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The Young Americans, and a few dozen local schoolchildren, put on incredible show; they could be coming to your school

January 21, 2015 by tomaswell

On Sunday, there were simultaneous invasions in the Livingston Parish community of Watson (it’s not officially a town yet but local leaders are working to put a referendum on the ballot).

Forty-four young people, led by a native of nearby Bogalusa, poured into several homes in Watson, recruiting elementary, middle and high school students to their cause, pulling local children into a grueling training regimen for a two-hour standing-room only performance be an audience of appreciative residents.

It was the fourth time in recent years that The Young Americans, a troupe of young people, white, black, brown and yellow, from across the U.S., Europe and Asia performed as a fund-raising project of the South Live Oak Elementary School. Following their performance, they presented the school with a check for more than $1,000. It was the fourth time that I have attended the show and the fourth time that I have been impressed at the abundance of talent possessed by YA members, all of whom range between 18 and 22 years of age.

It was also the fourth performance in which one or more of my grandchildren have participated. This year, there were four of my descendants among the scores of local children recruited to perform alongside the 44 Young Americans in a series of song and dance routines that was nothing short of spectacular.

Founded more than a half-century ago, The Young Americans is a charitable organization dedicated to the promotion of the arts. With schools around the country cutting back on arts funding because of fiscal problems, The Young Americans College of the Performing Arts has turned out some impressive alumni who have moved on to film, television, movie and musical careers.

Among those alumni are Nia Peeples of Fame and Walker, Texas Ranger; Mary Bond Davis of Hairspray; Steve Issacs of The Who’s Tommy, Jim May, orchestra conductor for The Lion King, and Mark Walberg, among scores of others.

Another alumnus was Bruce Sampson, a native of Bogalusa and the associate director of the previous three local performances before moving into the audience this year, giving way to his successor.

Sampson has been involved in entertainment most of his life, accepted at age 15 to the American Musical Theater program and The Young Americans. He signed his first recording contract at 17 and embarked immediately on a summer concert tour, opening for such acts as Maynard Ferguson and Kool and the Gang. All three of his daughters have come through the Young Americans.

But the real story here is how 44 kids from such a wide range of backgrounds come together to take their audience on a high energy tour of music from around the world and, for the old-timers, a dish of The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Contours, and other pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll. Of course they lost the older members of the audience but won the hearts of the kids with the One Direction, New Kids on the Block and a couple of other groups I can’t possibly identify.

The only thing conspicuously absent, at least from my point of view, was Brenda Lee and Roy Orbison.

But for two hours, they, along with all the local school kids who made their show business debuts, made us forget politics, crime, the economy and all the other problems we face on a daily basis.

Over the years, they have created specialty shows for corporate anniversary celebrations, sales awards ceremonies, foundation fundraising events, trade shows and, of course schools where they involve dozens of local kids in their baptism to show business.

The next stop will be in Marksville. If you get the chance to catch them in a performance, don’t pass up the opportunity. You could even approach your children’s principal about bringing them to your school.

For those interesting in either booking or auditioning to join The Young Americans should go to this link:

http://www.youngamericans.org/index.php/booking-the-young-americans/

Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »

A recent addition by our anonymous cartoonist (obviously a state employee not wanting to be teagued before retirement)

January 20, 2015 by tomaswell

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

Those who think of Gov. Jindal as delusional, dysfunctional, arrogant, vindictive can now tack ‘fool’ onto the list of labels

January 19, 2015 by tomaswell

In the four years of our existence, LouisianaVoice has poked fun at, criticized, questioned and challenged Gov. Bobby Jindal on a number of issues and finally, it has come down to the harsh reality that forces us to say what we have refrained, out of respect for the office, from saying thus far:

Bobby Jindal is a fool.

Of course we’re going to get some push back for making such a disrespectful comment about the man elected—twice—to be the chief executive officer for the State of Louisiana. Yes, we’ve called him silly and an embarrassment in the past, but his performance in London goes far beyond embarrassing.

