Louisiana Voice

Folks, I’ve not been able to contact my cousin and thus was apparently not up to date. I finally got through to her (after I posted the previous update) only to learn that her grandson had set up a Go Fund Me account and already has “enough stuff to furnish three houses.”

So, despite my urgent plea of earlier, it appears that they are going to be okay and will get through this ordeal. But….BUT, she said she is so very grateful for the support you’ve shown (and I have received literally dozens of responses). I, likewise, appreciate the generosity displayed by you and apologize for the appeal that, thankfully, turned out to be unnecessary.

To those who contributed cash, I will forward your gift to her because I know she can always use that to buy food for the boys.

Again, thanks so much.

I hate to come at you this way but my cousin in West Monroe is 82 and is caring for four great-grandsons, three of whom are non-verbal autistic. She is a graphic artist and she designed the covers for six of my books.

A couple of weeks ago, lightning struck her home and the ensuing fire destroyed the structure. Everyone got out safely, but the house was a total loss. She lost everything.

The house was gutted

Nothing is left. The plastic goo on the desk is her Mac computer

The house was insured, but not the contents. She is now living in a rent house with no furnishings and is in desperate need of bedding, linens, furniture, appliances, clothing, etc. Anything will help. My cousins in North Carolina are getting her a new computer for her business and her brother is helping with her rent.

For those of you living in Louisiana, anything you can spare would be of tremendous help and would be appreciated more than you could ever know. I can pick up items if you just let me know.

Please, if you can help, contact me at my email: louisianavoice@outlook.com

Thank you.

Tom

We’ve known all along that he was a desperate despot. Even those delusional souls who held fast to their belief that despite against all odds and 62 court decisions that went against him had to know that former guy was not going to be “reinstated” to the presidency.

Except for the Qanon devotees, of course. They still believe a furniture company is selling babies to a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. so they can start forest fires in peach tree dishes with Jewish lasers.

They had to know deep down that when his own appointed judges and other Repugnantcan jurists continued to throw his cases out of court on five dozen occasions that the election was not going to be overturned.

Yet, it wasn’t until yesterday during testimony before the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot that we learned to just what nadir of desperation Pvt. Bonespurs had descended as he cast about for someone to serve as front man in his quixotic bid to remain at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

It seems that Don of Orange wanted Jeff Landry as his special counsel to investigate election fraud.

Now that’s really grasping at straws.

That little bombshell was dropped during testimony by former UA Attorney General Steven Engel.

Ouch. The Lone DeRanger, the walking tanning bed warning label, the Great Orange Hairball of Fear, actually desired the services – the investigative services yet – of one Jeff Landry, the man who couldn’t even investigate a jailhouse rape in Union Parish. A man who was reduced to hiring a political crony as some kind of “special investigator” even though he possessed no qualifications for the position. A man who hired a woman convicted of felony fraud to head up the AG’s fraud section.

Okay, okay, I admit it, I have a case of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) I’ve never denied that the man left me more than a little deranged and totally perplexed that anyone could support such a narcissistic, dishonest person when there are legitimately honest persons who are willing to put the interests of the nation above their own selfish considerations.

And lest anyone get the wrong impression, let me be clear: I have no tolerance for anyone who would use public service to advance personal advantages or enrichment, be they of either political stripe.

But Der Groepenfuehrer, aka the Tangerine Orangutan, holds a special place in the annals of duplicity and grifting.

Still, if ever there was a perfect match for the Fraud of Fifth Avenue, it would be Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a man who has managed to carry on the great tradition of Louisiana’s unique brand of political chicanery. Rather than list all his transgressions again, I would suggest you read my post of July 14, 2021 by clicking HERE.

Engel testified yesterday that Forrest Trump was “vocal” about the need to appoint a special counsel to investigate election fraud and that former US Attorney General William Barr (Trumpty Dumpty had quite a number of AGs in those final days) sought his (Engel’s) advice.

“The request was whether the attorney general could appoint as a special counsel a state attorney general to conduct an investigation,” Engel testified.

Though Engel never mentioned Landry by name, he did note that “state law, the state was Louisiana, that the state law precluded the Louisiana attorney general from accepting any official position on behalf of the United States government.”

It’s not like Landry didn’t try to help the White Pride Piper. NBC News obtained a copy of a recording that went out as a robocall from the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), the fundraising arm of the Repugnantcan Attorneys General Association (RAGA) that said in part, “At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.” (Just for the record, the date of that planned “march to the Capitol” was Jan. 6, 2021.)

Landry was the RAGA chairman for 2020, and on Nov. 10, he announced that the organization was filing an amicus brief endorsing a challenge to a Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ruling allowing up to three days post-election for the counting of absentee ballots.

Also, Landry was listed as a co-director of RLDF, according to 2018 tax documents filed by the organization.

To read details of that RLDF effort on behalf of Tiny Hands Twitter Spitter, click HERE.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has ARRESTED nursing home owner Bob Dean on 15 felony counts of cruelty to persons with infirmities, Medicaid fraud and obstruction of justice.

The arrest is ostensibly for the evacuation of more than 800 residents from seven of his nursing homes in the wake of Hurricane Ida nearly a year ago to a warehouse in the Tangipahoa Parish town of Independence. That warehouse proved woefully inadequate to care for the elderly and frail patients, more than a dozen of whom died.

