’s school.

But I’ve already related that information, so I won’t beat the subject to death.

What I do want to do, however, is discuss the respective GoFundMe campaigns of Jones and Thames, the latter being one of the defendants in her defamation lawsuit she’s filed (Michael Lunsford and his Citizens for a New Louisiana are the other defendants).

Jones set as her goal $75,000 to finance her legal bills. Without being specific as to the amount raised, suffice it to say that she has easily surpassed that goal already because people opposed to censorship are, well…sane, levelheaded supporters of free expression.

Thames set as his goal $50,000 as a defense fund. To date, he’s raised a whopping $5,075, or roughly 10 percent of the total because again, people generally support the principles behind the First Amendment.

Jones’s GoFundMe campaign says, “No one should be attacked for standing up for their community or speaking out against censorship.”

I couldn’t agree more. Because, you see, that’s all she did. She appeared at a public meeting on her own time and spoke out against censorship. The result was she was immediately cast as a pariah, someone who would poison the minds of our children.

Just for defending the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

“This GoFundMe campaign is raising money to help school librarian Amanda Jones cover legal fees as she pursues protection against those who have been slandering her name after she spoke out against censorship at her local public library board meeting,” her GoFundMe page continued.  “Educators and librarians across the country are being attacked by groups taking aim at books with LGBTQ+ content and materials related to sex education for teens. This is what happened to Amanda, and she is taking a legal stand on behalf of educators.

“This could happen to any of us, and we have to take a stand.

“Give up a cup of coffee for a day and donate $5.

“Amanda has given so much of her time and energy to library and education communities. She deserves our support. Let’s show the world that librarians stick together and stand up for what is right.”

Here’s the kicker:

“Any money raised over what is needed to cover Amanda’s legal fees will be donated to EveryLibrary to continue the fight to protect others,” the online post says.

And there are others all over the map, to be sure. Efforts are underway in Lafayette Parish, Caddo Parish, and in Texas to censor libraries and to dictate to the pubic what is appropriate for intellectual consumption.

You can go HERE to see some of the contributors to Thames.

Now to boldly go where no smart man would dare go in Livingston Parish: If Thames, Lunsford, and Citizens for a New Louisiana are really serious about protecting innocent children from literature chock full of sex and unspeakable violence, they might be wise to shield the little darlings from exposure to a book called The Holy Bible.

Whoa. I said it. That’s sure to bring out the zealots with the pitchforks and torches.

But it’s true. For example, here’s a little verse from Second Kings, Chapter 18, verse 27: “Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?”

It’s right there, in the King James Version.

And what about incest? The Good Book’s full of it, beginning in Genesis. If Adam and Eve were the first humans, how do you think their children reproduced? With their parents? Siblings?

And then there was Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. They were sole survivors of the flood, so how did their children’s children propagate the species? With their parents? Grandparents? Siblings? Had to be some incest going on there somewhere, sometime.

But then, incest was fairly common in the Bible. Also in Genesis, two angels first visit Lot and the neighbors come calling, wanting to have homosexual relations with the angels. Instead, Lot offers them his two virgin daughters. We’re not told if they take him up on his offer but later, after Lot and his daughters flee Sodom and hide in a cave, the two daughters get him drunk and have sex with him in order to become pregnant. How sick is that? And we’re going to let little children be exposed to that? Why, gosh-darn-it, there are Bibles placed in the backs of pews in every church in Livingston Parish just inviting little eyes to fall upon such graphic stories.

Other mentions of incest can also be found in the books of Second Chronicles, Second Samuel, Exodus, and Amos.

Then we have Abraham, Jesus Christ’s ancestor, who impregnated both his wife and his servant – after the age of 90 yet!

And look at David. He sent Bathsheba’s husband Uriah to die in battle so as to cover up his getting Bathsheba pregnant.

There are numerous instances of gruesome beheadings in the Bible, including that of JOHN THE BAPTIST on the whim of Herodias, who, by the way, was married to her own uncle (more incest). The impetus for his beheading was a dance performed by Herodias’s daughter Salome (which could explain why Baptists are supposedly opposed to dancing).

Speaking of killing people, the Bible is jam-packed with murder of all kinds, beginning with Cain killing his brother Abel. And God was the perpetrator of much of it: the flood, where he killed everyone but Noah and his family; Sodom and Gomorrah, where he killed everyone but Lot and his two oversexed daughters and continuing in Exodus where he brought a plague upon Egypt and killed the first-born of every Egyptian family. Seriously, God? Innocent babies?

Looks like Lunsford, Thames, and Citizens for a New Louisiana have their work cut out for them in cleaning up all the dirty literature in all those churches.

