Despite Landry, Biden takes pound of flesh

Despite Louisiana’s Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry’s best efforts, Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and his party seem determined to make people pay for their climate alarmism fantasies.

Landry spearheaded an effort to scrap the social cost of carbon metric reestablished by the Biden Administration on its first day in office, which about a month later began forcing inclusion of that old figure in, among other things, putative lease sales of federal land for energy exploration. Landry sued shortly thereafter, but until the judiciary late last year ruled that, in another suit headlined by Landry, Biden had illegally prevented such lease sales from going forward and had to carry these out, the matter was moot.

With these set to move forward again, earlier this month a different court ruled that Landry and the other plaintiffs had the standing to challenge the cost forwarded by the Biden group convened to create it (largely a holdover figure from the Democrat Pres. Barack Obama Administration, which early on completed a sue-and-settle arrangement giving birth to the noxious notion that there existed this cost justified by the alleged negative impact man-made carbon emitting on all things) and that this reestablishment violated the Administrative Procedures Act because it hastily acted and did not follow through the entire process. By definition, the injunction issued carries an implication that a full trial would favor the plaintiffs’ argument, on the basis that the framework producing the number didn’t follow the law and therefore was made capriciously.

GIGO report asks LA to double taxes, rates

Now that the relatively small wasting of money is over, the rotten fruit of that effort urges Louisianans to start wasting a spectacular amount to such a degree it would detract from their quality of life.

That comes courtesy of the garbage-in-garbage-out Climate Initiatives Task Force set up by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, which earlier this month issued its final report. It sought to align the state with environmental goals championed by the far left as reflected in lip service through the flawed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report whose recent summaries have demanded reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 26 to 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025, 40 to 50 percent of those levels by 2030, and to net zero by 2050.

The report explains its climate alarmism, and in doing so manages to discredit itself entirely by ignoring climate science. Laying out bombastic yet scientifically unsustainable claims, it contends:

Ivey outburst part of Strange New Respect quest

Just as Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy has put in a strong bid to win Strange New Respect among leftists inside and outside of national government, so has GOP state Rep. Barry Ivey within the state’s borders.

Strange New Respect becomes recognized when a heretofore solidly conservative elected official begins to act in ways that win applause from the left, typically by surrendering on matters of principle that effectively promotes the left’s agenda. In Ivey’s case, it’s more quality rather than quantity: the occasional defective judgment on his part often comes with attention-grabbing histrionics.

For, as the record shows, Ivey still casts a lot of conservative votes. His Louisiana Legislative Log average score over his 2013-22 House career at 73 ranged from the only 100 one year to a low of 45, although in a year that scores were down overall (100 means perfect consonance with a conservative/reform agenda). And he does a good job in the kind of bills he offers: of the 180 regular session bills he has filed as the primary author, a surface review of the Log shows 24 were classified as good (meaning nontrivial and conservative/reform in nature) bills to watch during a session and only two were bad (liberal/populist in nature).

House tallies favor few Edwards plan vetoes

The products of the Louisiana Legislature’s First Extraordinary Session on 2022 dedicated to reapportionment now head to the desk of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. Let’s see what happened and the likely futures of these.

Keep in mind that Republicans hold a supermajority plus one seat in the Senate, meaning party unity will override any Edwards veto. In the House of Representatives, they fall two short of this lofty perch of 70, but also have three no party members on which to draw, of which state Rep. Joe Marino typically leans their way whereas state Reps. Roy Daryl Adams and Malinda White normally cast their lots with Democrats.

Important to note is the final tallies for each chamber on each bill. Whether the GOP can reach the override threshold is a function of its members (including those who cast protest votes because they didn’t like how the plan affected their districts, who will return to the fold in case of a veto) who voted plus those absent who will support any override plus supportive no party/independent members and Democrats. In all cases in the Senate, the threshold was met, so it’s the House where override questions would be and whose numbers are reported below.

LA Congress map may set new legal precedents

Louisiana could end up the tip of the spear in defining voting rights, as court cases swirl about, from how its Legislature concluded its 2022 First Extraordinary Session devoted to reapportionment.

That session sent plans favored by its Republican majority to Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has voiced support for other rejected maps that leftist special interests have backed. Almost certainly he will veto a congressional plan that considers not only racial demographics but also largely keeps communities of interest together and provides continuity of representation that increase the chances of incumbents winning with the new boundaries, because it supplies only one majority-minority district out of six instead of two in a state where just about a third of the population identifies as black. Inevitably almost certainly, whether from an override failing that creates malapportionment (whether this attempt only or another is made during the regular session) or it succeeds that aggrieves special interests seeking a map more conducive to electing leftists to Congress, it will become subject to litigation.

A decade ago, elements who keyed on race as a means to increase the influence of Democrats in plenary bodies had means of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to spur that. It required preclearance by the U.S. Department of Justice of districts created in certain jurisdictions that had a history of electoral laws that prevented minorities from voting, based upon a formula. However, in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision declared the decades-old formula in Section 4(b) was too dated to past constitutional muster in that its deviation from reality made impermissible federal intrusion through preclearance into state sovereignty, essentially mooting Section 5 (until Congress passes an updated, realistic formula into law).