Results in FL argue for LA public union reform

If Florida can ameliorate the effect of zombies, surely Louisiana can do it just as well, if not better.

In its original sense transported from Africa to the Americas, zombies are a reanimated creature from the dead found in voodoo practices, whether they know. Voodoo finds its way into Louisiana folklore, but in other places like Florida they’re more often found in labor unions.

That’s the conclusion a recent article drew about the state of these organizations in the Sunshine State’s public sector. Since that state, like Louisiana, doesn’t make employment in a bargaining unit subject to a closed shop – to work at that place you must join a union – but permits a bargaining unit to form and to negotiate on behalf of all employees regardless of whether they join and pay dues, those assessments essentially become optional.

Good LA crypto moves should exclude reserve

Suddenly, Louisiana has found a cutting edge technology gear with policy changes that landed a pair of data centers in the state and cryptocurrency use . But it shouldn’t take the step that some states and the incipient Republican Pres. Donald Trump Administration have under consideration, establishing a cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, reserve.

Trump in his campaign talked this up, and GOP Sen. Cindy Lummis followed through recently by introducing a bill to do the same. The idea is for government to buy bitcoin tokens (the federal government already has a couple of hundred thousand or so bitcoins seized from law enforcement actions) in order to provide some financial backstopping as well as use these as investment vehicles that could take a bite out of the huge $36 trillion debt.

Bitcoin is “mined” by solving complicated computational problems, open to anybody. Thus, wealth is created in two ways: by mining bitcoins or portions thereof which become recognized as a unit of account, or by a marketplace bidding up the value of a bitcoin in other currencies.

Christmas, 2024

This column publishes every Monday through Friday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Easter, Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Wednesday, Dec. 25 being Christmas Day, I invite you to explore this link.

Bossier Jury shaping image to avoid controversy

It’s almost as if the Bossier Parish Police Jury is striving to keep attention away from any of its potentially controversial doings, given the disconnect between the parish’s news release about the latest Jury meeting and what happened at that meeting.

Not that the Jury is known for its transparency. Unlike other major governing authorities in Bossier and Caddo Parishes, its agendas contain almost no supporting documentation so citizens can make informed commentary about them. It broadcasts its meetings through the non-robust Facebook Live platform that makes difficult following and replaying, and it doesn’t publicly archive at all its committee meetings although it did recently start to do that for its two utilities the governing boards for which are all the jurors. There practically is zero discussion on almost all issues except specific zoning requests even for some vastly important things (the 2025 budget and 2024 amendments to the budget each were handled in less time that it takes to flush a toilet), so citizens remain in the dark about such significant matters unless they file a public information request or troop to the courthouse during business hours and ask to see stuff – a 20^th century mode of operation despite the first quarter of the 21^st coming to its conclusion.

Rarely do the media attend Jury gatherings and if they report on these they use the news releases issued by the parish. For the Dec. 18 meeting, the release highlighted comments from the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau, tax notice information from the Sheriff’s Office, Jury efforts to coordinate better zoning changes, and broad parameters of the parish’s Three-Year Overplay Program and even more generally transportation.

Elites panic at LA Health's holistic messaging

More interesting than the news that the Louisiana Department of Health has taken a more holistic view of public health is the motivation behind those, including the media, who bemoan it.

Last week, National Public Radio ran a breathless piece about how LDH had deemphasized indiscriminate pushing of vaccines for the Wuhan coronavirus and influenza and maybe the flu-like mpox, although its incidence in the U.S. in its weak form is rare and in its more virulent form nonexistent. Allegedly, LDH officials instructed employees not to make vigorous efforts to advise the public to get these vaccines and noted the department “is shifting away from one-size-fits-all paternalistic guidance to a more informative approach aimed at enabling individuals, in consultation with their doctor, to make better decisions for themselves.”

That is an entirely appropriate and productive approach to these illnesses, all of which share the same characteristics, to varying degrees, that people with healthy immune systems and/or co-morbidities rarely become seriously ill from these. Mpox potentially is the most serious but can be taken care of with smallpox vaccination, although the less prevalent vaccine version in the U.S. dedicated to it does present a relatively high 1 in 175 rate of developing myocarditis/pericarditis among other less severe side effects, while the more prevalent vaccine hasn’t been studied enough to come up with a hard number although it is thought to be less deleterious.