Incredible.

Memo to Ray: We’re trying hard to reverse 30 50 75 150 plus years of public corruption in this state. Do you really think these remarks help?

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Back in the old days, people would at least look ashamed when caught being bribed, but not Mary Landrieu. It’s being called the Louisiana Purchase. Senator Harry Reid put a provision on the health care plan that originally called for $100 million to be funneled to Louisiana exclusively.

Mary Landrieu refused to vote for cloture on the motion to proceed to the health care debate. Reid raised the offer to $300 million and Mary proved she wasn’t a cheap date after all — she took the increase, voted for cloture, and then bragged about the $300 million bribe.

In a statement sure to be repeated by Republicans endlessly over the coming weeks of Senate health care debate, the senator flaunted the inclusion of the provision. “I will correct something. It’s not $100 million, it’s $300 million, and I’m proud of it and will keep fighting for it,” Landrieu told reporters after her floor speech. “But that is not why I started this health care debate; I started this health care debate for all the reasons I just mentioned in my statement” on the floor.

Former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, convicted on bribery and racketeering charges and sentenced to a Congressional-record 13-year sentence, recently received a couple of significant holiday-season gifts from Judge T.J. Ellis III.

Recently, Judge Ellis decided that Jefferson is not a flight risk and may remain free pending appeal, a process that may take a year or more. During that time, Jefferson must wear a monitor and may not travel without prior court approval.

Today, Judge Ellis agreed that Jefferson’s legal expenses will be covered by the court during his appeal. Jefferson and his wife recently filed for bankruptcy, due in large part to the legal bills incurred during his trial.

Admittedly, Jefferson might have problems paying for new legal bills out of his Congressional pension, estimated to be $40,000 to $55,000 per year. Then again, once he’s incarcerated, he won’t be shelling out a lot on food, clothing or shelter.

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U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers mismanaged the maintenance of the shipping channel known as the “Mister GO” (the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, MR-GO), leading directly to the flooding of thousands of homes and businesses in St. Bernard Parish and the New Orleans neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward.

The case directly involves $700,000 in damages to three people and a business, but opens the door to claims by as many as 100,000 residents and former residents of the affected neighborhoods. If upheld, this judgment could lead to damage claims in the $billions.

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Half of what they asked for, but he’s going away for a while.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A former Louisiana congressman who famously stashed cash in his freezer was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands in bribes in exchange for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.

(H/T: Riehl World View) You know, when you’re faced with this sort of situation - one where you see a flawed, corrupted, fundamentally weak man finally be caught up by the impersonal forces of law and justice - there are times where you have to look on and ask yourself, Was it worth it to see the wreckage that has been made of this person’s life?  Can there be satisfaction in seeing an elderly man sent to prison for what might be the rest of his days?  Are you satisfied at the way that the foe has been relentlessly brought low?

(pause)

(Brightly) Yes!

Moe Lane

PS: …in his freezer.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

State investigators taking dozens of computers from ACORN office on Canal Street

Early last month, Caldwell’s office issued subpoenas for records from ACORN’s New Orleans office, where the organization — now moving its national headquarters to Washington — has long been based. …

In a statement, ACORN’s attorney Pamela Marple said the group was told the raid was ordered because of reports that workers loyal to Beth Butler, the recently fired head of ACORN’s Louisiana branch, had been taking computer data and other items out of the office.

“Over the last two months, ACORN has been cooperating with a variety of governmental entities across the country to provide requested information and documents,” Marple wrote. “We were told that the AG’s office has no criticisms of ACORN’s cooperative efforts, but rather that the warrant was issued because of concern that former local ACORN staff members had, and may intend in the future to remove or alter electronic documents.”

An ACORN official also said Caldwell’s investigators will copy the hard drives from ACORN’s computers and return them next week. The computers contain all payroll information for the national organization, the official said.

H/T dennism

Friday night, prosecutors in the case of The United States v. William Jefferson (D-LA) issued a memorandum recommending a prison sentence of 27 to 33 years for the former congressman from New Orleans, consistent with Federal sentencing guidelines. Such a long sentence is justified, according to the memo, by the severity of the crimes, flight risk, and the possibility of hidden assets.

