Louisiana Voice

If you are hellbent on watching a sh*t show featuring a cast of complete idiots who would rather spew their own misinformed brand of Trumpism than to give any consideration to science, I give you the Louisiana Legislature.

How people like Valerie Hodges got elected to the House is beyond my comprehension. This woman is the Livingston Parish version of Marjorie Taylor Greene – full of crackpot opinions, but woefully short of common sense.

This is the same nutcase who back in the Dark Ages of the Bobby Jindal administration, voted in favor of Ruston’s New Living Word school which was founded on the principle of teaching creationism on DVDs. She likewise had no problem with “teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools.”

Somewhere along the line, as observed by writer Jarvis DeBerry, she overlooked that little part of the Constitution that says government should take a hands-off policy in favoring one religion (Christianity, for example) over another like say, Judaism – or even supporting the religious over agnostics or atheists.  

But she did apparently have a big problem in 2012 when the director of a Muslim school in the New Orleans area voiced interest in the state’s voucher program that Hodges had championed on its way to passage. She went absolutely bonkers, proclaiming the voucher program was intended for “Christian schools.” Can you say “double standard”? Hodges certainly can.

Fast forward nine years and she’s baaaaack.

To first put things in perspective, it’s important to know that there is a dedicated horde of Trump supporters who bought into his stolen election B.S., who subscribed to the shopworn rhetoric of Qanon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andrew Clyde and others who would have us believe the Jan. 6 anarchy in the U.S. Capitol was nothing more than tourists strolling through the People’s House.

With the notable exception of that concentrated knot of holdouts in Arizona who continue to insist on yet another recount of the November election results, these devotees are slowly coming to realization that the election was on the level and will not be overturned. Thus frustrated in their anger and disappointment, they have but one bullet left in their gun: distrust of science in the face of 582,000 pandemic deaths in this country alone.

And so it would be that on May 17, people like Hodges and Rep. Beryl Amedee (R-Houma) would make complete fools of themselves arguing with those who have dedicated their lives and reputations to the study of science that COVID vaccinations constitute a gigantic hoax, a notion perpetrated by a bunch of whackos who have no business trying to tell the rest of us how to think and act – but they do.

The issue was HB 103 by Rep. Danny McCormick (R-Oil City) which would protect businesses from liability for failing to mandate masks for employees or customers. Never mind that an employer just might wish to protect her staff and herself from your coughing and sneezing.

Of course, they were duly elected by their constituents so I suppose it’s true we get the government we deserve. But when their warped views endanger my safety, it is my right to speak up against such ass-clowns.

What gives Valerie Hodges the right to sit up there on the House Committee on Civil Law and Procedure and tell us that she knows a person who knows a doctor who advised patients not to take the COVID vaccine because they could get “very, very sick and possibly die from it”?

Here’s a news flash for you, Valerie: I know a person who knows a doctor who said if you contract COVID, you can get “very, very sick and possibly die from it.” That makes every bit as much sense as your gibberish.

Hodges says she’s afraid the U.S. might require vaccines for certain forms of travel. But, but, but… don’t we already have to have certain vaccinations before we can travel abroad, Valerie? Huh? Huh, Valerie? Isn’t that right?

Travel to Mexico does not legally require vaccinations, but it is highly recommended that travelers to that country obtain shots for chickenpox, diphtheria, flu, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), polio. The question here is, Valerie, did you have those vaccinations when you served as a missionary in Mexico? We would all be interested in knowing the answer to that. I’m betting you did.

And Rep. Amedee. Now there’s a real piece of work. She’s what Kris Kristofferson would call a “walkin’ contradiction” in his song The Pilgrim. Amedee, an anti-vaxxer to the max, supports the argument of an unidentified woman who testified before the committee on Monday, saying, “It’s my body, my right. And I have the right to say no.”

Don’t believe me? Well, her Facebook page contains a photo of and a “BIG SHOUT OUT” to a billboard in support of HB 579 “which is written to prevent state and local government-managed health procedures. Even the vaccines required for Students to enroll in school come with an opt-out provision for those who may have medical, religious, or philosophical objections. Where there is risk, there MUST be choice!”

