Louisiana Voice

It just doesn’t get any better for Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal.

Already having paid out approximately $3 million in settlements and judgments, which equate to something north of $25,000 per month for every month of his 10-year tenure as the high sheriff, he may be on the hook for even more civil liability claims.

The myriad of legal problems, both civil and criminal, should be enough to raise eyebrows among the Iberia electorate, prod the local newspaper into some serious investigative reporting (or even straightforward news reporting), and cause Ackal’s insurance carriers to take a long, hard look at the risks with this department and perhaps cancel his coverage.

Without actually conducting a parish-by-parish analysis, it would seem a safe bet to say that the IPSO’s liability payouts far outstrip any parish of comparable size and perhaps those of many larger parishes.

Simply put, Iberia Parish can no longer afford Louis Ackal. He’s far too high-maintenance.

The highest-profile case, of course, is that of Victor White, III, the 20-year-old who died when deputies said he got hold of a gun and shot himself in the chest—all while in a sheriff’s department patrol car and with his hands cuffed behind his back.

The Louisiana Sheriffs’ Law Enforcement Program (LSLEP), in response to a public records request, reported that $508,079.23 was paid on behalf of member sheriffs by LSLEP and the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association’s insurance carrier providing excess coverage to LSLEP during the six-month period of Jan. 1, 2018 through June 30, 2018.

Of that $508,000 paid out in judgments and settlements, $122,500, or 24 percent, was paid to White’s family. That’s almost one-fourth of all judgments/settlements for the 26 parishes covered by LSLEP.

The latest award was for $41,000 to a New Iberia woman who said she was pushed over a porch rail, pepper-sprayed and stripped naked in 2012 when she was 34 weeks pregnant.

Ackal still has nine civil LAWSUITS pending against him at the present time.

Donald Trump once said he would appoint “only the best and most serious people, top-of-the-line professionals. If we don’t, we’ll be in trouble for a long period of time and maybe never come out of it.” (Watch the video HERE.)

So, he appointed people like:

• Scott Pruitt (EPA);
• Wilbur Ross (Commerce), who previously headed the BANK of CYPRUS which was notorious for laundering dirty Russian money;
• Ryan Zinke (Interior), who, along with Pruitt, treated their agencies like a personal piggy bank (the nice term for slush fund), and
• Betsy DeVos (Education) who famously said that some schools might want guns to fend off GRIZZLY BEARS and who appeared to have  PLAGIARIZED some of the answers to questions put to her in her confirmation hearings (hey, Betsy, ironically, they kick students out of college for that).

And I won’t even go into the list of those appointees and hangers-on who have been indicted, pleaded guilty or been convicted of various misdeeds.

And now? Well, now we have Matthew Whitaker as the latest in the Trump Hit Parade of “best and most serious, top-of-the-line professionals.”

Whitaker was named by Trump as ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL following the forced resignation of Keebler Elf Jeff Sessions. Trump (did I mention that he said he would hire only the “best and most serious, top-of-the-line professionals”?) says (FALSELY) he has never spoken to Whitaker and doesn’t know him personally but insists that he is a “very well-respected man in the law enforcement community.”

Maybe in law enforcement, but respected in the area of law compliance is still up in the air. Whitaker, Session’s former chief of staff, cannot be named permanent attorney general without Senate confirmation, Trump’s claim to the contrary notwithstanding. Of course, mixing a few half-truths in with a lot of outright lies hasn’t been a problem for Trump thus far, so why should his appointment of Whitaker be any different?

But like Pruitt, Ross, Zinke, and DeVos, Whitaker comes with a lot of baggage.

A former U.S. attorney in Iowa, Whitaker later sat on the board of World Patent Marketing and apparently takes after Trump in his fondness for bullying. He once sent a threatening email to a former World Patent Marketing customer who complained that he spent thousands of dollars with the Miami-based invention-marketing company but did not received promised benefits. In that email, Whitaker, in a monumental miscalculation, cited his prior experience as a former federal attorney and intimated that filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau could constitute “smearing” the company online and result in “serious civil and criminal consequences.”

The former WPM client was accused by Whitaker of “possible blackmail or extortion,” and threatened with “serious civil or criminal consequences.”

That complaint was just one of a many and must have contained some validity, along with others filed against the company. Last May, Scott Cooper, WPM CEO and founder who contributed $2,600 to Whitaker’s unsuccessful 2014 Senate campaign and another $10,000 as its board member, was popped with a $26 million judgment by the Federal Trade Commission and WPM was banned from doing any further work in invention promotion.

