Remember that retired state trooper who was brought back into the fold as a WAE (part time) state trooper who was doing her patrolling while living in Greece?

Well, we have an update. LouisianaVoice has learned that (a) her appointment was apparently made without bothering to get the requisite approval of the Louisiana State Police Commission, which hasn’t held an official monthly meeting now for three full months and (b) the trooper, Melissa Matey (who retired on June 27 and was re-hired the very next day as a WAE state trooper) has been terminated as a result of our AUGUST 19 STORY.

How embarrassing it must have been for Louisiana State Police (LSP) officials to get caught with their proverbial pants down like that.

But wait! There’s more!

It seems that there are two more “retired” state troopers who were re-hired as WAE troopers but who are apparently performing their patrol duties over in Mississippi and Alabama.

Vincent DeBenedetto was first hired by LSP on March 23, 2009, and “retired” a mere four years later, on April 26, 2013, as a Master Trooper before working two separate stints as a WAE trooper, first from June 22, 2015, to May 5, 2019, for $31 per hour and again, from June 13, 2023 to the present at a rate of $35 per hour. In between, he worked as a Department of Public Safety police officer for $31 per hour.

Then there is Jules S. Pinero, III, who was initially hired on October 30, 2000, and retired at the rank of lieutenant a little over six years later, on February 11, 2007 before being brought back as a WAE driver education compliance officer on May 18, 2015 until May 5, 2019 at $31 per hour. The very next day, on May 6, 2019, he began working as a WAE state trooper at $31 per hour and continues in that position – except that his hourly pay was bumped up to $35 on January 11 of this year.

The only problem with all that is that DeBenedetto lives in Long Beach, Mississippi, and Pinero, poor fella, resides in Gulf Shores, Alabama (that must be tough).

Who wouldn’t like a soft cushy part-time job that pays $35 per hour? (Remember now, the Loozeraner Legislature has for years consistently refused to raise the $7.25 per hour minimum wages of a single mother trying to raise two or three kids.) But these guys not only get their LSP retirement, but $35 per hour for doing squat, as well.

Oh, and LouisianaVoice has also learned that there is another whose main job it is to show up to drink coffee with the guys at $35 per hour.

And we were naïve enough to believe that things would get better at LSP once Mike Edmonson was gone.

How foolish of us to forget that this is Loozeraner, where the words ethics, honesty and integrity are foreign concepts.

Since Edmonson’s departure, LSP has dug in its heels on its policy of responding to public records requests. For example, state law says custodians of public records “shall” provide requested records immediately. But LSP has this new policy of taking “up to 45 days” to respond – and all too often, that response is either so heavily redacted as to be useless or they say they have “no records that are responsive to your request.”

We’re still waiting for our requested records on WAE Trooper Matey. Fortunately, we were able to secure most of what we requested from other sources – certainly not from State Police, who tried unsuccessfully to cover up the killing of Ronald Greene by State Police.

Like I said, ethics, honesty and integrity…

As might be expected, Guvner Landry is pandering to our fears and prejudices by again singling out non-citizens as convenient scapegoats to be used to whip up frenzied opposition to a problem that isn’t nearly as bad as he would have us believe.

This time he has signed an EXECUTIVE ORDER that targets “noncitizens” in Louisiana as a voter fraud risk while conveniently ignoring the COLD, HARD FACT that no state – no, not one – allows noncitizens to vote in state or local elections.

This is the same guy who dispatched Louisiana National Guardsmen to the Texas border with Mexico to help keep out all those rapists and murderers from flooding into the country. And he has said he’s open to SENDING MORE should the need arise.

Funny thing is, his own party helped to formulate a bipartisan border control plan until the orange-tinted former guy called our very own Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to squelch the deal because it would help the Democrats in the November election.

So much for putting the country’s interests over politics.

Now, the Master of Mar-a-Largo is saying that if he is returned to the White House that he described as a “dump,” he will institute mass deportations of all non-citizens.

