Louisiana Voice

A reader who just happens to be a personal friend and sometime editor and proofreader of my book manuscripts sent the following link to me on Sunday. The last sentence asks that it be shared, so I am.

It’s loaded with links to news stories that support the writer’s assertions, so it’s important that you click on the links and read the stories of the shameful, disgusting history of Donald Trump and his supporting cast of MAGHATS. Note: In case you’re a diehard Trump supporter, please know that none of the linked stories are from either InfoWars, Fox News, WorldNetDaily, Breibart News or OANN, so you probably haven’t read or heard of any of the accounts. Unlike those outlets, the links are to reputable, reliable sources.

Here is the connecting link to the essay entitled JUST THE FACTS.

Well, campers, here we are on April 18, with just 12 days left in our April fundraiser. I want to thank everyone who has contributed. No matter the amount, $5 or $50 of $100, every bit helps us keep the stories coming about ineptitude, corruption and just plain ignorance on the part of elected officials from the local level to the top.

I hate having to come to you like this (I would have never made it as a TV evangelist – or even a garden-variety preacher), but it’s only twice a year. And unlike one unhappy camper, I’m not begging for funds for personal use. True, some of it does pay for gasoline for trips to outlying parishes and to the State Capitol, but your contributions go mainly to the cost of obtaining public records – sometimes through the necessity of legal action.

Bear in mind, I don’t have a paywall and I don’t accept advertising because I want this to remain free to readers.

But all that aside, I would appreciate any help you can give. At the same time, I encourage you to give to your local food bank as well. If you can’t afford to give to both, give to the food bank. It’s important.

If you choose to do so, you may contribute to LouisianaVoice by clicking on the YELLOW BUTTON to the right of this post. Or you may mail a check to Tom Aswell, 107 North College West, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70726.

Remember, the largest single contribution will receive a first-edition copy of Huey Long’s autobiography, Every Man a King. All contributions of $50 or more will also receive a signed copy of my latest book, 101 Wrongful Convictions in Louisiana.

Thank you.

At least one reader is of the opinion that I’m in failing health (I don’t really think macular degeneration falls within the purview of “failing”) and that I’m in dire financial straits (I can only guess he draws this conclusion from the twice-yearly fundraiser LouisianaVoice conducts which is currently taking place) and that LouisianaVoice is sub-par as a political blog.

Sub-par it may well be because I do not depend on it as a livelihood. I’m involved with several projects, but admittedly, I’m not hi-tech, though I do know the difference between A-1 and A-I.

I also can see that the first 100 days of Making America Great is nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.

But, as we were told repeatedly during the Vietnam War, I think I can see a light at the end of the tunnel – and I really don’t think it’s not an approaching train, which we got back when we were trying to wear down Ho Chi Minh in that ill-advised war of attrition.

Unlike Col. Bonespurs, I did enlist in the military just as Vietnam was heating up, but never set foot in the country.

But today, I see so many areas where this man is stripping us of our rights, of our dignity and of democracy itself.

He has targeted ATTORNEYS AND EDUCATORS, even AMERICAN CITIZENS. He’s deliberately UNDERCUT allies, DEFUNDED a refugee aid agency, threatened to ERADICATE an entire society in Gaza in favor of erecting a tourist mecca – to his own financial benefit, of course and launched an attack on the FIRST AMENDMENT.

And now, he wants to fire Central Bank Chairman Jerome Powell because he is somehow attempting to shift the blame for the coming recession, brought about by his own Daffy Duck-like economic policies, on Powell.

And now we learn that Col. Bonespurs wants a lavish military parade in honor of his 79th birthday next June. The event is anticipated to cost taxpayers a cool $92 million, including $21 million for public safety costs alone. All this, while imported goods are expected to increase for working Americans who haven’t seen him do anything about the price of eggs – one of his big campaign promises.

A military parade for a draft dodger who called military heroes “losers.” Can you spell arrogance, boys and girls?

And during all the chaos, Elon Musk and his DOGE has been running rampant through the federal government while downsizing his TARGETED CUTS of $2 trillion in waste to $150 billion. And yes, a billion here and a billion there, as Everett Dirkson once said, and soon you’re talking about real money. But $150 billion is light years from the anticipated $2 trillion.

But it’s interesting to note that while has been slashing and cutting with the precision of a meat cleaver, his own companies, Space X and Starlink have been mercifully SPARED. Meanwhile, Musk covered his own tracks with a series of OUTRIGHT LIES.

But wait.

It now seems that he has taken aim at a formidable foe by threatening to cut grants to HARVARD, which has the financial resources to fight back. The university, with its $53 billion endowment, may be just the schoolyard nerd to take on the bully and win.

The university, founded in 1636, long before Trump’s immigrant forebears made it to this country as unwashed foreigners, RESPONDED to IMPOTUS’s bluster by placing a chip on its symbolic shoulder and daring the buffoon to knock it off.

By standing up to GOLFER Ima Fraud, Harvard just may have gotten the attention of other schools and attorneys who might find the courage to lock arms with the Crimson.

Already, we’re seeing more frequent and larger demonstrations against this administration and its attempted trashing of the US Constitution.