Whitaker picked on the wrong adversary back in August 2015. The complaining party just happened to himself be a former U.S. attorney and he was quick to call Whitaker’s bluff. Here is that exchange, beginning with the complainant’s response to Whitaker’s threat:

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

And here are some links to other stories about Whitaker and World Patent Marketing:

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/172-3010/world-patent-marketing

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/attorney-general-hot-tub-scam-machine.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/worldpatentmarketing.com

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-acting-attorney-general-was-part-of-firm-us-accused-of-vast-scam/ar-BBPsvmQ?li=BBnbcA1&srcref=rss

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/acting-attorney-general-matthew-whitaker-ties-company-federal/story?id=59067838

https://www.linkedin.com/company/world-patent-marketing/

The last link is significant. When you click on it, you only get part of the page. At the bottom, you will need to click on “See more” to get the full text. That’s important because of the videos Cooper touts in promoting his company. The last video listed is “Donald Trump – What World Patent Marketing’s Customers Can Learn: Lessons from the Man Who Built America.”

So, not only was Whitaker a shill for WPM but so, apparently, was Trump himself.

But then Trump is keenly skilled at promoting a scam.

TRUMP UNIVERSITY, you will recall, was also run out of Florida (and the double entendre was intentional; it was both operated out of Florida and subsequently shut down, or “run out” and a $25 million settlement approved by a federal judge between Trump and former students of the university.

• Florida Attorney General PAM BONDI “personally solicited a political contribution from Trump” about the same time she announced she was considering joining a probe of Trump U.
• Trump gave her a $25,000 check from a Trump family foundation (in violation of rules prohibiting charities from engaging in political activity).
• Shortly after receiving his check, Bondi’s office reversed course and opted not to pursue its plans to join the lawsuit that ultimately resulted in that $25 million settlement. Her reason: her office “lacked sufficient grounds to proceed.”

Oh, did I mention that Trump is considering as a permanent replacement for Sessions either former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or……Pam Bondi?

Here’s the LINK to that story. You’ll have to forgive me for being so crude as to post a link to a CNN story. I know it’s all fake news, but it’s the best I could do on short notice.

Apparently, there are readers of LouisianaVoice who believe:

• I’m a tree-hugging liberal deeply in love with Hillary Clinton (I’m not. I’m a former Republican who, like a week-old puppy, finally opened my eyes—except it took me a little longer than a week.)
• I should limit my observations to Louisiana news and not delve into national politics (I am both a citizen of Louisiana and the U.S. I will opine about national politics whenever it damn-well pleases me.)
• I shouldn’t express opinions because I’m a news blog (Not true. A blog can be about anything its owner wishes to write about. I make no claim to being objective or impartial. That is the freedom afforded me as a blogger as opposed to a regular reporter.)
• I shouldn’t “trash” President Frump because he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. (The only “trashing” I’ve done is to provide links to real stories that relate what he has done or said. Those pretty much speak for themselves.)

To all those disgruntled folks, here’s the deal I will offer you.

You read The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis. And I mean read it. Thoroughly. Cover to cover. And if there’s something you don’t understand, read it again. And again.

The book is only about 200 pages, so it shouldn’t be too big a task for you—even those of you who watch Fox News (or should I say Faux News?) for all your information.

The book isn’t about any Russian collusion.

The book isn’t about hordes of Central American rapists/Middle Eastern terrorists invading our border.

The book isn’t about Trump’s myriad conflicts of interests or his golfing vacations or even his tweet storms.

But it is about an ego-driven, self-aggrandizing (Yeah, I know that’s redundant) everything’s all about me court jester who is convinced he knows all the answers and who has systematically gone about proving that he is woefully ill-prepared to be POTUS. It’s about a man whose learning curve is as flat as three-day-old roadkill.

Read the book objectively and with an open mind for once. And then if you can still defend this buffoon, get back to me and we can talk.

Until then, I don’t need to hear your postulating (look it up) about how he is “the greatest president ever.”

Scott Pruitt, H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson, Tom Price, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Mike Flynn, Don McGhan, Gary Cohn, Hope Hicks—Just a few of at least 60 PEOPLE who have either quit or been fired from the Frump administration.

And now Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is in deep doo-doo over a proposed LAND DEAL backed by Halliburton chairman David Lesar.

And while the details of the deal are different, it still somehow resonates with the Harding administration’s TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL, another deal between an Interior secretary and an oil company of nearly a century ago.

With that in mind, LouisianaVoice is suggesting that Frump may wish to adopt this as the THEME SONG for what’s left of his train wreck of an administration.

He can thank me later.