Maybe the governorship of Democrat John Bel Edwards hit
its high point prior to his taking the oath of office, but it may not go
downhill too far or fast depending upon the wiles of legislative leader who
already has served two terms in that role under a governor then named Edwards.
State Sen. John Alario gained unanimous reelection
for Senate president from his colleagues earlier this week. Just as Prisoner #03128-095,
known back then as Gov. Edwin
Edwards, held the state’s top office for 16 years, Alario now threatens to
do the same in serving as top officer of the House of Representatives,
accomplished in non-consecutive terms during the last two terms of Prisoner #03128-095’s
reign, and now if completing his term would log two consecutively additionally
in the equivalent position in the Senate.
Interestingly, for this final
voyage on the hayride he will take the trip, for the first time, as a member of
a different political party than the governor. Alario switched from Democrat to
Republican prior to his reelection as senator in 2011, after which he would
take the Senate’s helm. In some ways it did not seem all that unusual as by
then his voting record more often reflected conservativism and reformism. His Louisiana Legislature Log voting record for
his last term in the House averaged 35; he registered an average of 61 his
first term in the Senate and then posted a 63 during his chamber presidency
(100 denotes all conservative/reform votes cast, with 0 meaning none).
Much like when the Khmer Rouge took
power in Cambodia over four decades ago, the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
Administration seems set upon rewriting history to declare the day it took
office as beginning the Year Zero, if the first transition team report
released
serves as any indicator.
The Economic
Development Committee's conclusions were followed by the predictable Transportation
version, which inevitably and sensibly argued for looking for more efficient use of
infrastructure dollars, directing all of them to roads needs, before implementing increased
taxation. Naturally, to follow this means putting a greater strain on the
operating budget, since some of the money that could go to roads ends up spent
on the state police and other matters, but beggaring other parts of state
government did not concern this group’s focus only on transportation priorities.
Other than for transportation
needs, the economic development recommendations actually may turn out the least
controversial of the several documents that will come out over the course of
the month. It lauds the state’s Department of Economic Development, citing
statistics to position it as a national leader – all without mentioning it made
the progress to gain this status through the two terms of former Republican Gov.
Bobby
Jindal.
Did the governorship of Democrat John Bel Edwards
peak two hours prior to his swearing in?
Approximately at that time, state
Rep. Taylor
Barras became
Speaker of the House, an unexpected choice combining with a rare contested
election for the post. In the past, overwhelming majorities of Democrats
elected a Democrat as speaker regardless of the party of the governor. The
modern Republican governors, except for former Gov. Bobby
Jindal, complied by backing a Democrat both he and the majority found
acceptable; Jindal in his first term backed a Republican when neither party had
a majority and when the GOP, which would gain that majority over the next four
years, trailed Democrats by just one seat.
But Edwards within days of his
election publicly
announced
he would back a promotion for Democrat Speaker Pro-Tem Walt Leger. Not
only would this make for the first time in history the party not with a
majority not to possess the speakership, but it also would promote to speaker
someone from a party with only about 40 percent of the total chamber seats,
trailing the majority party in this instance by 19. It would have become an
unprecedented foray into House minority rule.
In
his inaugural address, Gov. John Bel Edwards preached
about how Louisiana needed unity, how its diversity need not descend into
division, and that he would give the “unvarnished truth” about issues and
solutions to pressing public policy problems – and in it proceeded to contradict
all of that.
Edwards sprung no surprises in
terms of policy preferences; indeed, the familiar bromides he presented played
an integral part in the contradictions. His repeating of the statistic often
used to mislead concerning pay between men and women, that when looking only at
total pay to total workforce, the typical woman makes 66 percent of the amount
of money that the typical man does, as something needed some kind of “correction”
ignores
the mountain of statistics that demonstrate with all intervening factors
equal, no significant pay gap exists. In doing so, he promotes division over
unity concerning an alleged “problem” that exists only in the minds of
ideologues besides dodging the truth of the matter.
He argued as a chief concern raising
the minimum wage needs to become a “living” wage, even though fewer
than 1 in 100 mature workers earn it, only 1 in 400 serve as a household’s
primary breadwinner, that for many of those jobs the minimum wage has risen at
a rate five or six times as fast as justified by the gains in worker
productivity over the past quarter-century, and that the most widely-used welfare
programs pay more than the minimum wage in 35 states – Louisiana included
among these. Nothing like trying to unify by starting off stoking some class
warfare, is there?
