Leftist heave to thwart fiscal reform should fail

You knew the Hail Mary pass was coming from the vested interests that want to thwart Louisiana’s attempt at fiscal reform, and here it is.

This week, a law firm in the past associated with supporting far left-wing political candidacies filed suit to try to kick off Amendment 2 from the March ballot. That came to be from Act 1 of the Third Extraordinary Session of the Louisiana Legislature, which passed unanimously in the Senate and with only a few dissenting votes from hard left Democrats in the House.

Leftist extremists oppose the amendment because it reduces taxation on investment and productive activity but raises it on consumption and enhances conditions to right-size state government. That means lower income individuals probably would be more likely to experience an overall tax increase than would higher income individuals, or would see a smaller tax decrease. It also makes more likely curtailment of discretionary transfer payments from government, whether to individuals or groupings of them such as nonprofit organizations, whether in recurring or one-time form.

Case telling more about media, higher education

As the saga of the disposition of the neurotic Louisiana State University law professor continues to drag out, it tells us more about the media and higher education than the actual demerits of the subject in question.

That guy ensconced at the Paul M. Hebert School of Law, Ken Levy, almost a month ago found himself suspended from teaching duties because of some unfortunate remarks of his. Besides insulting a politician or two in a semester-beginning lecture, he also managed to convey the impression that students with different political sensibilities than his needed reeducation that could begin with grading them on that criterion and that he could toss them into the hoosegow if they dared record his lectures (the complex legal question aside, he had no such authority), citing controversy that percolated from somewhat less openly jaundiced recorded remarks by one of his colleagues.

After retaining counsel, Levy alleged his remarks were in jest, which he appeared to mean served as a prophylactic against any unprofessional offense. To which I say, pulling out the old as-I’ve-been-teaching-in-higher-education-nearly-four-decades card, even if joking around it was unprofessional enough to warrant not just his suspension, but dismissal. You don’t even need four decades, not even four minutes, as a higher education instructor to know you don’t levy, even if a joking fashion, threats against assignment of a course grade that don’t have a direct relationship to a student’s demonstration of course mastery. Simply, too much is at stake for a student when it comes to a grade, where even a letter grade difference could mean the difference between staying in or out of school, retaining or not retaining financial aid, eligibility for job recruitment possibilities, and the like.

That noted, since his initial suspension in the course of legal hearings to ascertain whether LSU legally suspended him with pay, even more evidence has surfaced about his competency to teach effectively, in the form of a test question that in previous centuries might be referred to as bawdy. Briefly, the question graphically set up a scenario where students had to determine whether criminal behavior had occurred involving copulation with a jack-o-lantern, followed by recording and disseminating sexual abuse of minors, and with a direct insult to Republicans thrown in.

Demonstrating yet again that sophistry and irrelevancy often rise to the top in legal argumentation and decision-making, his mouthpiece argued nothing was wrong with the material in the question because a lawyer potentially could run into all of this in the profession, to which the judge assented in ruling Levy back into the classroom. A day later, the First Circuit Court of Appeals vetoed that.

Note the red herring shift in force here. The issue isn’t that students may encounter cases involving sexually-oriented criminal behavior, but in the presentation of these kinds of cases by the question material demonstrates a behavior sanctionable by the university. Keep in mind the idea of the university (to paraphrase John Henry Cardinal Newman) is to enlarge and illuminate the mind to view many things at once. But you can’t do that if you alienate your audience from the start by appealing to vulgarity (mistaken for cleverness) and insults (mistaken for virtue signaling).

All too often these days academia ends up the refuge of those who use instruction as a kind of therapy, to allow modes of behavior dressed in the trappings of teaching, making the classroom a playground for indulging in the instructor’s psychological insecurities. For example, undoubtedly one can write a question that more clinically and less floridly, and without partisan slurs (that have nothing to do with the subject), makes the same inquiries. You would want to do that because a more salacious rendering distracts some students of more delicate sensibilities while the political insult distracts others of that partisan stripe. Your job is to help students to learn and express that learning, not to throw up impediments via shock and provocation.

