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Jeff Landry as U.S. AG? Don’t make me laugh (or cry)

November 13, 2018 by tomaswell

In the annals of pure comedic performances, few could rival the record of Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

But now it appears he is making a valiant attempt to surpass his own record of slapstick routines.

According to Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Elizabeth Crisp, who has a solid record for accuracy and spot-on political analysis, Landry may have pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of actually making it onto the short list to succeed U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions who resigned under intense pressure from Donald Trump last Friday. You can see her story  HERE.

Of course, if Landry were to actually be nominated it would (a) be in total keeping with the unbroken line of absurd appointments and nominations by Trump and (b) turn the practical joke heretofore limited to the borders of the gret stet of Looziana onto the rest of the nation.

And we thought the Keebler Elf had some screwy legal interpretations. Landry, should he be nominated against all odds and be confirmed against even greater odds, would give new meaning to the term court jester.

He’s probably the only lawyer alive who could be out-maneuvered in court by Jethro Bodine.

This is the same Jeff Landry who, while in private practice prior to his election as Louisiana’s top legal scholar (insert laugh track here), was ridiculed in open court by a state judge for his sloppy legal work in improperly filing a lien on behalf of one of his only existing clients with the presiding judge admonishing the client to “Pick your lawyer carefully.”

But as Crisp pointed out, he is also the same Jeff Landry who has been invited to the Trump White House on several occasions, the same Jeff Landry who has a close relationship with former U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, now Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the same Jeff Landry whose annual alligator hunt fundraiser was attended by First Son Donnie Junior (I’d love to have had a photo of Donnie in hip waders).

And with this president, who knows? Landry is just qualified enough as a Trump bootlicker and unqualified enough as an attorney to pull it off.

And that would be a cruel joke indeed.

Posted in Attorney General, Courts | 5 Comments »

New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport lead nation in city murder rates; Louisiana leads nation in state murder rate

November 13, 2018 by tomaswell

We’re number one.

For 28 straight years.

Nick Saban can’t make that claim about Alabama.

Even more alarming: for an incredible 28 straight years, Louisiana leads the country in STATEWIDE murder rates.

Twenty. Eight. Straight. Years.

Thanks in large part to the state’s three largest cities: New Orleans, Baton Rouge and SHREVEPORT.

Because of the somewhat dated data, this might seem to be a non-story.

On the other hand, unless the trend has reversed itself dramatically, the findings remain dishearteningly and disturbingly relevant.

And so far, there seems to be no indication of any such reversal.

For the years 2015-2016, New Orleans had the highest per capita firearm homicide rate in the nation—four times the national rate and twice those of Chicago and Detroit, the so-called murder capitals of America.

Figures published by 24/7 Wall St., an independent research company that publishes some 30 reports daily, shows that New Orleans had 404 firearm homicides, a rate of 16.6 per 100,000 population. The national rate was 4.4 per 100,000 while Detroit and Chicago had firearm homicide rates of 8.2 and 8.1 per 100,000 population, respectively.

You can see the entire report HERE.

Even more disturbing, however, and not addressed by 24/7 Wall St. because of its smaller size, were the figures for BATON ROUGE, which had 62 firearm homicides in 2016, a rate of 32 per 100,000. But in 2017, that figure skyrocketed to 106 firearm killings for a rate of 46 per 100,000 population.

And already in 2018, there have been 73 firearm-related homicides in Baton Rouge and authorities seem powerless to stem the tide of firearm violence.

There are periodic Take Back the Neighborhood and Take Back the Night rallies and elected officials and law enforcement personnel make their token appearances, but those displays do little to bring peace to the neighborhoods jarred by what must seem like nightly outbursts of violence.

Rallies, political posturing and lip service just doesn’t seem to be cutting it.

They work about as well as the canned condolences uttered by all those elected officials who take time out of their busy campaign fund-raising schedules to offer TAPs (thoughts and prayers).

Posted in Crime | Leave a Comment »

Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office drowning in a sea of civil and criminal court cases; payouts now exceed 3 million dollars

November 12, 2018 by tomaswell

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.

 

Posted in Politics | 4 Comments »

Whitaker is just the latest in long line of Trump’s promise of ‘only the best and most serious…top-of-the-line” appointees

November 9, 2018 by tomaswell

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.

 

Posted in Politics | 18 Comments »

Appeal Court candidate admits paying convicted felon to get out the vote for his re-election campaign, then walks it back

November 5, 2018 by tomaswell

So, just why did Second Circuit Court of Appeal candidate Judge James “Jimbo” Stephens of Baskin pay a convicted drug dealer to help him get out the vote for his re-election campaign when all across the country there are full-fledged efforts to prevent volunteers from transporting voters to the polls?

Apparently, the answer depends upon whose ox is being gored. Put another way, perhaps there’s a double standard being applied as conditions dictate.

The FRANKLIN SUN recently ran an article in which it cited state campaign finance records as showing that Stephens’ re-election campaign shelled out $500 to Tyrone “K9” Dickens’ company, K-9 Outreach, last May.

Stephens, in an interview with THE OUACHITA CITIZEN, a sister publication to the Winnsboro newspaper, said his campaign paid Dickens to help get out the vote but later tried to walk back that statement. Under further prodding, Stephens admitted his campaign paid Dickens for a “sponsorship” that involved the use of his (Stephens) campaign materials.

Dickens, who vehemently denied that he was paid to help Stephens, has a long STRING OF ARRESTS dating back to 1986 on multiple drug charges, including distribution of cocaine, distribution of methamphetamine, indecent behavior with a juvenile, two charges of forcible rape (both dismissed), domestic abuse battery, and violation of a protective order.

Dickens’ former wife told authorities that a protective order was useless because her former husband often boasted of his political connections with police, judges, and Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo

“Judge Stephens never paid me, never, to help him with no campaign or to help get no vote,” Dickens told The Citizen. “I don’t know where that lie came from.”

Tyrone Dickens: “Wen (sic) God on your side don’t tell me you can’t change. It was a (sic) honor to be ask (sic) by governor John Bell (sic) Edward (sic) to help with his campaign again. A (sic) honor to stand beside attorney & State Representative Katrina Jackson, Judge Milton Moore, & Kevin Horn, people who I look up to they never forget where they came from. An’t (sic) God good. Its (sic) change going to come.”

“We were told that he (Dickens” was reformed and a community leader,” Stephens said. “I do not know his personal background. I hope Mr. Dickens will support us.”

In something of a surprise, Dickens told The Citizen that he was going through the legal process of getting his criminal record expunged.

A north Louisiana source told LouisianaVoice that State Rep. Katrina Jackson and 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Milton Moore (see photo above) are working behind the scenes to get Dickens a “gold seal” pardon from Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Dickens: “It feels good to be able to stand with State Representative Katrina Jackson (center) & Supreme Court Judge Marcus Clark (right)in the House of Representative (sic) Chambers. Both of which I had the privilege of campaigning for, and ultimately led to them being elected!”

In addition to the local district attorney’s office’s dismissing charges against Dickens, former 4th Judicial District Assistant DA Madeleine Slaughter paid Dickens $900 from her campaign to distributed push cards at the parish fair when she ran unsuccessfully for Ouachita Parish clerk of court. Slaughter is currently employed as an assistant attorney general under AG Jeff Landry.

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Courts, Elections, Ethics, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians | 1 Comment »

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