Apparently, he never gave a thought to who would then pick the fruit and vegetables (including those delicious Louisiana strawberries), who would perform the roofing on all those hurricane-damaged buildings in New Orleans and Florida, who would work in all the meat-packing plants, or who would do all that landscaping around those nice corporate buildings and our streets and highways. Did he say anything about punishing all those aforementioned corporate CEOs who hire illegals “off the books” so as to not to have to pay social security taxes or provide benefits while ever-so-politely taking away American jobs?

So, bottom line, Landry is creating a lot of wasted motion and blowing a lot of hot air over issues that do nothing to address the state’s very real problems of obesity, education, poverty, health and jobs. Instead, he focuses on hot-button issues like:

• A ridiculously redundant executive order;
• Spending untold amounts to send National Guard units to a neighboring state to defend against a non-existent threat to our own state;
• Being “tough on crime” by making it nigh-onto-impossible for the wrongfully convicted to have their cases heard;
• Insisting that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all classrooms while turning a blind eye to the real needs of public education and
• Ensuring that corporations get all the breaks by eliminating job requirements as a condition for granting tax incentives.

But political rhetoric without a trace of substance appears to be the norm these days, so why should I complain? After all, he was swept into office with a mandate from 18 percent of Louisiana’s registered voters.

One of the inevitable side effects of political division that currently poisons the bloodstream of a beautiful country is the inability to resist generalization when pillorying divergent positions and opinions.

A classic example of this is the tendency of Citizens for a New Louisiana, its leader, Michael Lunsford and its adherents to openly express their aim to restructure every single public library in every single parish in Louisiana to conform to the image of their constricted sense of values and morals.

So, rather than suggest that something nefarious might be afoot, I am willing to hypothesize that Lunsford’s lurking in the children’s sections of public libraries is for the purpose of researching for objectionable and inappropriate material, nothing else. That hasn’t always been the case as evidenced by numerous online comments about his furtive, creepy skulking:

What was hate group leader Michael Lunsford doing in the kids’ section of Barnes and Noble today?

Or:

Michael Lunsford is hoarding Lafayette Parish Library books in his office

Or maybe:

Michael Lunsford and Jamie Pope attack conservative military supporter, philanthropist, and owner of Grand Theatre over enforcing mask mandates. This is why good folks don’t want to stay in Louisiana. Grifting over morals.

Or perhaps:

Michael Lunsford and Citizens for a New Louisiana hates Cajun and Creole culture and doesn’t think Acadiana’s unique culture should be celebrated by its institutions.

I happen to subscribe to the philosophy that it’s wrong to toss a blanket characterization over any group. Like when the former guy, after that 2017 white nationalist protest in CHARLOTTESVILLE, said it included “some very fine people on both sides.”

The inconvenient fact that I’ve personally been unable to find any “very fine people” among the white nationalists should not preclude the fact that there may have been one.

Nor would it be fair to suggest that Lunsford may harbor certain latent tendencies of his own considering his long-time involvement with the BOY SCOUTS. He has, by his own assertion, after all, been “happily married” to his wife of 26 years. So, why should he be unnecessarily and unfairly tainted by a SEX SCANDAL that could date all the way back to 1910, the year Boy Scouts of America was founded by the MORMON CHURCH? Shoot, Lunsford probably isn’t even Mormon.

But then the CATHOLIC and BAPTIST churches have their own issues with sexual abuse scandals, so there’s that.

Of course, it’s wrong to paint an entire group with the same broad brush.

But that’s precisely what Citizens for a New Louisiana is doing. Openly PROCLAIMING its intent to impose its standards on libraries in all 64 parishes while launching personal attacks on any librarian or any other citizen who dares resist those efforts.

We would never stoop so low as to make any inference about Lunsford’s proclivity for children’s books, pornography and the Boy Scouts.

That just wouldn’t be right.

(Ordinarily, I would remind readers that this was written tongue-in-cheek, but I’m afraid even that might overload the moral sensibilities of Lunsford and Citizens for a New Louisiana.)