The billboard she was alluding to proclaimed, “Who Owns Your Body? Government or You?” That sounds a lot like what the pro-choice advocates have been saying for years now.

But that very same Facebook page also contained a celebratory shot of the House vote tabulation on Amedee’s HB 578, which was passed by a 71-27 vote by the full House. HB 578, the so-called Abortion Pill Reversal Disclosure bill, would require that a disclosure statement by added to the website of the Louisiana Department of Health’s website warning that the mifepristone pill is not always effective in ending pregnancies.

It seems a bit inconsistent that one who so adamantly pro-choice with vaccinations is just as passionately anti- choice when the subject is still control over one’s body.

Amedee, whose educational background has led her to ownership of an ERRAND SERVICE, pitted her vast scientific knowledge gleaned from that glorified delivery service enterprise against the obviously inadequate background of Angelle Bradford, a cardiovascular physiology student from New Orleans who testified as to what science shows in support of vaccines. Amedee told Bradford her education wasn’t giving her the full picture because the official information on vaccines has been “slanted and propagandized.” I wonder if she learned that while house-watching for a vacationing family or as a welcome wagon hostess.

Subscribing to sputterings of Qanon, Donald Trump and outfits like the Proud Boys would doubtless be getting the “full picture.” No bias or propaganda there.

So, go ahead, Louisiana. Keep electing these miscreants.

We deserve the government we get.

It was somewhere around April 1945 when my mother decided to pack up and leave my dad and Galveston, Texas, to join her parents and siblings in the Pacific Northwest, namely Washington State.

I can’t really blame her for calling her marriage to my dad quits. He was not the best provider for his children. In fact, he was more of a sperm donor: make babies and move on. I have brothers and sisters I don’t even know and to this day, I can think of only one Christmas gift my dad ever gave me: a cheap watch that broke the second week I had it. He would eventually end up marrying five times to four different women (my mother twice).

But when my mom loaded up her belongings and my older sister and headed north by northwest, she forgot one thing: me. I’m not judging; she did what she felt she had to do at the time, but she left me behind in a Galveston hospital, suffering from malnutrition (as I said, my dad wasn’t much of a provider). She did send a postcard to her father-in-law in Ruston, T.E. “Ed” Aswell, to inform him that I was in “a hospital” in Galveston. She neglected to say which one.

My grandfather immediately drove to Galveston and after battling the bureaucracy of two different hospitals (Galveston had only two at the time), was finally shown into the ward where I was. He told me many times that he would never forget seeing that frail, undernourished baby at the foot of his bed, clinging to the railing in order to stand. “His eyes were the biggest thing about him,” he remembered.

It took a pretty good battle, I’m told, for him to convince hospital staff that he was taking me home with him – something about there not not being a cow left in Texas if he didn’t get to walk out with me. But that’s how I came to live with my paternal grandparents until I married the love of my life, Betty, 52 years ago.

He and my grandmother were the best things that could’ve happened to a skinny, 18-month-old baby who was staring down the barrel of a lifetime of foster care until they intervened. God only knows where I might have ended up without their decision to take me in. I never called them Grandma and Grandpa. That would have been oh so wrong, for they were the only Mom and Dad I ever knew. That’s who they were – Mom and Dad.

They provided the moral compass, compassion, discipline and overall guidance a kid must have until Betty came along a couple of decades later to relieve them of that onus. I’m still a work in progress and Betty’s doing the best she can but I know how to say yes ma’am, yes sir, no ma’am, no sir, please and thank you.

We were poor by anyone’s standards – then or now – but three things I never lacked: love, shelter and food in my belly. My grandfather was a tough man. Besides being a truck farmer (he plowed an old mule until he finally saved enough to purchase a used, mostly unreliable Ford tractor), he also traded livestock, butchered hogs for some of the best sausage and ham you ever tasted, and worked as a concrete finisher. That last job was the hardest work I ever saw anyone do. I had to help him from time to time and I’m still in awe that his body held up for that work well into his seventies.

Did I mention he was tough? When my dad picked up a DWI in Monroe and asked my granddad to bail him out of jail, my granddad had two words in response: “Hell, no!” My dad served out a year’s jail sentence but my granddad never wavered. He simply would not, could not, tolerate alcohol – even though he did do a little bootlegging when times were really hard. A Ruston city judge once fined him $10 for bootlegging. When my grandfather refused to pay it, the judge paid it for him. Yes, those were different times.

