Eideard

It began as a landlord-tenant dispute, Louisiana style.

The tenant was Texaco; the landlord the Broussard family, heirs of a Cajun rancher, who claimed that Texaco’s operation of a gas plant on its property had left the land contaminated. The lawsuit, of a kind not all that rare in these industry-heavy parts, had dragged on so long that 13 of the heirs had died.

But it took a sudden and bitter turn in recent months, when another company — a company that, like Texaco, is a subsidiary of Chevron — sued to condemn most of the disputed land and expropriate it, arguing that it was acting in the national interest…

The Chevron subsidiary that sued to take the land, Sabine Pipe Line, had quietly operated a pipeline hub across the road for nearly 60 years. In June, Sabine sent a letter to the family, saying the 14-year legal fight with Texaco was threatening the continued operation of one of the most important natural gas pipeline hubs in the country. The family could agree to sell the land, the letter said, or be forced to do so.

The Broussards say the timing of the letter and the scope of the demand are more than a little curious. They contend that Sabine’s actions are not to protect any pipeline, but are simply a pretext to shield Chevron from millions in environmental damages…

Even though some members of the family worked on the property — some still do — they have never entirely been aware of what went on there. They knew that there were some places in the pasture where grass did not grow, and that pipelines crossed their land so thickly that Texaco simply paid them not to graze cattle in certain areas.

But it was not until a legal argument broke out between Texaco and another company working at the site that the family learned that one of the wells had blown out in 1997…

In a lawsuit, the Broussards argued that the contamination was so bad that Texaco had breached the lease and that they would try to kick the company off the property unless it was cleaned to their standards.

Then, another subsidiary shows up to throw them off their land.

Under the arcane laws governing mineral rights, living as landowners in a state where even the local dog-catcher can get oil company money to run for office – the Broussard family will have to fight for their rights in a court system that doesn’t consider the common law of the United States of America as relevant.

Ellis claims this guy stole his tax credits

A federal judge has ordered a California man to stop promoting what the U.S. Justice Department calls a scheme to sell billions of dollars in bogus tax credits.

The Justice Department said in a release Wednesday that Lamar Ellis of Brea has been permanently barred from claiming to have billions of dollars in federal research tax credits supposedly granted him for purported scientific breakthroughs.

The federal officials alleged Ellis advertised the sale of the credits on the Internet and issued phony documents to people who were led to believe they would reduce their tax obligations. Federal officials also alleged Ellis teamed with the non-profit Southwest Louisiana Business Development Center in Jennings, La., to try to sell $24 billion of the fictitious credits.

The civil injunction order requires Ellis to provide the federal government with the names, addresses and Social Security or tax identification numbers of everyone to whom he purported to distribute tax credits.

It’s just a guess. I think Mr. Ellis gets to spend a little time in a federal courtroom – and a larger chunk of time in the federal slammer.

Steam Punk brain eater robot by CatherinetteRings

Last week, Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals issued a warning to residents: Don’t use tap water to rinse your nasal passages.

The warning came after a 51-year-old woman in the state died after she was infected with the “brain-eating” amoeba Naegleria fowleri, which enters the body through the nose and sometimes causes devastating meningitis. Apparently, the amoeba lurked in tap water the woman used in her neti pot, a pitcher-like device used to rinse nasal passages.

“Tap water is safe for drinking, but not for irrigating your nose,” Louisiana’s state epidemiologist, Dr. Raoult Ratard, said in a statement. He urged those who want to rinse their sinuses to use distilled, sterile or previously boiled water, and to rinse their neti pot (or other irrigation device) after each use and allow it to air dry.

If you’re anything like me and have always used tap water to rinse your sinuses, the warning is a bit scary. Naegleria fowleri infection is very rare — only 32 people in the U.S. were affected between 2000 and 2010, the Louisiana warning noted — but it’s also very deadly, causing the destruction of brain tissue and usually death within a couple of weeks…

Naegleria “is generally harmless when ingested by mouth, so [the Louisianans] got it because it was pushed directly into the area behind the nose close to the brain,” Dr. Otto Yang said of the woman and a 20-year-old man who apparently died the same way in June. Yang said he believed that these to be the first reported cases of transmission through tap water.

Like the Louisiana health officials, Yang said it’s probably “best to use distilled or boiled water to play it safe,” when rinsing the sinuses…

Or live somewhere with cleaner water. When I lived in New Orleans we were assured safety because we were drinking Mississippi River water with enough chlorine in it to turn your bathtub green for a century.

Of course, that amount of chlorine may have been as dangerous as the critters it was killing.

BG Group Plc will buy 3.5 million metric tons a year of liquefied natural gas from Cheniere Energy Partner LP’s terminal at Sabine Pass in Louisiana, bringing U.S. exports a step closer.

