Louisiana Voice

If some of our Repugnican legislators were not as dumb as a can of hair, they might actually be funny with all their pontificating and posturing.

But the fact is, they’re not funny; they’re just being Trumpian stupid. *

The Repugnicans in the legislature called a special session that convened a week ago to consider restrictions on Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’s actions to contain the spread of the coronavirus that has killed 210,000 Americans.

It’s not enough that their president insists on walking around maskless, taking mini-motorcade trips around Walter Reed Hospital to wave at worshipful admirers with nothing better to do than gather outside the hospital in some kind of love-in vigil in support of a man who ignored every precaution until he, too, was diagnosed with the virus. He has to rub salt in the wounds of those who have lost loved ones to the virus by calling on Americans not to fear the coronavirus.

In case the Repugnican legislators have not noticed, but a map of the U.S. last week showed a majority of states where COVID-19 cases are on the increase. Among those were Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi. Smack in the middle of those states was one where cases were not on the rise: Louisiana.

But that ain’t good enough for the Repugnicans, dagnabbit. They want their freedom – freedom to go maskless into restaurants, LSU and Saints football games, festivals and, of course, Mardi Gras.

Again, in case they’ve forgotten, Louisiana was at one time the singular hot spot in America for the virus. That time was immediately after Mardi Gras, when visitors from all the nation converged on New Orleans and took the virus back to their homes.

Then came the shutdown. Theaters, stores, stadiums, gymnasiums, restaurants and schools were shut down, some for good. People worked and learned from home.

Except for places like Firehouse Bar-B-Que in Livingston Parish and Life Tabernacle Church in nearby Central, both within a few miles of my home, defied orders of closure or attendance restrictions. Other church ministers railed against the refusal of guvmint to allow the faithful to worship Gawd. Idiots like U.S Rep. Clay Higgins, who probably hasn’t set foot in a house of worship for years, maybe decades, took up the cross in the name of religious principle – and evangelical votes.

They want their freedom. I’m waiting for an insurrection by people who don’t want to wear seat belts because, well, it’s their freedom to feel unrestricted. And it’s just a matter of time before public flashers insist that they should not be required to wear pants. I mean, freedom of restriction is what it’s all about, right?

Our Repugnican legislators, supported by Koch Industries, Karl Rove, ALEC, LABI and Grover Norquist, have taken over control of this state beginning in 2008 when Bobby Jindal, working under the guiding hand of Timmy Teepell, turned state government over to the corporate interests.

Sacrificed at the altar of oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, nursing homes, private prisons, banks and payday lenders were public colleges, health care, public education, teachers, and women in particular – and the middle class in general. Massive corporate tax cuts were passed at the expense of the state budget which spiraled into deficit after deficit under Jindal as benefits were cut or eliminated outright – all at the direction of Norquist, who doesn’t even live in Louisiana.

So, with the state continuing to wallow at or near the bottom of every ranking of things good and at the top of all the bad rankings, the Repugnicans, led by the likes of House Speaker Clay Schexnayder (R-Gonzales) and Senate President Page Cortez (R-Lafayette) want to chip away at the one area at which the state has been successful under the leadership and direction of John Bel Edwards – bringing down the infection rate of COVID-19.

Sounding eerily like the idle boasts of Trump when he speaks of “many people” telling him this and that, Rep. Stephen Dwight (R-Lake Charles) sniffs, “There have been a lot of complaints that we don’t know what is coming down, what the plan is.”

Want to know what their plan is? Here it is, as explained by House Speaker Pro Tem Tanner Magee (R-Houma): “We are on step one of the process. It is wide open right now.”

Wow. Thanks for clearing that up. I certainly feel better now. That’s very much like Trump’s oft-repeated promise that his replacement plan for Obamacare would be revealed “in a couple of weeks.” He first made that promise soon after becoming president in January 2016. We’re still waiting.

Rep. BLAKE MIGUEZ (R-Erath) may have inadvertently provided some keen insight on accountability and transparency as defined Repugnicans when he said the bills being pushed to restrict the governor’s authority drew scant debate because they had already been discussed in private. “We have had a lot of discussions, a lot of meetings of Republicans (he can’t even spell the party’s name correctly) behind the scenes,” he said. “We showed a unified voice out here today that we are going to stick together.”

Well, of course you are. Otherwise, you might get a bad grade from LABI and a bad grade from LABI means fewer corporate campaign contributions, right?

But, hey. That’s government transparency – the gold standard of governmental ethics since January 2008, which just happened to coincide with the beginning of the Jindal era, which, to tell the truth, has never really gone away.

*(Trumpian stupid: unable to think for oneself, willingness, even eagerness, to take cues on behavior, philosophy and leadership from a narcissistic buffoon.)

For today’s lesson, class, we’re going to be studying how to turn a $4.3 million surplus into a deficit of almost $6.4 million in a mere six years.

Said another way, because in mathematics, you must be able to check your works by looking at the problem from a different angle, how do you lose more than $10 million of taxpayer money in a single term of office?

