Louisiana Voice

Donald Trump was not at all empathetic with the financial plight of the typical American when he defended profiting some $2.2 billion during the first year of his second term of office.

In fact, he was downright arrogant about it all when asked if he might be using his presidency to enrich himself. “You know why I’m profiting, because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on July 1.

He then addressed one reporter, saying, “Do you have a 401(k)? How much did you make?” Then, apparently not waiting for an answer, he quipped in the mocking voice that has become his trademark, “Thank you, President Trump.

But let’s fact-check that claim that the increases in 401(k) retirement plan balances” HAVE MADE AMERICANS WEALTHIER.

While the super-wealthy have realized substantial wealth gains, many working-class families are facing declining household budgets as prices of just about everything have increased while wages have remained stagnant. We have most assuredly NOT profited.

Nearly a million Americans lost nearly $3.8 billion cumulatively on Trump’s cryptocurrency and memecoin ventures—all while he has pulled in millions in fees for processing investments by ordinary, trusting, loyalists—as the bottom dropped out by some 97 percent from their peaks. (Of that $2.2 billion in earnings for Trump, $1.1 billion came from his crypto businesses even as his investors were taking a bath.)

THE GUARDIAN quoted one person who would seem to represent the consensus thinking of typical Americans: “I’m one of the lucky ones, and I’m still counting pennies while my president is earning billions while stomping on the backs of Americans.”

Another was even more blunt, calling Trump’s grifting “blatant corruption.”

A third found the contrast between Trump’s extreme wealth and the difficulty many Americans are experiencing in affording things like healthcare “obscene.”  

“It is an embarrassment that our system allows such corruption and wealth to be exploited by the top 1%, upon the backs of children who are not receiving proper education and healthcare,” said the man, a retired pediatrician.

And while tye typical MAGHAT will refuse to acknowledge it, he and the rest of working America are most certainly NOT better off than they were before the Rapepublicans took control of the White House, the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court, the fact is, Americans as a society, are far worse off than ever before.

But fear not. As one dedicated and loyal MAGHAT confidently observed when she was confronted with facts about rapist/grifter/autocrat/liar Trump’s utter failure to deliver on any of his grandiose promises:

• Russia/Ukraine war solved within 24 hours;
• Release of the Epstein files;
• No wars;
• Deliverance of a better economy;
• Deportation of only illegal immigrant;
• Eradicate government waste (see ballroom, Reflecting pool, arch, etc.);
• Better healthcare;
• $2,000 stimulus checks;
• Work non-stop (see naps, golf outings)

The response from that true-blue MAGHAT: “He has a plan.”

It would certainly be nice if he’d let the rest of us in on that wonderful plan.

First, it was an inspection team from the Louisiana Department of Hospitals and its report containing a laundry list of SHORTCOMINGS, then there were the reports of non-functioning air conditioning at North Louisiana Medical Center (NLMC), which forced that necessary surgeries be delayed or transferred to other facilities.

Separate from that report, there were numerous stories of myriad financial difficulties of Allegiance Health Care, the owner of NLMC and several other facilities scattered across the state, mostly in north Louisiana—little things like neglecting to submit payroll taxes to the federal government as required by law.

More recently, there is a second wrongful death LAWSUIT filed against the hospital and both suits make basically the same claim that the deaths occurred because of inadequate, or non-operative, telemetry monitoring—one of the deficiencies cited in LDH’s recent 84-page report which was a result of the inspection team’s visit.

Allegiance CEO Rock Bordelon fired off an email to LouisianaVoice on June 21 in response to our initial story about Bordelon and Allegiance in which he made vague references to legal action for what he termed “defamation” of him and his company even though most of what we wrote came directly from the public record.

Of course, any litigation he might choose to pursue would open his business interests up to examination under discovery.

And while his financial empire, so far as it applies to medical care, appears to be teetering, he manages to find time for other interests, namely a reality game hunting show called ON THE ROAD WITH ROCK & AARON, aka On the Road Outdoors. Bordelon is the ONLY OFFICER of the corporation, according to Louisiana Secretary of State records. Aaron Lewis, a sometimes-front-man for a rock band is apparently his sidekick and hunting companion.

Rock Bordelon

The perfect metaphor for Nero fiddling as Rome burns

He also has corporate filings with the state for a pizza company, a racing company, real estate interests, a wedding event center, an electric sign company, a hotshot transport company and what appears to be an ammunitions company–in addition to the medical care and pharmaceutical entities among some 200 corporate listings in his name.

As the problems of NLMC continue to mount, his Facebook postings of his most recent hunt for velvet elk in Colorado would seem to be the perfect metaphor for Nero fiddling as Rome burns.

Even as the Livingston Parish Library Board of Control continues to search for a new parish library director after its exercise in ineptitude in FIRING THE PREVIOUS DIRECTOR as per the wishes of Michael Lunsford and his CITIZENS FOR A NEW LOUISIANA, Lunsford’s influence continues to infest the local political scene with his toxic influence.

The parish council voted to remove the entire library board back in January 2025 by setting “a new table, put a new table cloth, put new silverware, put new people around the table with the same directions and … see if we can get things done on a more professional level,” in the words of parish council member Ricky Goff, whatever that was supposed to mean.

