Louisiana Voice

Editor’s note: I received this from a friend and I was struck by his sincerity and his concern for the well-being of us all. I am re-posting his remarks here in the hope that at least some of those who still doubt the seriousness of this horrendous virus will at long last comprehend that the consequences of self-imposed ignorance can be lethal. (As a personal note, I have had family members contract Covid and at least two people whom I knew personally have died from it. Please remember that it’s not about you nor is it about your “personal freedom.” It’s about survival.)

I’m posting this in social media for my “Friends” and even friends of my friends who may not have understood why I was so adamantly opposed to Donald Trump and what he has done and what I feel he stands for as a leader of the country.

The fact that you see or received this may be that you know I have been “hermit-like” in most of my associations since March of this year[2020], and I have been even more outspoken than normal on some issues related to masks, social distancing and refusing to attend some events where I felt there was a danger to others added if I attended.

Being one of those who is in the endangered group of the population, and knowing so many others who I believe are members of this group or should know that they are, I felt it incumbent on me to set some example. Being an “example” can be difficult, but I will attempt to make that leap here.

PLEASE, wear you mask PROPERLY and respect the health and safety of others I want to see at some point in the future. Don’t attend any large gatherings at all!

Don’t go to church, even though it may be legal, not because it would be considered sacrilegious, but because you are endangering others, even extended family by third-party contact.

I don’t hate Trump or you because you may have been a Trump voter, even secretly like those KKK members or friends of members who would be ashamed to wear your pointy robe in daylight. I just am a reader of facts, and the facts, to me, are clear.

Trump and his followers are just as guilty as all those who silently gave in to the Nazis in the 1930s. One step at a time they gave away rights, powers and the freedom of others because they saw some benefits for themselves.

For now, I’m willing to sit home and only “socialize” in a very limited circle. There will be better days ahead, when public safety is no so threatened. A vaccine is coming, and more people will treat public safety in a manner that protects the most vulnerable. Then we will party, hug and go about business like we did prior to January, 2020.

I hope we are all around at that time to celebrate survival of this nightmare of Covid-19, Donald Trump and those things that tore us apart.

(With apologies to Margaret Wise Brown)

Good night loon, 

Good night goon, 

Good night nastiest man in the room.

Good night lies, 

Good night spies, 

Good night rants and alibis.

Good night twitter, 

Good night tweets. 

Good night all those crazy bleats.

Good night red hats, 

Good night cruel chants, 

Good night sniveling sycophants.

Good night wall, 

Good night cages, 

Good night endless midnight rages.

Good night fine people on both sides, 

Good night losers, good night suckers, 

Good night evil nasty f**kers.

Good night Ivanka 

Good night Jared, 

Good night Baron, we hardly knew ya.

Good night thief, Good night grief, 

Good night cruel and callous chief.

Good night fake news, And Fox and friends, 

This is how the nightmare ends.

Good night at last. It’s time to go, 

The American people told you so. 

Much has been written here about the legal problems experienced by LaSalle Corrections of Ruston, problems brought about by alleged neglect and mistreatment of prisoners being held at its various locations in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia.

Several wrongful death and wrongful injury lawsuits have revealed inadequate training of employees, falsification of prisoner records and fraudulent records certifying that employees had completed certain required training when they, in fact, had not.

Thirteen months ago, reporter Cindy Chang of the New Orleans Advocate/Times-Picayune wrote a PROFILE of LaSalle founder Billy McConnell and his son, Clay. That story provided an interesting glimpse into how they regard prisons – and nursing homes – not from a standpoint of caring for living human beings but as a means to padding the corporate bottom line.

LouisianaVoice has now gone a bit further to show how far the principals – or at least one of the principals – of LaSalle will go to ensure that bottom line is not disturbed by a marital split.

Depending on the month, Louisiana and Oklahoma compete for the title of the state with the highest rate of incarcerations in a nation that leads the world in that statistic. That means that one of the two states will be at any given time, be the world’s leader in incarcerations.

