To Earnest, with Love

When I was trained as a law enforcement officer a long long time ago, we were trained to use only the force necessary to protect others and ourselves; to use deadly force only as a last resort; to always act in a way that deescalated the situation, not escalated it; and most importantly, to be willing to sacrifice our lives before we took the life of an innocent. That meant that in the split second of making a decision of shoot or don't shoot, your duty was to sacrifice your life before you harmed or killed someone you weren't absolutely certain posed a threat to you or someone else. We were repeatedly reminded that the people we were engaging with were the people we had sworn to protect and serve. Law enforcement is an extremely difficult and thankless job when its done the way I was trained and I was in awe of the officers who trained us and did this thankless job every day. They were/are heroes - true heroes. Today's LE officers are not trained as police but as an o...

It DOES exist! Recently, someone messaged me and remarked that because of my recent stint in politics, I must agree that there was no “good ‘ole boy network” in St. Tammany anymore.  I don’t know this person except through Facebook, but his posts, wherever I've seen them, are intelligent and respectful so his remark gave me pause.  After my year of living politically – that is, wading through an ever deepening river of slime and hoping I didn't step off into a deep hole – I am more acutely aware of the “good ‘ole boy network” than I ever was before.  Before I ran, ‘the machine” was just a concept that I understood about as well as I understand gravity.  I know it exists because I can see the effects of it all around me, but I don’t know how it works or what it looks like.  In fact, I was less certain that there was some political machine in St. Tammany before I ran than I was certain of gravity.  Having now seen the ...

The accumulation of wealth is not a virtuous or even meaningful pursuit.  Sorry, it just isn't. Regardless of your faith, all of the mainstream religions are founded on the fundamental principles of love and service to others, not making a buck at other's expense for the sake of a new car, a bigger house, yet another pair of shoes (guilty), every imaginable new toy or gadget, whe ther for ourselves or our children, or any of the other material objects we devote so much of our incomes to obtaining. Every time you or I pass on making a contribution to a worthy cause - and there are so many worthy causes - so we can buy yet another adornment for ourselves or our lives, we are failing to be virtuous; we are failing our fellow humans; we are failing ourselves; and if a person of faith, we are, in addition to all of those things, also failing God. Which is not to say that you are not free to devote your life to the pursuit of wealth for wealth's sake. Hey, it's a free c...

The more I read, the more I am convinced that fracking is "safe" like smoking was safe; like thalidomide was safe; like agent orange was safe. Safe for whom? In each of those cases, billions were made by a few at the expense of thousands of lives before the sheer weight of the devastation could no longer be denied. Then, finally, came the acknowledgment by those who should have protected the public from the beginning that, not only was it not safe, but the evidence of the threat had been there all along. In the case of fracking, we are talking about the "safety" not of the individuals who voluntarily expose themselves and their property to it, but of our water supply. And by "our," I do mean, all of us. Not just this community, but our country and the world. Clean water is fast becoming the most valuable commodity of our time. Just ask Texas, Colorado, and California. We in south Louisiana, surrounded by water, deluged by it almost every s...

I grew up in a dysfunctional home.   Bored yet?  I don't know ANYONE who didn't grow up with some level of dysfunction going on.  I know there are people out there who claim to have had very normal, loving parents and families, but I've never actually met any of them.  The kids next door to me were raised by their grandmother because their mother was an alcoholic and their dad just couldn't be bothered; the kids across the street, their mom died in childbirth with the youngest, who suffered a permanent brain injury during the birth and both were raised by their heartbroken single dad and his mother; my best friend's family was like a whole season of Law and Order - someone was always being arrested, being shot, disappearing, or involved in a serious, drug related accident; another friend's father tried to stick his tongue down my throat in his garage while my friend and her mom, his wife, were inside cooking dinner.  I w...