DHECC - from Omega to the Alpha with love

An interesting item about the Omega claim story has popped up after a public records request to the Louisiana Economic Development (LED) office.

On September 2, 2010, Chairman, CEO and President of Omega Protein, Joe von Rosenberg, sent an email and enclosed memo to the Secretary of the LED, Stephen Moret.  In it he mentions that he will be in Baton Rouge the coming Tuesday evening to attend an event for Governor Bobby Jindal.

As fate would have it, Omega made a $5000 donation to the Republican Party of Louisiana the day after that Jindal soiree on September 7th, 2010.  DHECC Claims Administrator Pat Juneau was cc'd in subsequent emails from the LED and shortly after that the Omega Claim was paid out.

It appears LED is who asked Juneau to contact Feinberg about the Omega claim and I suppose the $5000 donation to Jindal was a small pittance to get a $45 million payday.

It's an interesting snapshot of how the machine works.

More Metairie...

Louisiana revisionary history

Lakeside Mall Christmas message to their customers: We fucking hate you

Apparently last year's Lakeside Mall Christmas exhibit didn't get their anti-immigration, pro-republican and outright racist message across so this year they went even more literal.

This scene is of a border patrol officer stopping an eighteen-wheeler with what I assume are Mexican immigrants on the back polishing a hot rod vehicle:

I suppose the scene implies the truck driver was smuggling the people across the border and got caught by a Border Patrol agent.

In case you were confused as to the political and racial bias of that scene, the "artist" put this one right next to it:



Two years in a row...it's pretty clear this is no accident on the part of Lakeside's management.  It amazes me that they would display this shit 1. in a Christmas exhibit and 2. in a business that is supported by an overwhelming amount of minority customers, including Latin-American.

Good Ole Metry....backwards-ass, redneck, fucksticks still reign supreme even in their prized attraction....the shitty, run-down mall.  Merry racist Ho Ho from the shitburbs of New Orleans.

A sinking feeling

This post will by my 1818th entry on The American Zombie since the first on July 4th, 2006.

In the past month I have found myself reflecting, heavily, on this thing I've done....this blog.  At times I've been extremely proud and other times I've felt like it was an enormous burden, even a threat to myself and my family.  Truth is, in the past few months it's felt like an exceptional burden.

It started it as an experiment.  Upon the completion of the documentary, Left Behind, I made with Dr. Vince Morelli, I came to the conclusion that the root of this City's problem was its education system and the root of our education system's problem was corruption.  I discovered there was not a lack of money in the Orleans Parish School System but that the funds were simply being stolen at nearly every turn to the great detriment of our children.

I figured the blog was a way to possibly expose the entrenched corruption that exists within so many layers of New Orleans/Louisiana government.  I was naive enough to think that I could affect change simply by exercising the powers of the First Amendment.  

From that original "thunk" I have devoted an enormous amount of time, energy and money into this experiment and there's not a day that goes by I don't think about it....wondering if it's worth it...feeling guilty because I've neglected one or more stories...thinking about how much more effective it might be if I devoted all of my time to it....worrying about who I might have pissed off and if it would affect my income stream....wondering how it will affect my children as they become adults....

.....it weighs on me a lot.  Lately it has weighed on me more than usual.

I have to admit that I've reached a point where I don't think my efforts are actually affecting social and/or governmental change and if I'm not doing that I don't think it's worth the effort.  As my father used to tell me, "Don't half-ass do anything, Son.  Otherwise you're just pissing in the wind."

Truth is, I feel hopeless.

When I started AZ I was writing under the assumption that our justice system was...just.  I believed that if I simply told the truth and exposed criminal activity, city, state and federal law enforcement officials would pay attention and rectify the problems.

I believed justice was truly blind and the rule of law was real, the system simply needed people to exercise the First Amendment in order to set the wheels in motion.

What I believed, in the beginning, was that there was an avenue for recourse if the average citizen just woke up from their slumber (hence "The American Zombie") and cast a a light on the corruption that existed in their community.