But while he was tough as nails, he also could be as soft as melted butter.

Once, when I was just a kid back in the ’50s, he was driving in downtown Ruston when he spotted a couple pushing a child (a girl about seven or eight) in a wheelchair. She was wearing leg braces. The fact that they were black or that he’d never seen them before mattered not a whit to him: he stopped right smack dab in the middle of traffic, walked across the street and handed that little girl five dollars that I happen to know he could not afford. He was unable to speak when he got back behind the wheel.

My grandfather was a rarity for his time. He detested, loathed, hated, despised and otherwise abhorred the Klan. I well remember him saying on more than one occasion, “Any sonofabitch who has to hide under a sheet to do his dirty work ain’t a man – he’s a coward.” That little phrase got my skinny butt in a world of trouble a few years later.

He had a couple other adages he would throw out from time to time. He always taught me that every person I meet is a friend until they show they don’t want to be. It’s always that person’s call, he said.

I rode with him once to the old Ruston Oil Mill so he could purchase some feed for his cattle. He met a man on the loading dock and they stood and talked for nearly an hour while I sat in the truck. On the way home, he said somewhat offhandedly, “That fella back there is a liar and a thief.” I couldn’t comprehend why he would have spent so much time talking to someone like that, so I asked, “If he’s a liar and a thief, why were you friends with him?”

He pulled to the side of the road and stopped. He turned and pointed a beefy finger at me and said, “Son, always remember this: you can be friends with anybody as long as you know who they are.” I was about eight or nine at the time and that has stayed with me for nearly 70 years now, a constant reminder whenever I’m tempted to pre-judge someone.

He pulled to the side of the road on one other occasion – also when I was a small child and the event is burned into my brain. He had bought me a Milky Way candy bar and as he drove down the road, I tossed the wrapper out the truck window. I immediately felt a pop on the back of my head. At the end of a dark tunnel, I believe I saw Jesus waving me toward the light. My grandfather never said a word. He didn’t have to. But I knew to get out and retrieve that candy wrapper and to this day, I’ve never thrown so much as a gum wrapper out of my car window.

But he had a sense of humor, as well, and he could neutralize a tense situation with it when need be. Once, in West Monroe, he was stopped at a stop sign when a gravel truck bumped him from behind. It wasn’t serious and no real damage was done, but it really angered my grandfather to know the driver behind him wasn’t paying attention. So, he exited his truck to give the other driver a piece of his mind.

When he walked back to the driver’s door of the gravel truck, he saw that the driver’s forearm was about the size of my grandfather’s thigh (and my grandfather was no small man). Without missing a beat, my grandfather looked up with those beautiful blue eyes and asked, “Did I hurt you?” The other driver burst into laughter and they became friends on the spot.

He taught my cousins how to shoot craps. Jeanette and Cecil are brother and sister. When they had learned the ropes and paired off to play, Jeanette wanted to play for fun but Cecil insisted they play for real money, so they did. Jeanette had all his money in a matter of minutes and in a rage (they were kids, remember, so tempers flared rather easily; today, Cecil is one of the most generous, most gentle and patient people I know) he physically attacked her. She won that contest, too. But the really funny part was my grandfather sat there and watched as Jeanette twice took Cecil’s measure, never interfering. Only when it was over did he offer words of advice – to Cecil, something about never underestimating your opponent.

Now about that Klan comment that got me in trouble: In 1963, I was home on leave from the Air Force. Certain that the girls would be attracted to my uniform, I wore it when I went into Ruston to visit Stinson’s Music Box, Ruston’s only record store. While I was in there, two men entered whom I knew. I won’t mention their names, but my dad worked for one of them from time to time in his auto repair shop. They saw me in my uniform and asked me to come outside.

When we were out on the sidewalk where no one could hear, they asked me to join the Klan and to recruit fellow members of the military at Keesler AFB in Biloxi where I was stationed. Somewhat unadvisedly and unwisely, I repeated my grandfather’s line: “Any sonofabitch who has to hide under a sheet to do his dirty work ain’t a man – he’s a coward.”

