I grew up on this wildlife refuge and it's currently threatened by political interests, I would appreciate it if you would just take the time to like this page.
...I get hit with a barrage of emails filled with marching orders: "You need to organize your blog better"; "Where is the picture of (fill-in-the-blank) that I came here to see....put that back up!"; "Send my the posts you made about (fill-in-the-blank)."
How bout you this....you guys can come to my front yard, juggle flaming machetes, gargle peanut butter and sing the Philippine national anthem in Tagalag. Oh, and stick a broom up your butt and sweep my driveway while your at it. Werd?
Or....or.....you can do me the favor of finding a home, a father maybe....or a mother....or both....for these two beautiful new additions to the world:
And actually I'll help you out on one matter...Sewell bailed early in the process. He saw the writing on the wall and distanced himself from Fradella and Nagin....and....(fill in the blank).
Does anyone else remember the Fat Albert cartoons where the Junkyard Band would interject with a music video, summing up the message of the day? I thought Mushmouth played the guitar but obviously Rudy was the axe.
Thank Hulu. We figured it out. Here is the episode for the origin of the junkyard band. I always noticed the continuity break in the junkyard band videos where Rudy would go from an electric guitar:
to a homemade junkyard guitar on the wide shot:
So anon thinks it's because in the episode for the origin of the junkyard band, Rudy's amp blows up towards the end of the song:
The continuity in the song is still off but the explanation makes sense.
One more pressing mystery solved on AZ. Here's the full espisode:
Can you guys help me with this pic? It just...popped up....in my email account. Apparently this cat is a lawyer or a public speaker of some kind; in the text accompanying the pic he was bragging about being a masterful cunning linguist. Oh shit...wait...that was masterful cunnilingus...my bad.
Seriously, I'm flattered and all but I'll pass on that offer. Is this like an Anthony Weiner spoof? Is somebody trying to advertise Brazilian wax jobs on AZ? That is one helluva wax job, brah...whoever the salon is who did that should at least get credit...just let me know and I'll put up a banner ad so my AZ peeps can get waxed on...and waxed off.
As some AZ readers may know, I am a video producer by trade and for the past year I've had the good fortune of working with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network - LEAN documenting the health effects of the BP oil spill on clean-up workers and fisherman. Right before the BP spill happened, I began researching an issue I was made aware of by LEAN about the amount of pollution the oil and gas industry is dumping into our Gulf's ecosystem on a daily basis.
The subject matter is about "produced water" which is a waste stream product created during the oil and gas drilling process. My focus is mainly on the offshore rigs which dump over a billion barrels of produced water into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico every year. It is estimated for every barrel of oil or gas produced, some 7 to 10 barrels of produced water are created.
Some of you may have seen "Gasland", the superb documentary about on-shore gas fields, fracking, and produced water discharges created by the drilling process. Imagine the same thing, multiplied in orders of magnitude, being dumped directly into the Gulf every day. That's what we're dealing with.
What's in it? There are three basic classes of pollutants in the waste stream: benzene elements, heavy metals, and NORM (Normally Occurring Radioactive Material). The benzene properties tend to stay on the ocean's surface and are burned off by sunlight but the heavy metals and NORM "fall out" over large areas around the rigs where they are consumed by benthic (bottom feeders) organisms and work their way back up through the food chain. Eventually the toxins enter the human food chain through seafood consumption.
Mercury, thallium, lead, arsenic, are just some of the heavy metals in produced water but the real danger comes from NORM, radium-226 and radium-228.
The sheer amount of NORM pumped into the Gulf from produced waters since off shore drilling began is mind boggling. In fact, all we can do is estimate because the EPA or LDEQ (Louisiana Dept. of Environmental Quality) has not done a comprehensive study on the effects of produced waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
In 2003, the EPA was supposed to have conducted a comprehensive EIS (Environmental Impact Study) on the effects of the produced water discharge in the Gulf of Mexico but the EIS was never executed (under W. Bush admin.) and the permitting process was turned over to the LDEQ. The LDEQ then eased the restrictions on rig owners allowing them to actually increase the amount of produced water they were discharging into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Last September, I interviewed two NORM/produced water experts on the subject, Marvin Resnikoff and Stanley Waligora. The interview is a preliminary interview for the full length documentary, but this interview (about 40 minutes long) gives you a good background on the subject and just how serious the matter is.