Anything approaching the recommended punishment would be the longest sentence ever meted out on given to a U.S. Congressman.

Jefferson will be sentenced on November 13 by Federal Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, VA.

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Easily the best one that you’ll read all week.  The context: nobody can pronounce the Congressman’s last name properly - up to and including the President (this isn’t a slam: I was getting it wrong, too).  So Joseph decided to set the record straight with a press release:

My last name – Cao - is actually pronounced (drum-roll please…) “Gow.” It starts with a “G” and rhymes (as Amanda Carpenter quipped in the Washington Post) with “Pow.”

I can understand your reluctance to accept such an absurd variation – surely no “C,” in the history of language, has ever been pronounced as a “G.” And yet, through no fault of my own, my native Southern Vietnamese dialect evolved such that this absurd mockery of consonants is, in fact, reality.

The whole thing is worth your time; it’s good from start to finish.  All in all, I’d like to keep Joseph in Congress for a while: how about you?  Thanks to his position as a Republican legislator in a heavily Democratic district, he’s currently under a good deal of pressure to break ranks on health care rationing (he’s already taken hits from the Democrats for not budging for the ’stimulus’ or cap-and-trade bills): he frankly needs all the help that he can get.

Moe Lane

PS: I keep calling him ‘Joseph’ because he said that we all could.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Charlie Melancon (D-LA) has been working hard to portray himself as a centrist Democrat not in love with big spending big government.

He has decided to take his self-portrayed image on the road to campaign against David Vitter for the United States Senate next year.

There’s just one problem for Charlie. Barack Obama today gave away the game in Louisiana.

Charlie is very liberal. He hems and haws his votes to make it look less so. But Obama knows them when he sees them and he knows Charlie is going to work diligently to destroy America’s health care system.

Over the weekend, an unpaid ACORN volunteer in New Orleans expressed her desire to see a little more evidence of the Hope’n'Change she voted for when President Obama visits the city, however briefly, on Thursday.

Since it’s hard to fire an unpaid volunteer, the Big Wigs from HQ showed up on Tuesday and sacked Beth Butler, longtime executive director of Louisiana ACORN.

But there might be more to the story. Pass the popcorn.

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There’s quite a remarkable story in today’s New Orleans Times-Picayune. I wish I could cut and paste it in its entirety.

It’s the story of two very different men that we chose to lead our country, and how, in the unlikely setting of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we have a chance to compare and contrast their characters.

The world knows one as a blue-blooded faux Texan, bumbling idiot, spoiled child of privilege and draft dodger. The other is a compassionate man of the people who will soon join Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer and Nelson Mandela in the Pantheon of recipients of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Amazing.

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The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that LA Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, a Democrat, is on ACORN, as we say, like gravy on rice.

ACORN embezzlement was $5 million, La. attorney general says

The organization, until recently headquartered in New Orleans, had tried to keep the details of an embezzlement quiet. The embezzler, Dale Rathke, was the one-time bookkeeper for the organization. His brother, Wade Rathke, was President of ACORN International at the time, and saw to it that the unpleasantness was handled when he and “a donor” repaid $1 million of Dale’s improper credit card charges.

Now, however, AG Caldwell is following up on an ACORN internal report that the embezzlement was closer to $5 million.

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has been conducting an investigation of ACORN since June. He issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to former ACORN International President Wade Rathke and his brother Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas were focused on possible ACORN violations for non-payment of employee withholding taxes, obstructing justice and violating the Employee Retirement Security Act. No charges have been made. …

“Current high-ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million, ” the new subpoena says.

The subpoena says, “It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal or private funds.”

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Jim Letten, a Republican and eight-year Bush appointee as U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, has an impressive collection of political scalps.

