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It’s small, virtually unknown; but Ruston’s Military Museum is loaded with military memorabilia and one grizzled veteran

February 17, 2019 by tomaswell

It’s not the World War II Museum in New Orleans.

It doesn’t have huge grants underwriting its operations.

It doesn’t have a famous movie star promoting it.

Machine gunner

And it’s not exactly overrun with visitors

But the War Museum in Ruston, while operating on a meager budget and with a single curator, is built on the very personal memories of every person who contributed a gun, a uniform, medals, or other memorabilia.

 

Contributors like Chaplain James White of Minden

Or Ruston’s Major General Hal McCown

Museum curator Ernest Stevens is owner of a sheet metal company he took over from his dad.

Ernest is a veteran of Vietnam and for decades I, along with a lot of other folks around Ruston thought that was him wading across a river on the cover of Life Magazine back when the war was going full bore. During a recent visit to Ruston, I dropped in on Ernest to take the tour. That photo came up in the conversation and Ernest assured me that the soldier in the photo was not him. So much for that local legend.

I’ve know Ernest for the better part of 55 years now and he, like me, is a bit heavier and a lot grayer but the handshake and warm welcome is just as fresh and enthusiastic as it was before he left for that awful war. He, like so many hundreds of thousands like him, was just a boy then.

What would a Vietnam veteran running a military museum do

without a couple of relics from ‘Nam?

Ernest (forget that, I’m calling him by the name I knew 55 years ago). Ernie said veterans who gathered for meetings of the VFW (where the museum is housed) began bringing souvenirs to meetings to show fellow members. “Before long, we just started an informal display and that grew to what we have today,” he said.

Daily warning for wartime workers during WWII

“Pretty soon, veterans of various wars were bringing in all sorts of items, from vintage radios, to wartime equipment, even uniforms worn by the enemy,” Stevens said.

Uniforms of the Axis Powers

Survivors of Bataan never forgot; some never forgave

 

A mighty U.S. naval fleet, nearly destroyed at Pearl,

rose to dominate the seas

 

Back home, there was the German P.O.W. camp between Grambling and Simsboro—later a hospital for tuberculosis patients and later still, the site of Ruston State School

 

Weapons and uniforms of War

 

Playing war games while listening for news

from the front on upright radio

If you’re in Ruston, drop by the museum on East Georgia next to the old swimming pool and say hello to Ernie. He’ll drop everything he’s doing and give you the tour. And when you do, don’t forget to sign the register and leave a donation. The ones who contributed these artifacts sacrificed much and when you thank them for their service, look them in the eye and say it like you mean it.

Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »

Donnie Trump, Jr. takes idiocy to new level with outrageous ‘socialist’ attack on school teachers at daddy’s El Paso rally

February 12, 2019 by tomaswell

Donald Trump, Jr., you pampered little daddy’s boy mealy-mouthed sonofabitch!

I could stop there and my description would be sufficient, but I won’t. The little twit committed what I consider to be an unpardonable sin when he described teachers as “losers” at his daddy’s rally in El Paso Monday.

I can take just about anything from the Trumps and even laugh at them but when they start calling teachers “losers,” that’s a trip-wire for me.

I had the same reaction a few years back when another little dips**t named Jindal had the audacity to tell members of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) that the only reason some teachers were still in the classroom “is by virtue of their ability to breathe.” You will note that he would never have had the guts to say such a thing before a teachers’ group—only some half-baked organization like LABI which drinks the Republican Kool-Aid while lobbying for billions of dollars in tax breaks for its corporate members.

That’s because Jindal, like Donald Trump, is a damned coward who will only go before one of his wacko LABI or MAGA crowds and say something so asinine. At the first sign of a hostile crowd, they’d run like the wimps they are. Now that’s the definition of a loser—I don’t care how rich and successful one is in monetary terms, that’s still a loser.

And before you Trump supporters start in with your comments about how wonderful our Buffoon-in-Chief is, don’t even bother. You can say what you want, but you’ll be wasting your breath because I’m not about to back down on this. It’s kind of the reverse of trying to get you to see through how idiot Trump is making you think he gives a crap about you.

It seems that Daddy Trump has latched onto another catch-phrase to ignite his brain-dead supporters: socialism. And that’s the word Donnie invoked Monday as he warned students against “loser teachers…trying to sell you on socialism from birth.”