They didn’t take it well and about an hour later, I was forced off the road south of Ruston on U.S. 167. This time there were four of them (I guess just 2-to-1 odds didn’t give them sufficient confidence) and they told me if I ever said something like that again, they’d kill me. That was a pretty stupid thing to do because I knew each one of them. When they left, I took out a pen and piece of paper and wrote the date, time, location, the threat they made and each of their names so that if something violent happened to me, there would at least be a record of their threat. I kept that piece of paper in my wallet until the last one had died.

The point of all this reminiscing and reflection is to say 50 years ago this week (May 20), my grandfather died. My first child wasn’t born until more than a year later, in 1972. I so regret that he missed the births of my three daughters.

He had diabetes and lost a leg to the disease. And while it slowed him down during his last year of life, it never stopped him. I can still see him in his wheelchair, going up and down the rows in his backyard garden, nurturing his watermelons, tomatoes, peas and corn. Watching him struggle alone and determined, politely refusing all offers of help, was something that both hurt deeply and filled me with an overwhelming sense of pride and love.

The day after his funeral, his beloved dog, Duke, disappeared. I guess he missed my grandfather.

After 50 years, I miss him, too, with an emptiness that’s impossible to put into words, but the memory of his sacrifice on my behalf will never fade.

And though I cried, I was so proud

To love a man so rare

–The Captain and the Kid, by Jimmy Buffett

As I have mentioned before, I am a recovering Repugnantcan. I registered the same day that Gov. Edwin Edwards signed into law the bill creating the single primary system in Louisiana back in the mid-1970s and stayed with the party until midway through Bobby Jihad’s first term – hey, even newborn puppies have to be given the opportunity to open their eyes.

About the same time that I was transitioning, Caroline Fayard, a former (unsuccessful) candidate for Louisiana lieutenant governor came under fire when she made the observation that Republicans “EAT THEIR YOUNG.”

That wasn’t exactly an original expression. An earlier version said, “Old people vote and Republicans eat their young.”

But since Fayard first uttered those words, the expression has morphed into “Republicans eat their own,” with the most recent case in point being Liz Cheney, stripped of her House leadership position because she had the audacity to proclaim that Donald Trump actually lost the 2020 election.

One writer recently wrote that “For eight years, they tried to get a Cheney for lying. Finally, they got one for telling the truth.”

Regardless where or when the expression originated, the claim has never been in sharper focus than it is today as Repugnantcans scramble to tighten voter restrictions, loosen gun-toting restrictions and generally rewrite history even as the images of carnage remain fresh in our minds.

Elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Josh Hawley Ron Johnson, Devin Nunes, Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, Jim Jordan and John N. Kennedy would have us believe the unbridled riots of Jan. 6 were something other than what we witnessed in horror that day.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) says he never felt threatened by the mob. Our own Sen. Kennedy, while condemning the violence instigated by Trump, nevertheless joined with five other senators in voting to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona.

Scalise, being the self-serving weasel he is, simply kept silent on Trump’s role in inciting the rioters to storm the Capitol, taking what he felt was the safe route to keeping his Minority Whip position rather than showing true leadership by holding Trump accountable.

Gaetz, along with such reliable chroniclers of truth Laura Ingraham and Sarah Palin, tried to tell us the rioters were actually members of Antifa or Black Lives Matter.

And when five of our Six Repugnantcans voted to challenge the election results, talk show host, aka Mouth of the South Moon Griffon said they “did the right thing.”

What’s really puzzling is that the Repugnantcans have long identified themselves as the anti-communist stalwarts, yet they are now perfectly willing to look the other way in the face of hard evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election that put Trump in office.

I was repeatedly accused of something called TDS during the presidential campaign last year. TDS is “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and for some reason the fanatics who supported the Tangerine Toddler unquestionably and unconditionally were the ones accusing those who questioned his actions of suffering from the ailment.

It would seem to me that one who pledges absolute fealty to a demagogue would be the one who suffers from TDS, but that’s just me.

But the top prize for TDS has to go to U.S. Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Georgia).

