Fuller exit no trouble to Perkins reelection bid

Is it the end, or a new beginning, for the political career of Shreveport Democrat City Councilor LeVette Fuller?

This week, only days prior to qualifying fall elections, Fuller announced she wouldn’t run for reelection in District B. She implied in a radio interview that she experienced some contention with fellow councilors and expressed displeasure at how reapportionment had gone, which seemed to be more of a complaint about drawing the lines in general and not how her own district turned out, although she did criticize moving out the city’s casinos by the Red River.

If so, both irritants harken back to her record since her 2018 election. Although she ran more as a progressive, among Democrats on the Council she more likely than the others of her party backed positions advanced by the Republican minority. Often, these reflected disappointment at the Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins Administration for a number of good government flubs instigated by his policies. This earned her enmity from her partisan colleagues who much more uncritically backed Perkins, as until recently by joining with the other party that faction could act as a majority to stall or defeat Perkins’ preferences.

Recycling follies trigger another Perkins flub

The year-long comedy of errors regarding Shreveport recycling follies just won’t subside, just in time to allow voters to associate the incompetence displayed throughout with Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins as qualifying for fall elections looms a week away.

Just over twelve months ago, the Perkins Administration decided to award its curbside recycling contract to a firm headed by Charlette Edwards. A year earlier, the previous contractor – who had insisted it could make money for all off the enterprise – abandoned the money-losing deal, which forced the city to suspend the program and stop collecting the extra fee funding it for which it hit up households.

Although the program over a decade did little to conserve landfill space or to pump up city coffers but certainly squeezed residents, Perkins was sacred and bound to restart it. But only Edwards’ firm bid on it – and won the $9.5 million award over five years despite having no experience in this area, no equipment, no employees, and saying it would haul everything 75 miles away (the old contractor had a facility at the Port of Caddo-Bossier).

Veto session tally reveals GOP cowards, posers

Over the next several months especially Republicans in the Louisiana Legislature who were derelict in their duty will try to fob off excuses for cancelling the 2022 veto session. None are convincing.

Representatives came through with only six Republicans sending in a ballot to cancel. This left 63, ten more than necessary, to keep on the session. However, the party in the Senate let down the people, with all Democrats joined by 14 – over half – of their GOP counterparts giving their consent to cancel.

The phenomenon particularly applied to those term-limited who, unless they have aspirations for another office, will leave elective politics at the end of next year. All of those who can’t run for the Senate in 2023 and thus don’t have to face voter retribution over this – state Sens. Bret Allain, Fred Mills, Barrow Peacock, Bodi White, and Sen. Pres. Page Cortez – opted to take the easy way out and cancel.

LA poised to become most protective of life

The merchants of death will continue to resist kicking and screaming, but Louisiana is staying on course to complement its reputation as the most pro-life state in the country in becoming the state most protective of life within its borders.

Last week, after abortionists shopped venues to find a rogue judge willing to slap a temporary restraining order onto the state’s laws outlawing abortion except when continuing a pregnancy significantly threatened the life of the mother, including instances where the unborn would not live, Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry and others both asked the state Supreme Court to stay that immediately and argued against its extension in Orleans Civil Court just a couple of days later.

Unfortunately, the Court refused to act. A majority called its intervention premature, allegedly not rising to the level of merit necessary to take such a broad action. But, as both Republican Assoc. Justices Jay McCallum and Will Crain noted in dissents, this case did attain that importance, as the plaintiffs’ justification of being unable to continue business didn’t constitute immediate and irreparable harm and especially, as Crain noted, the harm done to the unborn itself was irreparable.