What a crock. First of all, I love it when people throw around the word as if it were synonymous with the word communism. It’s not. Social Security is a form of socialism. So is Medicare. So are public highways, garbage pickup, municipal sewer and water lines, police and fire protection.

Hell, the very idea of health and life insurance—and auto and fire insurance—is a form of socialism: it’s the idea of shared risk. Everyone pays a little into the pool so that those among us who have losses or health issues can benefit.

Trump proclaims to love the military, even though he dodged the draft with a stone bruise on his heel—and couldn’t remember which heel it was when asked a few years later. But that aside, military housing, military clothing and mess halls represent applied socialism in the purest sense of the word.

And for those who equate socialism with welfare, the most successful corporate citizens in this country are the beneficiaries of what we affectionately refer to as corporate welfare that dwarfs all the benefits received by all the low-income citizens of this country combined. The tax breaks, incentives, write-offs, and exemptions received by our fine corporate citizens are the epitome of classic socialism.

For that matter, the biggest advocate of socialism in history was a fellow named Jesus Christ. His ministry taught us to care for one another, to heal the sick and comfort the poor. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these brethren, you did it for me.” (Matthew 25:40).

But back to Donnie’s NONSENSE. “You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth,” he told Monday’s rally in El Paso.

Indoctrinated? Give me a flipping break, you little moron.

I’m 75 and well past my school years but I still remember the wonderful teachers I had at Ruston High School like it was yesterday: Coach Perkins, Coach Garrett, his wife, Mary Alice Garrett, Charlotte Lewis, Maggie Hinton, Mrs. Edmunds, Earvin Ryland, Morgan Peoples, Ruth Johnson, Oscar Barnes, Denman Garner, Moose Phillips.

Then, later at Louisiana Tech: Dr. C.C. Chadbourne, Dr. Phil Cook, Dr. Winters (the hardest professor I ever had, but one helluva teacher) and Morgan Peoples (again, after he moved up to Tech).

These people had a profound influence on me, a poor student who was taken under their wings and nurtured until I came out with first a diploma and then a degree, the first in my immediate family to do so.

There was another who, though I was never in his class, taught me a lesson with only five little words.

Registering for my first semester at Tech, I was directed to the desk of Dr. Tony Sachs, head of Tech’s English Department to sign up for my English course (under Dr. Chadbourne). “What’re you doing here?” he asked.

“I was told to come over here, so this is where I’m at,” I replied.

Signing my registration card without ever looking up, he corrected me: “This is where I am.”

Lesson learned. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. I’ve never forgotten that brief exchange.

But the real lesson that Donnie (and Jindal) obviously are too dense to absorb is this:

  • Columbine High School, April 20, 1999: teacher Williams Sanders, 47, among those shot and killed.
  • Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14, 2012: teacher Anne Marie Murphy, 52, shot and killed while covering the bodies of children to protect them; Victoria Leigh Soto, 27, shot and killed when she stood between shooter and children; Rachel D’Avino, 29; principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, Lauren Rousseau, 30, and Mary Sherlach, 56, all shot and killed.
  • Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida, February 14, 2018: Scott Beigel, 35, shot dead while trying to get kids to safety inside his classroom; Aaron Feis, 37, shot dead when he threw himself in front of students to protect them, Chris Hixon, shot dead.

How’s that for being a loser, Donnie, you idiot child? Think you could ever muster the courage to be that brave? Ask Daddy, if he’s still nursing those stone bruises on his heel that kept him out of the military during Vietnam —if, that is, he can even remember which heel it was.

Here’s something to ponder: There are 3.2 million members of the National Education Association, and 1.7 million members of the American Federation of Teachers and another 1.7 million college teachers.

They all have family members—parents, siblings, children.

They vote.

Posted in Education | 9 Comments »

ALEC’s 2018 ‘National Legislator of the Year’ is from Slidell, Louisiana, a woman, and voted against equal pay for women

February 8, 2019 by tomaswell

In 2016, her first year as a member of the Louisiana Legislature, Sen. Sharon Hewitt (R-Slidell) successfully sponsored Senate Bill 466 which provided a procedure for the LSU Board of Supervisors and the Commissioner of Administration to seek approval from the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget and the legislature to proceed with the sale of a state hospital.