Something happened in my adopted home town of Denham Springs yesterday that gave me reason for hope and optimism – on two fronts.

There was a book signing party at Cavalier House Books right up the street from where I live for the debut of That Librarian, the story of the trials and travails encountered when one attempts to defend the very bedrock of our First Amendment.

The book is authored by AMANDA JONES, a local librarian who once had the temerity to speak out in opposition to censorship, a stand that brought down the wrath of self-appointed guardians of community morals and purity – their own self-imposed standards of morality and purity, by the way – a position that resulted in threats to her physical safety, threats made by cowards hiding behind computer keyboards.

The two very tangible factors that gave me so much optimism that there yet is hope for the exercise of freedom in a great nation is the fact that (a) independent book stores like Cavalier’s can still exist in an ever-burgeoning corporate world where nothing matters but the bottom line and (b) our community can still turn out en masse to demonstrate its dedication to the principles espoused in the aforementioned First Amendment.

For those of you who have not kept current on the growing threat to public libraries, there is an obscure outfit called Citizens for a Better Louisiana, led by a Michael Lunsford of St. Martin Parish, both of whom are most probably funded by some out-of-state self-righteous Republican outfit, whose sole mission it is to wreak havoc among library boards and their governing agencies (parish councils and police juries) in an effort to purge libraries of anything to do with inclusion, empathy or real, authentic history.

Here are just a few EXAMPLES OF BOOK TITLES that these extremists would prohibit you from reading at your local library:

• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
• Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
• The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• Charlotte’s Webb, by E.B. White
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
• 1984, by George Orwell
• The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
• Animal Farm, by Geore Orwell
• The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
• A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
• The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
• All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
• The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
• In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
• The Naked and he Dead, by Norman Mailer
• An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

To Kill a Mockingbird? Seriously? All the King’s Men, by a former LSU professor? Really? Hemingway? Faulkner? Sinclair? Orwell? Steinbeck? Are you kidding me?

The Jungle, for those of you who may be unfamiliar, is about the horrible conditions at America’s meat packing plants in the early 20^th century. The book brought about wholesale changes in both worker safety and a crackdown on the sale of spoiled meat to consumers. So, why the hell would anyone want to censor or ban such a book? Because it reflects poorly on corporate America, that’s why, and we just can’t have that, can we?

And they have the audacity to accuse librarians of grooming? The same people who push through laws mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments in Louisiana classrooms and who require the teaching of the Bible in Oklahoma schools? Just who is grooming whom here?

But here’s the real irony: I’m old enough to remember when these same people raised holy hell when Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and Little Black Sambo were objected to by civil rights groups because of their overtly racist themes (though history has shown that Mark Twain was never a racist and like the singer Randy Newman, he employed racist vernacular to make a point). Little Black Sambo, though – Yeah, that was racist on so many levels.

But as usual, I digress. Jones was anything but defensive in her interview with Cavalier’s co-owner Michelle Cavalier. Quite the contrary. She was outgoing, friendly and basically, just charmed those who turned out for her party. She opened by categorically denying that her book was self-published (though there’s nothing wrong with that) or that she used money donated to her legal defense fund to finance said self-published work (just another example of the level to which some will stoop when they’re both ignorant and bigoted). She said the outcry over what Citizens for a New Louisiana was attempting and her staunch opposition to their intrusion resulted in her being recruited by a literary agent (something we other authors can only dream of) and that her book was published by the same publishing company (Bloomsbury) that published the best-selling Harry Potter series. Folks, that ain’t self-publishing – not by a long shot.

She followed that by asserting unequivocally that “no library is pushing pornography onto children as some would have you believe.”

You’d never know it by listening to some of our parish council members and the governing boards of other libraries across the state who are hell-bent on stacking local library boards with their hand-picked censorship ogres. They probably haven’t set foot in a library in years.

But the turnout at Cavalier’s for Amanda’s book gives me hope for the future.

