Creating and running Louisiana’s biggest indigenous company as his vocation, Jim Bernhard put that ahead of his hapless political activism when he announced that after just months he would step down as chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.
Bernhard had been allowed to run the party because of his close connections to Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Her plan had been to put a loyalist at the helm to turn the party into a propaganda and reelection machine for her. Particularly, he could keep the moonbat fringe leftists from gaining too much control, sabotaging her bid for a second term.
However, his position became much less tenable as Blanco began to draw more and more well-deserved criticism for her mishandling of the state’s preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina and that his firm The Shaw Group drew a huge, no-bid contract for post-Katrina work. All Blanco needs is to have charges of favoritism, that she had tried to influence the federal government on this matter (even if no direct proof exists), heaped onto the perception of incompetence she has earned from the disaster; no doubt she asked for Bernhard to go.
(It’s funny how strenuously the left and its ally the media in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election tried and even still today tries to draw these incredibly convoluted connections between Pres. George W. Bush and Vice Pres. Dick Cheney and Haliburton Corp. which have concluded in no evidence backing any claims of corruption, while Bernhard’s clear connection received hardly a peep. A Google search of “Bush Cheney Haliburton Iraq” pulls up over 161,000 hits, while “Bernhard Blanco ‘Shaw Group’ Katrina” got 770 – and looking at Google’s news index produces exactly 5 – one of which deals with the resignation and 10 fewer than the number of stories indexed about Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, and Iraq over the past month. And even when reporting on these no-bid contracts a Haliburton subsidiary gets brought up – without ever mentioning either The Shaw Group or Bernhard and his connections! And media folks seriously claim they are unbiased on what they choose to report?)
Taking charge now of the state party is Mary Lou Winters, the current vice chairman and a Democrat regular (unlike Bernhard who hardly involved himself in politics until a couple of years ago, and his ignorance showed) who has served as a national convention delegate, elector, and endorser of national Chairman Howard Dean. This reduces Blanco’s control over the state party and may signal a Blanco shift more towards using her own organization allied with other significant Democrats’ to try to shape public opinion, as indicated by a leaked memo to one of her staffers last month.
Now Bernhard can concentrate on what he does best, making money, while the moonbat wing of the Louisiana Democratic Party can make some headway in taking the party as far left as the national party is – creating more and more Republican officeholders in Louisiana as a result.
1 comment:
Many of us non-moonbats have been wanting to cut the size of government in this state, but always get out voted by the legislature and the governor. A storm like Katrina while creating a lot of damage to property and human suffering, maybe benefitual in the effort to help reduce the economic vortex condition of the the state. Those with the political power in the state are being charged with turning their backs on the poor, their political base. If the poor in majority who left the state because of Katrina fail to return and those left in New Orleans stay upset with the leadership, we non-moonbats have a chance.
Jimmy Couvillion
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