Now, I'm not so sure.

The corruption within this state is intrinsic...hereditary even.  It is so prevalent, we have come to simply accept it as the modus operandi.

Any reform we saw on a local level, in post-Katrina New Orleans, is a faded dream.  Even the dreamers were defiled.

Pay to play has woven itself into the fabric of our government for so long it's now categorized on the "insiders'" sliding scale of significance.  On the national barometer of corruption, we've actually managed to go so far off the reservation we can't even be quantified....we're an anomaly.

The collusion between the oil and gas industry, the trial attorneys who would have us believe they are fighting for the public's best interest and the politicians who take both of their money is an unholy trinity promising salvation at every turn. 

They lie.  They fucking lie. But we keep buying their bullshit.

If you read this blog...even if you don't...what I hope you will understand is that none of these people have the public's best interest at heart.  It doesn't benefit any of them....any of them....to create a healthy, educated, populous in an environmentally safe Louisiana.  They want idiots and this state is ripe by design.  Idiots more concerned about what two grown men choose to do with their sexuality than a Congressman fleecing a public university.

We are losing everything that is near and dear to our hearts in this state...our higher public education system, our public hospital system, our coastline.....yet we bicker about partisanship instead of actually holding our public officials accountable.

We are trapped inside a juvenile interpretation of the Hegelian Dialectic.

The corruption in this State and City is insulated, obscured, behind the political dichotomy of left/right.  In New Orleans, democrats are protected from prosecution by the local political machine while on the state level republicans' transgressions are overlooked and written off as "minor issues".

They are all stealing public money.  All of them.  They are all using tax dollars as their own 0% interest, no money down, no principle owed...bank.

Bill Cassidy stole money from the state of Louisiana.  Diana Bajoie stole money from the state of Louisiana.  One is a republican, the other a democrat.  Neither one has been prosecuted or even officially investigated.
         
Patrick Juneau illegally billed the state of Louisiana.  He is not a democrat or republican, he's just an opportunistic old man that will do whatever either reigning "party master" asks him to do in order to enrich his own bank account.

We are standing on the deck of ship, floating in a sea of corruption with no rudder, no mast, no sail, holes in the hull, arguing about the weather while our politicians take the cargo and sail off in lifeboats.

In the matters I listed above, I think the evidence is clear on all fronts, at least enough to justify investigations by our state regulatory officials...the state auditor , state inspector general, state attorney general.

Thing is, I've busted my own ass on at least two of these stories and liberated information on the third while many other reporters busted their ass to do the same.  The Fourth Estate has fulfilled it's duty, not just my small contribution but the body, whole.  The evidence is convincing, overwhelming on the issues listed above.

LSU would never conduct an honest audit on Cassidy.  No university would.  Not Loyola, Tulane, or even UNO as it fades into obscurity.  They are all deeply entrenched in political interests on both city and state levels.  University employees will not talk to their own institution's investigators for fear of losing their job.   These things need to be audited by our state regulatory agencies....it's their job, it's their duty. 

For these regulatory agencies to ignore even one of these issues, much less all three, is a bellwether as to the state of our State.

This...these moments....are where we traditionally fail, Louisiana.  Let's not fail again.  Let's not kick the can down the road and allow business as usual.

We have a problem here.  It's systemic.  It's destructive.  Please.  Please.  Please....investigate.




          

The Cassidy conundrum

Nowhere to run:  How "Double Bill" Cassidy Could Endanger LSU's Good Standing

Double Bill - Comment Bump, December 4, 2014

Wesley1066

There are three questions being waved around.

1. Did Bill Cassidy lie to the House Ethics Committee on the number of hours he would be working for LSU?

2. Did Bill Cassidy submit timesheets to LSU for time he didn't work, ie was in DC voting instead of working for LSU?

3. Did Bill Cassidy fail to meet the terms of his continued employment for LSU?

Let's look at these:

1. He told the Ethics Committee that he would work a maximum of 16 hours a month. The timesheets presented average 13.7 hours per month. No issue there, and despite what the blogger here says, Bill Cassidy did not BILL LSU for 30 hours a month.

