Akasia Lee Sentenced

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA-

New Orleans resident AKASIA LEE, age 36, was sentenced Nov 17, 2009, in federal court by US District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon to five years in prison for her role in the conspiracy to commit health care fraud. In addition, Judge Lemmon ordered restitution of $3,977,288, a fine of $1 million, and three years of federally supervised release following imprisonment, during which time the defendant risks an additional term of imprisonment should she violate any terms of her release.

According to court documents, on March 19, 2009, Lee pled guilty to one count of a superseding indictment admitting that she and other employees of A New Beginning of New Orleans, Inc. (ANBNO) conspired to commit health care fraud. Lee, the owner/operator of ANBNO, a Medicaid provider that made claims for Personal Care Services (PCS) it claimed to have provided to Medicaid recipients, solicited mothers with children who had Medicaid benefits to apply for care. Lee admitted that after Medicaid approved the applications, false documentation containing employee time sheets and daily schedules detailing services rendered to recipients was created by employees of ANBNO and parents of the Medicaid recipient children. Lee admitted that Medicaid paid approximately $3,977,288 as a result of the fraudulent claims made by ANBNO and its employees.

The case was investigated by agents of the FBI, the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, and the Louisiana Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. The case was prosecuted by Assistant US Attorneys Patrice Harris Sullivan, Jordan Ginsberg and G. Dall Kammer.

Click For Cans

OK, a little corporate shilling here but trust me it's for a good cause. Campbell's Soups Chunky brand is having a contest and all you have to do is go there and vote. No signing up for e-adverts, or entering personal info. Why should you? It's a Saints thing and you can vote every day. Again, why should you? To feed people!

Campbell's is donating soup to NFL teams which they will distribute to local food banks. In our case this will be Second Harvest. 1,000 cans of soup will be donated to each team regardless of the voting outcome. The team receiving the most votes for the AFC and NFC get an additional 12,000 cans and the overall winner gets another 5,000 cans. This means if you lazy kids out there can click a button enough times for the Saints, you could help bring in 18,000 cans of soup to help feed people. And not watered down MRE soup, but so-chunky-you-could-eat-it-with-a-fork-but-use-a-spoon Chunky Soup!

The contest goes on through the end of the season when the four AFC and NFC teams with the most votes enter single elimination "playoffs" for three weeks to crown the overall winner. This means each of you reading this can add over seventy votes for the Saints from here on in! Just go to Chunky's website and click the Vote Now button, then pick the Saints matchup and choose our home team. And hurry! As of this posting the Saints 5,042 votes are second to the Packers 8,971 this week. In the time it took me to type that and double check the numbers the Pack gained four votes and the Saints gained none, so get your fingers moving and help feed some people in New Orleans!

And don't forget to blast this to everyone you know!

Thanks to local Kazoozie Floozie Debra Gunter for the heads-up on this!

Charity

I shot this in April of 2006, when hope still shone on Charity Hospital like a beacon. At the time I didn't do anything with it, but I remembered thinking that the surrounding clouds looked like a portent of dire warning if ever there was one. Fancy that. Now this photograph has decided it wants to speak, to scream in agony with a voice that could pierce the ears of the deaf. I am only too happy to lend it my stage.

It has become painfully clear to me now that there is no hope for Charity. LSU wants a shiny new sprawling medical complex and they don't care what historic landmarks or neighborhoods or communities stand in their way. It's been four years since Hurricane Katrina gave LSU and the State of Louisiana the Golden Opportunity to lock the doors on Charity. Since then it has languished, decaying day by day like the health of the citizens of New Orleans.

Mayor Nagin is a clueless, ineffective caricature of leadership, concerned more with lining his pockets than the well-being of this city. Governor Jindal is on the money train with his cronies and frat brothers at LSU, even though they have failed multiple times to find financing for their boondoggle. President Obama certainly could care less, otherwise he would have sliced us off a tasty hunk of that Stimulus Cheese to help solve the problem. So what can we do?

Let's die.

Winter is coming and this gives us all a great opportunity to catch pneumonia and die. And when it's time for all of us to go, let's use our last breaths to crawl to the locked and boarded cyclone fence that surrounds Charity and shuffle off this mortal coil in mass protest. That'll show 'em! Piles of corpses surrounding the building, cough drops and throat lozenges clogging the sewers like so many discarded Mardi Gras doubloons and Moon Pies, rivers of phlegm and mucous running down Tulane Avenue to the river, and in each of our hands a can of LSU brand Chicken Soup with the handwritten message, "It's not working." Is that what it would take for someone in Baton Rouge to finally wake up and do something?

