TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's Journal'Purposeful racial discrimination' leads judge to order new trial in French Quarter arrest suit
An Indiana teen who sued Louisiana State Police, claiming his constitutional rights were violated during a 2015 arrest in the French Quarter, will get a new trial after a federal judge said lawyers for the defendants unlawfully declined to pick a potential juror based on his race.
Lyle Dotson sued former State Police Col. Michael Edmonson and the troopers who arrested him -- Rene Bodet, Calvin Anderson, Tagie Journee and Huey McCartney - in U.S. District Court in New Orleans in 2016.
Dotson said in his lawsuit the troopers arrested and detained him on Oct. 7, 2015, on Toulouse Street near Bourbon Street, and accused him of following an undercover narcotics officer.
McCartney used his personal cellphone to take pictures of Dotson while he was handcuffed, according to the lawsuit. Dotson objected to the photograph, and McCartney said Dotson kicked him, according to the lawsuit.
Read more: https://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2018/06/racial_discrimination_new_tria.html
Louisiana man charged in 2017 bomb threat made to Trump Tower cafe
LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana man has been charged with phoning in a bomb threat to a restaurant at the Trump Tower building in New York City last year.
A federal grand jury in Louisiana handed up an indictment last Thursday charging 27-year-old Paul Miller, of Lafayette, with making the bomb threat last September.
The indictment says Miller called Trump Café at President Donald Trump's namesake skyscraper in Manhattan and told the person who answered that a bomb was in the building. It doesn't say where he called from.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney David Joseph's office said he doesn't know if Miller has an attorney.
Read more: http://www.theadvocate.com/nation_world/article_23c96bba-73bc-11e8-93df-433f368ac6a3.html
Louisiana DAs use diversion traffic tickets to 'openly violate' ethics laws, complaint says
Louisiana district attorneys are illegally padding their budgets by using off-duty police officers to write profit-driven traffic tickets that can be dismissed for a fee, a legal watchdog said in an ethics complaint filed Tuesday.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is asking the state's ethics board to investigate and order district attorneys to return millions of dollars they have generated through "diversion" traffic tickets. Standard tickets written by on-duty officers don't give drivers the option to "buy their way out of prosecution," the group's complaint says.
"The State deserves more from its elected district attorneys than this unethical scheme to generate profits through the threat of prosecution," it says.
The Alabama-based law center is accusing District Attorney Richard Ward's office of abusing its prosecutorial powers to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from drivers who pay $175 to get a ticket dismissed and avoid having it reported to the state Office of Motor Vehicles. The state's ethics code prohibits district attorneys from profiting off the threat of prosecution, the group says.
Read more: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_c8c42824-73e1-11e8-bb06-0be0227bfe0f.html
On Juneteenth, a look at the social, economic services done by Freedmen's Bureau agents in Louisiana
Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration marking the end of slavery in United States and a recognized holiday in 45 states, commemorates June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Texas finally received news of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after Robert E. Lee’s surrender. Including the 250,000 enslaved people in Texas declared free that day, roughly four million enslaved people across the country had been emancipated. To assist them in their transition into free society, President Abraham Lincoln established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865.
The Freedmen’s Bureau, as it’s more commonly known, provided social and economic services to formerly enslaved people and others living in poverty throughout the southern states and Washington, D.C. These services included assisting African American veterans in collecting pensions and back pay, distributing essential goods, facilitating labor contracts between sharecroppers and landowners, and helping to establish and maintain freedmen’s schools. Copies of Freedmen’s Bureau records in The Historic New Orleans Collection’s holdings contain a wealth of information about Bureau activities, especially education initiatives, in Louisiana during Reconstruction.