2. The list of conflicts show 21 days in question, but 4 of those specifically state the LSU work was phoned in. Of the remaining 17, 10 were roll call votes after 6:00pm which only leaves 7 of these that even warrant further investigation. Since the blogger has referenced CenLamar's article discussing the meetings with Dr. Claude Pirtle, we will discuss these. Pirtle is described as "a resident physician of internal medicine at LSU New Orleans", so describing meetings with him as "resident supervision" would not be an immediate problem. But let's further examine the implications of CenLamar's article. Pirtle is quoted as saying that he met with Cassidy "2 or 3 times a week" in a month that Cassidy only claimed work on 2 days. Either Pirtle is overstating the meetings he had with Cassidy or many of those meetings were not counted as "resident supervision". That leaves us with one day of meeting with Pirtle that CenLamar's only cause for alarm is that Pirtle supports Cassidy, therefore the meeting must be something other than "resident supervision".

3. I have seen nothing yet that indicates correspondence from Bill Cassidy to LSU, the only evidence provided so far is that somebody asked somebody else what the expectations were for Bill Cassidy and that Bill Cassidy took an 80% cut in pay from LSU. 

1.  The issue in respect to his submission to the House Committee on Ethics is not the hours he reported to LSU, it's that he told the Committee that he would only be working:

16 hours a month

He told the Committee this one full year after he had agreed with LSU to work twice that amount:

30 hours a month

The issue is that he told the Committee he was ONLY spending 16 hours a month on his moonlighting job with LSU.  He lied...period.  He had already billed more than that to LSU repeatedly by the time he stated his monthly hours to the Committee.

He misled the House of Representatives Committee on Ethics as to the nature of his work with LSUHSC.

If we are to believe the terms of his employment were only defined in the emails, he absolutely knew he had agreed to 30 hours a month...a full year... before he told the Committee he was only working 16 hours a month.

In other words....he lied.  He lied to United States House of Representatives.  

2.  Let's start from the top...THERE ARE NEARLY 50 MISSING TIME SHEETS.  He only turned in 16 of 63 timesheets.....Ya heard?  So before you start splitting hairs on the signatures.....which I'm happy to do because that's a scandal unto itself....about 80% of the salary he received is UNDOCUMENTED.  This is not only an issue the State Legislative Auditor's office needs to investigate the Department of Labor needs to investigate it as well.  The fact that it almost certainly involves Medicare/Medicaid funds would also beg the attention of the FBI.

On that note, I am currently chasing down sources as to whether the guy even showed up, physically, for the work he claimed he did "non-virutally".  That's coming man...it's coming...don't think this election is going to stop that snowball from turning into an avalanche.

The Pirtle issue is laughable but even if he billed 1 hour with Pirtle, I would question how discussing "Obamacare" in his office could remotely be billable to LSUHSC.  Shortly after those conversations on the Hill, "Dr. Pirtle" launches a web development company, Nodus Studios, and lands a contract with LSU...what a renaissance man Claude is, eh?  Was that contract publicly bid?

3.  You haven't seen anything because THERE IS NO CONTRACT.  How was Dr. Cassidy's pay rate, hours worked, tenure, medical malpractice insurance, time sheet reporting process, pension plan......showing up for work and proving it......established if there was nothing in writing?  There is no fucking contract.....it's just a series of emails.  You're pointing out that he received an 80% cut in his previous salary, I'm asking you how the hell he was still receiving 20% of his previous salary without a contract.   What did he do?  Did he show up to do it?

He pulled down over $100,000 in public money from a public institution WITHOUT A CONTRACT.

So forget everything we've talked about.....how did a public entity, LSUHSC, pay someone over $100,000 in taxpayer's money without a goddamn contract?