Revolutions are ignited by a small spark and Col. Bonespurs may have provided that spark.

Like the Energizer Rabbit, he just keeps on running.

Like the wristwatch in the old Timex commercial, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

Former Sheriff and former State Rep. Steve Pylant, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Heeere’s Steve! – and he’s running once again for sheriff of Franklin Parish.

He will be running to fill the unexpired term of former Sheriff Kevin Cobb who was plucked by the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association in Baton Rouge to become its new executive director.

Pylant previously served as sheriff for 16 of his 28 years in law enforcement and followed that by serving eight years in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

Apparently, all that public service was not exhaustive enough and he now wants more.

As I wrote in 2019, I omitted him from my book Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, but it was an oversight and never an intentional slight.

That was because his EYEBROW-RAISING ACTION that same year on behalf four former felons seemed somehow at odds with his rigid law-and-order stance in the legislature.

Normally, I would not open old wounds but Pylant’s re-entry into the public fray qualifies the five-year-old incident as legitimate news.

Typical of today’s brand of Republicanism, a moral code seems to be whatever happens to be convenient at the time, never mind the obvious contradictions.

Pylant obviously applies that logic to his actions, never mind that the action themselves conflict mightily with his public stand as a lawmaker.

That seems to be the trend today, from the very top all the way down to the local level.

Donald Trump has been accused alternately of being a Russian agent, a puppet of Vladimir Putin, a wannabe dictator in the same mold as Putin, or even the subject of blackmail by Putin.

He has done little to dispel those accusations and in fact, some of his actions have only served to veriify and underscore the disturbing claims.

Take, for example a story that The Washington Post broke around 11:00 a.m. today.

Most of my close associates refuse to subscribe to or have canceled their subscriptions to the Post because of owner Jeff Bezos’s decisions to (1) refrain from making an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election and (2) dictating the editorial content of the Post.

I have to admit that their concerns over Bezos’s interference in the Post’s newsroom operations are legitimate. It’s a disturbing development to be sure.

But, it seems, the paper still can hit Trump where it hurts when occasions dictate, Bezos’s lingering presence notwithstanding.

Take that bombshell that hit my in-box today at midmorning:

Trump, it seems has nominated interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin for the permanent role.

That, despite the fact that Martin has appeared more than 150 times on RT and Sputnik, networks funded and directed by the Russian government, as a guest commentator between August 2016 and April 2024.

He told an interviewer on RT in early 2022 that there was “no evidence” of a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s borders. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, just nine days after that incredulous claim. Instead, he criticized U.S. officials as warmongering and of ignoring Russia’s security concerns.

When nominated, he had to complete a questionnaire which, among other things, asks nominees to list all media interviews. Somehow, he neglected to mention those 150-plus Russian network appearances. Obviously, they just slipped his mind.

Not only did he fail to disclose the appearances, but some national security analysists have accused him of amplifying anti-American propaganda on the Russian networks and the State Department last years said he had moved “beyond disinformation” to engage in covert influence activities aimed at undermining democracies on behalf of Putin’s administration.

This, folks, is way beyond squirreling away classified documents in Mar-a-Lago’s bathroom.

The U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. is the largest in the nation and has almost unbridled jurisdiction to prosecute important national security offenses.

Think about that for just a nano-second.

With those prosecutorial powers coupled with Trump’s “2025 retribution tour,” what odds would you give any dissident in or out of the Trump administration?

It’s a recipe for the purge of anyone with an original thought and of a frightening attack on the media, on academia, on gays, on women, on blacks, on Latinos, on Middle Easterners and anyone or anything else that might stand in this monster’s path.

A White House official told the Post that Trump had made “a brilliant choice in selecting Ed Martin to serve a full, permanent term as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia,” and noted that Martin had “a distinguished record of service,” and as such, was the perfect choice “to restore law and order…”

The kind of law-and-order Trump has in mind should send chills down all our backs.

Project 2025? Forget that. Yes, Project 2025 is a playbook for an attack on our very economic and social structure. It seeks to implement a system beneficial to the ultra-wealthy would-be oligarchs and reduce the rest of society to peonage status.

But that aside, what this nomination does easily transcends Project 2025 in its severity, its threat to democracy and a free society. If Trump can plant one such person in the most powerful U.S. attorney’s office in the nation, what do you expect him to attempt next? Do you seriously believe he’ll stop there? This is just a preview, the opening act, if you will, of what’s to come.

Folks, Trump is as dangerous as a snake – a deadly venemous snake.

He is either (a) a knowing and willing agent of Russia, (b) an aspiring dictator willing to stop at nothing to assert complete control over Congress, the Supreme Court and each of our lives, (c) a total incompetent, in over his head with no idea what he’s doing or (d) a combination of two or all three.

Take your pick: either way we’re doomed if we allow him to continue to run amok, shredding the Constitution and ignoring the courts and the rule of law.

We can sit back and enjoy our SUVs, our flat screen TVs and our Z-turn mowers in a happy little vacuum of obliviousness or we can get off our asses and demand the return of our government to us, the ones to whom it was endowed in the first place, nearly 250 years ago.