In the post-war South, the demand for education of newly freed people was enormous, and Freedmen’s Bureau agents were instrumental in establishing schools for African American children. Aaron Walker, one of these agents, wrote in an October 1865 report to the Bureau’s superintendent of education in Louisiana that he had helped to establish three schools in Shreveport and two in Natchitoches, each enrolling over 40 students. Walker commented that the number of potential students in Alexandria could fill at least two schools, but there was no building, or even room, in which to house the school. In Jefferson Parish, an agent (whose signature on the report is illegible) reported that his district contained 13 schools, but that he may have to close at least two due to insufficient funding.
This anecdote and others in the agents’ reports struck at one of the largest obstacles to creating and sustaining schools: money. The Bureau had originally instituted a plan where all Louisiana residents paid a five-percent tax to support these schools, but many whites protested, so a system in which only freedmen paid the tax replaced it. This tax created an extra burden on an already impoverished populace, agents observed. Walker reported that the Shreveport and Natchitoches school buildings were obtained with no rent required, but George Ruby, another agent, who went on to become a prominent African American political leader in Texas, wrote of a different situation in Amite Station in St. Helena Parish. “There are a large number of freedmen in the vicinity working the sawmills and elsewhere, who are all willing to sustain and anxious about their schools,” Ruby wrote, “but the trouble is just now their people though laboring, have little means.” The Jefferson Parish agent noted that he had “reasoned and explained to [the laborers] the great necesity (sic) of Education,” but that many objected to paying a tax that wasn’t being universally enforced.
Read more: http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/entertainment_life/article_ba608ad6-7114-11e8-acb9-eb949222e4c2.html
North Louisiana glass plant that received millions in tax incentives laying off up to 227 workers
A north Louisiana glass plant that received millions in tax incentives as part of a Jindal-era economic development deal to retain its workforce is planning to lay off up to 227 employees, cutting the facility’s capacity roughly in half.
The company, the Ardagh Group, cites a growing plastics market that is cutting into many of the food product lines made at its facility in Simsboro, near Ruston, where it makes glass jars and bottles for brands including Tabasco, Smucker’s, Tito’s Vodka, and Seagram.
Plant manager Chris DeCerbo said the firm is working to find new business to stave off the cuts, but added it would take “providence” to prevent the layoffs.
DeCerbo and the Louisiana Workforce Commission said the total number of layoffs could end up being less than 200. Around 450 people currently work at the plant, more than the 350 workers the facility needs to employ to stay in compliance with its deal with the state.
Read more: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/business/article_1e594384-731d-11e8-8035-7b4fdff7eb1a.html
Legislature begins third special session of 2018 with one more shot at preventing cuts to services
The Louisiana Legislature has begun its third special session of the year — a last-ditch attempt to address the $650 million budget gap the state faces when more than $1 billion in temporary taxes expire at the end of the month.
"We’ve been teetering on the brink of the fiscal cliff for too long, and the clock is winding down," Gov. John Bel Edwards told lawmakers in a brief session-opening address Monday afternoon. "We will start the next fiscal year on July 1 whether or not we fix the cliff."
The Legislature in a special session that ended earlier this month approved a $29 billion budget that includes cuts to higher education, public safety and welfare programs, among others, if more revenue isn't raised in the latest special session.
Taylor Opportunity Program for Students scholarships that thousands of college students receive each year would be slashed by nearly 30 percent, colleges and universities would take a nearly 20 percent hit and state officials have said Louisiana would become the first state to eliminate the federally-funded food stamps program because the state would not be able to afford operating it.
Read more: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/legislature/article_2eebd0ec-7334-11e8-b83f-a3adbd404f9e.html
EPA makes Oklahoma first state granted oversight of coal waste
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency has approved the first state permit program for disposal of toxic ash from coal plants, a switch from federal oversight that the coal industry had sought.
Coal ash is the residue left after burning coal to generate power. It can contain toxins such as arsenic and chromium and contaminate ground water.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had delayed implementation of a 2015 federal rule that set tighter guidelines for waste from coal plants.
Pruitt says the first approval of a state permit program, in Oklahoma, gives oversight to “those who are best positioned to oversee coal ash management — the officials who have intimate knowledge of the facilities and the environment in their state.”