He tops anything ever said by Clay Higgins, John Kennedy or Ron Johnson – and that’s saying a lot.

A story in yesterday’s Washington Post quotes Clyde as downplaying the events of Jan. 6 as “acts of vandalism” and suggested it was a “boldfaced lie” to call what happened that day an “insurrection.”

I’m sorry, congressman, but I can’t make the mental stretch necessary to say that the killing of a Capitol police officer was a simple “act of vandalism.”

But Clyde wasn’t finished.

“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos, pictures,” the Post quoted Clyde as saying. “You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

Orderly fashion? Staying between the stanchions and ropes? Normal tourist visit? What the hell have you been smoking, Congressman? Which TV footage were you watching? The one I was watching (in real time, by the way) didn’t look anything like a “normal tourist visit.”

And then there is Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), who the same Post article said accused the Justice Department of “harassing peaceful patriots” for its attempts to identify and arrest those who stormed the Capitol that day. “Outright propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state against law-abiding U.S. citizens, especially Trump voters,” Gosar said. “The FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal records and restricting the liberties of individuals that have never been accused of a crime.”

And all this time, I thought the Repugnantcans were in favor of law enforcement and the punishment of criminals.

Finally, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) regurgitated the Antifa claim. He supported his view by opining that the attack was premeditated and so could not have been incited by Trump. Never mind the indisputable fact that Trump had literally SPENT WEEKS whipping supporters into a collective froth with his false claims of fraud, all capped off by his call to march on the Capitol.

Sorry, Repugs, you can’t change history. Sen. Patrick Moynihan once famously said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”

But Gloria Steinem may have said it best when she said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

And the sad truth is Repugnantcans do, in fact, eat their own.

Just ask Liz Cheney.

An editorial cartoon on Wednesday said that the Ringling Circus was boycotting Arizona, citing the “unfair competition from the vote audit circus” because it had “the best clowns.”

You can now add Louisiana to that list of boycotts by Ringling because there’s just no way their clowns can hold the line when pitted against certain of our legislators.

Take Reps. Valerie Hodges (R-Denham Springs), Ray Garofalo (R-Chalmette), Kathy Edmonston (R-Gonzales), and Mark Wright (R-Covington). Somebody please take them.

Okay, old joke but what the House Education Committee did on Wednesday was certainly no laughing matter, though all three should have been wearing big, oversized shoes, red noses and orange wigs. In fact, that goes for all eight committee members who voted to report Hodges’ House Bill 352 favorably.

Committee Chair Garofalo, as noted by committee member Rep. Ken Brass (D-Vacherie), somehow managed to spend the entirety of the testimony on the bill in another committee room but still managed to make it back in time to vote in favor of the bill – without benefit of hearing any of the testimony. Meanwhile, he left it to Wright, who had problems with committee procedure and the rules of order, to preside over the debate.

So, what’s the big deal about HB 352? The answer is self-proclaimed historian/author DAVID BARTON of Dallas, Texas, and his outfit called Wallbuilders. Wallbangers might be a better name for it.

Wallbuilders is a company that offers a line of textbooks that purport to teach American history and civics but with a decided flair for omitting the uglier aspects of our history like Native American genocide, SLAVERY and such messy details as our third President fathering children by a slave woman. In fact, one of its books, THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND SLAVERY, places the blame for slavery in this country on Great Britain, claiming that “…the Founders vigorously complained against the fact that Great Britain had forcefully imposed upon the Colonies the evil of slavery. For example, Thomas Jefferson heavily criticized that British policy.”

Good to know. The book goes on to say that “even the Virginia Founders were not responsible for slavery, but actually tried to dismantle the institution.” Perhaps that explains how Richmond became the Capital of the Confederacy.

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Wallbuilders’ updated history books put the onus on the Southern Poverty Law Center for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capital.

Hodges, testifying on behalf of her bill, co-authored by Rep. Edmonston, assured committee members that because she served as a missionary in Mexico for a couple of decades, she knows “how it feels to be judged by the color of my skin.”

Seriously? How about in your own country, Rep. Hodges? Ever been judged by the color of your skin in the good ol’ US of A?