His little tantrum at the National Governors’ Conference luncheon a year ago was an embarrassment to Louisiana; his performance in London yesterday evoked memories of Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy’s claim in Wheeling, West Virginia on Feb. 9, 1950, that he had a list with the names of more than 200 “known communists” employed by the State Department. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mccarthy-says-communists-are-in-state-department

Jindal seems hell-bent on out-cruzing Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz with his outlandish claim in his speech to the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), named ironically enough, for the late U.S. Sen. Henry Jackson, a Washington Democrat.

A little background on the Henry Jackson Society is in order here.

Created in 2005, HJS purported to offer a forum for those who believed that any form of totalitarianism required a hardline response—either diplomatic or military.

The HJS Associate Director is a man named Douglas Murray, who also is a columnist for The Spectator and Standpoint. The Spectator, a conservative magazine is Britain’s oldest continuous publication, dating back to 1828 and owned by David and Frederick Barclay. The lesser-known Standpoint was founded in 2008.

Much like their Republican counterparts in the colonies, the Barclay brothers, who also own the London Telegraph, have been accused of avoiding taxes by placing their assets under the ownership of offshore companies and controlled through trusts.

But back to HJS Director Murray, who in March of 2013 wrote an article in Standpoint in which he lamented the fact that “white Britons” were in the minority in 23 of London’s 33 boroughs (this is starting to sound eerily familiar). http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/4868/ful

Concern over the growing divisiveness of the strident organization was such that two months later, the Guardian editorialized that Britain’s Labour Party should cut ties with HJS. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/20/labour-cut-ties-henry-jackson-society

Fast forward to January of 2015 and Louisiana’s governor, who has problems back home sufficient to keep him in Baton Rouge, i.e. a budget deficit that grows daily, deep cuts pending for health care and higher education, controversy over the proposed open burning of 15 tons of munitions in Minden, crumbling state infrastructure, looming $180 million bill from Medicaid/Medicare over his hospital privatization deal, and a fast-approaching legislative session at which hard decisions will have to be made. Instead, he chooses to traipse off to London to give an inflammatory speech chock full of inaccuracies and misconceptions.

Ostensibly on a state-sponsored economic development trip (meaning taxpayers pick up the tab for his travel, lodging and meals as well as his support staff and state police security detail), he nevertheless manages to squeeze in an address meant to appeal to his rabid right wing supporters back home as he continues his quest to at least show up in David Letterman’s Top Ten List of Why Bobby Jindal Never Shows Up in the Top Ten List of GOP Presidential Hopefuls. The sad truth (for Jindal, that is) is that he doesn’t even rate a mention in any such Letterman list.

So, what, exactly, did he say that registered an 11.2 on the 10-point Richter scale of Political Absurdities?

Only that there were areas in Europe where non-Muslims are not allowed and radical Islamic law is allowed to override local law. He calls them “no-go zones.”

But when he said, “Non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home,” Jindal got it all wrong. When he added, “It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so- called ‘no-go zone,” he got it all wrong.

“I’ve heard from folks here that there are neighborhoods where women don’t feel comfortable going in without veils. That’s wrong. We all know that there are neighborhoods where police are less likely to go into,” Jindal told CNN. “I think that the radical left absolutely wants to pretend like this problem is not here. Pretending it’s not here won’t make it go away.”

http://blogs.theadvocate.com/politicsblog/2015/01/19/bobby-jindal-sticks-no-go-zone-talking-point-london-speech/

He got that all wrong, too.

That’s all wrong as in Joe McCarthy’s outrageous—and unsubstantiated—claims that ultimately hastened his political demise.

When challenged by CNN, Jindal was undaunted: “I think your viewers know absolutely there are places where the police are less likely to go. They absolutely know there are neighborhoods where they wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

When asked by CNN if that was because of crime and not because of a concentration of Muslims, our governor said, “This isn’t a question.” He stuck to his guns, saying the left “wants to make this into an attack on religion and that’s not what this is. It’s absolutely an issue for the UK, absolutely is an issue for America and other European and Western nations.”

He “absolutely” repeated his “no-go zone” claims, throwing in a few more absolutelies in the process, later in the day during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEjlHY2caIs#t=48

Jindal even managed to evoke the “American exceptionalism” claim in the Blitzer interview—while standing on a busy street corner….in London, no less. The only thing absolutely missing was a court jester’s hat for Jindal to wear for the CNN interview.