Read more: http://www.swtimes.com/news/20180618/epa-makes-oklahoma-first-state-granted-oversight-of-coal-waste
Oklahoma's county health clinics cut back after layoffs
OKLAHOMA CITY — County health clinics across Oklahoma are struggling to survive after layoffs by the state Health Department.
The staffing shortage has led some clinics to reduce the number of people they serve and delay visits, the Oklahoman reported.
Clinics saw about 4,800 fewer people than a year ago, according to statistics from April compared to the same time last year. Visits also declined from April 2016 to April 2017, but not nearly as much as they did in the last year.
County health departments statewide conducted about 1,800 fewer visits for family planning, 1,700 fewer for the Women, Infants and Children program, and 1,100 fewer for children’s health. The figures don’t include Oklahoma and Tulsa counties, which have independent clinics.
Read more: http://www.swtimes.com/news/20180618/oklahomas-county-health-clinics-cut-back-after-layoffs
Arkansas lawmaker accused of wrongdoing should resign only if indicted, governor says
HOT SPRINGS -- Gov. Asa Hutchinson repeated his belief Friday that a lawmaker accused of wrongdoing should resign only if he is indicted on criminal charges.
Information attached to a June 7 federal guilty plea by lobbyist Milton "Rusty" Cranford accused "Senator A" -- acknowledged as the governor's nephew, state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, a Republican in Little Rock -- of accepting bribes. However, the senator has not been charged. Cranford pleaded guilty to one count of federal program bribery for his role in bribing Arkansas lawmakers from 2010 until 2017.
The governor addressed the matter Friday during a previously scheduled speech on ethics at the Arkansas Bar Association's annual meeting in Hot Springs.
Gov. Hutchinson said he had delayed speaking about the matter in depth until the speech, although his conclusion was largely what he had told reporters last week: Any decision on Sen. Hutchinson's resignation should depend on the outcome of the federal corruption investigation. Some lawmakers are calling for Sen. Hutchinson to resign now.
Read more: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/jun/16/governor-calls-for-patience-in-inquiry-/?f=news-politics
Related article:
Former law client sues state senator; filing seeks $383,805 from Hutchinson
The company that once paid state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson of Little Rock $9,000 a month in lawyer fees filed suit Friday.
Friday's civil suit by Preferred Family Healthcare, a behavioral-health service provider, seeks to recover at least $383,805, an amount awarded to an ex-employee who sued one of the company's subsidiaries in 2014.
Hutchinson represented the subsidiary but failed to show up for hearings or respond to court motions in the dispute, the suit said. The earlier suit involved is David Coleman v. Health and Human Resources of Arkansas. Health Resources is a Batesville subsidiary of Preferred Family Healthcare.
The new suit said Hutchinson failed to notify the company of missed deadlines and court appearances in the previous case in Independence County. The company "learned of the judgment for the first time from its banking institutions, who were processing the garnishments" in the Coleman case. The order of garnishment went out Feb. 21, 2017, according to the new lawsuit.
Read more: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/jun/16/former-law-client-sues-state-senator-20/?f=news-politics
Federal judge again blocks Arkansas medication abortion law
LITTLE ROCK — A federal judge is again blocking Arkansas from enforcing a law that critics say makes the state the first in the nation to effectively ban abortion pills.
U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker on Monday granted a 14-day temporary restraining order preventing Arkansas from enforcing the restriction on how abortion pills are administered. The law says doctors who provide the pills must hold a contract with a physician with admitting privileges at a hospital who agrees to handle any complications.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month rejected Planned Parenthood's appeal to reinstate Baker's earlier order blocking the law. Planned Parenthood said its two facilities and another unaffiliated clinic in Little Rock have stopped offering medication abortions because of the restriction.
Baker said Monday that circumstances have changed since her initial ruling.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/jun/18/federal-judge-again-blocks-arkansas-medication-abo/
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