I am truly thankful for the hearings that the Louisiana House Select Committee on Homeland Security has been holding to shine some light on the overreach of our state government and the abuse of its citizens, all in the name of “protecting” us from COVID.  I am also thankful for the blunt and honest testimony from Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham giving us the raw truth about the excesses of the John Bel Edwards regime.

Abraham truly is a breath of fresh air at the state capitol.

The suspension of our constitutional liberties and the corresponding absolute waste of trillions of tax dollars is the worst governmental overreach that I have witnessed in my lifetime.  And so far, all the perpetrators are allowed to ride off into the sunset and cash in on their fame (or infamy) with no or little repercussions whatsoever.

Monetarily, the COVID response included some completely insane expenditures of public dollars.  The most egregious of these in Louisiana was the temporary hospital that was set up in the Convention Center in New Orleans.  That gem reportedly ended up seeing a whopping 100 patients at the cost of $178 million in our tax dollars.  The list of ridiculous expenses goes on and on, though.  Things like the state buying tens of thousands of ventilators that were never used (looking back, who really wants to be put on a ventilator for COVID now?).

The financial decisions were bad enough, but much worse was the suspension of our civil liberties in the name of the public good.  The state went so far as to pursue criminal charges against pastors for holding church services in person, and shutting down and punishing small businesses for having the unmitigated gall to want to make a living.  All of this with the blessing of John Bel Edwards and his cronies in the supposedly Republican controlled legislature.  There were a few freedom fighters that fought against this, but most of our elected leaders were complicit.  Fortunately, most of them were thrown out of office last year.

Worst of all was what we allowed our state government to do to our children.  In my view, that was inexcusable.  No classes, no social events, no athletics, no nothing.  We allowed our government to lock our children in their homes in isolation for months, and in some cases years.  We can never repair that damage to our children.  The class of 2020 had the last half of their senior year stolen from them.  No graduation, no senior prom, no last year of baseball, softball, etc. for so many young people.  They had once in a lifetime experiences stolen from them, and the data now shows us that it was totally unnecessary.  BESE even cancelled meetings to prevent parents from being heard.  Again, there were a couple of members who stood up for the people (Jim Garvey and Michael Melerine), but the majority of them silenced the parents and toed the official line.

One of those who campaigns as a conservative, but aided the effort to silence the parents, is Mr. Ronnie Morris, who was rewarded by being elected BESE president this term.  No only were there no consequences for sticking it to the parents, but he actually got promoted for it.

Four years we are still struggling to make up the ground that we lost due to our state government’s actions during the COVID insanity.

Basically, it seems we are waiting for that group of kids to age out, so that they no longer affect our educational statistics.  The harm to those children is clearly irreparable.  And the government strong-armed and lied to many parents to convince them to vaccinate their kids, when the kids were at little to no risk all along.

Now we do not know what long-term effects will occur with those kids.  Anecdotally, I am seeing a lot of younger people with heart problems now, and it is pretty clear that the Covid vaccines do have an effect on heart health.  It is also clear that the vaccines are minimally effective.  We were told it was a one-time shot, and then it became an every year thing.

I am confident that Governor Landry would not take the path of repression that John Bel Edwards did if faced with the same situation.  I am also more confident that our legislature has been transformed post-COVID to a point where they would not allow this either.  But it is infuriating that John Bel Edwards and his accomplices are all seemingly sliding off the hook.

It always seems that justice is very hard to find in government…