Why would an instructor do this? (For readers with college experience, think about these archetypes you may have encountered in the course of your studies.) Maybe he fancies himself a rebel who believes untraditional discourse signifies he is more creative and imaginative than the herd. Or sees himself as a provocateur who to change academia must thumb his nose at it through attention-grabbing rhetoric and actions. Or maybe he views himself as an academic Übermensch, to whom the rules don’t apply and he can take this power trip that disparages the beliefs of many of his students with impunity. Or perhaps he conceives of himself as the “cool” professor, who imagines such discourse increases his popularity among the students as it has him climb down from the ivory tower to become more relatable to their supposedly more earthy lives. There are others unrelated to the conceit that lies behind those so far explicated, even less salutary, that deal with neuroses.

The point is posturing in these forms detracts from effective teaching. And when these have the effect of denigrating students for reasons beyond academic performance, if not creating a hostile learning environment, that is something for which a university can bounce from its hallowed halls even a tenured professor.

Yet reading much of the media coverage of this protracted case frames it in free expression terms that in reality don’t form the basis for his suspension, implying if not asserting that LSU is trying to punish the cretin for his political opinions, which included in class vulgar exhortations about conservative elected officials. Some, like the Baton Rouge Advocate, at least mention that LSU’s disciplinary attempts involve comportment, while other like the far left-funded Louisiana Illuminator web site entirely and dishonestly ignores the basis for LSU’s action. This all is done as a method to advance a false narrative that somehow the rise of conservative elected officials that now dominate Louisiana government and hold majorities in the federal government threatens free expression and cows what should be the bastions of that, higher education.

Quite the opposite. For this guy is but the tip of the iceberg. His insecurities may have been such that he too openly and stupidly displayed them, but there are plenty of others more circumspect populating academia, both in Louisiana and across the nation. And as academia has sympathy for their political views, ordinarily it won’t bother with them no matter how much they may invest in indoctrination instead of (see Newman above) education. This creates an echo chamber of orthodoxy that experiences excavation only when its excesses become illuminated to the larger world, which introduces the real heroes of it all, the students whose recording and revelation of class materials exposed the poverty of Levy’s approach to instruction. It takes courage to enter into conflict with a guy who holds tremendous power over your future, and that is fortified by knowing in government you have elected officials that will hear you out and will apply pressure for a fair resolution of the conflict. Knowing that greater capacity exists to expose idiocy in the classroom has the effect of exposing more of that idiocy, which then at least drives more of that idiocy underground and away from interfering with genuine education.

In other words, maybe having a Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who appoints members of the LSU Board of Supervisors confirmed by a state Senate with a GOP supermajority, makes LSU (who like most higher education institutions otherwise practices “don’t ask/don’t tell” in this regard) pursue more aggressively punishment of faculty stupidity in the classroom. In that respect, the real story the media is missing is how conservatives controlling elective offices instead of threatening free expression are restoring the idea of free inquiry thereby enhancing the mission of superior education within academia.

LA should forbid planned virtual learning days

The Ouachita Parish School Board made a bad precedent worse, and alerts the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and/or the Louisiana Legislature they might want to counter this.

This past week the Board ratified its academic year 2026 calendar. Included in it are three virtual learning days, up from two at present. Virtual leaning days are those where students don’t report to class but are responsible for completing school work due that day from another location.

The concept originated around a decade ago when, with the increased technological capacity to deliver coursework remotely and the spread of devices among students to perform it led some districts that experience chronic bad weather to use these days to supplement “snow days.” While calendars could work in a few days where schools would close because of inclement weather, in too many cases that allocation would be exhausted and then some, causing loss of learning potential. With this option, snow days could be converted into virtual learning days with less erosion of learning. Adoption spread when the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic closed schools for an extended period of time.

Marvin credibility increasingly on thin ice

Subsequent to a puzzling exchange at a community meeting, Republican 26^th District Atty. Schuyler Marvin finds himself with a growing no-win political situation in the context of what has happened to a slew of elected officials in Bossier City over the past four years

The parish’s political insiders in the city have had a rough time of it in recent years. First came the 2021 elections, where voters dumped GOP former Mayor Lo Walker and two city councilors, all part of the same cabal with Marvin. And just from qualifying for this year’s round, three others – Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free and Democrat Bubba Williams – removed themselves from reelection consideration as public antipathy towards their high-handed style of governance grew, mainly over the issue of their illegally blocking the sending to voters of a petition installing term limits on city elected officials. Two others, Republican Vince Maggio and independent Jeff Darby who also voted on multiple occasions to engage in that illegal action, have drawn opposition to their reelection bids.

