In what has become nauseatingly
familiar to observers, Edwards framed the presentation along the twin
rhetorical principles emblazoned upon his administration to date: blaming his
predecessor for every bad thing, real or imagined, under the sun; and
pugnaciously defining cooperation as the endorsing of his policy preferences
while conflict occurs only when others disagree with him. Expanding upon the
latter, to which he also made allusions at the end, he alleged that a “Washington”
politics of divisiveness interfered with getting things done (read: having his
agenda enacted) and that a “Louisiana way” should prevail.
Of course, the “Louisiana way” has
facilitated spending the state’s way into oblivion: in
the next-to-last year data were available (2012), the state ranked 12th
in spending as a proportion of state personal income. That’s high, but more remarkably
growth in that measure over the previous two decades exceeded that of all states
but Delaware. In Louisiana, consensus of Edwards’ type leads to overspending
and a little more conflict seems in order to stop it.
Edwards also launched into a series
of half-truths, if not outright fibs. Rummaging through a litany of campaign
promises that involve bigger government, he said nothing close to resembling reality
regarding Medicaid expansion. He repeated his
lie that previous refusal to expand diverted state taxpayer’s dollars,
continued to assert flawed
conclusions that expansion would boost economic activity, said
uncompensated care costs would go way down
as a result of expansion despite that so
little of expenditures are true charity care and most of the rest the
federal government picks up, and made the false claim (apparently coming up
with a figure out of thin air) that the state would save $100 million this
upcoming fiscal year by expanding when the state’s
own data (in reports made unavailable online from the Department of Health
and Hospitals since the Edwards Administration assumed command of the agency)
forecast in FY 2017 the state will lose nearly $40 million. (Perhaps this lack
of transparency is not limited to this instance: at the time of this
publication, the text of Edwards’ speech remained unavailable at the governor’s
office website.)
Then Edwards upped the ante further
by circulating myths about the minimum wage and gender wage differentials. He claimed
hiking the minimum wage would constitute a step towards a better “living wage” –
when in
fact hardly any worker earns only the minimum wage, most who do work in
food preparation or as servers, most work part-time, the majority are young, and almost
none are the sole breadwinners of a household. He argued, without any details,
for action to close an alleged wage gap between men and women – when in
fact this disparity doesn’t exist when taking into account the different employment
choices the sexes typically make.
Edwards also stumped for enormous
state expenditures on “light” rail, despite the fact that this would commit
the state to huge subsidies per passenger and hardly solve for traffic
congestion. Economic problems stemming from a lack of a regional approach,
incredibly enough, he blamed on not having passenger rail: according to him,
the absence of this prevented the promotion of cooperation between Baton Rouge
and New Orleans, which is about the last reason why the two metropolitan areas
often compete against each other economically.
These fantastical, if not outright ignorant,
statements he might have made as a way to demonstrate he stayed attuned to campaign
promises that he would try to keep. But the sheer nonsense behind them that he
seemed to take seriously suggests he actually does think these would make for wise
policy. And, besides earning him a failing grade for this annual gubernatorial
exercise, these words also remind us of the unsuitability of this pretense of
leadership, underscoring the mistake made by the Louisiana electorate that
delivered him in fluky fashion to the state’s highest office.
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