Please pay attention to what the scientists state in the interview, "The BP oil spill can be cleaned up"
However, a half century of radioactive waste discharge in the Gulf is going to be with us for thousands of years.
If you can handle my ugly mug, and this ugly story, it's worth watching to understand how big this problem really is:
Bennett is about to be tarred and feathered...his ex-wife is going to make sure of it. When you see what this idiot did (not just the corruption aspect) it's going to make Meffert look like a boy scout. Get ready, the St. Pierre trial was just the beginning of a triple feature. This is going to be one fun summer.
I wish this post was about 20 times longer. I wish it was a book. In tandem with Naomi Klein's thesis on disaster capitalism, this book could be titled, "Scavenger Capitalism: The Hyena's Guide to Survival in Post-Empire America".
Check out who has recently acted as a registered agent of Dell computers in Louisiana (recently as of February of this year.)My eyebrows sure shot up.
Any word on what company is the "Texas company" refered to in the insider trading case against Frank Fradella?
There is a lot more to come on that one.
DR Commercial lines "of Baton Rouge", "of Louisiana", etc. seems to be a little insurance company or set of companies run out of a house in Covington. There is a salvage business connected to these companies, too.
Their naming practice put me in mind of Home Solutions "of Louisiana", etc.
The house is owned by people familiar to this blog, and the little companies are theirs, too.
They have employment connections both to the city and to Frank Fradella and Aaron Bennett.
When you check the Secretary of State Database, their names do not appear in connection to these companies named for their initials and run out of their second home.
They are going to some trouble to make themselves hard to track.
Why? We wondered. After one of your recent posts, someone I know went back to look at the city contracts that are up on line, and darned if there weren't contracts awarded to this little salvage company. Shades of Victoria White, with city employees cashing in on city contracts through their little side businesses.
Can this be true?
I want to know more. I am hoping that as more of the Frank Fradella business comes to light, the role of the city employees who have connections to Fradella and Bennett will become clearer.
People who read this blog know a lot more about this than I do, and more than the people around me who dig through the record of city contracts when they are bored at work. Please spill the beans.
Katrina carpetbaggers deserve to be outed, tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.
Those who held positions of public trust and who violated that trust, manipulating the system to profit from the destruction of the lives and livelihoods of their neighbors, are odious.
The Texas company was identified by a second anon:
the texas company was a restoration company out of plano named RG america, i believe. they were later aquired by home solutions in order to facilitate a bank fraud scam. fradella was a small time hustler who was in the right place and the right time after katrina. fradella's goal was to inflate the price of his stock, he told anyone who would listen that he and nagin were big pals.
DR Commercial Lines is interesting. The company does indeed have multiple addresses around the state but I was able to trace at least one of the addresses back to two people:
James H. Runnels, Jr. and a Kelly Brooks White
So I'm not sure what exactly DR Commercial Lines (Insurance Company) has to do with city employment or a salvage company. Is Veronica White related to a Kelly Brooks White? I'm assuming anon mixed up the name Victoria with Veronica. I don't know who D and R would be...unless they are initials of first names.
Also, I tried to go through the state purchasing website to see who was qualified to sell Dell computers to the state....other than Kim Fury Jennings.....I couldn't find a way to research that.
This comment leaves us with more mysteries than leads.
I'm going to have to take a summer trip to my alma mater in Oxford, MS. I've been following Slabbed stories and I'm beginning to think it's getting weirder up there than it is down here.
Make sure you read the comment section. As a matter of fact you should always read not only Slabbed posts but the comment section as well...he's got the best in the business...well besides you guys of course :).
Ok....I got back in the courtroom just in time for the defense's closing statements.
Before I start with the closing statements I wanted to point out one thing that stuck in my mind is just how few witnesses the prosecution brought before the jury. I mean they could have literally quadrupled the amount of witnesses to testify against St. Pierre but they kept it lean and mean. I'm not criticizing, it just got me thinking a lot about their strategy.
As I stated in the previous run down, the lead prosecutor, Matt Coman (I wasn't sure if I could use his name in the last post but the TP did so I guess it's OK), was running like a sports car and the pace of the questioning was brisk. I think, overall, this set a tone for the entire trial and I think the prosecution was so confident in their paper trail that they didn't want to bog down the trial with excessive testimony. If that's what they meant to do, rely on the paper trail more than the testimony, I think it worked like a dream.