And trust me, they aren’t about to stop there. Anything about the Holocaust and civil rights will be in their crosshairs next. You can book that.

Better get busy, guys. You’re burning daylight.

Hollywood has made a career of giving us the put-upon person who in the end, turns the tables on the bully and kicks some serious ass.

One of the last persons you’d expect to fill that role would be a quiet librarian in a middle school in Livingston Parish.

But Amanda Jones has had enough of the trash talk from self-righteous loudmouth Michael Lunsford who seems to have nothing better to do with his time than to pick on female librarians, be they in a Livingston Parish middle school or in a public library in Lafayette.

Lunsford, the self-appointed guardian of public morals has taken it upon himself to goad his followers to attack Amanda Jones on social media, depicting her to be some kind of subversive monster bent on turning our children into homosexuals.

In other words, he has a dirty mind and as the old computer adage goes, garbage in, garbage out.

Not coincidentally, it’s the same strategy employed by people like Newt Gingrich, Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Ron Johnson, Gym Jordan, Rand Paul, John Kennedy, and a host of other like-minded political hacks who, lacking legitimate arguments, resort to character assassination and outright lies.

In legal parlance, it’s called defamation. Another word for it is libel.

And when Jones, whose sin was speaking out in opposition to censorship of libraries and of Lunsford and his so-called Citizens for a New Louisiana group, came under a withering attack of lies, inuendo, and accusations of being a pedophile, she began a drive to raise funds to finance the legal costs of going after Lunsford and one of his cohorts, Ryan Thames.

I won’t divulge the amount of money she has raised, but I can tell you it was a significant amount – most likely enough to take the fight to Lunsford and Thames in a defamation and harassment LAWSUIT filed against the two last Wednesday.

Lunsford is president of something called Citizens for a New Louisiana. Thames is a Livingston Parish resident who operates a Facebook page under the alias Bayou State of Mind – and hit behind that cowardly moniker to launch anonymous attacks against Jones. Jones is president of the LOUISIANA ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL LIBRARIANS and also was Louisiana’s co-librarian of the year for 2021.

Among the ABSURDITIES Jones was hit with on social media included claims she was grooming kindergarten children to be gay and that lightning struck her school (apparently some kind of sign from God), causing part of the school to be destroyed by fire.

Well, first of all, she is librarian at a school that teaches fifth- and sixth-graders exclusively. No kindergartners there. Second, the lightning strike was at Live Oak Junior High, a couple of miles from Live Oak Middle School where she is librarian.

And those were just the nice things they said about her.

There are several words that come to mind when the names Michael Lunsford, Ryan Thames, or Citizens for a New Louisiana come up. Despicable, reprehensible, disgusting, repulsive, repugnant, libelous, defamatory, sick, and nauseating are just a few.

And it’s a clear reflection of what’s happening in this country. Where once two sides could sit down and discuss – even debate – issues without resorting to attacks on one’s character.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has a new book called The Destructionists. In that book, he notes that at one time the two major political parties – Republicans and Democrats – could consider each other as opponents – but not enemies.

Then Gingrich and C-SPAN arrived in Congress the same year – 1979. The face of public discourse changed radically after that. Knowing the C-SPAN camera showed only a closeup of the speaker and not the empty House chamber, Gingrich began carpet-bombing fellow members with his incendiary rhetoric.

It was so bad that then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill, in a furious response, said of the brash Georgian, “You deliberately stood in that well before an empty House and challenged these people and you challenged their Americanism, and it is the lowest thing that I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.”

But then Tip had not encountered an orange-haired egotistical grifter named Trump. Gringrich, if anything, was encouraged to step up his attacks with dog-whistle words like “battle,” “war,” “Fight,” “crooks,” “traitors,” and similar rhetoric designed to stir his constituency to a fever pitch. Continuing the practice were people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and more recently, Alex Jones.

That, sadly, is the sorry state to which political discourse has sunken. That’s where we find ourselves today and you can see and hear it in state legislators and now all the way down to parish councils and library boards.

Is this really what we want now? Where kids’ football game where an argument between coaches morphs into gunfire? Where we never know when we send our children off to school if they’ll come home alive?

Lunsford and his ilk are so terrified that “gay” might rub off on straight kids if they read these awful books. Can it really be so bad that the State of Florida actually banned four math text books because of objectionable content? Math?

Two of the books to which Lunsford objected are This Book is Gay and The V-Word. (Perhaps he thought the latter title was his unauthorized biography.)

At any rate, maybe he would be wise to touch base with Alex Jones to get some pointers on formulating a good defense for Jones’s lawsuit.