My buddy Billy Wayne Shakespeare wrote in his classic play Hamlet Bob that there was “something rotten in Denmark.”

The same can pretty much be said of the awarding of an $11 million, three-year CONTRACT  to a relatively new firm called Primary Class, Inc., dba Odyssey, to administer the state’s fledgling “education savings account” program.

The ink wasn’t dry on a similar $50 million no-bid contract with the state of Idaho before auditors were called in to investigate reports of $180,000 in IMPROPER OR DUBIOUS PURCHASES.

Primary Class also was said to have IMPROPERLY HELD Idaho taxpayer funds in an interest-bearing account and retaining those interest earnings.

Primary Class (or Odyssey) also bid unsuccessfully on a similar contract for the State of Arkansas and then cried foul when another vendor, Student First, won the bid over Odyssey and one other company, ClassWallet. Arkansas State Procurement Director Jessica Patterson, in a five-page LETTER on May 3, 2024, denied Odyssey’s protest.

All this is to suggest that Louisiana might have been more prudent to have vetted Odyssey a little more closely before throwing $11 million at the company.

But then, the State of Louisiana, aka the Louisiana Legislature, has historically managed to fritter away revenue recklessly while staking the state’s financial fortunes on the volatile oil and gas industry. Remember the bust of the 1980s?

And while Louisiana consistently lags behind other Southern states in teacher pay, legislators always manage to find the money for pet projects.

Like, for example, the approval of that ridiculous $14,000 stipend for each and every judge in the state while only grudgingly approving a paltry $2,000 stipend for teachers even as it cut early childhood programs by $9 million, or 37.5 percent.

Without being too specific, I’ve observed some judges in this state that should be paid minimum wage – and that’s only because of legal restrictions on lower salaries. Try, for instance, to even find a judge on a Friday afternoon. Not gonna happen.

I know, I know, they’re going to try and tell us how dedicated they are, how much reading they have to do, ya-da, ya-da. They’re going to campaign for office by telling us how tough they are on crime, how they support the Second Amendment, etc. But first of all, being tough on crime is for police and prosecutors. The judge’s job is supposed to be apolitical. They are there only to weigh the evidence in a case, not to take a position. And Second Amendment? What’s that got to with being a judge anyway?

But to give these guys a $14,000 bonus while only approving $2,000 for teachers – and doing that at the last minute as if throwing a dog a bone – is a damned insult. Do these legislators (and our guvner) have any idea how much extra duty teachers perform? They grade papers at night, they pull bus line and parent line duty, recess duty, lunchroom duty, break up fights, wipe snotty noses and listen to guff from derelict parents who have no idea what homework their kids bring home and then bitch when the grades come out. On top of all this, they have to put up with local school board members, many of whom never set foot in a classroom after graduation. And do you have any idea how many times teachers must reach into their personal finances to purchase supplies for their classrooms? No, of course you don’t.

And they get a $2,000 stipend and then only because lawmakers are able to cut $9 million from early childhood programs. The devil giveth and the devil taketh away.

But not from the judges. Supreme Court Justice James Genovese got his $14k as he was on his way out the door to assume duties as president of NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY in Natchitoches (at a salary of $350,000 – fully $61,000 more than outgoing President Marcus Jones). “I have served 29 years as a judge,” he sniffed. “I’ve earned it.”

No, Judge, you were paid a salary that you may or may not have earned. Teachers, on the other hand, earn their pay – and much more – every single day of the year. And that $61,000 increase salary over that of your predecessor is more than some teachers make for an entire year, so shut your pie hole about “earning” that $14,000 bonus unless you spend that $14,000 on supplies for your courtroom, and I seriously doubt that.

And don’t give me any crap about teachers getting a three-month vacation each year. They’re lucky if they can catch their breaths in the summer months, what with the conferences, planning for the next school year, paperwork and in some cases, continuing their own educations. They can only hope for a stress-free weekend.

Judge Genovese, your arrogance is exceeded only by your lack of qualifications to lead a state university.