In fact, although I did miss the bulk of the trial, I was surprised that the defense didn't call a host of witnesses in just to break the prosecution's rhythm. Also, I really question the presence of the defense strategy in general. Here's why...as I stated in the previous post when the "freaky-deaky on the boat bomb" was dropped it was farging atomic. Castaing and Flannagan had to know that was going to happen...they had to. In a purely strategic sense, I don't understand why they didn't have a female defense lawyer on board or at least sitting at the table with them if not actually making the closing statements. I'm going to get to that point later on but every lawyer (on both sides) in front of the jury was male and as white as my hillbilly hiney after a long winter. I don't understand why the defense didn't mix the bag in order to change the dynamic of the trial. The jury was damn near a Bennetton ad....well no that's not exactly true....but the racial/gender make up was rather mixed. I just don't understand why the defense wouldn't have tried to offset the prosecution with a visual, racial, gender variable but then again I don't have a law degree and I don't make the big bucks.
Having said that, I thought the closing statements for the defense were pretty damn good. At times, it got a little surreal but overall I was actually getting a little worried about things by the time they finished. Remember this was my first live trial experience.
Back to the action....Flanagan...hence forth know as, Sir Thomas More Flanagan...was the first to take the stage. The rumor about town is that Flanagan's legal fees were actually paid for by Dell and I will address that issue in a subsequent post on Humid Beings. It's apt because Sir Flanagan invoked Dell right out of the gate. He tried to convince the jury that St. Pierre couldn't have been doing anything all that illegal if he was working with this fine, upstanding, national mega-corp., Dell Computers. He also noted that the business practices which Dell conducts in the state of Louisiana, with Veracent as a sub, were a "standard way of doing business" in any state.
This was in reference to the loop Veracent/St. Pierre had created where they would build the cameras, ship them to Dell and Dell would in turn sell them back to the Louisiana municipalities through their state contractor's license.
Flanagan's claim that this process is standard for Dell is absolutely, positively, not-fucking-true. I will merely invoke the name Kim Fury Jennings and let you dig back in the catacombs of AZ. More will come in the HB post.
The jury, however, knew very little about Dell's shenanigans in Louisiana and the argument sounded valid. Flanagan also harped on the fact that the prosecution claimed St. Pierre's bank, UBS, was a "Swiss bank account". Sir Flanagan implied that UBS was actually not a Swiss bank, it just had a parent investor in Switzerland and the claim was a desperate attempt on the part of the prosecution to make the defendant look shady. Therefore, the prosecution is so desperate to prove their case, they are fudging the facts to make St. Pierre look bad.
I'm not sure, because his back was to me, but I want to say Coman flinched. Not because it made a damn bit of difference to the jury but because I don't think he expected the defense to bring that back up.
Still....well played Sir Flanagan....some of the finest turd polishing I've seen. Of course it can't compare to the facade they just put on this turd across from Whole Foods on Magazine Street:
This turd towering over the Dirty Coast lair.....but I digress.
Sir Flanagan then grabbed the courtroom by the tail, hopped in a cerebral time machine and took us back to a more noble period...16th century England to be exact. The topic of conversation suddenly turned from the unfair treatment of Marky Mark St. Pierre to none other than Thomas More Flanagan himself.
Flanagan, apparently hoping to enterprise on his pious sense of Catholicism, proceeded to give the jury and peanut gallery a brief history lesson on his namesake, Sir Thomas More, patron saint of attorneys.
When he took this "Twilight Zone" turn in his speech, I was thinking he may tie the end of this tangential thread back into St. Pierre's tribunal and create a nice bow. Perhaps he was using More as an allegory for Marky Mark...a man persecuted for his convictions...albeit ruthless capitalist convictions in Marky's case but a true ideologue nonetheless.
Nope. It was just about him...Sir Flanagan. Turns out Sir F is a direct descendant of Sir Thomas More. An interesting caveat but how that made Marky Mark any less guilty was a mystery to me.
click on the image to expand
I couldn't help but glance over at one of the slew of lawyers sitting next to me to see if they were as bewildered as I was. One of them looked at me with raised brow and shook his head back and forth. Good to know I wasn't the only one wondering if the reels on the projector had just gotten mixed up. We jumped from courtoom drama to period piece in a matter of seconds.
Minus that 15th Century detour down the rabbit hole, Sir Flanagan put up a pretty good argument.