But I digress. Among other things, HB 352 mandates the teaching of:

• The “Founding Principles (capitalized, no less) of the United States of America” (somewhat subjective as those founding principles (capitalized) will presumably be what Wallbuilders deems them to be;
• Federalism and the Federalist Papers;
• American exceptionalism;
• Globalism and the United Nations;
• Immigration policy;
• Due process and equal justice under the law (something that most probably should be taught many of our political leaders who seem to believe they are a law unto themselves).

“Textbooks and instructional materials…shall accurately reflect the contributions and achievements of ordinary Americans and promote an understanding of the history and values of the people of the United States and Louisiana, including the free enterprise system, the benefits of capitalism, private property, constitutional liberties, the value of a constitutional republic and traditional standards of moral values,” the bill says.

It also says, “Political activism of one point of view over another has no place in formal education…” That’s rather strange coming from Hodges considering she once endorsed the concept of church-affiliated schools receiving state charters – until an Islamic school in New Orleans applied for one. She nearly popped a blood vessel over that, declaring she had not meant her endorsement of faith-based schools to extend quite that far.

Not said, but certainly understood, considering Barton’s presence and endorsement testimony at Wednesday’s hearing was that Wallbuilders stands to reap a windfall should HB 352 become law. Why else do you think Barton would make an appearance to push the bill other than to see the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) forced to approve his books for grades one through 12?

Representatives from the Louisiana State Department of Education and BESE, by the way, were on hand to oppose the bill – to no avail.

And then there’s that bill by committee chair Garofalo that’s sort of hanging out there in limbo because he was sufficiently stupid as to piss off the legislative Black Caucus with his insensitive remark that his HB 564 would allow educators to teach “the good” about “slavery.”

Uh…and what good would that be, Garofalo? All those good ol’ blues and spiritual songs? Sewanee River? Old Man River?

Like Hodges, Garofalo lives in some kind of dream world. His bill would prohibit the teaching of so-called “divisive concepts” like the myth that the U.S. or the gret stet of Looziana is “fundamentally, institutionally or systemically racist or sexist.”

Really, Rep. Garofalo? And the fact that there is no systemic racism or sexism would explain why Blacks are much more likely to be pulled over by police and why women earn approximately 60 cents to ever dollar a male makes for performing the same job?

Perhaps the complete absence of sexism would explain why LSU finds itself in quite the legal pickle over its handling of sexual harassment complaints on campus. You think maybe?

No racism? Well, that surely explains all those private and charter schools popping up all over the state, now, doesn’t it? They certainly weren’t created so the poor and black kids could be dumped into low-performing public schools while all those middle- and upper-class kids trotted off to their private or charter schools, were they?

And all those dirt-poor Native American reservations just couldn’t be a symbol of systemic racism. Nor could the attacks on Islamic citizens, Asians, and the demands that Latinos “speak English.” (Would you ever suggest to a member of the Sicilian Mafia that he “speak English”?)

Don’t believe me? Well, read on to the bottom of page 4 of Garofalo’s bill: “…[A] charter school …and the school’s officers and employees shall be exempt from all statutory mandates or other statutory requirements that are applicable to public schools and to public school officers and employees…”

Well, that certainly clashes with that provision in Hodges’ HB352 that stipulates that there shall be “equal justice under the law.”

A Louisiana legislator whose umbilical cord is attached intransigently and unapologetically to the oil and gas industry (no conflict there) authored a couple of bills in the current session which would do far more to protect the industry than it does Louisiana citizens or its environment.

House bills 617 and 549 would, in order, (a) make Louisiana a “fossil fuel sanctuary” in defiance of President Biden’s environmental plans and (b) change the status of natural gas pipelines from “transport vehicles” to “facilities,” a subtle difference in vernacular that would remove the authority of State Police to impose FINES against pipeline companies for failing to report natural gas leaks in a timely manner.

And while The Guardian, the superb British publication, REPORTED on HB 617 by State Rep. Danny McCormick (R-Oil City), the House has already given near-unanimous (97-0, with seven representatives not voting) approval of HB 549, which would drastically change the reporting requirements on and responsibility for natural gas leaks.