Some parish council members, notably Erwin Sandefur, Dean Coates, Ryan Chavers and Joe Erdy, OBJECTED to removing the entire board. Sandefur and Erdy, in particular, wanted the parish council to reappoint their two members, Larry Davis and Summer Smith, both of whom were ultimately rejected in the sweeping coup, er… housecleaning.

Fast forward to 2026 and the congressional reapportionment mulligan exercised by the Louisiana Legislature and U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields was squeezed out of the 6^th District, throwing the contest for a successor into disarray.

Into the breach stepped former Livingston Parish Library Board member Davis, a rarity in Livingston Parish in that he is a Black Republican who is also a minister and who is now preaching the Gospel of Deity of Cheeto Jesus Trump, the Alpha Molester in Chief.

His WEB PAGE touting his candidacy checks off all the prerequisites of any campaign in a red state—Economic Growth, Border Security, Public Safety, Parental Rights, Energy Independence, Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutional Freedoms and Military Strength—as if Repugnantcans held a monopoly on such issues.

As long as the economy and fiscal responsibility are on Davis’s mind, this might be a good time to remind him and all Repugnantcans that under the Decomposing Jack O’Lantern’s second term, the national debt has increased by $3.1 trillion (with a “T”) and inflation is eroding middle America’s standard of living quicker than you can say sexual predator.

So, what makes the candidacy of Larry Davis so interesting?

As always, follow the money. The list of contributors to his fledgling campaign is interesting, to say the least.

Take William Mills of Lafayette, for example. Mills has thus far kicked in a single $3500 contribution to the Davis campaign.

Who is William Mills, you ask?

Well, besides being a 2025 recipient of something called the Horatio Alger Award, he’s one of the biggest supporters and a BOARD MEMBER of Lunsford’s Citizens for a New Louisiana, the organization that’s behind the statewide push to censor public libraries and hold them to Lunsford’s arbitrary standards of puritanical doctrine.

Other individuals who are been front and center in the attack on the First Amendment include the campaigns of Rep. Kellee Hennessee Dickerson (R-Denham Springs), Sen. Valerie Hodges (R-Denham Springs), $1,000 each.

For a list of all his donors, go HERE.

A trial date of next Feb. 22 has been set for a wrongful termination case in which an employee of nearly 30 years was fired by the Louisiana Workers Compensation Corp. (LWCC) for offenses the majority of state civil service workers and supervisors alike have violated on a regular basis.

A federal judge earlier denied a motion for summary judgment (dismissal) filed by the LWCC after two obscure, little-used regulations were invoked as a means to fire the longtime employee.

Judge John W. deGravelles denied LWCC’s motion in a 25-page ruling, saying LWCC’s citing violation of the regulations “was not the real reason” for the termination of Laura Sherman, who had worked for the agency since 1993, “but rather a discriminatory animus was.”

Sherman was found employing a state computer to perform duties related to rental property she owned and was found to be in violation of regulations prohibiting private use of state computers and of failing to properly notify and obtain approval for outside employment.

Those rules are, at best, selectively enforced throughout state government as state employees routinely use computers for personal emails and for online shopping (including supervisors this writer is personally aware of, including one who booked a cruise on a state computer while on the clock).

Moreover, many state employees derive income from outside sources that would not be considered “employment,” per se, such as rental property, selling beauty products and even performing school fundraising activities without ever giving written notification or seeking permission to do so.

In Sherman’s case, she maintains the work she was doing on her rental property was being done during her lunch hour and that she was not on the clock at the time.

LWCC vice presidents Angela McGhee, Kyle Rickards and Jamie Bourg attest that they conducted an investigation and determined that Sherman was actively working on her rental properties without permission to engage in outside work, as required by LWCC’s Outside Employment Policy.

There is, indeed, such a policy throughout state government but it is rarely enforced. Employees routinely derive outside income from investments such as rental property, for which supervisors would be hard-pressed to qualify as “outside employment,” since many supervisors themselves own rental property and receive income from outside sources.

The only time the regulation is enforced is when there is no other reason to terminate an employee. Employees who sell beauty and health products, for example, often do so while actually on duty in offices where they work.

The incident in question occurred on June 8, 2022. Both sides in the dispute offered evidence pertaining to the two policies. LWCC submitted in evidence language of the Outside Employment and Unethical Behavior Policies as well as testimony about their meaning.

Conversely, Sherman submitted a number of declarations from former employees of LWCC that touched on how those policies were generally understood, applied and enforced in practice, whether they applied to investment property, whether LWCC had knowledge of her activities with the investment property, what employees were allowed to do during break (such as lunch breaks) and whether any other employee had ever been terminated for violating either policy.

“In resolving the motion (for summary judgment), the court may not undertake to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses, weigh the evidence or resolve factual disputes,” deGravelles wrote. “So long as the evidence in the record is such that a reasonable jury drawing all inferences in favor of the nonmoving party (Sherman) could arrive at a verdict in that party’s favor, the court must deny the motion.”

The five-day trial has been set for Feb. 22-26, 2027.

Sherman is represented by Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith III.