Then it was wind-blown Eddie's turn (in reference to his tie being over his shoulder all the time). Castaing came out of the gate bellowing the chorus, "Lies, lies, lies...yeah!" He pounded on Meff's credibility bringing up his testimony in the civil suit and how he had lied on the stand as well as the deposition. He threw in a mildly humorous zinger that watching Meff testify in this trial against St. Pierre was like watching "Extreme Makeover: Witness Edition". Yeah, OK, so that's not really funny but in that context any smattering of levity takes on a greater effect.
He kept referring back to the civil suit so much Coman jumped up and threw in an objection to the judge, "If he wants to talk about the other trial I'd be happy to do it." Objection sustained.
Castaing then threw out the first of two incredibly silly analogies. He stated "You can't rely on Greg Meffert in important affairs." The first picture he drew (I think you should imagine this picture drawn with crayons, not oil paint) asked the jury to imagine themselves on a skydiving trip with Greg Meffert...yeah really...go ahead, close your eyes I'll give you a few minutes....
Ok...now the plane takes off and Greg leans over to you and says, "Hey brah, I saw a rip in your parachute when it was being packed." Then the plane reaches altitude and it's time to jump. Right before the doors open Meff leans over and says, "Hey brah, I was just shittin' with ya', there's no rip in your parachute." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.)
Castaing then asks the jury, "What are you going to do? Would you trust Greg Meffert and jump?"
Eddie then proceeded to show a FOX 8 video interview of Meff when he came out of the courthouse in the civil trial and told the reporter, "I was just trying to tell the truth, I just want to tell the truth" Castaing played it, I think three times, to get the desired effect.
I thought the skydiving analogy was pretty weak, I think the jury did as well.
However, Eddie's next move was not weak at all. He went to the drawing board and added up the numbers which supposedly amounted to the total money St. Pierre received after his "supposed" kickbacks to Meffert. According to Ed's mathematics, Marky Mark would have only profited $20,000 a year for four years bringing the total payout to only 80k over 4 years. Of course he was using fuzzy math and selectively pulling from Imagine cash only, but it did make for an effective counter argument.
Ed then brought up that Meff was 6 months out of office when he started getting the kickback checks and that technically there was no bribery scheme in play because he had already left office. That, of course, doesn't answer the MeffCard issue but it was a valid point.
Using that as a platform, Eddie then tried to convince the jury that Mark didn't believe what he was doing was illegal or bribery and if he didn't know he was bribing Meffert then the jury must acquit him. He pleaded with the jury, "Today is the most important day in Mark St. Pierre's life and you have only one question to ask, 'Is there proof that Mark St. Pierre knew he was bribing Meff.?'" Coman objected, "Your honor, that's not what the law requires." Sustained. Judge Falon informed the court that he would explain what the letter of the law is to the jury before they deliberate.
To help drive home the fact that St. Pierre didn't believe he was doing anything wrong, he pointed out that Meffert had an agreement with the city, signed by Mayor Nagin, that allowed him to pursue outside business interests. He tried to make the case that Meffert was hired as the city CTO under standard city practices (he wasn't...he was hired under an emergency procurement process) and that Imagine was hired under a GSA. He then went on to say, "If the mayor and the city (assume he meant city attorneys) OK'd the deal are they all dirty too?"
Uhhhh....yeah. I mean if you're resorting to using Ray Nagin as your reference for honesty you may want to rethink your strategy. Unless those jurors had been living under a rock for the past four years the last question I would ask them in defense of St. Pierre is "Do you think Ray Nagin is dirty, too?" I really thought one of the jurors was going to answer him, "Are you fuckin' kidding me?" Hell for a second there I thought Judge Falon was going to say it. In retrospect it may have been worth getting a contempt of court charge to stand up and yell it, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!"
He then turned around and held his hand out towards MM and said, "Look at these guys. They're geeks. They don't know the legality of doing business with the city." (paraphrased again...just assume that everything is paraprhased) . He then moved into the 2nd part of the defense strategy which was to imply that Baker, Donelson gave St. Pierre bad legal advice and that's why he's in this whole mess. He harped on the fact that there was obviously some mis-communication between St. Pierre's Baker, Donelson' attorney, Kent Lambert, and the research attorney, Sherry Dolan. Both testified and Lambert said he told St. Pierre that it was basically an "even odds proposition" that they could get into legal trouble for the kickback scheme they had set up. However, Dolan, who did the actual research on the issue, stated to the court that she told Lambert it was "positively a violation of ethics".