After multiple courts chastised the five who broke their oaths of office with these votes, with one panel deeming their actions construable as malfeasance in office which is a felony, perturbed parish residents began petitioning Marvin to investigate the matter or to call in the state to do so. Not that reformers should have much confidence that Marvin should do either, for Marvin – son of a former district attorney – is among the most insider of parish insiders and has a history of protecting allies when his office is put in a situation where it may wade into legal controversy.

Tate tries con job on opposing new NIH cost rule

When you’re playing the big con, your mark can’t know he’s been taken even after he’s been taken. If a recent communiqué by Louisiana State University System Pres. William Tate IV about changing federal regulations about National Institutes of Health grants indicates anything, Tate shows he would excel at utilizing information asymmetrically to score a big payday for his organization.

Last week, the NIH issued new guidelines about how awardees could utilize its grants. It said, barring unusual circumstances to be worked out between NIH and the awardee, that it would typically set indirect costs awarded at a ceiling of 15 percent. Indirect costs are for facilities, or depreciation on buildings, equipment and capital improvements, interest on debt associated with certain buildings, equipment and capital improvements, and operations and maintenance expenses; and administration, or general administration and general expenses such as the director’s office, accounting, personnel, and all other types of expenditures not listed specifically under one of the subcategories of “facilities.”

Typically, past NIH awards to university researchers averaged 27-28 percent in indirect costs, but the new policy impacts all current grants for expenses henceforth starting this week and forward as well as for all new grants issued. And from the reaction from higher education, you would have thought the Earth had stopped turning on its axis.

Cantrell doesn't enjoy last laugh as NO declines

Between the two of them, singer Lauren Daigle is laughing last and loudest compared to Democrat New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell as another visible decline of the city under recent mayors.

This past weekend, Daigle performed, in well-received fashion, at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. She saw this as vindication for events of over three years ago, when Cantrell made a play to cancel Daigle appearing on the television show Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve that was set to have a satellite location in New Orleans.

Daigle said she was in talks with the production to appear in the hours before 2021 rolled in around Jackson Square, but before anything concrete formed a couple of months prior Daigle on a whim had participated in a concert by a friend there. At the time, orders issued by Cantrell through emergency Wuhan coronavirus pandemic powers limited outdoors gatherings to 50 people with masks (despite that already evidence had accumulated that mandates to wear face coverings outdoors didn’t do a thing to prevent virus spread, and subsequently more confirmation came). The size of the crowd was considerably larger and many didn’t cover their faces.

Make LA civil service panel reform priority

While all of the attention has gone to what control the governor would have over the State Civil Service Commission, ignored has been perhaps a more important change over establishing job classifications that came to light last week, reminding of the necessity of that alteration.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry wanted to have the SCSC at its last meeting to change 21 positions, totaling 900 current jobs, in state government from the classified to unclassified service as hired after Jul. 1. Classified positions provide their holders more job security and a defined schedule of compensation, while unclassified employees can be more easily hired and fired and be paid in a greater compensation range.

Landry Administration officials testified that these positions, attorneys and engineers, as classified disallowed offerings of competitive salaries that created shortages and inability into inducing continuity into the workforce. Additionally, compared to public sector employment nationally, Louisiana state government has among the highest per capita number of attorneys and engineers employed, so the plan would be to have the flexibility to pay more and maneuver the number of positions according to market conditions, which almost certainly would mean fewer total jobs than at present.

Yet the Commission, which has a history of trying to preserve state employment jobs and circumscribing merit-based solutions to boost employee productivity, rejected the move, with commissioners in the majority claiming doing this would create more instability in times of budgetary stress. With one commissioner absent, only two of six voted to approve, perhaps not coincidentally the two appointees of Landry wanting to approve and three appointees of Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards plus the elected state classified employee representative disapproving.

While the concept of civil service is valuable, in that it tries to minimize politics in personnel decisions that threatens to diminish performance, the way it’s structured in Louisiana gives too much power to the unelected Commission. Aside from the employee representative, each of the six private college leaders gives the governor a list of three individuals to choose from for the rolling six-year fixed terms representing all congressional districts. While this insulates selection from political pressures by elected officials, it makes it susceptible to pressure from employee special interests and no other state uses such a walled-off procedure.

That was a problem GOP state Sen. Jay Morris tried to solve with a bill last year to amend Constitution for the selection process. It would have allowed the governor three unmediated selections with the other three from the aggregated list of three nominations by six leaders. This would have inculcated more responsiveness from appointees to overcome the over-insulation of commissioners that leads them to listen more to the special interest of 34,000 or so state employees than to 4.6 million state residents.

