Ad shows Landry opponents have nothing left

If this is the best the GOP opponents of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry can do to try to derail his gubernatorial train, they might as well quit the race now and save taxpayers the expense of a general election runoff in two months.

In advance of a televised debate that Landry won’t attend because one of the hosts is a nonpartisan but clearly leftist advocacy group, Republican Treas. John Schroder released an attack advertisement that may get some air time at least in parts of the state. The ad points out that Texas lawyer Zach Moseley, as part of the firm in which he is a principal, is alleged to have engaged in a variety of shady practices over a blizzard of suits against insurers regarding recent hurricane disasters that have struck Louisiana.

Already the Western District of Louisiana federal judiciary has hauled him and others of this firm in front of it to explain themselves, as well as mete out fines, over actions such as withholding settlement monies that netted them suspensions, and frowned upon the firm’s aggressive collecting of clients, opaqueness in informing clients of their rights if not outright misrepresentation (taking advantage of a loophole in state law now closed as a result of the negative publicity), and potentially even breaking the law with such actions as forgeries. The state’s Insurance Department already has fined the firm, Moseley, and two others a maximum $2 million besides halting their ability to do business in the state for a time which the court continued.

Landry forum pass rational, aids his campaign

Tomorrow brings the first significant televised debate among 2023 Louisiana gubernatorial candidates, yet the most significant candidate by the polls won’t be there. That reflects an escalating trend towards ushering this kind of campaign event into irrelevancy, because candidates increasingly control the presentation of campaign information.

Front runner Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry won’t attend this put on by a consortium of television stations, the Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Urban League. He said he would take a pass because of the Urban League’s presence, which holds itself out as nonpartisan but has a history of fronting left-wing causes. For example, Landry has been critical of overbroad assertions of affirmative action, most recently filing suit to prevent the federal government from applying outcome-oriented usage of it for environmental regulation without regard for intent, while the Urban League has given full-throated support of expansive use of the concept.

Landry also may have had queasiness about the Advocate, which has a thinly-disguised antipathy towards him that shapes its coverage of the campaign. When it’s not publicizing molehills in an attempt to make mountains out of Landry oversights, it reprints pieces from the far-left Louisiana Illuminator website that makes no bones about its disdain for Landry, and its subsidiary shopper Gambit’s leftist editor unleashes editorial broadsides against him.

Declining LA fiscal health to hit disabled worst

Scratch the fantasy that Louisiana big government advocates had that recent new spending commitments wouldn’t put the state into future fiscal distress, exacerbated by wasteful Medicaid policy decisions designed more to expand the number of people on this dole rather than to help the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

Last month, the Division of Administration presented updated financial numbers reflecting trends in revenue collection and spending since the Revenue Estimating Conference last set such numbers in stone in May. These will go into one of the two recommendations for revenues and expenses certified by the REC close to year’s end.

While this report predicted a surplus of nearly $150 million for the next fiscal year of 2024-25, the bottom drops out in the next two, where both FY 2026 and FY 2027 are forecast to produce each nearly a half a billion dollar deficits. The end of the 2016 and 2018 sales tax increase of 0.45 percent mainly drives the new gap. Worse, tax changes from the 2023 legislative session have yet to be factored in, which could have a further negative impact.

LA Freedom Caucus can change policy trajectory

It’s a bold bid, but one if even moderately successful could drag Louisiana governance (probably kicking and screaming) into the 21^st century.

The Louisiana Freedom Caucus PAC, the campaign arm of a collection of Republican House of Representatives members plus supporters, last week released a list of endorsees for upcoming legislative elections. This entitles them to campaign assistance.

Endorsees are judged to adhere to conservative principles and include both current legislators and hopefuls in joining them. Regarding this decision for existing legislators, one criterion stood out: only the 19 representatives who voted against breaking the constitutional spending caps in this past regular legislative session were eligible for endorsement. No senators did.

BC graybeards drop fig leaves at Chandler pressure

As the fig leaves fall away and the threats escalate, the battle about term limits on Bossier City elected officials has mutated from a veneer of concern over legal obligations to a process driven by reelection concerns on both sides, although opponents have captured a monopoly on hypocritical self-interest that continues to erode their political fortunes while giving Mayor Tommy Chandler a tremendous opportunity to boost his own.

This week a Council majority of graybeards – councilors Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby who all will have served at least 12 years by 2025 – plus their pet rookie Republican Vince Maggio, in concert with their consigliere City Attorney Charles Jacobs hope to go all Cosa Nostra in their endeavor to defeat the effort to give voters a say on a three-term lifetime and retroactive limit in office. They combat a petition certified by Bossier Parish Registrar of Voters Stephanie Agee that the city charter forces the Council to approve placing such an item on the ballot by Nov. 7.

But this majority bloc resists, because such a vote of taken within the next 14 months almost certainly will pass the measure and end the political careers of the graybeards. And the excuse they try to use is the petition didn’t directly have the birth years of signers listed as stated specifically in the relevant state statute, although it did list the voter identification numbers unique to signing individuals that includes the birth year of them, providing an indirect listing that complies with the spirit of the law if not its exact wording.