Eddie was basically pointing out that if Dolan did the research and was convinced what they were doing was illegal, why didn't she warn the client? Why did Lambert tell him it was 50/50 chance if Dolan was convinced it was wrong?
Castaing even threw in a little zinger at Baker, Doneleson and Sherry Dolan stating, "They did their research in the wrong area of law but that's another matter." Ouch.
He then pointed out that "There was no money found in a freezer in this case." (ha, ha), and pulled out yet another ridiculous analogy. Let me see if I can remember it right, I think he was making this up as he went along: Imagine you're in a car with a sick child, out west...you don't know where you are... there are no road signs or map....you have to get your kid to the hospital as soon as possible. You come to a crossroads and Greg Meffert is standing there. Can you rely on him to tell you the right way to the hopsital?
First of all...why is Greg Meffert standing at a crossroads in the middle of a Southwestern desert? Is he Papa Legba? That actually freaked me out...the next time I drive through the Southwest (which I love to do) I'm going to be looking for Meff standing at a crossroads with an evil grin on his face...maybe with Ralph Macchio playing a guitar.
OK, Eddie...I got one for you. You're a stripper on the Silicon Bayou....Greg Meffert takes you in his private bedroom and pays you to have sex but he doesn't want to use a condom. He tells you he's disease free....do you trust him? Or wait, you're a stripper, skydiving with Greg Meffert but you have a sick child on board the airplane, which happens to be a G4 with Ray Nagin, Frank Fradella and Aaron Bennett on board. You got pregnant and had the child when you agreed to have unprotected sex with Greg Meffert on a boat...but that's not important right now. You have to skydive with the child and land on the roof of Oschner hospital...but first you have to depose Meffert under oath....now....do you think Ray Nagin is dirty? See, Mark St. Pierre wasn't on that plane....you have to acquit!
It's almost as good as the Chewbacca defense:
I kid...I kid.
While we're on the subject of strippers, Eddie brought up the issue. He said, "I know the strippers were a bad thing, I don't like strippers but this isn't church." Well, actually about 30 minutes beforehand it kind of felt like church when Sir Flanagan was giving us the details of how Henry VIII executed Sir Thomas More for refusing to denounce the Catholic church. Regardless, what you got against stippers, Eddie? Strippers are as American as apple pie and dirty politicians....and I'm not going to sit here and listen to you bad mouth the United States of America...or skydiving and sick children.
Getting back to my point about having a female defense lawyer on the team, they had to know that the stripper issue was going to be big in this trial. While I think Sir Flanagan did a decent job, I really think it would have behooved them to have a woman give one of the closing defense statements and have her address the stripper issue. Hearing Castaing say, "I don't like strippers but they don't matter in this case" is not nearly effective as it would have been to hear a female lawyer state it. That's just my two cents, I don't really know the legal defense handbook but I do know a little bit about psychology and perception. It was a helmet party on both sides of the courtroom and it seems like they would have been better suited to mix it up.
I'm getting loopy...I need to go to bed. Almost done though...
For the finale, Castaing put up a picture of the Mefferts standing with the Nagins in Hawaii...really...he did. They let the picture sit there for a while and I kept wondering what the hell he was showing us that picture for. He then told the jury to look at those kids in the picture, "That's why Greg Meffert is testifying against Mark St. Pierre...it's for those kids....and he'll do or say anything for those kids." So now I'm really confused, a few minutes ago he was telling us that Meffert is just a damn liar and you couldn't even trust him to help a sick kid. Now he's telling us all Greg Meffert cares about is his kids. Am I supposed to like Greg Meffert or hate him? And you're showing us the Mefferts and Nagins mucking it up in Hawaii on the public dime? That shot really chaffed my arse when I saw it. It just made me madder than a hornet at all of them.
He finished off by showing a cute, generic animation of a money bag flowing from Connexus past Unisys to Anthony Jones...but it's really not even worth explaining that.
By the time the defense rested, I was a little worried. I think on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give them a 6. Alas, they were still polishing a turd and I think even a 10 out of 10 wouldn't have been enough to get past the prosecution's paper trail....and of course the boat....and the strippers...and what the strippers did on the boat.