Predictably, the mainstream media spun a narrative that this was a power grab by Landry and confined its reporting almost exclusively to the appointment issue. But the amendment also would have removed exclusive power to make such a change as had been petitioned last week from the Commission and given the Legislature the ability to make these changes by statute.

This also would have helped to rebalance the scales and even possibly obviate the need to change the appointment process, maybe in combination with term limits. As increasingly government becomes less immune to market forces, the Legislature is a much nimbler institution to address job classification issues to maintain efficiency and effectiveness in running a properly-sized government.

Last year, the Senate gave the required two-thirds majority to the bill, but the measure came up a couple of votes short in the House likely due to absences in the crush of business at session’s end, so it didn’t make it to the people for their approval. Morris or somebody else needs to try again this year, as this reform will aid Landry’s salutary goal of paring unnecessary spending in state government and make it work better.

LA wind energy grifters bray about permit halt

As Republican Pres. Donald Trump enters the third week of his second term in office, Louisiana grifters – including a state representative – aggrieved at Trump’s turning off the firehose of taxpayer benefits to them have started complaining.

Perhaps taking a cue from a recent Associated Press article about Trump’s suspension and review of wind energy permits, the Baton Rouge Advocate pounded out a Louisiana version. Both discussed the presumed economic benefits from allowing wind power construction and generation, while the AP piece added this constituted a rebranded strategy from hyping the alleged threat of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming to stressing jobs and economic development from wind power.

The Advocate article echoes the development angle. It parades several individuals involved in or advocating for support industries, including Republican state Rep. Joseph Orgeron, to complain how not only would am embargo on wind power development curtail a nascent Louisiana industry but also in doing so potentially cost the state tax revenues from it.

Risky for LA GOP to endorse for 2026 Senate

Louisiana state Republicans need to acclimate themselves to the new reality of partially closed primaries by making endorsements prior to the primary election rare.

Party leaders have begun an internal debate over whether to follow the strategy of endorsement before the initial election of the 2023 governor’s race as applied 2026 U.S. Senate campaign. It has at this time only two declared candidates, Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy and GOP state Treas. John Fleming, but Fleming has asked the state party – whether through the state central committee that meets quarterly or by an interim decision by its much smaller executive committee – to endorse him along the lines of what the executive committee did almost a year prior to the 2023 race by tabbing Republican Gov. Jeff Landry.

The rest is history – other GOP candidates entered, but Landry waxed the field, raising record amounts of cash. This certainly avoided the disastrous repeat of 2015 when two other quality Republicans joined in against the favorite Republican former Sen. David Vitter; while they didn’t prevent him from making the blanket primary runoff, they did fray him around the edges and one, Jay Dardenne, threw his support to eventual winner Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards and was rewarded with the second-ranked job in the executive branch. Neither did the party endorse businessman Eddie Rispone nor former Rep. Ralph Abraham in 2019 and another intermural tussle ensued, with Rispone going through to lose narrowly to Edwards.

Media not taking well Landry's devaluing them

Poor Tyler Bridges, he’s not one of the cool kids anymore and he doesn’t like it. Assuredly, he’s not the only one in Louisiana’s legacy print media.

Bridges, a longtime reporter now working for The Advocate newspaper chain, recently gave readers an idea of how upset he was with Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. For anybody who reads his stuff, if not generally his outlet, or any of (what’s left of) the Gannett outlets in the state, or the only major daily outside of these two combines the Lake Charles American Press, it becomes clear they aren’t fans of the governor.

That their ideological leanings differ from his was something Landry recognized long ago, and as have many conservative politicians around the country he built campaigns and governance around direct communication with people rather than try to cajole a hostile intermediary into saying nice things about him. Indeed, part of this strategy has been to marginalize that conduit of indirect communication.

BC reform train appears primed to leave station

Bossier City takes the spotlight as the only major Louisiana city to have elections this spring – placing in full view a likely drastic reordering of political power.

When the dust settled from qualifying for the Mar. 29 elections, reformers – those who want to keep a lid on city spending especially on low-priority and grandiose projects, exit it from sweetheart deals, and bring greater transparency to governance – appear likely to nab at least a majority on the City Council, if not much more, as well as retain the mayor’s slot with Republican Tommy Chandler.

