Louisiana Voice

That’s more than eight years that he has held the office of Louisiana’s junior U.S. Senator without having even once rubbed elbows with the great unwashed – us. You’d think he would make the occasional visit to places like Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans or Houma/Thibodaux to learn up close and personal what’s on the minds of Louisiana voters. After all, we are a red state, and he eems to believe that he is Donald Trump’s proxy (when actually, it’s Jeff Landry) so it would seem that he would be facing friendly crowds. Oh, come election time, we will see him on TV addressing concerned voters who, in reality, are paid actors on a tightly-controled set, ostensibly hanging onto every word the senator utters.

There are those, however, who would really love to ask him why he voted to confirm the likes of FBI Director Kash Patel or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But alas, he remains aloof. No one answers his office phones in Louisiana. Instead, we get a message that he’s “meeting with other constituents.” How stupid does he think we are? He’s “meeting with other consituents” if you call him at 3:00 a.m. And if you e-mail him about an issue, you will get a generic response that comes nowhere close to addressing your concerns. He is, simply put, the K-Tel records of U.S. senators – a knock-off of the original, a cheap copy.

His responses to e-mail inquiries calls to mind the old joke about the guy who, riding in a sleeper car on a train trip, encountered bed bugs and fired off an irate letter to the railroad company. A couple of weeks later he receives a response, an apology and a promise to fumigate the train car. But in opening the envelope, a note falls out. He picks it up and read the message: “Send the bed bug letter to this person.”

Where’s Johnny Boy?

Still no word on who paid for Kennedy’s stay, either

It was right there, in the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) PRESS RELEASE dated March 5. More than $7.5 billion in retroactive payments were sent out to 1,127,723 individuals as of March 4, it said.

The payments, the SSA said, are the result of the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). The WEP and GPO provisions reduced or eliminated the Social Security benefits for over 3.2 million people who receive a pension based on work that was not covered by Social Security (a “non-covered pension”) because they did not pay Social Security taxes.

The average retroactive payment thus far is $6,710, the press release said.

Unless you were lucky enough to receive two checks, as one area reader did. She received two different checks totaling nearly $10,000. “This has to be an error,” said the recipient’s spouse. “Since the SS Administration has already issued [more] a million and a half of these checks, the amount by which people have been overpaid must be massive.”

But Elon Musk and his pet Doge are eliminating waste and inefficiency. He and Agent Orange have said so repeatedly. So, no, there can be no error. Trump has so proclaimed.

“President Trump made it very clear he wanted the Social Security Fairness Act to be implemented as quickly as possible,” said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. “We met that challenge head on and are proudly delivering for the American people.”

How many retro checks have you received?

All I can say at this point is I’m pretty sure he can’t lay any overpayments at Biden’s feet, much as he’d love to.