Sound Off Louisiana

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-Amite), who was the lone partipant at the Baton Rouge Press Club’s forum for Louisiana Governor on Monday, October 28, 2019 as his opponent, businessman Eddie Rispone (R-Baton Rouge) opted to pass on attending.

Controversial Louisiana political power broker and businessman Lane Grigsby, whom Gov. Edwards laid bare his campaign’s intent to tie to the hip of his challenger Eddie Rispone as being Rispone’s “corrupt puppet master.”

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-Amite) served as the lone participant at the Baton Rogue Press Club (BRPC)’s meeting of Monday, October 28, 2019.  He was the lone participant because his challenger, businessman Eddie Rispone (R-Baton Rouge), took a pass on attending.  Let’s take a look at a few highlights of Gov. Edwards’ presentation:

Edwards responds to a question of his “chances of winning over Ralph Abraham’s supporters.”

Edwards takes a few jabs at his absentee rival Rispone and emphasizes that he (Edwards) should not bear the responsibility for outlining Rispone’s position on redistricting.

Edwards teletypes his campaign’s very obvious strategy of tying controversial political power broker Lane Grigsby and Rispone at the hips in referencing Grigsby as a “corrupt puppet master.”

Former Republican (he withdrew from the GOP last week) and U. S. Senate candidate (2014) Col. Rob Maness has been the most outspoken critic of the Rispone-Grigsby connection; however, he’s far from alone as this article by The Advocate’s Tyler Bridges (a/k/a “The Twit” per conservative talk-show host Moon Griffon) makes clear.

The reality is that the Grigsby-Rispone connection has for a protracted period been known to be a weapon readily available at Edwards’ disposal should Rispone make the runoff, which he obviously now has.

What’s not known is whether, in deploying a scorched-earth approach (which is the only approach Grigsby knows and was likely the motivating factor behind Rispone’s own scorched-earth approach entailing Abraham) will have so alienated enough folk like former BESE member Lottie Beebe and former East Baton Rouge Parish Councilman and LSU Economics professor Dr. Pat Culbertson to sway enough voters off Rispone to give Edwards the win:

“I’m a Christian,” Beebe said recently. “It’s wrong what he’s doing.” (Grigsby, who calls himself a life-long Christian, was raised Methodist but worships at the multidenominational Grace Life Fellowship.)

Beebe added that she won’t support Rispone in next month’s runoff because of his connection to Grigsby. “He will more or less rubber-stamp Lane Grigsby’s education policies.”

In 2007, Grigsby created Our Louisiana PAC, which targeted at least six legislative candidates. One mailer tarred Pat Culbertson, a Republican member of the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council, as “a tax-and-spend liberal.”

“I’m all about freedom of speech, but it amazes me that people could just lie and distort my record,” Culbertson told The Advocate then, adding that he didn’t know why Grigsby attacked him.

At any rate, Grigsby’s close association with Rispone most assuredly won’t be an asset for Rispone, and our advice would be get ready to be peppered with both attack ads and debate questions Wednesday night regarding Grigsby and have some good explanations.  Obviously, “The Twit,” as Griffon is fond of reference Bridges, clearly saw the benefit of strategically exploiting former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal by making sure he appeared on prominent display on the photo of the feature linked above!

Edwards is asked if he’s “concerned at all” by the support of President Trump and Vice President Pence for his opponent Mr. Rispone.

Edwards responds to a question by BRPC Secretary-Treasurer John Hightower entailing Louisiana’s high automobile insurance rates.

Edwards is asked to respond to Rispone’s support of a Louisiana School Voucher Program implemented under the administration of former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

For the record, Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns, who never refrains from posing a question at a BRPC meeting, intentionally refrained from even raising his hand for today’s meeting.  He is choosing to keep his reasons for doing so to himself, but he’s making it crystal clear there was no avoidance whatsoever on the part of Gov. Edwards in not calling on Burns for a question as Burns never even made that a possibility.