Chandler was largely ineffective as mayor after ousting long-time and insider mayor Lo Walker, doing little to advance a reform agenda. Debatable is whether this occurred because of his lack of political skills or because he faced on almost every issue five opposing votes that would make at best for a string of symbolic vetoes. But he supported the strict term limits movement to the hilt and with a friendly council he would join them, regardless of his skills, in the cause of reform.

Court reminder halts Monroe Council obstinacy

Don’t be fooled: the Monroe City Council majority Democrats folded on obstructing results of last year’s tax vote because they had received a reminder they had a legal obligation to certify the tax’s passage.

At the Council’s last meeting, it finally approved the one percent sales tax renewed at voters’ behest. Originally set several months ago, after subsequently joining the Council Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad with retuning Democrat Juanita Woods tried unsuccessfully to rescind the authorization. Then, also without unsuccessful, they beseeched voters not to vote for it, claiming it would be a “slush fund” – translated, meaning they wanted it defeated so they could pass a version in a form steering more money to southside Monroe.

Denied in this, at the Jan. 14 meeting they tried the last, most desperate tactic: refuse governing authority promulgation. State law mandates that before forwarding a tax vote to the Secretary of State for final disposition, but without comment the Democrats voted it down.

Most BC graybeards throw in governance towel

Term limits in any form have yet to be approved by Bossier City voters this spring, but the sunshine the issue attracted onto city governance already has them working as intended – if, unfortunately, tardily.

At this time in the 2021 election cycle, city government had a mayor vying for a fifth term, a councilor wanting a third term, three councilors shooting for sixth terms, one gunning for a seventh, and still another asking for an eighth. When the dust settles after these elections, at most only one of these seven will remain in office.

The last election cycle produced some tremors when Republican Tommy Chandler ended the GOP’s Lo Walker’s run as mayor, Republican Shane Cheatham decisively defeated the GOP’s District 1 Councilor Scott Irwin, and Republican Chris Smith knocked out of at-large office GOP Councilor Tim Larkin. This cycle is on the verge of registering an earthquake with graybeards Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free with Democrat Bubba Williams all passing on tries for seventh, fourth, and eighth terms, respectively.

LA education direction validated yet again

It’s becoming old news that most Louisianans never tire of hearing: state children continue to exhibit significant improvement in educational performance, this time concerning the National Assessment of Education Progress exam results.

Termed the “nation’s report card,” exams in fourth and eighth grades every couple of years or so are taken across America, providing a comparative instrument as well as an absolute measure of English and mathematics skills. Since its inception in 1990, through 2019 Louisiana typically has or been close to dragging the rear among the states for all four categories.

No more, In 2022 – the first exam in three years, after commencement of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic – Louisiana at least poked outside the basement, hitting among the states on three categories ranks between 41^st and 44^th and cresting at 38^th for fourth grade reading. While absolute scores didn’t change much from 2019 – in aggregate, across the four they summed close to no change – Louisiana’s ranking improved on average several places because almost all other states lost ground. This occurred not only because of reforms stretching back into the last century but which began picking up steam with major overhauls under Republican former Gov. Bobby Jindal and Superintendent John White that began bearing fruit but also because White’s successor Cade Brumley and the majority on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education – against the preference of Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards and a minority of BESE – refused to order school closings during the pandemic, leaving that decision to districts where the large majority kept operating in-person, avoiding for the most part the documented significant drops in outcomes witnessed elsewhere and particularly in jurisdictions that hesitated to return to in-person schooling.

Trump derangement syndrome strikes LSU again

Maybe the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center has decided it needs to nip in the bud what otherwise could turn into an epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome, by taking action that increases the integrity of higher education in Louisiana and citizens’ confidence in it.

Last year, a professor at LSU Law named Nicholas Bryner encountered some minor trouble when he insulted and demeaned students who supported Republican Pres. Donald Trump. Student recordings of the remarks came to the attention of GOP Gov. Jeff Landry who sent notes including to the law school administration that this conduct merited investigation. Whether that happened is not public, but the boorish and unprofessional behavior displayed by Bryner was, and with a little counseling plus the public outing bringing him deserved ridicule constituted acceptable punishment.

Now, apparently on the first day of class this semester, another law school instructor went much further. Law school administrators suspended for the semester Prof. Ken Levy for remarks made in that class, apparently caught by student recordings to which a media outlet gained access. Although administrators haven’t yet responded to requests for an explanation, perhaps because Levy has engaged counsel to fight that, a review of the media-obtained transcript gives readers a pretty good indication why a suspension not only was proper but also obligatory.