Twenty-five years ago, Billy McConnell was running a family company that financed and built schools, fire stations and nursing homes. But then a federal court ordered Louisiana’s Department of Corrections to reduce the number of prisoners in its overcrowded prison system.

A light came on in Billy McConnell’s head and he subsequently entered the winning bid to construct a prison in Alexandria. That led to others and soon came the decision to not just build, but also operate correctional facilities.

Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown was elected in 2003 on a platform of replacing the parish jail that was located on the top floor of the 74-year-old courthouse in Jonesboro. But Brown had no funds and no authority to raise taxes to build the jail, which he envisioned as being large enough to house additional prisoners in order to maximize the state’s per diem payments.

Along came LaSalle, which built a $15 million, 1,147-bed facility for a relatively crime-free parish of barely 16,000 souls. That’s one prison bed for every 14 Jackson Parish residents. But then, Louisiana’s rate of incarceration is one of every seven residents, so perhaps one bed for every 14 residents isn’t so out of line for the state.

For the privilege of warehousing – and make no mistake, warehousing is the accurate term – state prisoners for about $25 per day per prisoner, LaSalle agreed to pay Brown $100,000 as a “sponsor fee” to operate the jail under his authority.

When the feds came along and upped the ante to about $65 per day for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees, that was icing on the cake. While LaSalle paid the jail’s employees, Brown retained the right to hire and fire the 130 or so personnel – a pretty good bit of political patronage for a local elected official to control.

So, obviously, the McConnells’ decision to go into the jailing business was a humanitarian gesture, right? I mean, after all, son Clay McConnell is a Methodist minister. For the answer to the benevolent question, let’s let him provide the answer:

“We realized that prisons are like nursing homes. You need occupancy to be high. You need to treat people fairly and run a good ship, but run it like a business, watch food costs, employee costs.”

To that end, I guess you’d call LaSalle an unqualified success were it not for those pesky legal costs from all those lawsuits over dead and injured prisoners, and employees either terminated or who sued when they became ill after being exposed to the coronavirus.

But to get a peek at the real heart of this man of God, one need only examine the dispute that arose between the younger McConnell and his former wife following their 2015 divorce.

Clay and Leigh McConnell were married in November 1996 and divorced in October 2016. While married, the couple jointly owned 16.66 percent interest in McConnell Correctional Center, LLC, via an operating agreement dated March 9, 2000.

But wait. On Feb. 2, 2006, McConnell Correction Center, LLC, effected a corporate name change to WMC Enterprises, LLC.

Leigh McConnell was requested to sign a “Transfer of Assets” agreement by her then-husband who she said told her that the transfer agreement was to ensure his voting rights in WMC Enterprises since she “did not attend board meetings of McConnell Correctional Center, LLC,” according to court documents obtained by LouisianaVoice.

The transfer agreement stated in part that Leigh McConnell “has no ownership interest in the entities transferred herein and accordingly no ownership interest in WMC Enterprises, LLC, which is acknowledged as being the separate property of her husband Clay.”

Those “entities” consisted of several other companies that operated under the McConnell Correctional Center corporate umbrella before being transferred to WMC Enterprises.

So, according to Leigh McConnell, she was told by her husband that the purpose of the transfer was to protect his voting rights when in fact the real purpose was to make her half of the 16.66 percent go poof.

 As of 2014, the value of that 16.66 percent was approximately $5.3 million, meaning that as of six years ago, LaSalle (or McConnell Correctional Center, aka WMC Enterprises) was worth approximately $31.6 million. One source said the estimate of today’s worth could be three times that amount, or nearly $100 million.

But Leigh McConnell said in her petition to revoke the transfer agreement filed on Nov. 9, 2016, which she says she signed under false pretenses, denied her half of that 16.66 percent, or 8.33 percent, share in the ownership of McConnell Correctional Center.