CLICK HERE for the “forum” in its entirety.

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LSP Master Trooper Dean Coates, who appeared before the Louisiana State Police Commission on Thursday, October 10, 2019 to request an investigation of LSP having failed to uniformly implement longevity pay increases, sued LSP the following day, October 11, 2019, seeking to be awarded his longetivity pay retroactively to October 12, 2016.

Louisiana State Police (LSP) Master Trooper Dean Coates sued LSP on Friday, October 11, 2019.  The preceding lawsuit is self-explanatory but, in a nutshell, it asserts haphazard implementation of a 3 percent “longevity pay increase” which was awarded only to “chosen commissioned troopers” when Coates asserts the pay raise is applicable to all troopers, the majority of whom Coates asserts in his litigation have not been awarded the pay increases.  The following table illustrates the timeline of events outlined in the petition:

Paragraph 10 is the critical allegation contained within the litigation, so we put it front and center at this time with some highlighted critical words within the paragraph:

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EBRP Coroner Dr. Beau Clark, who was grilled on his office having approved the cremation of 134 homicide victims in East Baton Rouge Parish since he was sworn into office in apparent violation of a Louisiana statute prohibiting such cremations.

Toward the middle of this past week we at Sound Off Louisiana were provided with some pretty alarming material pertaining to East Baton Rouge Parish (EBRP) Coroner Beau Clark.  Moreover, we are disturbed by what we have been informed has been the stand of Attorney General Jeff Landry entailing the matter.

Specifically, we were first provided with the link for a forum which transpired about five days before we were contacted.  We were told the exact point to go to in the meeting, so we did, and we captured the next 3:12 of the meeting, which featured an unspecified employee of the West Baton Rouge Parish (WBRP) Coroner’s Office directly confronting Clark about his practice of cremating homicide victims in apparent violation of LA R. S. 13:5716, which specifies that when the coroner’s investigation reveals “suspicious circumstances or the reasonable probability of the commission of a crime,” the coroner “shall deny the (cremation) permit.” (Emphasis is ours).  Let’s take a look at the confrontation:

Clark is confronted about his office’s cremations of homicide victims in apparent violation of the above-cited statute prohibiting such cremations when a crime has been committed.

The statute link is provided above, but let’s force it to stare everyone (including Clark) directly in the face, shall we?:

Now, clearly “homicide” is a crime, no?  So, a homicide victim surely must meet the test of “reasonable probability” of a crime, no?  We would submit that homicide victims are evidence far beyond “reasonable probability” and represent as close to certainty of being evidence a crime has been committed as one can ever obtain in our way of thinking.

With the preceding logic in mind, the WBRP Coroner official poses the question to Clark about his acts, and he states that Clark has engaged in this practice (of cremating homicide victims) in excess of 150 times since he took office.  We sought to confirm that number, and we found it to be only slightly off.  Clark was first elected in 2011 and was sworn into office in early 2012.  The following table illustrates the number of homicide victims who were cremated in EBRP from January 1, 2009 through August 14, 2019:

By our math, the actual total of homicide victims cremated since Clark was sworn into office is 134, which we derived by simply adding the numbers from the year 2012 forward on the above table.

Now, understandably, funeral homes are going to be reluctant to discuss any coroner’s practices; however, we did obtain one instance of correspondence entailing Clark having approved a cremation, and we were also permitted to examine (though not obtain a copy of) the death certificate of that same homicide victim.

While we wish we could provide a copy of the death certificate, we can’t; however, what we can do is attest to the fact we examined the death certificate, and it is the same individual for the cremation permit notice of approval we are about to provide.  Furthermore, the manner of death was declared to be “homicide” by Clark’s office, and the specific cause of death stated on the death certificate was “multiple gunshot wounds,” and specified that the disposition of the remains was cremation.  Let’s provide the EBRP Coroner’s office’s approval of the cremation of that homicide victim (with identity of that victim and the funeral home intentionally concealed) at this time:

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