Tactics obvious for strict BC term limits to win

Now that the Oathbreakers on the Bossier City Council have surrendered on the issue of letting the people vote on strict term limits, backers of those amendments still have several steps to take to ensure eventual implementation.

This week, the Council voted unanimously of all present finally to send to the State Bond Commission – months late, according to the city’s charter – amendments petitioned by the public to a three-term lifetime and retroactive limit on the service of city councilors and the mayor. Despite the Charter mandating that the Council do this shortly after petition certification, five councilors – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio, plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby – on multiple occasions refused to authorize that.

That charter violation, when prodded by a district court to rectify, brought their refusal. Only when a city resident, Cassie Rogers, aided by fellow members of the Bossier Term Limits Coalition, brought the matter to the attention of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals who affirmed the Council had no option but to resolve the matter to an election and suggested that not only did failure to do so amount to violating their oaths of office but even could rise to the level of a drawing a felony charge of malfeasance, did they capitulate.

Insider moves by Bossier Jury par for course

Leave it to the Bossier Parish Policy Jury not just to double down, but to triple down, on its penchant for insular, insider-run government, as it proved at its last meeting.

This meeting featured the handoff from outgoing parish administrator Butch Ford, whose three-year tenure was marred by his dodging state law that he had to be registered to vote at a parish homestead, which he wasn’t for half of his time in office that the Jury simply ignored, to his successor Ken Ward. Although he served for almost 20 years in a middle-management position in Caddo Parish, Ward had created just for him last year an assistant parish administrator’s position in Bossier Parish, perhaps as a result of many years of service on a parish board that made him familiar to most jurors.

Ward may turn out to be an excellent administrator, but the parish, as has been its wont for decades, conducted no public search that could have attracted experienced and talented candidates. That is an affront to residents who expect the best candidate for the job regardless of whether he is known to, if not friends with, jurors, and a public vetting of all applicants.

Cassidy insulting GOP officials risks little

It’s not that Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy doesn’t want to win reelection, but that he’s gone past the point of return long ago and can afford pettiness in politics.

Last week, GOP state Rep. Roger Wilder claimed Cassidy had reneged on supplying him with tickets to Washington Mardi Gras festivities. During the last part of January traditionally Louisiana’s congressional delegation hosts the event which typically sucks in a lot of state and local politicians, plus more lobbyists than a stick could be shaken at. This demand makes these somewhat valuable for purposes of politicking.

Apparently, Wilder went to secure his promised ones and was told instead he’d get a refund. He says it was his support of Republican state Sen. Blake Miguez, a rumored candidate for Cassidy’s job in 2026, of which Cassidy’s staff got wind and so farmed out the ducats elsewhere.

Trump actions already shaping LA govt, economy

Republican Pres. Donald Trump isn’t letting any grass grow under his feet when it comes to promulgating policies, by executive orders or simple agency policy changes, that will have a significant impact in Louisiana.

Upon taking office, Trump signaled one immediately that would have a huge impact on the state – abolishing a moratorium on permits for facilities exporting liquified natural gas. Since then, others have come rapidly.

One cuts off federal funding to jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with the federal government in illegal immigration enforcement actions. That imperils both the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office in its refusal to detain most illegal aliens – which it legally does not have to follow – and New Orleans, which has a similar policy by choice. That puts at risk nearly $6 million or 8 percent of the sheriff’s revenues and New Orleans receives over $47 million in intergovernmental money or about 5 percent of its revenues, although this figure includes state revenues.

Between the Lines +20, then and now

Now that it’s time to celebrate this space’s twentieth anniversary, where it’s come over the past five years (the last time this exercise was completed) and what’s happened in Louisiana politics over the past two decades.

Readers should go back to that Jan. 22, 2020 post to review how and why this, which I still understand is the longest-running blog about Louisiana politics, all started, but I will extend my remarks from then a bit. The paucity of blogs about Pelican State politics invited such an effort, but a knowledgeable one. True then (not so much in volume) and now (featuring increased volume) is while information dissemination about the state’s politics (by any media) comes either in the form of the proverbial mile-wide and inch-deep – typically journalists, most opinion columnists, and some of the sources cited by each – or an inch-wide and mile-deep – describing some sources used – this effort has been all about being mile-wide, mile-deep.