Unless of course, that's exactly what they're waiting for…

What To Do With Dollar Bill

For the last several hours, (and I'm certain for the next several as well,) Talk Radio has been abuzz with that very question. What sentence should be given to Former Louisiana State Senator/Former Louisiana Congressman/Convicted Felon William Jennings Jefferson? (Check out his Wiki page. They've already added "convicted felon" to it.) The 'Man-In-The-Street' has suggested everything from complete exoneration to the death penalty. I have the answer.

One year in jail for every year he pretended to be working for the people of Louisiana. While he was first elected to public office in 1979 he has only been a federal politician for eighteen years, from 1990 to 2008. The crimes in question come directly from his time spent as a member of the US House of Representatives and that's where my reasoning comes from. Eighteen years. Does he deserve more? Probably, but I think eighteen years is appropriate. He would be 80 at the time of his release.

If he lives that long.

No parole, no time off for good behaviour. Face it, the 'good behaviour' deal is actually geared toward violent offenders. It's a gift if they can manage to act like a human being. Jefferson is not a violent criminal and I don't expect him to start shivving prison guards ten minutes after he is placed in custody. Parole is derived from the French term for "(spoken) word." It became linked to prisoner release as the inmate in question gave their "word of honor" that they would not return to a life of crime. Bill Jefferson? Word of honor? Thank you for applying, next inmate, please.

The airwaves are filled with people who think that anything more than fifteen years would be excessive. Former US Attorney Harry Rosenberg posits that Jefferson will eventually receive between 10-15 years.

Comparisons have been drawn to Edwin Edwards who received ten years in prison for his roles in bribery schemes to award riverboat casino licenses in Louisiana. While the crimes may appear similar, at least Edwards was actually bringing businesses into the state and jobs to his constituents. Jefferson was buying himself and his family into foreign based businesses with no benefit whatsoever to the people he represented.

Comparisons have also been drawn to Bernie Madoff whose Ponzi Scheme siphoned over ten-billion dollars from unsuspecting investors. Madoff received a sentence of 150 years for his shenanigans which some people think is far worse than Jefferson's crimes. They claim that Jefferson never harmed or killed anyone by accepting bribes. I think they're wrong.

While Jefferson never actually pulled a trigger or slit a throat, money that he and his family collected through Federal Government grants intended for the numerous "non-profit" organizations they own ended up lining their own pockets. Money which could have been the difference between a child picking up a pen, brush or math book instead of a gun or a crack pipe. Can you honestly tell me, with a straight face, that Bill Jefferson's actions caused harm to no-one?

For those of you thinking that eighteen years is too light a sentence, remember there's the forfeiture. The thinking here is that Jefferson will end up having to forfeit at least a half a million dollars which he and his family members profited through his shady dealings. I think that's abysmally low. Let's set a precedent and force him to pay back the Federal Government every cent he made from his salary as a congressman. Let's make that the rule of law for any public official convicted of corruption. Jefferson's forfeiture hearing is set for today.

Jefferson's actions have cast doubt on his entire career of "public service" and for that, he should pay dearly and lose his entire paycheck from his "service" on Capitol Hill. That would add just over 2.7 million dollars to his forfeiture, and for Bill Jefferson, a man who worships the all-mighty dollar, that would hurt him more than any prison term.

UPDATE: Jefferson's forfeiture hearing ran its course today, and as expected he will have to cough up over $470 million, plus millions of shares of (now worthless) stock in a (now defunct) Nigerian telecom company. Next up is his sentencing, scheduled for October 30th.

Visit Humid City!

Sorry I've not posted much recently. I've been busy. However, I do have a new little post regarding "boutique" land baron and trusted public servant Sean Cummings over at HumidCity! Please visit and if you feel like commenting, do it over there so we can keep all our gripes in one basket.

Toodles!

Vote Now!

See that little ad next to this post? The one for K+36: the lower ninth? That's my first book and it's entered in the 2009 Blurb Photography Book Now competition. It's up for a People's Choice Award and if you're so inclined, you can vote for it by following this link:

You can also purchase the book from the same page or leave a comment, again, if you're so inclined!

UPDATE: By the way, voting is now closed. Thanks to all who stopped by. You can still use the link to check out the book!

UPDATE: The results are in and there's no easy way to say it… I'm a loser! No matter, I got the book shown to many more people and it helps keep the word out that there are still problems in New Orleans. Luckily, the Steelers won their home opener which decidedly helps to ease the pain.

Thanks to all who helped get the word out and thanks for all your support!

…and that's the way it is…

Walter Cronkite, the worlds last trustworthy and true journalist, died yesterday. He was 92 years old. Unfortunately, he lived long enough to see Dan Rather and Katie Couric destroy the integrity of the CBS Evening News, reducing it to nothing more than a gossip and rumour-mill.

I have missed Walter since his retirement in the early Eighties. I miss him even more now.

Repose en Paix.