Louisiana Voice

John Neely Kennedy is quick to disparage the so-called mainstream media yet he is equally adept at using that same MSM to get the widest possible exposure to his every Foghorn Leghorn utterance in his undying effort to appeal to this century’s political base.

For most of this century he has been a John Birchite Repugnantcan but before that he was a liberal Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for the US Sen. against Mary Landrieu and endorsed Democrat John Kerry for President in 2004. Like his hero, the former guy, he was even (gasp) pro-choice in another lifetime.

But after poking his finger into the political winds and discerning a significant shift to red in Louisiana, he hit rewind and switched tracks to right-wing, holier-than-just-about-everyone Repug.

For just about anyone else, that would’ve been like undergoing a warm buttermilk enema in political-speak, but for Kennedy, it came easy because he’s never really had a well-defined political philosophy. Opportunists and con artists rarely do.

The release of his latest reelection campaign ad is spread all over the MSM today and that is no accident. His political flacks have expertly spread the word about what a masterpiece it is – surpassing in wit and cleverness even his 2016 proclamation that he’d “rather drink weedkiller” than support Obamacare.

In this oh-so-sincere version of himself, he proclaims, “Always be yourself, unless you suck.”

Clever, no?

Well, perhaps he should take some of his own advice and be himself, whoever that chameleon may be.

This ad could backfire if exploited properly by the opposition (there are three Democrats running against him).

First of all, he supports increased military spending but recently voted no on a bill to appropriate funding for veterans whose health was compromised by toxic burning at military bases in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. So, send young men and women to war but abandon them when they return home.

It wouldn’t be the first time run an ill-advised ad backfired. In 1999, when he was the secretary of revenue (appointive) seeking the office of state treasurer (elective) he ran a statewide TV ad claiming that as revenue secretary, he reduced the paperwork requirements of businesses “by 150 percent.”

He may have graduated from Vanderbilt and Oxford universities, but anyone with a passing familiarity with math knows it’s physically impossible to reduce anything by more than 100 percent. But such is the nature of self-serving, if untrue, political campaign advertising.

Expedience, not accuracy, trumps (no pun intended) everything.

But Kennedy is one of those marathon runners who has made a career of politics. He’s run in several statewide political races, most unsuccessfully before finally getting himself elected for secretary of revenue and finally, the Senate – on his third attempt.

In gardening vernacular, he’s a perennial.

But he’s nothing if not calculating and conniving.

When he figured out that Louisiana was shifting from blue to red, he changed colors like that lizard. I hope he never tries to hide in a box of crayons; he’ll explode.

But consistency has never been his strong suit.

As senator, he voted for the National Defense Authorization Act but spurned sick vets.

He was quoted as saying, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Yet, he voted to reject the results of the 2020 president election.

He all but accused President Biden’s nominee to head Treasury of being a communist in 2021, telling her he didn’t know whether to refer to her as “professor or comrade,” while overlooking his own furtive trip to Russia three years earlier over the July 4 holiday. He has steadfastly refused to explain the reasons for the trip, although he did walk back his initial claim that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that “interfered” (not meddled) in the 2016 election, claiming that he “misheard” the question.

I’m told that weedkiller can adversely affect one’s hearing that way.

Back in 2019, Kennedy was a guest on Faux News and used the occasion to take Democrats to task over their three years of “whining” about the results of former guy’s 2016 election over Hillary Clinton.

“We’re going into the third year that they’ve been throwing a tantrum over the election result. They need to leave the man alone, let him be president,” he said at the time, adding that if Democrats were dissatisfied with the results, they should “get over it” or campaign against the president.

“I wish I didn’t have to say this,” went on (he’s always going on). “There are some members of the House leadership whose only mission in life is to demonize the president.”

This from a guy who voted not to certify the 2020 results and who has spent nearly two full years “demonizing” the president.

Damn, it’s funny how your words can come back to bite you on the backside.

The pleasure boat of Waste Solutions/Trash Raiders owner Dustin Clouatre was recently parked on the Lamar-Dixon Expo near Trash Rangers vehicles. Trash Rangers operates is private trash hauling business from Lamar-Dixon, paying the parish $600 per month rent where other entities pay as much as $3000 per month (see story below). The boat was subsequently moved within an hour of an inquiry about its being parked on public property.

There’s mischief afoot in Ascension Parish and things are getting a little trashy concerning Parish President Clint Cointment and his relationship with the owner of a local company called Trash Rangers which has a long-term sweetheart contract with the parish.

Complicating matters even more, the parish, Trash Rangers and its president, Dustin Clouatre, were named defendants in a lawsuit filed by an unsuccessful candidate for parish president. Cointment promptly fired the parish’s long-time legal counsel, O’Neal Parenton, and hired the same attorney who represents Clouatre. That could conceivably create a conflict of interest in the event that Clouatre and the parish end up pitted against each other over some issue as co-defendants in that litigation.

But the hiring of attorney Jean Paul Robert to represent both the parish and Clouatre means that the parish now appears to picking up the legal costs of Clouatre who is a contractor but not a parish employee.