The 20-year contract is Cheniere’s first long-term sales agreement for exports from the terminal’s proposed plant in Cameron Parish and may help the company raise finance to begin construction of the facilities that will chill the gas, turning it into liquid for transportation, BG Group said in a statement…

Surging shale gas production has reversed declining output in the U.S., now the world’s largest gas producer ahead of Russia. Companies including Cheniere plan to convert LNG import terminals into export plants.

…Profitability of U.S. exports is determined by the price difference between gas and crude oil. Oil is sometimes used as a power generation fuel, and is also used as a reference in setting Asian long-term energy contract prices…

Shipments may start as soon as 2018, Elizabeth Spomer, senior vice president for business development, said.

Cheniere has said it plans to sell LNG to Caribbean nations for power generation to cut their dependence on crude oil. Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are among those that could save money by burning gas to generate electricity, Cheniere’s chief executive officer Charif Souki has said.

And, someday – just maybe someday – the political blockheads in Washington will realize that both American consumers and American investors would benefit from including natural gas as a leading producer of electricity in this land of ours.

I ain’t holding my breath waiting, though.

To get to Brandon, you have to drive across the Pearl River, a boundary that seems to separate black Mississippi from white.

In the town’s center, a monument stands honoring the confederate soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

This mostly white town in mostly white Rankin County is about a 30-minute drive from Jackson, Mississippi. It’s here in Brandon that some residents say a gang of teenagers expressed their strong racial prejudice — sometimes through violence.

These residents say the teens were friends with and often led by Deryl Dedmon, now 19 and facing capital murder and hate crime charges for the killing of James Anderson, a black man, who died after he was beaten and run over by a truck in Jackson, according to police. Dedmon has pleaded not guilty and his attorney has refused to answer CNN’s repeated requests for comment…

Parents and students who knew Dedmon tell CNN it was widely known that he expressed a hatred for blacks, white people who had black friends, and anyone he thought was gay. And they say he had a history of harassing teens at his high school.

CNN has learned that Department of Justice investigators have uncovered two other possible incidents where groups of white Rankin County teens, including Dedmon, have sought out and attacked a black person.

But police and school officials told CNN that there were no warning signs, no concerns about Dedmon or his friends before James Anderson’s death this summer. Brandon’s Assistant Police Chief Chris Butts described Anderson’s killing as “an isolated incident” that has been blown out of proportion by the media.

RTFA. It’s long. It’s just as I remember a lot of white Mississippi, White Louisiana.

It wasn’t the same in Black or integrated communities. The balance may have changed by now. The results of official racism obviously haven’t.

A migrant farm worker from Mexico who died in 2010 was the first human ever to die in the US of rabies transmitted by vampire bat, health officials say.

The 19-year-old died last August about three weeks after he was bitten on the heel by a vampire bat while sleeping in the Mexican state of Michoacan.

Doctors in the US state of Louisiana, where he went to work on a sugar cane farm after the bite, diagnosed rabies. He had no known vaccination against the disease, US health officials reported.

According to a report in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, a publication of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the unnamed worker was bitten on the left heel by the bat on 15 July 2010. He departed for the US 10 days later, arriving at a sugar cane plantation in Louisiana on 29 July.

The next day he went to hospital, complaining of fatigue, pain in his left shoulder and numbness in his left hand, which he attributed to overwork. He was transferred to hospital in New Orleans, where his condition deteriorated rapidly until he died on 21 August.

A post-mortem examination showed that he had been infected with a variant of rabies that comes from vampire bats…

“This is the first reported death from a vampire bat rabies virus variant in the United States,” the CDC reported. But the study notes that vampire bats are the leading source of rabies infection in Latin America.

Two questions come to mind: As a matter of practice, was he here legally? How much bureaucratic make-work between Louisiana and the Feds at the CDC was there – that this took a year to make it into the Scientific literature much less the public eye?

Five current or former police officers have been found guilty on a combined 25 counts of civil rights violations tied to fatal shootings on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Jurors reached a verdict in the closely watched trial after three days of deliberations.

The shootings occurred on Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005, six days after much of New Orleans went underwater after the powerful hurricane slammed into the Gulf Coast.

Prosecutors contend the officers opened fire on an unarmed family, killing 17-year-old James Brissette and wounding four others. Minutes later, one of the officers shot and killed Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man described by Justice officials as having severe mental disabilities.

Madison was trying to flee the scene when he was shot, according to a Justice Department statement. One of the officers allegedly “stomped and kicked” Madison before he died, the statement noted.

Officers Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso were convicted in the shootings along with a fifth defendant, former detective Arthur Kaufman.

The five men are scheduled to be sentenced on December 14. Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso are facing potential multiple life sentences, as well as additional penalties for charges tied to a conspiracy to cover up what happened on the bridge. Kaufman faces a maximum penalty of 120 years in prison.

“Today’s verdict by these jurors sends a powerful, a powerful, unmistakable message to public servants, to law enforcement officers and to the citizens we serve and indeed to the world,” U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said. “That message is that public officials and especially law enforcement officers will be held accountable for their acts, and that any abuse of power, especially that power that violates the rights and the civil liberties of our citizens, will have serious consequences.”