The problem is he got his information from Faux News which later issued corrections that there was “no credible information” that such “no-go zones” exist in France or Europe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/01/18/fox-news-corrects-apologizes-for-no-go-zone-remarks/

Lest one think his London speech was not “political,” Jindal even managed to slip in attacks on Hillary Clinton, apparently on the supposition that she will be his Democratic opponent in next year’s presidential election (insert chuckles, chortles and guffaws here).

The Democratic National Committee (DNC), fully cognizant of his budget problems back home in Louisiana, was quick to criticize Jindal, saying he was “just embarrassing himself now” and that he is “very interested” in being president but not so much in governing.

But we disagree with the DNC; he long ago transcended embarrassment. He embarrassed himself many years ago when he insisted on dropping his Indian first name (Piyush which, by the way is still his legal name, calling into question the legality of all documents signed as “Bobby”) in favor of adopting the name of a character on The Brady Bunch sitcom. (We still say it was his good luck that he wasn’t a fan of The Beverly Hillbillies: We just don’t believe Jethro Jindal would’ve caught on.)

He embarrassed himself when he wrote an essay for the New Oxford Review entitled “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare” about his supposed exorcism of a female classmate at Brown University.

He embarrassed himself when he gave that awful response to President Obama’s State of the Union address in 2009.

He embarrassed himself when he insisted against all expert engineering advice to the contrary on building those $250 million sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico in an unsuccessful attempt to stem the flow from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill onto the Louisiana coast—unsuccessful because the berms washed away in a matter of days, sinking tens of thousands of dollars of cranes and bulldozers with them.

He embarrassed himself when he, a Roman Catholic, went to all those Protestant churches in north Louisiana during his first term to speak about his “born again” conversion to Christianity—while aides were passing around forms for congregation members to complete with their names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for future political contribution solicitations (it’s illegal to solicit campaign contributions in the church itself).

No, he didn’t embarrass himself this time. Oh, that he had only limited the damage to embarrassment.

Instead, he showed himself to the world to be the fool he really is and in the process, made the citizens of this state who twice elected him, appear as hysterical, hate-mongering David Duke and Joe McCarthy disciples of demagoguery.

And for that, we should all be embarrassed—or worse, humiliated.

Posted in Budget, Finances, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Legislature, Politicians, Revenue | 33 Comments »

LouisianaVoice adds social media links: readers may now share posts about our favorite subject: Louisiana politics

January 18, 2015 by tomaswell

 

At the repeated suggestions of several readers, we have added a feature to LouisianaVoice which we hope will increase our readership. (At least that’s what we’ve been told.)

At the bottom of each story we now have links readers may go to share our stories with others via Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Linkedin, and others.

And I personally have never really gotten into social media, there is even a button readers may click on to “like” us—whatever the heck that is. My car, after all, still has an 8-track player and my cell phone has a rotary dial and I still watch movies on Beta tapes—though they and the 8-tracks are getting harder and harder to find.

After adding these links we scrolled through a few stories to see what kind of hits we were getting and found that our story on U.S. Rep. Steve Scalese’s speech to David Duke’s group has already been forwarded more than 3,000 times on Facebook.

And that’s a good thing…we think.

At any rate, please feel free to avail yourselves to the new LouisianaVoice feature.

As for us, well, we’ll just keep writing about good ol’ Louisiana politics.

—Tom Aswell, Editor

Posted in Politics | 12 Comments »

Lines separating Jindal campaign workers from governor’s office staff blurred by seamless back and forth status flow

January 17, 2015 by tomaswell

When it comes to making a distinction between the duties of official public servant and campaign worker during the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal, the lines are often blurred as individuals move back and forth between state and campaign payrolls seamlessly and with few apparent changes in their duties.

Jindal deftly juggled the payroll of his closest advisers between his campaign payroll and taxpayer-funded salaries as part of his staff in his two successful runs for the governor’s office in 2007 and 2011, civil service and campaign records show.

At least three of those moved just as easily from the governor’s office in Louisiana to the re-election campaign of Florida Gov. Rick Scott in 2014 and Timmy Teepell moved from Jindal’s 2007 campaign manager to his chief of staff once Jindal took office and he later left briefly to work for the national Republican Governors Association as brother Taylor Teepell moved from advisor to former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to first deputy legislative director and later deputy chief of staff for Jindal.