It’s a tangled story but LouisianaVoice will attempt to pull the string that unravels the entire mess. But to do so, it’s necessary to rewind to Feb. 7, 2019, when Murphy Painter, then a candidate for parish president and on invitation from Clouatre, appeared in Clouatre’s office at Hughes Insurance Agency in Gonzales to discuss the possibility of Hughes Insurance’s possibility of getting the book of insurance for the parish government if he should be elected.

Unbeknownst to Painter, Clouatre taped their conversation and Wade Petite, campaign manager for Painter’s opponent, Clint Cointment, began circulating the news on his Web blog that he was in possession of a tape of alleged wrongdoing by Painter.

The wrongdoing alleged by Petite claimed that Painter covered up the rape of five girls under the age of 12 during his tenure with the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Going back even further, Petite and District Attorney Ricky Babin had also taped then-Parish President Kenny Matassa giving money to Gonzales City Council candidate Wayne Lawson in 2016 but Matassa was acquitted of bribery at trial. Matassa’s biggest sin, it appears, was in beating Cointment for parish president that year.

In Painter’s case, Babin called him before a grand jury over the accusations but he was never charged with anything. In fact, the rape case presented to the grand jury occurred at a time when Painter was not even with the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office. Painter, however, withdrew from the runoff election after the furor over what he insisted – and still insists – was an altered tape.

Painter has since filed suit against Cointment, Petite, Petite’s online publication, the Pelican Post, Clouatre, Hughes Insurance, and DA Babin. Hughes Insurance was dismissed and the court ruled that Babin had qualified immunity and was also dismissed. The other four remain as defendants and Painter has filed appeals on the two who were dismissed.

Cointment won the parish president’s race by default after Painter pulled out and one of his first official acts was to sign a no-bid $1.4 million contract for the parish’s book of insurance with Hughes Insurance with Clouatre as the agent of record.

But then, as if that were not enough, things began to get really dicey.

It seems that besides being an insurance agent, Clouatre also owns a trash pickup service called Trash Rangers. He’s nothing if not diversified.

In another no-bid situation, Cointment terminated the parish’s contract with its trash pickup company and awarded the contract to Trash Rangers for commercial trash pickup in the parish. The only signatures on the contract, which ran from July 22, 2021 to July 22, 2023, were those of Cointment as parish president and Clouatre as owner/president of Trash Rangers.

The contract also awarded Trash Rangers the right to store its equipment on a corner of the grounds of the parish-owned Lamar-Dixon Expo Center at the brother-in-law rate of $600 per month compared to $3000 per month that it charges other short-term tenants like the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, Entergy, Dixie Electric, and Cat5 Resources — entities which would use the expo center as a staging area in the event of an emergency or natural disaster like a hurricane.

There are ethical questions about a public body giving something of value to a private person or company but that doesn’t seem to matter to Cointment who also agreed to allow Trash Rangers to supply a number of dumpster bins and roll-off containers for Lamar-Dixon’s use during events held here and to charge the parish $600 per container it empties when full.

In a magnanimous gesture, Cointment also approved an addendum that gives Trash Rangers, as a sponsor at Lamar-Dixon, the right to use the parking lot area for storage of equipment on a full-time basis, gives full advertising rights at the center, and even provides a link for Trash Rangers on the Lamar-Dixon Web page.

So, now the Ascension Parish government – and parish taxpayers by necessity – are in the trash business with Clouatre.

Clouatre is rumored to host elaborate parties on his $1.4 million yacht and his $400,000 Greek fishing boat that he paid $40,000 to have shipped to him, according to his boasts on his Facebook page.

The big news out of Washington this week was President Biden’s UNEXPECTED WIN with the anticipated passage of several major pieces of legislation following a flip-flop by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.).

But lost in all the hoopla was a Louisiana connection that goes back 12 years which illustrated in no uncertain terms how big money from corporate lobbies can influence legislation detrimental to Americans, particularly limited-income elderly citizens.

The Washington Post yesterday published a story that said Biden was on the cusp of securing passage of several major pieces of legislation on the climate, extension of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), increased minimum corporate taxation, and cost savings through reduced cost of Medicare prescription drugs.

It is that last one – officially the PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICING REFORM bill – that goes all the way back to the year 2003 and the decision by a Louisiana congressman to exit Congress through the revolving door to a multi-million-dollar lobbying job.

Rep. Billy Tauzin, who in 1995 switched from Democrat to Republican, announced in 2005 that he was leaving Congress after 25 years but it was what he neglected to say that was important.

Before heading out the door, he rammed through Congress the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill which contained a provision that prohibited Medicare from negotiating the price of prescription drugs. Consequently, the cost of drugs under the program fell under the Beltway cliché of “it is what it is,” more bluntly, the price of prescription medication was what the drug companies said it was. Period.

Oh, the bill also prohibited the importation of identical, cheaper drugs from Canada and elsewhere, thereby pretty much locking up a monopoly for American pharmaceutical companies.

What made the pill even more bitter to swallow is what Tauzin did next.