U.S. Att’y Jim Letten, FBI Smell Something Fishy in New Orleans City Hall
U.S. Att’y Jim Letten Nails Another Corrupt New Orleans-Area Democrat
St Bernard Parish Judge Arrested for Fraud; Oh, BTW, He’s a Democrat
Movin’ On Up (To The Big House): Four Members of Jefferson Clan Indicted on RICO Charges

Add one more: St. John the Baptist Parish President Bill Hubbard.

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On Thursday, I wrote about the announcement of a new giant oil field discovered by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s in 4,100 feet of water, and the well is over 35,000 feet deep. If it turns out to be as big as BP hopes it is, it might be BP’s biggest Gulf find and deliver half the output of Prudhoe Bay. Big field.

On Friday comes
word that Bobby Jindal and the State of Louisiana have their eye on the prize.

This will be interesting.

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A great ad the people of Louisiana need to see.

Former Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), recently convicted on 11 counts of bribery and racketeering, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

In his preliminary filing, William and Andrea Jefferson state liabilities in the range of $1 million to $10 million, against declared assets in the same broad range. Most of the debt would appear to be consumer-type debt: credit cards and car loans. Several New Orleans area banks are listed among the creditors. Another noteworthy creditor is the Congressional Federal Credit Union.

Absent from the creditors’ list are the IRS and the State of Louisiana.

A more detailed filing will be required in a few days. Jefferson will be represented in the matter by his daughter, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock.

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Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) held a townhall meeting in what should be the friendly locale of blue-collar Reserve, LA on Thursday afternoon. She was non-committal on HR 3200, expressing her preference for the Wyden-Bennett bill that has been introduced but will go nowhere under the current leadership. Based on the following quote, it seems that even the sympathetic Times-Picayune had a hard time ignoring the Astroturfing on the pro-Obamacare side.

Most of the questions were overwhelmingly in opposition to the general concept of “Obamacare,” a pejorative label put on House Democratic plans for a health insurance overhaul. There were scores of other, less vocal attendees who sported stickers with messages like, “Health Care Now” and “We can’t wait.” Some were part of union organizing efforts. Others came with the encouragement of the White House’s national field operation.

Reserve, you may recall, was the site of another townhall a little over a month ago — the one where a citizen informed a stunned Kathleen Sebelius that “it will be a cold day in hell before [Obama] socializes my country.”

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Back in May, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner penned a letter that lays out in glorious detail the misconceptions and wrong-headed thinking that pervade the Obama Administration’s approach to energy and the environment, taxation and to the economy in general.

The letter was a response to one written by Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA7) (a member of the Ways and Means Committee), expressing his concern for the Obama Administration’s plan to rescind certain oil and gas tax deductions which they characterize as “loopholes”. The economy of Louisiana’s Seventh District, in the southwest part of the state, is heavily dependent on the oil and gas, oil service and petrochemical industries. To paraphrase Boustany’s basic question: How many jobs will my district lose, Mr. Secretary, when you “close the tax loopholes” on oil and gas drilling and production?

Secretary Geithner’s reply belies the Obama Administration’s hostility to oil and gas and their willful ignorance in the realm of energy policy.

Garden variety stupidity might be observed in a statement or point of view that is merely ignorant, misinformed or ill-considered; stupidity of this type occasionally affects us all. It is one-dimensional and generally benign in the long run.

But the transcendently stupid statement is a true gem, like a highly flawed diamond; it is multifaceted and multidimensional; it may even tease with glimmers of brilliance. The more you study it, though, the more glaring the flaws.

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This is just funny, funny, funny to watch.

Do you really think Senators are going to be in a mood to socialize the American healthcare system after experiencing stuff like this from rural Louisiana:

Consider this your must read of the day.

The left in Washington has concluded that honesty will not yield its desired policy result. So it resorts to a fundamentally dishonest approach to reform. I say this because the marketing of the Democrats’ plans as presented in the House of Representatives and endorsed heartily by President Obama rests on three falsehoods.

Bobby Jindal, more than probably anyone else in elected politics right now including Barack Obama and his Secretary of Health, is probably the most qualified person to talk about healthcare reform.

Read the whole thing here.