“The citizens of this country will not, should not, and we intend that they will never have to fear the individuals who are called upon to protect them,” Letten declared.

Overdue.

RTFA if you need your memory jogged. Local officials could have taken care of this – and didn’t. The police department could have come down on the side of justice and didn’t. Federal efforts on behalf of abused civil rights are still needed for justice in many of these United States.

Skeletal remains found in the chimney of an Abbeville, Louisiana, bank two months ago have been identified as those of a local man who hadn’t been seen in 27 years.

The remains are those of Joseph W. Schexnider, who vanished at age 22 in January 1984, Abbeville police Lt. David Hardy told CNN. Schexnider’s disappearance was noted after he failed to show up for a court hearing on a charge of possession of a stolen vehicle. When officers showed up at his home to take him in to custody, Schexnider’s mother said he had fled to avoid arrest.

The remains were discovered in May when construction workers were doing renovations on the main branch of the Bank of Abbeville, a historic building that sits on the main square in the southwestern Louisiana town of 25,000 people. Tests done at a Louisiana State University forensics lab established the remains were those of Schexnider.

The cause of death was likely dehydration and starvation, Hardy said. Foul play was not suspected and the case is closed, he said.

But why Schexnider was in the chimney remains a bit of a mystery…

A mystery to whom? Do you think he was waiting for a bus? He stood atop the chimney to pee in the hole – and fell inside? Give me a break!

Save the “mystery” for Nancy Grace.

I’d rather remember Hwa Lee instead of her killer

Hours after he claimed he’d like to kill all the members of the jury that convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of a store clerk in Marrero, the same Jefferson Parish jury recommended that Isaiah Doyle die by lethal injection.

The jury of three men and nine women deliberated just under two hours returning a verdict just before 11 p.m…

Doyle, 28, killed Hwa Lee, 26, on Aug. 4, 2005, even though she complied with his demands that she give him cash from the register behind the counter of her parents’ Barataria Boulevard convenience Store.

He blasted her with four .45-caliber rounds and initially told Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives it was an accident…But, after warning court officials for days he’d take the witness stand, he testified Friday during his penalty hearing that the shooting was no mistake. “The only reason she was shot four times is because the gun jammed,” he told the jury. “Otherwise, I would have emptied the gun in her f—— head.”

The jury had to consider whether he was mentally retarded, meaning a life sentence in prison was automatic, or to recommend he receive the death penalty…

Doyle testified against the advice of his attorneys and said he had no remorse for what he did to Lee. He said he had no sympathy for her or her family. And he lashed out at the jury. “I hate every last one of you, especially him right there,” he said pointing to a man on the panel. “I wish I could cut his head off.”

At another point in his testimony, he said, “If I had an AK-47 (assault rifle), I’d kill every last one of you.”

Nice guy. They should throw away the key to the cemetery after they bury him.

BTW – Doyle told the jury he knew how to manipulate tests designed to determine mental retardation. “No, I’m not retarded,” he testified, claiming he is “so intelligent” that he knows how to score low on IQ tests.

“I hope you remembered the checkbook”

Louisiana’s biggest corporate players, many with long agendas before the state government, are restricted in making campaign contributions to Gov. Bobby Jindal. But they can give whatever they like to the foundation set up by his wife months after he took office…

Marathon Oil, which last year won approval from the Jindal administration to increase the amount of oil it can refine at its Louisiana plant, also committed to a $250,000 donation. And the military contractor Northrop Grumman, which got state officials to help set up an airplane maintenance facility at a former Air Force base, promised $10,000 to the charity.

The foundation has collected nearly $1 million in previously unreported pledges from major oil companies, insurers and other corporations in Louisiana with high-stakes regulatory issues, according to a review by The New York Times.

It is among the newest of charities set up by elected officials, including members of Congress, or their families that are mutually beneficial: companies seeking to influence politicians or curry favor can donate unrestricted amounts of money, while the officials benefit from the good will associated with charitable work financed by businesses…

Ethics watchdog groups say the contributions are no accident…

NSS. You don’t need an ethics advisor to point out the inherent corruption in politically-connected charity work.

Alexandra Bautsch, the governor’s top political fund-raiser, is listed as the charity’s treasurer. Ms. Bautsch has continued to be paid by Mr. Jindal’s campaign — $112,500 last year. But none of the officers, including Mrs. Jindal, were paid for their work.

In recent years, foundations linked to more than a dozen members of Congress have routinely accepted donations from businesses seeking to influence them. In some instances, the lawmakers have intervened with federal agencies or taken up legislation on donors’ behalf…

“Foundations tied to politicians see their donations dry up when the politician is no longer in power,” Ms. Sloan said. “That demonstrates the real reason the charities get the donations is their political position, not because of the good works they do.”

Corrupt and deceitful practices continue to be the foundation of American politics. Mail me a penny postcard when Congress or some state legislature actually does something more than quote scripture over the problem.