I guess the bigger question in my mind is "Why didn't St. Pierre plea?" I've got some theories on that and I'll get to it in the final post, after I run down the prosecution's final remarks, the verdict, and the press conference in part 3.
I haven't edited this so I know there are lots of grammar gremlins and even after I edit there are grammer gremlins so please excuse....I'm goin' to bed.
does profanity detract from the veracity of the facts blog? i was recently scolded on this matter.
keep in mind if you say yes i have to go delete about 3 hours of writing i just labored over and start over....but don't let that influence your opinion.
Let's say, a former N.O. council-person who may have accepted a bribe from Mouton? Or a former state senator who may also have accepted a bribe from Mouton and has been implicated in dirty dealings by the Meffster to boot? And another Mouton bribe given to....perhaps...Derrick Sheperd? HA! I'm sorry that was funny to me...when it comes to the bad sheperd there's no need to be crypt-ic (ht Oyster), you know it's probably true.
So let's take a glance back at the 2009 Sneaky Snake Countdown. Of the 14 snakes identified, only one remains un-indicted, un-convicted, or not under investigation (officially):
Numbers 12, 11, and 9 just went down:
And then there's Sheperd...I'm posting this one just because that picture still makes me crack up every time I see it:
Now we have two mystery snakes who the Cowboy of Poydras Street may have caught by the tail while wrangling the others:
I think it may be time for another sneaky snake countdown soon. The old den of vipers has been cleaned out and lo and behold, there was a whole other layer beneath them.
Oh....BTW....please, please, please get over to Cenlamar's pad and read all about the LFF's 501c-us-launder-money scam. What kind of snake do you think Gene Mills should be? Oh, of course, the snake in the Garden of Eden...tempting lawmakers.
For the past couple of months, I've had this beautiful, yet afflicted, cardinal hanging out in my backyard. Every day starting around 10 am, this guy...we'll call him Greg...starts a day long ritual of flying into my backdoor window. Apparently he is so enamored with his own reflection he just can't get enough of himself. All day long he keeps launching kamikaze attacks on my window, banging his pecker into the glass over and over and over....
At first it was a novelty, I thought there may even be a method to the madness...maybe even a net-method (wow that was bad). I had hoped that perhaps Greg would eventually attract a mate and bear fruit with his nosediving antics.
Alas, I came to realize it was a lost cause. He's just going to keep banging his pecker against any shiny thing which catches his attention; a creature consumed with that which reflects his own image.
The totality of the St. Pierre trial did, indeed, prove to be a one hell of a show. Encouraged by the response of my previous post, I decided to attend on Wednesday and Thursday to see if I could create a job out of color-commentating criminal trials. My flippant demeanor was quelled right out of the gate on Wednesday morning when I found myself looking at an email from 2007, sent by St. Pierre to the rest of his partners in crime proudly touting that he had discovered the blogger behind AZ...then proceeded to list my wife and children by name.
I already knew they had me investigated, that wasn't a big deal nor a revelation. In fact, if you have been with AZ from the beginning you should remember my knee jerk response to their original "we got you now" message.
When they sent that first message, I was in Washington, D.C. with my friend and fellow filmmaker, Vince Morelli. We were at a coffee shop on Pennsylvania Avenue trying to set up a meeting with someone from Sen. Mary Landrieu's office about screening our documentary, Left Behind, to select members of congress (never happened...we basically got blown off in case you're wondering).
Their first message to me didn't scare me in the least. Contrary to my critics' belief I was never that concerned with my own anonymity. I was more concerned with the anonymity of my sources and if they fingered me it would put them one step closer to my peeps. They thought they knew who the original Anon was in my first Imagine post, but they were incorrect. I withheld posting their message because it was mostly incorrect and I didn't want to name the person they thought was one of my sources. That emboldened them and they sent me the following message:
A lot of other people are reading that comment - you know, the one that is making you piss in your pants - with the addition that we all know that you are not interested in the truth.
We know you won't publish that comment. All of us. It is so evident to everyone now(the real press, included) that you are not interested in the truth. Greg Meffert is smarter than you are - all legally, too - and you feel like a big political loser. You are right.
I love that line, "all legally, too". Yeah boy....time doth tell.