Timmy Teepell left Jindal’s office following the 2011 election to head up the southern office of OnMessage, a political consulting firm out of Maryland to which Jindal has paid more than $5 million from 2007 through the end of 2013.

Jindal’s campaign paid Teepell $110,000 in 2007 and $120,000 for four months during 2010 (Aug. 1 through Nov. 4) and five months during 2011 (July 1 through Nov. 30) but from Jan. 14, 2008 through July 30, 2010 and from Nov. 5, 2010, through July 1, 2011, he worked as Jindal’s chief of staff at a salary of $165,000 per year—paid by Louisiana taxpayers.

Teepell did receive one payment of $3,880 from Jindal’s campaign on Nov. 11, 2010—10 days after he begin his second stint as Jindal’s chief of staff but the overlap was probably a delayed payment for campaign work done before he re-joined the governor’s staff.

Taylor Teepell, worked for six months in Jindal’s 2007 campaign, earning $29,000 before going to work for former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour who was serving as president of the Republican Governors Association.

Taylor Teepell entered Jindal’s office on Nov. 21, 2011, as older brother Timmy was departing. He first came on board as deputy legislative director at $90,000 but in less than a year, on Oct. 16, 2012, was named deputy chief of staff and given a raise to $130,000, the same salary Jindal makes. This was in the middle of a period in which state classified workers have received no pay raises.

Other attempts by Jindal to shuttle supporters back and forth between campaign and public payrolls are almost laughable in their transparent efforts to make everything appear to be above board.

Take the case of Melissa Sellers who received $35,600 from the Jindal campaign between March 30 and Nov. 8, 2007 and another $12,860 in two separate payments of $6,430 on Oct. 14 and Oct. 24, 2011. Jindal won re-election to his second four-year term on Oct. 22, 2011.

Civil Service records show that Sellers began as a state employee in the governor’s office as press secretary on Jan. 15, 2008—the day after Jindal was inaugurated for his first term—at a salary of $85,000. After being promoted to director of communications and given a raise to $90,000, she resigned on Oct. 7, 2011 but returned to the governor’s office in the same role only 18 days later, on Oct. 25. The campaign payments were during her brief hiatus from the governor’s office.

That means she pulled in $12,860 for working 18 days for Jindal’s campaign—a pay scale of more than $300,000 per year. But if the Oct. 24 represented a 10-day pay period (the first paycheck was on Oct. 14), then her first pay period would have extended at least as far back as Oct. 4—three days before her resignation from her state job. In any case, it appears there may well have been some overlap between the time she started working for the campaign and the date she resigned from the governor’s office.

More significant than her salary, however, was the timing of the move. By that time, Jindal and everyone else in the state knew he would win re-election easily over only token opposition, so what was the purpose of her taking an 18-day break from the governor’s office to work in a campaign that was already in coasting mode?

But then, upon returning to the governor’s office on Oct. 25, she remained barely more than a month, leaving again on Dec. 1, ostensibly to enroll in seminary to study for the ministry—a commitment that apparently did not last very long.

Instead, she next turned up in the re-election campaign of Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott and now serves as his chief of staff. Along the way, she managed, along with two other Jindal campaign workers, to become involved in a scandal that resulted in Scott’s firing of popular Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Commissioner Gerald Bailey.

The three—Sellers and husband and wife team Frank and Meghan Collins—managed to acquire the dubious identity of “The Louisiana Mafia” for the heavy-handed manner in which they attempted unsuccessfully to jerk Bailey around.

They first demanded that state police provide transportation for Scott campaign workers but Bailey refused, explaining that he was obligated by law to provide transportation for the governor and his wife, but not campaign aides.

Next, the Florida Republican Party attempt to foist a $90,000 check onto the FDLE as payment for shuttling campaign workers but Bailey again said no, that it would be inappropriate for his department, which is supposed to be independent of partisan politics, to accept money from a political party.

Scott, or those representing him, then attempted to bring Bailey into a conference call to discuss Scott’s platform for the coming four years but again Bailey declined to involve his department in partisan politics.

