Today Is TPRTK's Birthday!!!!!

The first post for this blog occurred one year ago today. What a quick year it has been. We didn't know where this thing would take us. But now we have a better idea. Lots of stuff happened. We investigated, found wrongdoing, reported on it, gave our opinion and introduced a new word and concept to the vernacular - Charorge.

The first post was our report of our investigation, and findings, of Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph's Parish credit card misuse. We found she had charged plane tickets and meals for her husband, George. And away we went.

Along the way we came up with the term Charorge. That term has meanings on different levels. On one, it's simply a mashup of Charlotte and George's names, sort of like Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez being known an Benifer. But, beyond the simple goofball pop culture implications, the term has a more troubling meaning - we elected a woman who can't make decisions without the input of her husband. For women aspiring to a life of public service, Charlotte Randolph is a disaster since her administration reinforces that longstanding, and unfair, stereotype of women. I know alot of women who are strong, intelligent, ambitious and self-reliant, and some of them were even passionate in really nice ways. Charlotte does not represent them.

One of the many problems uncovered about Charlotte's administation is that she could not control the men she relied upon. When George was not bullying Councilmen or vendors, he was wrecking parish vehicles or flying, sleeping and eating on the Parish tab. Ray Cheramie seemed to believe he had hit the lottery. All Parish equipment was at his disposal to do with as he pleased. So, when Cameron Parish loaned us generators after Katrina, Ray used them for his family. Ray's cattlemen buddies needed drainage for their pastures, there Ray was with an excavator. Ray's homeplace needed some drainage work, no problem. Councilman Daniel Lorraine criticizes Ray, he gets chest bumped. After all these revelations, what does Charlotte do? Did Ray get fired, like other Parish employees have for doing less during this administration? No! Ray gets Charlotte's vote of confidence. And she attempts to retaliate against Daniel by getting George to lie about the Councilman doing the same thing to him.

Early on, Charlotte accused us of conspiring to bring down another administration. No, Charlotte, all we did was report the facts and gave our opinion. If anyone conspired, it was you and those you trusted. Ya'll brought down your adminstration through ya'll arrogance and belief all that big shot support you got in your election insulated you from accountability. Your problem is in your mirror.

It's been a year full of enlightenment, fun and disillusionment for this writer. With all the wrongdoing we have reported, we were hoping that those with authority to do something about what we had found would do something about it. Thus far, the only one holding Charlotte Randolph and her gang accountable is you, the Public. The word on the street is that Charlotte's political career is over. We gave that opinion over 6 months ago. She might have been able to recover from the wreck and the misuse of the credit card and the overtime to salaried employees. But, as more scandals came to light, particularly the misuse of the generators and DA BAGS scam, it was all over but the crying. Regaining Public confidence is difficult, especially when the Public is faced with the cumulative effect of scandal upon scandal, all within one year.

The local media coverage the last year surprised the hell out of us. It's one thing for the Comet to fairly cover Council meetings. But, the Lafourche Gazette's coverage was astounding, considering the prior editorial policy of that paper not to print anything shedding a bad light on public officials. KLRZ was useful in an ironic way. The station gave Charlotte every opportunity to make herself look good. But, everytime she went on the air, she had to defend one screw-up by her administration after another. So, in the end, her radio appearances did her more harm than good. I almost forgot, Vision Communications did a workman-like job bringing the Council meetings into our living rooms. We take them for granted.

As a new form of local media, we saw part of our job as supplementing, pushing, prodding, cajoling, informing, and criticizing the traditional media. I guess, George, you could say we also "managed" the press. And it appears, we did a lot better job of it than you set out to do.

While almost all the words posted to this blog have been written by me, alot of that writing would not have been possible without a number of "deepthroats" providing me reliable information, perspectives and photos, and catchy and humorous song lyrics and ink pens. You know who you are and I thank you, you bunch of lowdown bastards.

17346 unique visitors came here over the last year. That is an average of 49 per day.

This is an election year and, while the lack of action by law enforcement has made me a little disillusioned with the system, this could be a really exciting second year of life for this creature I have brought to life, The Public's Right To Know.