The bill, which may have stymied Bobby Jindal’s privatization blitz had it been in effect at the time he jettisoned state hospitals to private contractors, passed the House, 97-0 but met resistance in the Senate before passing by a 25-11 vote.

That same year, Hewitt sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 84 which, in a classic example of bureaucratic redundancy, requested the Division of Administration “to provide a report of all the reports required of the executive branch by statute and resolution.”

Inexplicably, in 2018, she voted against SB 117 by Sen. J.P. Morrell that would have required any state contractor to comply with the Louisiana Equal Pay for Women Act.

Typical of the backwater mentality of the Louisiana Republican Party and the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) that has kept this state from entering the 21st Century, the bill failed by an 18-20 vote.

The resistance to legislating equal pay for women parallels the Louisiana Legislature’s stubborn insistence on beating back repeated efforts to raise the minimum wage in Louisiana. Even Arkansas has recognized that a person simply cannot subsist on $7.50 an hour.

But now Louisiana. I wonder if it has ever occurred to our political leaders that the determination to keep wages low might just have a little to do with the state’s perpetual bottom ranking in everything but poverty, obesity, crime and football?

That vote probably contributed in large part to her selection as “National Legislator of the Year” by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization noted for its rigidly conservative political positions that favor the privileged over those who actually get the work done.

ALEC has long been in lockstep with the Republican Party that promotes tax breaks for the wealthy and valuable incentives and exemptions for corporations while placing the tax burden on the working class.

ALEC likes to describe itself as non-partisan but that description is about as far from the truth as possible. The organization has a long and sordid history of supporting big oil, big pharma, banking and insurance companies over the rights of injured workers, minorities, the environment, affordable prescription drugs and public education.

And it opposes equal pay for women.

Was I being overly harsh in describing LABI and the Republican Party of obstructing progress in Louisiana? Perhaps, but consider this: In Louisiana, the earnings gap between men and women just happens to be the largest in the nation.

Progressive? Hardly.

Women in this state make 69 cents for every dollar earned by men in the same job, according to the Association of American University Women (AAUW).

But Hewitt apparently navigates on a level that puts her out of touch with reality. She holds a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from LSU and put that degree to good use managing major deepwater assets in the Gulf of Mexico for Shell Oil.

Chances are she received comparable pay as male engineers at Shell and I can only say good for her. She earned it.

But she seems to forget that not everyone can be so fortunate. Perhaps it never occurred to her as her career advanced that other women deserve equal pay for equal work as well.

There can be no rationalization for not recognizing that fact.

It reminds me of an old television commercial by Eddie Chiles who said, “If you don’t have an oil well, get one.” Which is just a cute way of saying, “I got mine; it’s too bad if you didn’t get yours.”

Just a touch of arrogance there. Personally, I’d rather own the Boston Red Sox or the New York Times. But you see, lofty aspirations like that are simply out of reach for the unwashed masses.

Equal pay should not be.

ALEC, which bestowed its “National Legislator of the Year” honors upon Hewitt, has among its membership corporations hit hardest with penalties for employment discrimination. ALEC member CSX Transportation was recently fined $3.2 million for employing unfair and unnecessary tests designed to steer women into lower-paying occupation. In 2005, ALEC member Federal Express was fined $3.4 million fir discrimination against a woman.

But be proud, Louisiana. A woman legislator just got a national award from ALEC.

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Privatization | 8 Comments »

An era is ending: a mentor and a dear friend is writing ‘-30-‘ to a distinguished journalism career covering 7-plus decades

January 31, 2019 by tomaswell

It was back in 1966 that a young telephone installer-repairman realized that climbing telephone poles was not his cup of tea. The hot summers and cold winters perched atop some utility pole in rural Union Parish attempting to resolve repeated outages in the Truxno community held no real appeal for him.

That, coupled with the fact that he was a terrible telephone technician and more than a little put off by real work, prompted him to start looking elsewhere for gainful employment.

It was about that same time that The Ruston Daily Leader was looking for an advertising sales rep. So, with zero experience, the 23-year-old man walked into Publisher Tom Kelly’s office and applied for the position. Kelly, at the time only 36 himself, gave him the job at a whopping $65 per week—a $5 cut from what he was making with what was then Southern Bell.

