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27.9.18

SOS polls duel on sampling, turnout model

You couldn’t have gotten two more different results from polls a week apart in Louisiana’s fall secretary of state race. Why these differ and what this means fascinates.

As noted last week, a poll for The Hayride website by Remington Research produced the following results:
Kyle Ardoin: 13%
Renee Fontenot Free: 10%
Heather Cloud: 8%
Julie Stokes: 8%
A.G. Crowe: 7%
Gwen Collins-Greenup: 6%
Rick Edmonds: 3%
undecided: 45%

And this week, a poll by JMC Analytics for the state Rep. Rick Edmonds campaign gave these results:
Fontenot Free: 22%
Stokes: 11%
Edmonds: 11%
Collins-Greenup: 4%
Ardoin: 3%
Cloud: 2%
Crowe: 1%
Other candidate: 1%
undecided: 46%

26.9.18

Court loss to dilute improved education outcomes

Louisiana law sometimes helps charter schools maintain their independence and facilitates the benefits of school choice, but sometimes it works against this.

Earlier this year, these schools won a battle to maintain public funding for some of them when the Louisiana Supreme Court correctly ruled them as public schools, even if run privately. A union and school district filed a legal challenge alleging they weren’t, but the Court astutely noted that the schools in question, which fell into a special chartering category, contrary to the plaintiffs argument met the test that they were as “public schools” didn’t equate to “city and parish school systems.”

Thus, one attempt by anti-choice forces to knock out a segment of charter schools failed. But on another front they succeeded last week in federal court.

25.9.18

LA bishops must follow through on disclosure

Now they just have to mean what they say by following through with action.

Louisiana’s Roman Catholic bishops seem poised to implement a ground-breaking policy on dealing with sexual abuse accusations against clergy, religious, and secular employees. The new tack comes in the wake not only of increased national attention to the issue brought by law enforcement investigations in other states, but also with additional revelations in the past month of new abuse claims in Louisiana and of older ones that led to church legal settlements.

In St. Martin Parish, accusers have gone to court over the behavior of one long-time priest. In Orleans Parish, information has come out about a settlement over the behavior of Jesuit High School employees, including priests. In Jefferson Parish, abuse revelations surfaced about a layperson for decades employed as a teacher in New Orleans and River Ridge and who served as a deacon in Metairie.

24.9.18

Differing motives separate Edwards, Landry styles

Yesterday, I compared the governing of Democrats former Pres. Barack Obama and current Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards. Today, I get to compare the styles of Edwards and Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry to amplify a point further.

In the pages of The Advocate, I noted two similarities between Edwards and Obama: they both subscribed to an imperialistic view of a chief executive’s powers and they both used their offices to campaign permanently and constantly. For the latter, I gave a couple of examples where Edwards delivered criticism about a potential opponent, Landry, over issues that had nothing to do with the governor’s office: whether the state’s attorney general could initiate an investigation of potential crimes despite constitutional prohibitions on that and Landry’s joining the state with others to a dispute over the constitutionality of the (misnamed) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Yet others I know saw irony over using incidents with Landry as an example of Edwards’ permanent campaign, because they believed Landry displayed the same penchant. No doubt Landry does publicize activities of his office as these relate to political issues of the day. For example, when last week he issued an opinion on Edwards’ powers as these relate to appointing a member of the Red River Waterway Commission, which declared a recent Edwards appointment open to legal challenge, unlike most he made a news release for it. He also held a news conference over it and reiterated its contents in a social media post today.