Perhaps we could borrow from the classic 1964 Peter Sellers-George C. Scott movie and simply call this class DA Duhé (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Deficit).

Or, Honey, I Shrunk the Surplus. Or maybe even The Incredible Shrinking General Fund.

When it comes to deficit accrual, 16^th JDC District Attorney Bofill Duhé is virtually unchallenged in Louisiana.

There are 42 judicial districts in Louisiana, some of which, like the 16^th JDC, encompass more than one parish. The 16^th JDC is comprised of Iberia, St. Martin and St. Mary parishes.

Only six other district attorneys showed budget deficits in their latest state audits. Five of those only did so in the most recent accountings, having finished in the black in previous audits. They are the 19^th JDC (East Baton Rouge Parish), the 1^st JDC (Caddo), the 26^th JDC (Bossier and Webster), the 37^th JDC (Caldwell), and the 7^th (Catahoula and Concordia).

Orleans was the only district besides the 16^th to show multi-year deficits but Orleans has historically experienced financial problems.

When Duhé took office in 2014, he inherited a budgetary surplus of $4.3 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2013. A year later that surplus had shrunk to $2.1 million. The next year that figure had decreased to less than $240,000 and in 2016, the office experienced its first deficit when it finished the year $906,529 in the red. It more than doubled to a bit north of $2 million in 2017 and by the end of 2018, the last year for which audit figures are available, the deficit had swollen to an eye-popping $6.4 million.

In football parlance, that’s a swing of more than $10 million in only four years, or an average loss of $2.5 million per year.

In May of this year, Duhé furloughed 38 percent of his staff, attributing the difficult times to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pandemic did not raise its ugly head until March of this year, so what is the reason for the deficit spending for all the previous years of his tenure?

Well, perhaps we should start by taking a peek into his educational and professional background.

Nope, that’s not it. He graduated in general business from UL-Lafayette in 1984 and began his working career as a special assets officer for two Lafayette banks until he decided to enroll in law school in 1989. He still sits on the board of directors of a local bank so, if anyone should know a thing or two about handling money and how to operate a budget, you’d think that someone would certainly be one Bo Duhé.

Duhé once said, “We, like other businesses in our community, must operate within our means.”

Perhaps if Duhé had not spent so much of his time pursuing cases that he should not have he could have saved a dollar or two. Several of his prosecutions look a lot more like persecutions, a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Let’s begin with his puzzling feud with District Judge Lori Landry. Duhé filed MOTIONS OF RECUSAL on more than 300 criminal cases docketed for Judge Landry’s court. That story, chronicled by The Daily Appeal reporter SARAH LUSTBADER, has more twists and turns than a barrel of chains – not to mention obvious conflicts of interests involving First Assistant DA ROBERT VINES.

Judge Landry, it should be noted, is opposing Duhé’s reelection in next month’s election.

And then there’s the story of DONALD BOUSSARD who paid dearly after he had the temerity to initiate a recall of former Sheriff Louis Ackal after 20-year-old Victor White III supposedly managed to (a) obtain a gun and (b) shoot himself in the chest while (c) he was seated in the back seat of a sheriff’s department patrol car (d) with his hands cuffed behind him.

Finally, there is that questionable indictment of Iberia Parish Clerk of Court MICHAEL THIBODEAUX on (count ‘em) 14 criminal counts of perjury, racketeering, malfeasance, theft of advance court costs, and filing false/altered public records.

The fact that the indictment came a full 20 months after the release of the October 2016 audit should raise eyebrows. And considering a blindfolded man could turn around three times and spit and most probably hit a legislative audit report at least as serious as this one which produced not even a slap on the wrist, and you really start wondering about the local political affiliations.

Thibodeaux’s cardinal sin: Ryan Huval was an employee of the clerk’s office and Thibodeaux terminated him. The official reasons are not known and Thibodeaux is prohibited from discussing it because of privacy issues.

But the reasons, whether justified or not, don’t matter. Ryan Huval is the son of Ricky Huval.

Ricky Huval is the parish assessor and he was not happy with his son’s firing. And Ricky Huval and District Attorney M. Bofill Duhé are tight.

But the question must be asked: where was the DA’s office when prisoners were being abused and killed while in custody of Sheriff Louis Ackal? Yes, Ackal was indicted, but it was a federal indictment. Duhé was nowhere to be found.

And if Thibodeaux can be indicted by Duhé for the alleged misapplication of $300,000, what does that say about the man who indicted him losing $10 million in four years?

Without having ventured into Iberia Parish, it certainly appears that Duhé is not above using his office to carry out political vendettas – even at the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars.

(And I say “without having ventured into Iberia Parish” for a reason. Given the obvious underhanded political hijinks that take place there and given all that I’ve written about Ackal and Duhé, there’s no way I’ll be taking a leisurely drive through the 16^th JDC anytime soon. I’m slow but I ain’t stupid.)

“This is a national crisis directly affecting the president and, unfortunately, we can’t trust what comes out of the White House.”