It didn’t take Kelly long to realize he’d made a grave mistake. It turned out the kid couldn’t sell mittens to an Eskimo. But he had been dabbling with writing a sports column on the side and Kelly spotted something, some quality still unknown to this day, and as a consolation prize, offered him the job of sports editor.

And that’s how my journalism career was launched. A few months later, while I was sitting at my desk, I got a call from then-Louisiana Tech assistant football coach George Doherty. “You want to take a ride with me tonight?” he asked.

“Where’re we going?”

“We’re going to Shreveport to sign a future NFL number-one draft choice.”

And that’s how I came to be sitting in the living room of one Bill Bradshaw when his son Terry signed his grant-in-aid scholarship with Louisiana Tech. I ran a photo of Terry signing his scholarship, beating The Shreveport Times in its own back yard. I wish I still had that photo. He had hair then.

And, of course Doherty was correct. Terry was the first player selected in the 1970 NFL draft and went on to win four Super Bowls as the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback.

Earlier, in 1968, I left The Daily Leader for a job as news reporter for the Monroe Morning World where I worked for an outstanding editor, the late Jimmy Hatten. It was the same year I married my wonderful and beautiful wife Betty and sitting in the church during the ceremony was Tom Kelly. Hard to believe it’s been half-a-century.

Kelly would soon bring me back as city editor of The Daily Leader and while there, I wrote a short booklet about outlaws Bonnie and Clyde to coincide with the showing of the movie of the same name starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. It was also during that time that I made the decision to go back to school. I’d flunked out of Tech in 1962. Seems the importance of going to class didn’t really register with me then. But Tom Kelly taught me something that they didn’t teach in Tech’s journalism curriculum and that is, to paraphrase former House Speaker Tim O’Neill, all journalism is local. Tom drilled into my head that there are three critical times in a person’s life that must never be ignored: his birth, his marriage, and his death.

While pursuing a degree in journalism, was recruited by The Shreveport Times to run the north Louisiana bureau for The Times and Morning World in Ruston. Both papers were owned by the Ewing family and were good, solid publications, not the sorry excuses for newspapers they have become under the mismanagement of Gannett. (The Morning World has since consolidated with its afternoon sister publication and taken on its name, The News-Star.)

From there, my journalistic odyssey took me to Baton Rouge to work under the tutelage of Jim Hughes at the State-Times, the now-defunct sister publication of the Morning Advocate.

But Tom Kelly wasn’t quite finished with me yet. In 1976, he brought me back home to work as Managing Editor. I’d barely been there a week when there was an awful pipeline explosion in the Jackson Parish community of Cartwright that killed a retired couple and a mother and three of her children. As I walked up to the crater created by the blast, I could see a group of first responders about 200 yards away frantically waving and shouting to me. The heat from the ground around the massive hole in the ground began melting the rubber soles of my shoes, so I moved away quickly and started walking toward the group of men to learn what they were trying to tell me. And their message was there was another 30-inch gas line right next to the one that exploded. My knees immediately turned to something akin to Jell-O.

For New Year’s Day 1977, Tom Kelly sent out special invitations to the inaugural All-American Redneck Male Chauvinist Spittin’, Belchin’, and Cussin’ Society and Literary Club’s All-Day Poker Game and Dinner on the Grounds.

There were few rules but some of the most important ones:

  • Lots of music by Willie, Waylon, and Hank Williams;
  • No guns, knives, or other sharp objects allowed at the poker table;
  • The only hand to beat a Royal Flush was a real good redneck bluff;
  • Wimmenfolk was invited to do the cookin’ and bridge playin’, but they was forbidden to come into the poker room, sigh heavy, roll they eyes or say it was time to go.

At the time, The Daily Leader had an editorial writer, Rudolph Fiehler, PhD, a retired Louisiana Tech English professor.

Doc Fiehler knew nothing about poker, so he remained in the dining room playing bridge with the wimmenfolk. At one point, he got up and wandered into the poker parlor and stood watching us gambling away our life savings in nickel-ante poker.

Tom Kelly, spotting Doc, got up and offered him a seat at the poker table. Doc initially refused, saying he knew nothing about the game.

“We’ll tell you,” the five of us volunteered at once, smelling fresh blood for our game.

Doc did finally consent to sit in for a few hands. He was so foreign to the rules that we had to tell him when he had won.