Both bills by McCormick, who Guardian reporter Sara Sneath pointed out runs M&M Oil and who before becoming a legislator, was a member of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, the powerful industry lobbying group, dovetail nicely with Louisiana’s long tradition of fealty to the petrochemical industry in Louisiana but which appear to run counter to the health interests of his constituents and to protection of Louisiana’s air quality.

Calumet Refinery, for example, was hit in 2013 with a $326,000 fine for nine air violations and a group of oil companies, including Calumet, offered residents of a mostly Black neighborhood in his district a paltry $2.7 million to SETTLE several lawsuits over health problems suffered by 703 plaintiffs that had dragged on for decades.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy may express his anger at Biden’s description of the corridor along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans as “cancer alley,” but facts are facts, no matter how inconvenient they may be. The corridor had that name – with good reason – long before Biden appeared on the scene even as vice president in the Barack Obama administration.

Because of fears that the EPA could revoke the state’s authority to enforce federal rules and possibly because of the Legislative Fiscal Office’s estimate of the possible lost of nearly $7.3 million in federal funds, McCormick’s fossil fuel sanctuary bill was tabled. That didn’t prevent him from sniffing, “I don’t know who would have a problem with it (the bill), honestly.”

But the House passage of his HB 549 raises new fears with attorney Isaac Jackson who says an obscure state statute could shield oil and gas companies from legal liability for damages they might cause. Unreported gas leaks that spark explosions could be a classic example of the unintended consequences of LA R.S. 30:51.

Jackson, who is a former general counsel for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, a former assistant attorney general and a former employee of Exxon, says it would be difficult to portray him as anti-oil and gas.

“At the same time,” he said, “I am concerned that the oil and gas/petrochemical lobby has wielded so much influence with regulators and legislators that laws have been shaped to have certain oil and gas companies avoid liability for damages they admit to causing.  I can tell you from first-hand experience in the industry that most oilfield operators are good operators.  But these laws are designed to protect only the few, worst ones. That’s not how the law should work.

“This is why I am concerned about a curious law of unclear intention, unclear origin, with no legislative history, and which is broadly worded in a dangerous way. The law’s key language is not typical of other laws. The vague wording of the law makes it susceptible to disagreement in how it might apply. But that uncertainty is also what makes it dangerous,” he said.

A plain reading of Revised Statute 30:51 indicates that it creates what Jackson calls a “secret” three-year countdown clock within which a state or local official must sue an oil and gas operator to enforce a penalty, otherwise known in legal circles as prescription. “That alone is enough to raise one’s eyebrows,” Jackson said. 

Under normal Louisiana law, the countdown clock for holding the violator responsible would begin only upon the regulator learning of the violation. But this odd law starts the clock regardless of any knowledge to the regulator. Instead, the law uses the curious term “made known” and states that the clock begins when an operator “makes known” a violation to the state attorney general. “What does it even mean to ‘make known’ to the attorney general?” Jackson asked rhetorically. “A postcard? An oral statement made in passing? A formal letter? No one knows because the law is so oddly worded.”

Left unsaid by Jackson was the well-known predisposition of the current attorney general to protect the oil and gas industry at all costs. AG JEFF LANDRY has consistently FOUGHT EFFORTS by Gov. John Bel Edwards and individual parishes to hold the industry accountable for the vast damage it has inflicted on Louisiana’s coastal wetlands.

“Here’s a good question for those who doubt the possible implications of this law: if this is not a get-out-of-jail free card to bad industry actors, then what actually is the alternative purpose and effect of the law?” Jackson asked.

He said the state must be honest with itself. “In the oil and gas context, bad operators do not write to notify their local and parish officials when the operator commits a violation for the same reason citizens do not write letters to the police to self-report speeding violations. With this law on the books, bad operators have a perverse incentive to cover up violations and quietly notify the attorney general, knowing that he may not alert local governments and state regulators,” he said. 

“This is a bad law and it should be changed. Until it is changed, local district attorneys should advise local and parish government clients of the dangers associated with Revised Statute 30:51 and push the attorney general for a formal policy ensuring that the public and officials are notified of each violation “made known” to the attorney general. And unless district attorneys warn their clients of the dangers associated with this law they perhaps risk falling short of their obligation under Revised Statute 16:2(C) to render faithful and efficient services.”