I'm assuming they sent that info they dug up on me to the TP and/or other members of the press. If they did, that may have been the stupidest move they made, almost as stupid as going on WWL with Garland. Mainly because they didn't realize that no one gave two shits to Jesus who I was at the time and on top of that they had mixed me up with Jason Berry, the internationally renowned writer of "Lead Us Not Into Temptation" (If I had a quarter for every time I was introduced to someone in New Orleans and heard "Oh, you're the OTHER Jason Berry"). Also, I was already talking with "members of the press", they already knew who I was. All of my fellow bloggers knew who I was. It wasn't a big secret and exposing me would not quell the facts. They were not only trying to kill the messenger (perhaps literally), they were telling everyone "Hey! We're killing the messenger! Problem solved!"
Banging their peckers against the wall.
When I saw that email up on the screen in the courtroom, I have to admit my stomach sank a little. I knew they had investigated me but to see my kids' names and my wife's name listed in the email was harrowing. It was somewhat of a slap in the face...this blog ain't no game...I'm screwing with millions of dollars and potential jail time with snakes like St. Pierre. I take full responsibility for that but keep it in the kitchen, I'm the chef so bring the heat on me. And don't forget I'm a hillbilly. You ever see the Patrick Swayze movie, "Next of Kin"? It ain't too far from the truth.
Enough of that.
Castaing was worried, it was apparent inside and outside the courtroom. In fact, he seemed more worried than Marky Mark. He kept throwing his tie over his shoulder and he even approached the jury in his closing argument with the tie flipped back. For a second I started wondering if he was sending some kind of secret message to a jury member but then again I've seen to many mafia movies.
Shortly after the email was shown, the prosecution went back to the WWL interview and asked MM if the caller, Tammy, was indeed Stacy St. Pierre. MM came clean and said it was. He then tried to justify the act by making some argument along the line of everyone calls into radio talk shows and uses fake names. Really? Is that a trend I wasn't aware of?
They also showed an email between Kurt and St. Pierre while the interview was going on and Kurt told MM, "Dude, I don't know if I can keep listening to this." Although I've never met him, it seems to me that Kurt was the most rational of all the Imagine crew. It seems like he was also the most paranoid when it came to understanding the gravity of what they were doing. I was told that he was very reluctant to take the CTO position after Meff stepped down and had to be coerced by both Meff and Nagin to take it. I think he understood the dangers more than any of them, or at least took the potential danger more seriously.
While they were talking about the WWL phone call, I was watching Lady St. Pierre pretty closely. Her trademark. plastered smile was cracking and I think her emotional fortitude may have been cracking as well. I actually got worried there for a few seconds, her facial expressions were shifting from smiles to confusion to a wild-eyed gaze. Did you ever see the Martin Short movie, "Inner Space", where his face starts flipping out?
That's what it reminded me of. It was like she had lost control of her emotions and facial expressions. It was painful to watch.
The prosecution brought up the contract/lease for the antennae array on the top of One Shell Square that St. Pierre took over after Katrina. This was an interesting line of questioning to me because I think the prosecution let St. Pierre wiggle out of this issue. The array serviced not only the crime cameras, but the communication systems for multiple city services such as NOPD and a couple of battered women shelters. The prosecution harped on the womens shelters asking him how he could have been so cruel as to threaten to shut down vital communications to city services like this. St Pierre shot back that he was owed months in rent and he had given the city ample warning to pay or it would be shut off..."Just like Entergy would do", MM quipped. Yeah you goddamn right, there, Mark.
The reason I think the prosecution slipped on this is because when they asked St. Pierre how he got the contract, he stated "The city came to me and asked me to take over the array."
Weeellllll.....let's take-a-fukin-look-at-this.
What really happened was that One Shell Square donated the space to put the array up in the aftermath of Katrina, recognizing that the city needed these vital services. Marky Mark and the boys immediately recognized the potential for a revenue stream, arranged the lease with One Shell Square, marked up the rent (I don't know how much but I was hoping that would come out) and charged the city out the wazoo. The agreement for that real estate should have been between One Shell Square and the city, not Veracent and the city. When MM stated "the city came to me", I wish the prosecution would have immediately asked him, "Who in the city came to you?" The answer was then CTO, Mark Kurt...Imagine bro and now Ciber employee. St. Pierre made it sound like he was doing the city this great favor by taking over the array (which mostly just sits there) when in reality they recognized they could turn it into a whole new revenue stream and charge the city for it.
I had to leave for a couple of hours after that and missed Matt Coman's (lead prosecutor) first closing remarks. I got back just in time for the defense's closing remarks and I'll pick that up later on tonight.
