Louisiana Voice

The problems of LaSalle Corrections continue with the recent revelation that the U.S. Department of Labor had RECOVERED  more than $125,000 in back wages for 122 of its employees in Tullos, Louisiana.

This is just the latest in a long string of problems experienced by the Ruston-based company that operates 18 private prisons in several states, including nine in Louisiana. Total capacity for its 18 facilities is 13,000 inmates.

Following an investigation by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), LaSalle paid $125,516 in unpaid fringe benefits to the 122 employees to resolve violations of the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA).

WHD investigators found that LaSalle had failed to provide the required fringe benefits to employees at the Tullos facility. The employees had performed contract work with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). LaSalle failed to make required contributions to health and benefits plans on behalf of the employees from August 2019 through October 2019.

The McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act requires contractors and subcontractors performing services on prime contracts in excess of $2,500 to pay service employees in various classes no less than the wage rates and fringe benefits found prevailing in the locality (commonly known as prevailing wage), or the rates, including prospective increases, contained in a predecessor contractor’s collective bargaining agreement.

The dispute with the Department of Labor was just the latest in a continuing string of problems experienced by LaSalle that include charges that its Georgia prison performed unwanted hysterectomies on female detainees and the settlements or judgments against LaSalle for prisoner deaths and injuries.

Other FINDINGS revealed that LaSalle employees routinely falsified records on prisoner care, that employees received inadequate training and were even instructed to lie about receiving training that had not been provided.

Last year, an ICE detainee DIED at the Richwood Correctional Center in Ouachita Parish, a LaSalle-run facility, in October 2019. ICE officials claimed that Roylan Hernandez-Diaz, 43, died of “self-inflicted strangulation.” But with all the reports of ABUSES of detainees, one has to wonder at the accuracy of ICE’s assertions.

Hernandez-Diaz, of Cuba, had been in ICE custody since May 20, 2019 after he was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol at a port of entry in Texas.

The Richwood facility has a capacity of 1,000 prisoners and it was holding 375 ICE detainees among its prisoners at the time of Hernandez-Diaz’s death.

In another inmate death, LaSalle used legal maneuvers to get the wrongful death lawsuit dismissed. The family of Derrick Williams filed suit in Lincoln Parish, where LaSalle’s headquarters are located, after Williams was found unresponsive at Richwood on Jan. 23, 2014.

LaSalle and Richwood, in July 2015, filed a motion of exception of venue, arguing that the lawsuit should have been filed in Ouachita Parish, where the prison is situated. The trial court granted the venue exception and ordered that the suit be transferred to Ouachita Parish on Nov. 16, 2015, a little less than 10 months after Williams’s death.

Following the suit’s transfer, Richwood and LaSalle filed a peremptory exception of prescription, alleging that prescription was not interrupted and that the plaintiffs’ claims were prescribed because they failed to serve any defendant with process before the one-year prescriptive period expired.

Prescription is the time allowed to file civil lawsuits. In Louisiana, that time is 12 months. The argument that prescription was not interrupted by the change of venue is a technical one at best, but one that was granted by the trial court and subsequently upheld on appeal.

Carl Lenard, 62, and Stanton Johnson, 51, were guards at Richwood in April 2020 when they died of the CORONAVIRUS after allegedly being instructed by management not to wear protective gear because of concern of spreading panic among the prison population.

There were 45 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among detainees at the time of the guards’ deaths.

A Richwood employee told Associated Press that guards were being ordered not to wear masks or gloves in order to avoid spreading panic among detainees. Two days after AP asked LaSalle about that policy, the order was rescinded, the employee said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center called on ICE to improve conditions at Richwood.

A year before the guards’ deaths, the Concordia Sentinel newspaper in Ferriday REPORTED that 510 asylum-seekers and other federal detainees were being held by ICE at LaSalle’s River Correctional facility in that parish.

The legislature’s criminal justice reform, spearheaded by Gov. John Bel Edwards, resulted in fewer state prisoners, which made space available for the ICE detainees which, conveniently, pay the local jails and private prisons like those run by LaSalle $65 average per diem per occupied bed for warehousing detainees compared to the state rate of $24.39. In all, there were 2,692 fewer state prisoners in December 2018 than in October 2017 to be immediately replaced by 2,790 better paying ICE detainees.

LaSalle signed contracts with the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office as well as the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office.