And when he complained to Scott’s chief legal counsel, that he had received solicitations for campaign contributions to Scott on his state computer, the attorney, Pete Antonacci, advised him to “just delete” the emails—in violation of Florida law prohibiting the destruction of state records.

And then there is Frank Collins, one of the “Louisiana Mafia,” who should still be smarting from his experience in Jindal’s office.

Paid only $7,500 to work four months in Jindal’s 2007 campaign, he eventually succeeded Sellers as press secretary, but at $65,000—which was $20,000 less than Sellers made for the same position three years earlier. He left on Oct. 6, 2012, and like Sellers and wife Meghan, eventually ended up with Scott’s re-election campaign and now works as Scott’s deputy chief of staff while Meghan Collins is a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education.

Jonathan Ringo is a $110,000-a-year director in the governor’s office who once told Robert Burns—but then denied that he ever said it—that the Office of Inspector General “concurred” in Burns’ removal from the Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board. Before bellying up to the public trough, however, he was paid more than $18,000 by Jindal’s 2007 campaign.

Matthew Parker has been director of legislative affairs for the governor’s office at $120,000 per year since Oct. 16, 2012. Before that, from Nov. 28, 2011 until being named to his current position, he was director of intergovernmental affairs at $95,000 per year.

But other than Timmy Teepell, Parker was the highest-paid Jindal campaign staffer, knocking down nearly $35,000 in seven months in 2007 and more than $79,400 in the first 11 months of 2011 for a grand total of more than $114,000.

Perhaps it’s only coincidence that Parker is Timmy Teepell’s brother-in-law.

The two lowest-paid employees in the governor’s office who also worked for his campaign at least have the consolation of getting frequent rides in state police helicopters.

Tyler Brey, who received $18,500 for working for seven months in the 2011 campaign, went on the state dime on March 11, 2013 as a $33,000-per-year external affairs liaison, whatever that fancy title entails. Last Oct. 1, even as state classified employees were going without a pay increase for a fifth consecutive year, Brey received a $1,300-per-year raise to $34,300. Brey also made 42 trips on the state police ‘copter, always accompanying Jindal as his sycophant, to such exotic getaways as Monroe, Springhill, Ruston, Jena, Winnfield, Delhi, and Mansfield, among others.

One of those trips Brey made with Jindal and communications director Kyle Plotkin, was to Minden on Feb. 3, 2013, eight days before he officially became a state employee.

The other frequent flyer was Daniel Kirk, who was paid $24,000 by the Jindal 2007 campaign before joining the governor’s office on Jan. 14, 2008, the same day Jindal was inaugurated for his first term.

He started as a $35,000-a-year administrative assistant and four months later was named a program manager at the same salary. But on Feb. 22, 2010, he was named a director in the governor’s office. It wasn’t altogether clear what a director does, but it must be pretty impressive considering he got a $30,000 bump in pay—to $65,000 but still $45,000 less than fellow director Ringo.

Kirk got to visit some of the same locales as Brey and got the added treat of flying to Georgetown in LaSalle Parish and Kinder in southwest Louisiana. He and Jindal also made a hop to Columbia, home of State Sen. Neil Riser, just about the time U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander was getting ready to announce his retirement so that Riser could run for his seat—unsuccessfully, it turned out.

In all, Kirk made 49 trips with Jindal in the state police helicopters, 19 of those during the 2011 election year and the other 30 in 2010, the year leading up to Jindal’s re-election run.

It’s impossible to say with any certainty that Jindal and his campaign-workers-turned-state-employees were using the state helicopters for campaign purposes, but with Jindal making nearly 200 ‘copter trips in 2010 and 2011, often accompanied by Sellers, Kirk or Timmy or Taylor Teepell or Brey, compared to only 86 during the next three years combined, one has to wonder.

And with the controversy sparked by Sellers and Meghan and Frank Collins in Florida in their attempts to commandeer state vehicles for campaign purposes, one also has to wonder if the “Louisiana Mafia” was only trying to repeat in Florida what they may have done with impunity in Louisiana in 2010 and 2011.

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Civil Service, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, State Police | 7 Comments »

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