Literally the day after his retirement from Congress, he strolled down to K Street and settled into an $11.6 million job as (wait for it) head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, aka Big PhRMA.

That generous five-year contract made him the highest-paid health-law lobbyist in DC and the envy of K Street.

It also prompted Public Citizen President JOAN CLAYBROOK to say at the time, in something of an understatement, “It’s a sad commentary on politics in Washington that a member of Congress who pushed through a major piece of legislation benefiting the drug industry, gets the job leading that industry.”

His role in shepherding the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill came just two months before he resigned as chair of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce which oversaw the drug industry.

It was not Tauzin’s only questionable flirtation with the healthcare industry. From 2005 to 2020, he served as a board member of LHC GROUP, a provider of in-home healthcare and hospice services, being paid $152,000 in 2006 while in Congress and $263,000 in 2020.

The pharmaceutical industry and Republicans in Congress, needless to say, are almost apocalyptic in their OPPOSITION  to the reforms in pricing. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), in a typical snit over anything Democrats propose, no matter the merit, has threatened to block other pieces of legislation if Democrats proceed with the price reconciliation process.

The 12 years of the prohibition on negotiations has likely cost the federal government (US taxpayers and the country’s elderly Medicare recipients) untold millions – perhaps billions – of dollars in unnecessarily inflated prescription drug prices.

It was not an oversight; it was a deliberate, calculated ploy designed to enrich the pharmaceutical industry – and in the process, a single member of Congress.

We have that former congressman, our very own Billy Tauzin, to thank for that.

And we now have Joe Biden, the subject or relentless attacks from the right, to thank for his efforts to rectify that deliberate maneuver.

Remember that story LouisianaVoice did when the IRS formally designated the Family Research Council (FRC), headed by Baton Rouge native Tony Perkins as a CHURCH?

Well, apparently there were a few others who didn’t take the news too well. Forty members of Congress have asked the IRS and the Treasury Department to INVESTIGATE “alarming patterns” of right-wing advocacy groups registering as churches.

Churches, of course, are prohibited from engaging in partisan politics at the risk of losing their tax-exempt status.

That’s the theory, at least.

While FRC was already a non-profit and exempt from federal income taxes, the designation has the added advantage of further shielding such groups from other financial reporting requirements and allows them to more easily avoid audits.

Of course, the 40 members of Congress demanding an investigation are all Democrats. No Repugnantcan would be so crass as to suggest an investigation of such a staunch advocate of a church-state merger as FRC.

Perkins, a former Louisiana state legislator who has parlayed his obsession with gays into a national position as president of FRC, never passes up an opportunity to take a shot at the LGBQT community, even going so far as to say that God sends natural disasters to punish them. “God is trying to send us a message” about gay marriage and legalized abortion, he once said.

That was before his own Baton Rouge home was DESTROYED in the 2016 flood that inundated much of South Louisiana.

The flood, which he said was of “Biblical proportions,” was not attributable in his eyes to any LGBQT or abortion issue, however. Instead, he saw the flood as an OPPORTUNITY for Christians to “use this as an incredible, encouraging spiritual exercise to take you to the next level in your walk with an almighty and gracious God who does all things well.”

As one of the thousands of victims of that same flood, I can readily attest that the event was anything but an “opportunity” for those of us who were left homeless by the devastation. At least he had a motor home to house his family on a temporary basis while his home was being repaired. To be sure, that’s more than most had.

Funny, isn’t it, how this sanctimonious man with a direct link to God’s will can see a disaster one way when it affects others but quite differently when it hits closer to home?

In a somewhat related matter, a $100 million replica of NOAH’S ARK was built a few years ago in Kentucky, a state which has been deluged in recent days in its own flood “of Biblical proportions,” resulting in nearly three dozen deaths so far (the search for victims continues as this is being written).

One is given to wonder if operators of the exhibit, the recipient of considerable tax breaks by the State of Kentucky by the way, offered any of those thousands of unfortunate victims an opportunity to ride out the flood – or more important, shelter – when their homes were washed away.

If you happen to believe in karma, Noah’s Ark Encounter SUED ITS INSURANCE CARRIER in 2019 after heavy rains in 2017 and 2018 caused a landslide on an access road to the attraction, causing more than $1 million in damage. The ark was not damaged but apparently the blocked road cost considerable lost revenue in the form of admission fees and T-shirt and coffee mug sales.

While some might see the irony in that, the insurance companies did not but they did eventually settle for an undisclosed amount. Strange that the Bible doesn’t mention any landslides or insurance coverage in its story of Noah’s Ark and the flood.

The Southern Poverty Law Group has designated FRC as an anti-gay extremist hate group, which alone should give the IRS pause in designating the organization as a church.

But there’s more. In 2016, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz appointed Perkins to his unsuccessful Repugnantcan president nomination campaign’s “advisory council for religious liberty.” Following that stint, Perkins played a major role in formulating the Repugnantcan Party platform which included a provision for sending LGBQT people to gay conversion therapy.

If the Family Research Council ever craters, perhaps there’s a job waiting for Perkins at the WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH.