No reason for LA to privilege renewable energy

The thing is, with very few exceptions journalists don’t know what they don’t know. Throw in the public policy subject least critically analyzed and most distorted in its wider presentation, and you have a recipe for a good bit of nonsense, as exemplified by a recent media story about Louisiana renewable energy policy.

Elevating the potential for disaster is that it comes from a student journalist at Louisiana State University, whose colleague made a bit of a mess with a story last month about changing amounts of voter registrant affiliations in the state. Unfortunately, although admittedly ultimately the writer’s fault for choosing such sources, in this instance the author was handicapped by the ignorance displayed by some chosen to make comments.

The article tried to put into a Louisiana context the efforts by Democrat Pres. Joe Biden to pursue an energy agenda based upon faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Biden has announced he would like to ramp up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions in America by 2030, now proclaiming a goal of around half at present as a palliative to alleged disastrous consequences. But science doesn’t support such a scenario transpiring, and even accelerating the reduction will do little to ameliorate overall temperature gains over the next 80 years. Plus, Biden and any future president stumping for the same will have to convince a skeptical Congress to pass laws and to permit regulations to enforce this.

Edwards comments deny his faith's doctrine

I guess it’s true, from his latest opining about legislation before the Louisiana Legislature: Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards does want to abandon his current post and become ambassador to the Holy See.

Some observers have speculated as such, and now we have evidence to support that. That’s because Edwards has taken a position at odds with his professed Catholic faith, bringing him into alignment with the "Sunday Catholic” who would appoint him, Democrat Pres. Joe Biden.

Earlier this week, Edwards criticized – and implied vetoes if such bills ever came to his desk – measures such as HB 542, HB 575, and SB 156 that would limit sports participation of children and young adults of one sex to competitions for that sex and that would prevent medical interventions designed to change or impede sexual development of children. He hopes “the Legislature will not seek to advance those bills” because “I am really concerned about emotionally fragile people and the idea that the weight of the state would be put behind something that to me is unnecessary and discriminatory and very hurtful for those individuals when there’s not a compelling reason to do it.”

LPSC repeats mistake that may cost ratepayers

Louisianans dodged a bullet on the Windcatcher project. They might not have such luck concerning the junior version.

Last week, Southwestern Electric Power, a subsidiary of American Electric Power which provides electricity in northwest/west/central Louisiana, announced that its Sundance project had come online. This 199 megawatt addition is the opening salvo of the North Central Wind project in Oklahoma that eventually will ramp to 1,485 MW, of which Louisiana will receive as much as 464 MW while SWEPCO and AEP customers in Oklahoma and Arkansas will divvy up the rest.

This comes as part of a SWEPCO strategy to replace coal and gas-fired generation with renewable energy. The utility plans to take several such units offline in Louisiana and Texas over the coming decade, plus a wind farm. It insists that this eventually will have the state’s customers come out ahead, with the maximal cost borne by ratepayers at $624 million but reaping $1.15 billion in savings.

"Elect" Landrieu still woke, still nonsensical

Old boss same as the new boss.

That’s the inescapable conclusion from reading a screed by Democrat former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who was woke before woke became fashionable. Since leaving office in 2018, Landrieu, incapable of winning any electoral office outside of the confines of surreal New Orleans, has drifted into obscurity, lecturing on city management with a special emphasis on race relations to anyone gullible or bored enough to pay attention.

His latest sermon appeared as a CNN opinion piece, stumping for a “truth and healing” panel in America to “examine the systems and institutions that operate at the detriment of Black Americans and other minorities.” It is a jeremiad chock full of ignorance and disingenuity, beginning with that statement.

Chandler pick risks reform agenda success

Incoming Bossier City Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler got his man. In the process, he may have let slip away his agenda’s success.

Chandler surprised political watchers by tapping Bossier Parish School Board member Republican Shane Cheatham to serve as the city’s Chief Administrative Officer when Chandler’s term commences Jul. 1. This will send the City Council’s District 1 voters back to the polls in the fall at least once, for Cheatham soundly defeated incumbent Republican Scott Irwin for that spot in last month’s elections.

Cheatham, along with incoming at-large Republican Councilor Chris Smith, would have served as an ally of Chandler’s on the seven-member body. The Council seldom deviated from initiatives springing from outgoing Republican Mayor Lo Walker over the past 16 years, nor even the previous 16 years to that when Walker served as CAO, with the large majority of its decisions made unanimously across this era of low Council turnover.