She said she was the victim of fraud perpetrated by her then (now ex-) husband, Clay McConnell, her former father-in-law, William McConnell, and WMC Enterprises.

She cited a passage of the original operating agreement of McConnell Correctional Center which said, “No transfer of a membership interest may occur without the unanimous consent of all members and any purported attempt to transfer a membership interest without such approval will not vest in such transferee any membership rights in the company.”

As so happens in such matters, one side in a legal dispute often has limited financial resources while the other has a bigger stack of chips and figuratively, at least, holds all the cards.

This was no exception. Leigh McConnell simply ran out of funds to pursue her claim and her ex-husband, the ordained minister, just kept writing checks to his attorney in order to drag out proceedings. Together, they waited her out until she eventually was more or less forced to dismiss her claim, according to a source close to the situation.

There are two lessons to be learned here:

• What’s $50,000 – or even $100,000 in legal fees – if it can save you a few million?
• Justice can indeed be bought, or at least rented, if you bring enough money to the table: just keep raising the bet until the other side is forced to fold.

A public official need not actually do or say something to violate his oath of office. The mere act of silence or inaction in a crisis situation is a clear sign of one of three things: cowardice, negligence at best, or treason at worst.

I will not go so far as accuse John Kennedy of treason, but his reticence in the ongoing tantrum by Donald Trump certainly qualifies as cowardice and negligence. He calls to mind the words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I know he ran on Trump’s coattails in 2016; he said so by claiming to be an unconditional supporter of Tweet Thang. But it just seems to me that a real man would not be too proud – or cowardly – to admit that perhaps he made a mistake or to at least issue some sort of public proclamation that it’s time for the Tangerine Toddler to admit that he lost the election by 6 million votes and by the same electoral vote that he won by four years ago. Is that too much to ask of our junior senator?

It was another John Kennedy, the one who was gunned down in Dallas 57 years ago Sunday, who once said, “In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow.”

In 1955, that Kennedy, with the assistance of Ted Sorenson, wrote his famous book Profiles in Courage, which examined eight U.S. Senators who displayed great courage under extreme pressure from their parties and their constituents. They stand in stark contrast to the John Kennedy of today who has exhibited zero resolve to do the right thing and stand up to the tyrant whose days in the White House are dwindling down to a precious few.

Why is this? The only explanation is he is too damned worried about pissing off the rabid Trump supporters of this state and losing his job as opposed to not being sufficiently concerned about standing up for the U.S. Constitution. In short, John Neely Kennedy has his priorities skewed to the point of being FUBAR (see: Saving Private Ryan).

John N. Kennedy, I didn’t know John F. Kennedy, but you’re no John F. Kennedy.

As a refresher for John Neely Kennedy, here are thumbnail sketches of the eight senators profiled by John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

John Quincy Adams broke with his party when he was the sole Federalist to vote in favor of the Louisiana Purchase. Adams continued voting against his party, but the big break came in 1807 when Thomas Jefferson asked Congress to enact an embargo against Great Britain to shut off international trade in retaliation against British aggression towards American merchant ships. The embargo would have had a disastrous effect on the Massachusetts economy but Adams agreed with Jefferson and helped steer the embargo bill into law. The Federalist held fast to a philosophy of appeasement toward the British and Adams resigned from his seat in 1808.

Daniel Webster was a Massachusetts senator (Whig). His ultimate downfall began in 1850 when he agreed to help Kentucky’s Henry Clay pass a compromise bill that would keep the Union together. Webster’s support of Clay’s bill enraged his constituents and ended his career as a Senator.

Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton was deeply opposed to the introduction of slavery into new territories. Benton was concerned that the issue was being exploited by Southern and Northern partisans and his position cost him the popularity he previously had in his state, and he was stripped of all of his committee memberships except Foreign Relations. In 1850, Benton was still opposed to the series of measures known as the Great Compromise and did not hesitate to make his feelings known. Benton was constantly called out of order by Vice President Millard Fillmore, the presiding officer. Benton was voted out of office in 1851, returned to Congress in 1853 as a representative, but lost his seat in 1855. Although his uncompromising stand on prohibiting slavery in new territories ended his political career his stand was one of the factors that kept Missouri from seceding from the Union.

Sam Houston refused to support the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and would have allowed the residents of territories from Iowa to the Rocky Mountains to decide the slavery issue themselves. Houston, a southerner, felt that the act would further divide the Union. Houston’s vote against the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the breaking point. He was the only Southern Democrat to vote no. Houston was dismissed from the Senate by the Texas legislature in 1857. Two years later he was his election as governor of Texas was a major defeat of Southern pro-slavery extremists. In February 1861, the Texas legislature voted to secede from the Union. His refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy led to his ouster as governor in March 1861.

Edmund Ross of Kansas cast the deciding vote that acquitted President Andres Johnson who was impeached because Radical Republicans had passed a Tenure of Office Act to prevent a president from firing cabinet members without Senate consent in an attempt to try to stop Johnson from firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson believed Stanton was a tool of the Radicals who wanted to establish a military dictatorship in the South. Johnson favored a policy of reconstructing the Confederate states back into the Union as quickly as possible without unnecessary military intervention, as Lincoln had intended. When Johnson fired Stanton, the impeachment began. Ross voted against convicting Johnson despite suffering abuse from fellow Republicans and from the press. Neither he nor any other Republican who voted to acquit Andrew Johnson was reelected to the Senate, and Ross and his family suffered ostracism and poverty upon their return to Kansas in 1871. Ross was eventually vindicated when the Supreme Court declared the Tenure of Office Act to be unconstitutional, and praised by the press and the public for having saved the country from dictatorship.

Lucious Lamar, a Mississippi Democrat did the unpardonable when he gave a eulogy on the House floor as a freshman representative in 1874 upon the death of Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Sumner was hated by most Southerners because of his opposition to slavery and his vehemence in denouncing slaveholders. In 1856 Sumner was brutally caned on the Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina. Lamar’s eulogy praised Sumner’s desire for unity between North and South and many in the South felt it a betrayal. In 1876, Lamar was elected to the Senate and once again acted in opposition to his constituents and his party when he agreed to the findings of an election commission that gave the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

George Norris, a Nebraska Republican, showed early on that he was not afraid to stand up to powerful individuals. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for authorization to arm American merchant ships, even though the United States was still officially neutral in the war. Although Wilson’s request was immediately popular with the American public, Norris felt that Wilson’s bill was a ruse by big business to get the United States into the war in Europe. Norris was the only member of the Nebraska delegation to vote against passage of the bill and he was criticized on every side. He offered to resign from the Senate, saying that if the people of Nebraska no longer felt that he was representing them adequately, he should step down. Norris touched off a firestorm of criticism in 1928 when he backed Al Smith, a Catholic Democrat who was anti-Prohibition, for president rather than Herbert Hoover, whom Norris felt was owned by monopolistic power companies. Norris went on to serve in the Senate until his defeat for re-election in 1942.

Robert A. Taft, the son of William Howard Taft, was a conservative’s conservative, with presidential aspirations. Taft made a speech at Kenyon College in October 1946 in which he opposed the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials that were just ending. Taft felt the defendants were being tried under ex post facto laws (laws that apply retroactively, especially those which criminalize an action that was legal when it was committed).  Taft viewed the Constitution as the foundation of the American system of justice and felt that discarding its principles in order to punish a defeated enemy out of vengeance was a grave wrong. Taft so strongly believed in the wisdom of the Constitution that speaking out was more important than his personal ambitions or popularity. Many years later, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas agreed with Taft’s view that the Nuremberg Trials were an unconstitutional use of ex post facto laws.