But the action by Landry, who is an officially unannounced but assumed Republican candidate for governor in the 2023 election, carries deep political overtones. The sheriff of Tangipahoa Parish is Daniel Edwards and the Independence police chief is Frank Edwards. Both men are brothers to Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards who has often been at political odds with Landry. The patriarch of the Edwards family, Frank Edwards, for whom the Independence police chief is named, was also sheriff of the parish.

The timing of Dean’s arrest and the certain legal maneuvers to come just as the political season heats up in Louisiana could prove to be a political embarrassment for the Edwards clan.

In early September 2021, only days after Hurricane Ida struck, 843 residents were removed from the warehouse, which had no air conditioning, no electricity, no oxygen concentrators, and no means by which to prepare food for the residents.

Seven deaths were immediately attributed to the ordeal and several subsequent deaths followed but both Sheriff Daniel Edwards and Police Chief Frank Edwards issued STATEMENTS that they did not intend to investigate the deaths, according to Landry.

In a statement to CNN, Sheriff Edwards said the case was “not connected to the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office. It is under the purview of the Independence Police Department under Chief Frank Edwards.” But Police Chief Edwards told the network that his department was too small and lacked sufficient resources to investigate. Additionally, he said his office had been overwhelmed with recovery efforts following Ida.

The Louisiana Department of Hospitals (LDH) came under fire from LEGISLATORS who appeared a little to eager to shift the blame on LDH in their scramble to find a scapegoat for the debacle. And while the governor’s office was not directly involved, it all happened on Gov. Edwards’s watch and Landry obviously was chomping at the bit to embarrass his nemesis, or at least his brothers and by association, the governor himself, as the state moves into another election cycle.

It’s not like Daniel Edwards needed this for his department.

His office and that of the Hammond Police Department were RAIDED by the FBI in 2016 in connection with a federal investigation of a drug task force that saw deputy Johnny Domingue PLEAD GUILTY to three drug conspiracy charges and a single count of abuse of office. RELEASED in March 2019 after being given credit for 34 months he spent in jail awaiting trial, he found himself BACK IN JAIL three years later after his arrest for attempting to smuggle 8 kilos of cocaine into Houston in what was actually a sting operation.

A second deputy, Karl Newman, was sentenced to 42 months in prison in the same case which also took down a prominent DEA agent, Chad Scott.

And only last week, the Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Office came under fire again in a botched rape investigation that eventually saw a state judge award CUSTODY of the child from the encounter to the alleged rapist and the mother, the victim, ordered to pay child support.

It’s shaping up to be an interesting campaign already and nobody has even announced for a single office yet.

Surely, Landry would take the high road and choose not to make all this an issue in the campaign.

So, Doug Cain is leaving with his head held high.

That’s nice to know.

Lt. Col. Cain, the second in command at Louisiana State Police (LSP) is retiring after 25 years of “rewarding law enforcement service,” according to the Baton Rouge Advocate.

I suppose it’s rewarding that he was part of the attempted cover-up of the beating death of Ronald Greene in May 2019. He will deny any culpability in that tragic event, but there is this lingering question over why his cellphone was swiped just as the investigation into Greene’s death at the hands of rogue state troopers was heating up.

His phone and those of former LSP Superintendent Kevin Reeves, former LSP Chief of Staff Mike Noel and former LSP legal counsel Faye Morrison were all SANITIZED about the time litigation was being filed over Greene’s death, thus destroying potential evidence in that civil matter as well as a possible criminal investigation.

Any representative of any law enforcement agency, including a local constable’s office, but especially an assumed “professional” department such as state police would know the importance of preserving evidence and the legal implications of destruction of same.

That would especially appear to apply to the residing in-house legal counsel and to the man who harbored the desire to become LSP superintendent – only to retire abruptly after 25 years in the wake of ongoing investigations into the coverup of police brutality and PHONE ERASURES.

That doesn’t present a good look, no matter how high he’s holding his head on the way out the door. It could be that he’s doing so to keep from drowning in a flood of investigations. Some might even conclude that the phone swiping could be considered as obstruction of justice.

Reeves took a powder as soon as he felt the heat but even in retirement, continues to pack, as evidenced by his recent appearance at the June meeting of the State Police Commission – even though there were several well-armed state troopers in attendance.

Kevin Reeves packs heat in ankle holster

We can all take some comfort in the knowledge that there are those within the department who have – and who continue to do so – put forth honest efforts to do the right thing in the Greene matter. The downside of their attempts to shed light on wrongdoings is that they have either resigned or retired in disgust or been suspended by panicky LSP hierarchy.

Make a request for public records and LSP will either send you a stack of redacted pages – and I mean complete pages completely blacked out – or inform you that because no disciplinary action was taken, the records are not public. Either way, you get nothing. Your best hope is that someone on the inside will leak the documents you need, as was the case with LouisianaVoice‘s recent STORY on State Police Academy cheating.

But Capt. Mark Richards, one of those who has since retired in despair over what he’s seen LSP become, is one of those who resisted efforts to keep the Greene incident report secret. Told to block release of the report, he replied via email that he had never encountered such a request from superiors. He subsequently told state legislators that he felt LSP brass wanted release of the report blocked so as to prevent media from obtaining potentially embarrassing material.

It’s not like LouisianaVoice and other media outlets didn’t try to shed some light on State Police years ago.