As of May 2019, ICE was also housing detainees in Jonesboro (1,000), Jena (1,160), Alexandria (400), Oberlin (50), and Pine Prairie (1,094).

“As I have long said, the success of a coronavirus vaccine would only be announced after the election.

“Pfizer and the others probably didn’t have the courage to make this HISTORIC announcement before November 3^rd, because they hoped it would keep me from WINNING BIG.

“The truth is, if Joe Biden were President, you wouldn’t have the vaccine for another four years, nor would the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have ever approved it so quickly.” —Email from Donald Trump today.

No, Tweet Thang, that’s not what you have long said. Let’s keep the record straight on this. What you said and what Donnie Jr. and Eric repeated on numerous occasions was that the virus would magically disappear on Nov. 4, that Covid was a hoax. That, in fact, is what the three of you repeatedly told the American people.

But it didn’t disappear, did it? In fact, new cases now exceed 150,000 every 24 hours. Covid deaths are climbing rapidly to 250,000 and will probably reach that number before Thanksgiving.

I know you have a propensity to lie through your teeth, but let’s not lie about something this important. You first predicted it would disappear by Easter. Then it was as soon as warm weather got here. Then it was Nov. 4. You were incorrect every. single. time.

You said it was no worse than a cold. But a quarter-million people don’t die of a cold in less than 10 months.

You said early on that everyone who wanted to be tested would be. Only problem was, there weren’t enough tests available.

You said we would have a vaccine very shortly. But even with the latest good news from Pfizer, it’s going to take the better part of a year – or more – to get it distributed.

But then you also promised to reveal your income taxes way back during the 2016 campaign but you didn’t, and you repeatedly promised a healthcare plan to replace the ACA would be forthcoming “within a couple of weeks.” That was right after your election and (again) repeated several times since then. But even as you go before the Supreme Court to try to abolish Obamacare, you still have not followed up with a replacement.

And now you claim – without any evidence to back it up – that you won the election. Even with the electoral votes as close as they are, it’s difficult to overlook a popular vote deficit of more than five million ballots.

Fact is, you are a bald-face liar and you just can’t help yourself.

And you’re a loser.

But America is a winner.

Okay, campers, we have a new game we’re going to play with Donald J. Trump.

As you may know, Trump has launched a fund-raising effort, ostensibly exclusively for Trump’s election defense fund and he is inundating people (including yours truly) with 20-30 emails per day begging for donations.

What he doesn’t tell you is that his defense fund receives only the remainder of any donation exceeding the maximum $5,000 allowed under campaign finance rules.

He also doesn’t bother to explain that 60 percent of all post-election donations are earmarked not for his legal fight over the election results, but to pay off his campaign debts.

The fine print on the campaign, according to THE NEW YORK TIMES, website reads:

60% of each contribution first to Save America, up to $5,000/$5,000, then to DJTP’s (Donald J. Trump for President’s) Recount Account, up to a maximum of $2,800/$5,000.40% of each contribution to the RNC’s Operating account, up to a maximum of $35,500/$15,000. Any additional funds will go to the RNC for deposit in the RNC’s Legal Proceedings account or Headquarters account, up to a maximum of $213,000/$90,000.”

Now, whenever you use your credit card, you are not the only one who pays. In addition to any interest charges that you pay, the merchant, or recipient of the payment, is hit with two separate charges: a percentage of purchase charge and a swipe charge.

It’s the second one, the swipe charge, that is crucial here. Rather than a percentage, it is a flat fee that is charged each time a credit card is swiped, or used, to make a payment. It’s not really important to know what the flat fee is – just that it exists and for the purpose of our new game, it’s a gift from heaven.

If you receive these emails from Trump, just contribute a penny.

Whatever that swipe fee is, it’s certain to result in a deficit transaction for Trump every time it’s used.

I’m suggesting that we go into each and every email and give a penny for each one we receive. Twenty or thirty cents, after all, isn’t going to break any of us and there’s a helluva lot more satisfaction than the contributions will cost us.

I also suggest that you pass this on to your friends in order to get as much participation as possible. I don’t particularly care about helping the credit card companies but any distaste for them will certainly be outweighed by our collective contempt for Trump and by the pleasure of wreaking havoc on his new leadership PAC, “Save America.”

If you haven’t received any of his emails, contact me at louisianavoice@yahoo.com and I’ll be happy to pass them along to you.

It’s the least I can do.