Sadly, none of the courageous traits chronicled by Massachusetts’s John F. Kennedy can be found in Louisiana’s John Neely Kennedy.

You want something to back your absurd position in an argument?

No problem, you can find it on the Internet.

Maybe that’s why the country is divided down the middle on just about every issue, including the outcome of the Nov. 3 election.

The winners, those who voted for Joe Biden, are content with the outcome and are eagerly anticipating the Jan. 20 inauguration date when Donald J. Trump will become a footnote in history.

The losers, rather than being content to say shut up and deal, are clamoring for recounts where Trump lost and a halt to vote-counting where he won and in general, making a lot of white noise about a rigged election without a shred of evidence.

To illustrate my point that the Internet is a ready source for just about any argument, there is the claim by an outfit called JUDICIAL WATCH that the U.S. spends more on medical care for prison inmates than it does on seniors, veterans and military personnel.

Not even close.

It wasn’t true when the claim was made back in 2016 and it’s not true now.

But then, that’s not surprising. Judicial Watch is a right-wing nutcase organization that has aligned itself with, among others, Steve Bannon and Breitbart News. Among its myriad of claims is one that asserts that climate science if “fraud science.” It also advanced the crackpot theories that the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered and that ISIS had established a camp in Mexico. The organization also urged that mail-in ballots be prohibited for the 2020 presidential election.

In short, Judicial Watch plays fast and loose with the facts but the claim that more money is spent for prisoner health care than for the other named recipients is pure garbage.

In fiscal year, MEDICARE SPENDING accounted for $644 billion, roughly 14 percent of total government spending and, after Social Security, the second-largest program in the federal budget.

The Defense Department spent $33.5 billion on healthcare for MILITARY PERSONNEL in 2017, a figure that has remained fairly constant through the fiscal year 2020 budget request.

For VETERANS, the healthcare expenditure was $69 billion in 2017

By comparison, federal and state prisons combined to spend less than $10 billion on healthcare for prisoners. The 50 STATES combined to spend $8.1 billion on prison health care services. FEDERAL PRISONS, meanwhile spent about $1.2 billion per year for fiscal years 2016-2018, but saw that number decrease to $1.2 billion in FY 2019.

Figures don’t lie but liars do figure.

And just in case you’re wondering, the gret stet of Loozianner, which ranks either first or second among states (depending on the month – it’s an ongoing contest with Oklahoma) in the number of people incarcerated in a nation that ranks first in the world, has a firm hold on the anchor position in the per capital expenditure for health care for prisoners.

The NATIONAL average expenditure for healthcare was $5,720 per year per prisoner in FY 2015. California was number one with a per capita expenditure of $19,796 with Louisiana dragging up the rear at $2,173.

So, where did Judicial Watch get its numbers? Who knows? The organization has a long and storied history of conjuring up lies and distortions to fit its right-wing agenda. Anything it publishes must be taken with a grain of salt – a huge grain.

 No rumor is too far out there for Judicial Watch to give credence. It advances some of the same crackpot conspiracy theories as the 3 Percenters, QAnon, Info Wars and Breitbart.

Why? Because there are about 70 million Americans out there who are so gullible, so incapable of independent thought and so unwilling to rationalize these assertions for themselves that they will believe any half-baked, sensational story that’s thrown out there like so much red meat, so long as it coincides with their own dark suspicions.

To check these stories for accuracy and veracity before sending them on down the line to their like-minded friends never even occurs to them. It’s on the Internet, so it must be true.

And that kind of thinking, like the refusal to wear masks in public, allows people like Lance Harris, Jeff Landry and Clay Higgins to take center stage to question the actions of a governor who is earnestly trying to protect the state’s citizens and economy from the effects of the worst pandemic in a century.

It is also evidence of a weak-willed society just ripe for a demagogue to step up and stoke the flames of discontent and suspicion much like a man named Hitler 90 years ago.

Oh wait, it’s already happened.

Never mind.