Today, Gov. Kathleen Blanco went in front of Congress to assure it that Louisiana’s politicians weren’t as thieving as their reputations suggest, and got backup from Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, in an effort to assure the federal government that the state could be trusted with whatever relief bucks came its way.
Blanco one-upped the proposal by former Louisiana Republican governors (the only Democrat former governor with us being rather indisposed at the moment) by promising a good three layers of auditing of any federal monies coming into the state: a national accounting firm to start, then another to check the first, and finally the new Louisiana Recovery Authority to check them both. That being the case, it looks like Blanco is trying to solve the unemployment problem in Louisiana as a result of the recent hurricane disasters by getting the out-of-work hired to audit somebody somewhere.
Landrieu sought to reassure Congress by pointing out that it wasn’t just Louisiana who had a governor go to jail. What he didn’t mention was we also had a run of insurance commissioners – Sherman Bernard, Doug Green, and Jim Brown – spend time in the big house. You can also throw in former Elections Commissioner Jerry Fowler to add to Prisoner #03128-095 and the Masked One as elected officials spending time up the river in the past 15 years. Not exactly reassuring, is it? And, not only did the Federal Bureau of Investigation deem it necessary to put a full-time corruption office in New Orleans, it branched out to Baton Rouge as well.
For their trouble, the state’s senior congressman Republican Rep. Richard Baker threw cold water on Democrat Blanco’s new commission by saying he wants to see a presidentially-appointed commission to oversee things. He then spread the frigidity around to Landrieu’s sister by rejecting her idea that Louisiana governments get money for free, by saying it could come from federally-backed debt partially repaid by Louisiana subgovernments.
To add comic relief, simultaneously the far-left Association for Community Reform Now pledged to sign up 100,000 Katrina refugees to stiff-arm the government into funding its agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts. We’ll hold our breath on that one.
Baker certainly is correct that Louisiana needs encouragement of loans rather than grants for proper accounting of funds, especially now since it appears the Army Corps of Engineers have full federal funding to restore the New Orleans-area levees back to pre-hurricane status despite the history of local political shenanigans and Louisiana political intrigue in that regard. Given the state’s history, Blanco’s and Landrieu’s entreaties simply don’t carry much weight.
No comments:
Post a Comment