And we had to tell him that far too often. Before the session was over, he possessed every nickel, dime and quarter at the table. We were busted he was $17.85 richer. One player threatened to ambush him on his way home. I still hold fast to the conviction that we were sandbagged.

As it is with life, we all moved on. I moved back to the Baton Rouge area, settling in nearby Denham Springs and Tom Kelly ended up back in Winn Parish where he had begun. A native of Gaar’s Mill, his first job was with the Winn Parish Enterprise. It was only natural that the yellow dog Democrat (a phrase coined by Harry Truman’s mother, who said she’d vote for a yellow dog before she’d vote Republican) would return to his roots. He founded The Piney Woods Journal in 1997. The monthly publication was geared to, but certainly not restricted to, Louisiana’s timber industry.

Earlier this week, I received an email that Tom sent to his correspondents:

This is to notify you officially that The Piney Woods Journal will cease operations under my ownership with the edition of May, 2019, completing 22 years of continuous publication. As of now, there are no buyer operators waiting in the wings to take over, and unless one steps up in the meantime, we will be closed.

This decision has not been made lightly. The Journal has become a part of the landscape in the region, largely because of your commitment to writing on subject matter that is of particular interest to a readership that has grown and remained loyal from the beginning. However, after several false starts, there appears to be no ready buyer waiting outside our door, and I am not able to do the things that I once did to contribute to the news/editorial/advertising mix that has made The Journal a unique media presence in what many continue to say is a dying industry. I would make a point that if it is dying, it is due to many self-inflicted faults (think Gannett, etc.) by a generation that believes that nothing is real except Google and Facebook.

This month, if I live to see it, I will be 88 years old. I have continuing health issues that prevent me from doing things I used to do on behalf of the paper, and which others are not in a position to do, for various reasons. My wife Miriam is entirely home bound with her own ailments. We have been at this together for thirty-five years. We live with pills and potions by the hour, and spend our most creative energies seeing after ourselves and, of course, our current “family” of growing puppies and their mama.

As the saying goes, it’s been real. And now our participation will end; unless there is a knock on the door down at 104 North Third, the Piney Woods Journal’s residence, with someone bringing a check to purchase our operation, we’ll see y’all in the funny papers.

 Good luck, good writing, and good life to all of you.

Needless to say, the announcement was like a punch in the gut. It caught me by surprise and produced an instant wave of nostalgia. The two of us had been through too many battles together and too many battles with each other for his message to be dismissed lightly.

I immediately fired off this message to Tom:

Tom, this truly saddens me on so many levels. Obviously, I share your sentiments about the death throes of news publications and I, too, place much of the blame on the Gannet and Facebook mentality. It’s an industry that I literally grew up in—as a man and as a journalist. But more than that, you and I have a connection that goes back more than 50 years and nothing can ever replace that. You took me under your wing and taught me about journalism. How you managed to have enough patience to do that I will never know, but know this: I will be forever grateful for that education and your tutorship and guidance. You are one of only a handful of people whom I admire and look up to and you will always be an inspiration and a source of encouragement to me. At the risk of sounding too maudlin, your announcement makes me feel as though I’ve lost something very personal—and I have.

Take care, my friend.

az

This was his response:

My greatest pride in the personal achievements in this profession that we follow are not in the words I write, but in the people I have been fortunate enough to bring in and help to grow as practitioners of our craft. Bill Davis. Eric Mahaffey. Nick Drewry. Jerry Pye. Derwood Brett. Buddy Davis. David Widener. David Specht. Several whose names have slipped my mind. And a brash, talented, industrious achiever of the writing arts named Tom Aswell. We called him Az. If I have left anything behind, it is in the talents of those who carry on even now. They all made me look better that I could have been alone.  Several of a new generation joined up as contributors for this latest enterprise, which has provided me a new level of satisfaction. 

Keep the faith. 

TK 

What you leave behind, Tom, is a legacy that no journalism class could ever hope to teach. You taught integrity, dedication, and a love for the written word to dozens of fortunate reporters, editors and interns who had the good fortune to walk through the door of the Ruston Daily Leader. I was one of those and I will be forever richer for the experience.

Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »

Former sheriff and current legislator comes to rescue of four former meth felons caught with weapons in Catahoula Parish

January 27, 2019 by tomaswell

Just the good ol’ boys
Never meanin’ no harm
Beats all you never saw
Been in trouble with the law
Since the day they was born

                                  —Theme from The Dukes of Hazzard by Waylon Jennings

The recent actions of State Rep. STEVE PYLANT (R-Winnsboro) most probably were not the intended consequences of the CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORMS passed by the Louisiana Legislature in 2017.

Pylant represents House District 20 which includes all or parts of the parishes of Caldwell, Catahoula, LaSalle, Tensas and Franklin.

In 2013, Pylant was one of only two members to vote against a bill to give special consideration to veterans of the armed forces who are arrested or convicted of a crime: “I support veterans 110 percent,” he sniffed at the time, “but when someone violates the law, we should be fair and impartial, no matter who they are. Everyone has problems … I don’t think it’s fair to be more lenient on some than others because of their military background.”

He currently serves a vice chair of the House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice and in 2015, he voted against reducing the penalties for the possession of marijuana.

The following year—and again in 2017—he voted against Senate Bill 180 (Act 343) which provided exemptions from prosecution for anyone lawfully possessing medical marijuana.

In 2017, he voted in favor of Senate Bill 70 (Act 108) that make misbranding or adulteration of drugs under certain circumstances a felony.

He also supported drug testing of welfare recipients and the right of concealed carry in restaurants that sell alcoholic beverages;

That seems about right for the man who, before entered the Louisiana Legislature in 2012, served for 16 years (1996-2012) as the high sheriff of Franklin Parish.

So, with all those law and order credentials, how did it come to be that Rep. (formerly Sheriff) Pylant would come galloping in on his white horse to secure a property bond of $90,000 to spring four convicted felons from jail in Catahoula Parish in December 2018?

Perhaps they weren’t members of the military, thus earning them greater consideration for leniency.

Or perhaps one of those arrested is the brother of a member of the Franklin Parish Sheriff’s Office and the judge, a tad more adherent to the law than those seeking to exert political influence, noted that he could not grant bail to one and not the others.

All or none, in other words, so Rep. Pylant obligingly ponied up the $90,000 property bond for all four defendants, each of whom had prior drug convictions as well as other assorted convictions spread among them.

The four were said to have been hunting on private property in Tensas Parish and were originally booked on promises to appear in Catahoula court on bonds of $5,000 each as set by Judge John Reeves. But Seventh Judicial District Attorney Brad Burget said when he reviewed the clerk’s file that showed the four were all convicted felons, he determined that “an appropriate bond” had not been set.

Booked on Dec. 8 were Jamie Dewayne Roberts, 45, Michael S. Linder, 49, and Trampas Barton, 43, all of Wisner, and Steve Drane, 50, of Gilbert.

Roberts, at the time of the arrests, was armed with a CVA Elite Stalker 35 Whelen rifle and in addition, had a concealed .22 magnum North American Arms revolver in his front pocket. Barton had a Model 7400 Remington 30.06 rifle. Linder had in his possession of CVA Elite Stalker 35 Whelen rifle, and Drane had a Browning A bold 325 WSM rifle.

Convicted felons are prohibited by law from possessing firearms.

Catahoula Parish Sheriff Toney Edwards said that after the four were booked, he received a call from Bryan Linder who asked that his brother, Michael Linder, be released on a PTA—promise to appear in court.

Bryan Linder works for the Franklin Parish Sheriff’s Office, the office once headed by Rep. Pylant, so it’s pretty easy to connect the dots on how things went down from that point.

But, for the moment, let us examine those felony conviction records of the four.

  • Jamie Dewayne Roberts: possession of methamphetamine in 2010; theft of anhydrous ammonia (used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, or meth) in 2016, an indication he didn’t learn much from his first conviction.
  • Trampas Barton: Distribution of methamphetamine in 2016, five additional convictions for burglaries and two more for drugs.
  • Michael S. Linder: Manufacture of methamphetamines.
  • Steve Drane: Manufacturing meth and on parole until 2021.

At least they weren’t involved in the possession or distribution of marijuana. That’s something Pylant, as your basic law and order representative, just couldn’t abide.

So thank your lucky stars you’ve got protection
Walk the line and never mind the cost
And don’t wonder who them lawmen was protecting
When they nailed the savior to the cross

                            —The Law is for Protection of the People, Kris Kristofferson

 

 

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Judges, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians | 8 Comments »

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