I received an interesting text yesterday from someone I don’t know but which infuriated me. It was some sort of asinine protest against the wearing of masks to curb the spread of the coronavirus. This is what it said (in all cap, of course, much like Donald Trump’s tweets):

“THE CDC CLAIMS THAT SMOKING IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR 480,000 YEARLY DEATHS, INCLUDING 25,000 FROM JUST SECONDHAND SMOKE. YET THE GOVERNMENT HAS NEVER FORECED ANYONE TO STOP SMOKING TO SAVE A LIFE. SO THEN WHY ARE YOU BEING FORCED TO WEAR A MASK?? STILL THINK THIS IS ABOUT ‘SAVING LIVES’?”

First of all, smoking is banned in public places such as restaurants, theaters, state office buildings and, in some states, inside vehicles when there are passengers under 12 years of age.

Second, I know of no jurisdiction where anyone is “forced” to wear a mask. Yet. I wear my mask to church but I notice that people all around me are maskless.

Third, yes, it is about saving lives, you clueless knucklehead! If you think otherwise, the next time you have surgery, ask the doctors and nurses to leave their masks at the door because after all, it’s not about saving lives so, why would you need that protection?

And next time you embark on a errand or trip in your vehicle, be sure to tell the kids in the back seat not to fasten their seat belts. Don’t worry about studies that have shown conclusively that if you’re in a collision and are ejected from your vehicle because you weren’t wearing a seat belt, you have a 25 times greater chance of dying than if you were belted in. In fact, tell the little tykes it’s cool to sit in the front seat – beltless. And infant carriers? Who needs ‘em? That’s just the guvmint tellin’ you how to live your life – or die trying.

For that matter, why do football and baseball players need helmets? You think that study that found that 110 of 111 deceased NFL players had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) a degenerative brain disorder associated with repetitive head trauma was just coincidence?

Think how uneducated and ill-informed you must sound to say masks are not about saving lives.

I have to ask if you are resisting the wearing of masks only because a thick-headed, orange-haired pitiful excuse for a leader eschews them? That’s the example you wish to follow – someone who governs by tweet and would rather play golf than address the problems of this country – instead of someone who has invested a career to fighting disease?

Seriously?

Trump and his minions have been insisting that the coronavirus is (a) only the sniffles and (b) will magically disappear.

Well, we are fast approaching a quarter-million deaths from the “sniffles” and for the past week, we’ve set new records daily for the number of infections. Yesterday, it surpassed 150,000 in a single 24-hour period. That’s not “magically disappearing,” folks.

I said here earlier that the best barbecue I’ve ever tasted was from Fire House Barbecue here in Livingston Parish. Plus, they give generous portions. But when they defied the mask mandate a few months back, I vowed never to set foot in there again. And I won’t. If they don’t have the common decency to protect their customers, I refuse to be one.

It’s not about “freedom.” That’s one of the most pathetic arguments I’ve ever heard on any subject. Thank God, we didn’t have that attitude in this country during World War II when commodities were being rationed to support the war effort. Instead, we came together – at least our parents and grandparents did – for the good of the country.

Do you think those Covid patients on respirators would concur with your absurd argument that masks aren’t about saving lives?

Yes, as a matter of fact, masks are about saving lives, so get over your ego-driven defiance and do the right thing. Trust science, not some advocate of bleach drinking. The virus has not “disappeared,” and Dr. Anthony Fauci is a far more knowledgeable authority on this than President “Tweet Thang.”

Mask up!

The coronavirus will magically all of a sudden go away and disappear after Nov. 3.”

—Eric Trump, last May. [If you consider 100,000 new cases a day for the past week as ‘disappearing,’ well then, yes.]

Make America Rake Again.”

—Bumper stickers being marketed by the Four Seasons Landscaping Service, where Rudy held that hilarious press conference on Saturday. [Someone, we know not who, booked the place instead of the Four Seasons luxury hotel for the presser.]

Lawn and Order.”

—Four Seasons Landscaping Service T-shirts now being sold along with the aforementioned bumper stickers. [Seriously, could anyone have scripted a presser mistakenly held at a landscaping company’s parking lot next door to a porn store, across the street from a crematorium, on a road leading to a prison?]

The real hero today is whoever answered the phone at Four Seasons Landscaping and offered no clarification whatsoever until it was too late. I salute you, my fellow patriot.”

—Tweet by author Geraldine DeRuiter.