—Allan Lichtman, history professor at American University, on Trump’s credibility problems which he says are coming home to roost.

“You do not give a patient – much less the President of the United States – a drug that is not yet approved by the FDA (to say nothing of someone with ‘mild symptoms’). Unsurprisingly, the Trump White House is not being forthright to the American people about the health of their President,” 

—Zeke Emanuel, bioethicist and former health policy adviser for President Obama.

“The disclosure of the 72 hours from diagnosis leaves us with a significant time of lacking self-quarantine but instead travelling to Minnesota and New Jersey, along with many other gatherings, close contacts, that may well have further spread infections.”

—Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, questioning the news conference Saturday by physicians tending to Donald Trump which raised the possibility that Trump may have already known of his infection before holding campaign events in Minnesota and New Jersey – but held them anyway.

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic killed 5,500 people in Louisiana. As of today, LA’s death toll from COVID-19 is 5,355. At this rate, within the next four months, COVID-19 will have killed more people in LA than every hurricane combined since the Last Island Hurricane of 1856.

—Writer Lamar White, Jr.

NOT A TRUMP QUOTE, but it should be (with apologies to Cavin & Hobbes):

“That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!“

LouisianaVoice has learned that Louisiana Public Service Commission member Eric Skrmetta, in addition to his involvement in a Mississippi Gulf Coast casino operation, also entered into an agreement with the same company in an effort to gain approval of a casino in Harvey, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans in adjacent Jefferson Parish.

Skrmetta, of Metairie, represents PSC’s 1st District.

Neither the income he derived from his partnership with Boomtown Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, nor the agreement with Boomtown in the Jefferson Parish endeavor are mentioned in his FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE STATEMENT on file with the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

Documents filed with the SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC) indicate a letter of intent was signed on March 26, 1993 between Boomtown, The Skrmetta Group, Inc., and Skrmetta Machinery Corp.

Skrmetta Machinery Corp. was chartered in 1968 and remains in good standing, according to filings with the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office. 117 Eric Skrmetta is president of Skrmetta Machinery and is listed as an officer of The Skrmetta Group.

Skrmetta’s financial disclosure statement lists The Skrmetta Group as one of his holdings but does not mention Skrmetta Machinery. Nor does he include any income from either corporate holding or from Boomtown.

SEC filings also show that an agreement to lease real property in Harvey was signed between Boomtown and the two Skrmetta entities.

On Nov. 18, 1996, Boomtown entered into an agreement with Skrmetta. Under terms of that agreement, the company agreed to pay him $5.673 million in return for Skrmetta’s 7.5 percent interest in a partnership between Skrmetta and Boomtown. Boomtown was required to pay a down payment of $500,000 b Dec. 5 of that year and the remaining $5.173 million to be paid “not later than Aug. 10, 1997.”

An agreement between Skrmetta and Boomtown currently pays Skrmetta an average of $500,000 on the LEASE of the property on which its Biloxi casino is situated. That amount does not include his 5 percent cut of gaming revenue from casino operations. Neither of those income sources are included in his financial disclosure statement.

Today, the industry has been cleaned up considerably, with casinos now owned by Indian tribes or major hotel and leisure industry companies whose stocks are publicly traded and reviewed by the SEC.

Still, regarded as cash cows, casinos remain the target of those hoping to make a quick fortune.  Authorities found in the 1970s that a number of casinos in Nevada, namely Las Vegas, had been taken over by organized crime which took control of union pension funds to facilitate casino expansions. And later, Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., owned by Donald Trump, was fined $10 million after having been convicted of money laundering.

In Louisiana, there are no prohibitions to elected officials holding an interest in gaming enterprises.

“If he’s sick, then they planted it when they tested him. It’s what they did to me when I went to hospital for my heart beating too fast. Two weeks later I got a cold. It’s political. I don’t trust the US government at all. Who are they to mandate personal safety? I listen to Trump.”

—Trump supporter Sean Patterson, in St. Joseph, Missouri. [Well, that certainly rates a roll of the eyes and “OMG” uttered under one’s breath – while slowly backing away.]

“When I first heard, I did wonder if he made it up to get out of the next debate or win sympathy. Before it would have been impossible to think a president would make up getting ill but now anything seems possible. He probably didn’t but I’m not completely sure.”

—Trump supporter Amy Grant, in St. Joseph.

“[E]veryone who hitched themselves to the president’s dishonest messaging about the virus is being confronted with the reality that the president himself is sick.”

—Irwin Redlener, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

“This is a reminder that covid-19 is an ongoing threat to our country and can happen to anyone. Learning more about when President Trump and others with whom he had contact last tested negative and first tested positive will help understand this outbreak and limit the risk of further spread.”

—Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Obama administration.

“Wear the damn mask. “Follow the science. If I could say one thing to all of the people out there watching: Forget the politics. This is a public safety health issue.”

—Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who moderated last Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Joe Biden, while awaiting his own coronavirus test results.