At the time this started, I had been teaching Louisiana government in the college classroom for almost a decade, and in the course of preparing and teaching classes I became aware that much of what was seen in the traditional media (because new media outlets at this time were practically nonexistent) offered surface analysis or information for the most part, except for the occasional true expert but whose expertise was confined narrowly, was outright oversimplified if not incorrect. I felt I could offer a much broader and more thoroughly analyzed perspective, especially through my use of hard data that separates this space from the impressionistic or wish-fulfilling but bereft of systematic knowledge narratives common to the vast majority of news gathering and commentary about Louisiana politics.

Trial defeat imperils BC councilor betrayers

A recent Louisiana Second Circuit of Appeals decision might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the reelection chances of multiple Bossier City councilors.

Last week, a three-judge panel ruled on an appeal that five city councilors – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio, plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby – filed in opposition to a district court ruling that the Council had violated its charter by refusing to pass along to the state for voter approval a duly certified and constitutionally valid petition, to amend the charter with strict term limits. These would be a lifetime three terms and apply retroactively to the mayor’s post and all Council slots, which practically means of the five appellants – all of whom betrayed their sworn oaths of office to engage in this illegal behavior – all but Maggio would be unable to run for another term.

This obstinance prevented the measure from going to voters in November, which then would have applied to this spring elections. Because it didn’t, the four can run for reelection this spring, although Williams has said publicly he would retire. It also cost the item a place on the December ballot and likely on the spring ballot in March since the deadline for proposition consideration by the State Bond Commission was Jan. 2.

Historic period gives LA ruling GOP great chance

With the second inauguration of Republican President Donald Trump, Louisiana enters an unprecedented period that has the potential for maximal policy change from an eccentric past that still inflicts woes on the state to this day.

With Trump taking the executive branch helm, after at the start of the month the GOP taking full control of Congress, it became the first time since 1993 that one political party held all of the levers of power in both Louisiana and the federal government. Then, it was Democrats, which historically had not been unusual. As Louisiana had its first Republican governor only starting in 1980, and Republicans until 32 years ago had just a handful of members in the Legislature – never mind ever coming close to a majority – in roughly half of the years from the birth of the modern party system not long before the Civil War to then the congruence had been in place whenever Democrats controlled the White House and Congress.

But from then until now, with GOP ascendancy in Louisiana that has had one of its own in the Governor’s Mansion for 18 of those 32 years and since 2011 control of the Legislature, the various shifts in power at the national level prevented the congruence – until today. The historic part, of course, is that now it’s Republicans rather than Democrats who have all of the control.

Playing water politics harms Monroe ratepayers

The penny-saving, dollar-wasting Monroe City Council majority might pose as saving residents money by forgoing water rate hikes now, but that action likely will end up costing ratepayers even more in the future.

At its last meeting, the Council rejected increasing rates by 2.7 percent, as recommended by the independent Mayor Friday Ellis Administration. Until this year, that hadn’t been an issue, as by ordinance rates were to increase annually by the rate of consumer price inflation in order to satisfy conditions attached to a 2018 water reserve bond issue of more than $35 million. According to that issuance, the city had to have net water revenues building a reserve at least equal to 125 percent of the principal and interest payable on the bonds each fiscal year and on any additional parity bonds hereafter, with the series terminating in 2049.

But last Sept. 24, after as a result of elections Democrat Councilors Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad joined Councilors Democrat Juanita Woods and Republicans Gretchen Ezernack and Doug Harvey, the newcomers joined with Woods to pass Ordinance 12,243 cancelling the automatic increase and setting up an annual vote whether to change rates. The majority Democrats said the Council should have the flexibility to set rates as needed.

Federal LSP report lets enabler Edwards skate

And while the case of Ronald Greene ends in a whimper, a related federal investigation it spawned also ended disappointingly in that it failed to pursue something vitally relevant to it – the politics behind Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ quest to stay in office.

Greene, a black motorist, died at the hands of law enforcement in May, 2019. After a high-speed chase ending in a minor fender-bender, a mix of white state troopers and a local deputy battered and restrained him for nearly an hour, with him eventually dying on route to medical care. From the start the Louisiana State Police mendaciously reported that Greene had died in an accident even as several months later they began investigating the events around it, having known the truth all the time.

That investigation, completely out of the public eye and which also covered an attempted LSP coverup, over a year later led to disciplinary action against the troopers, where the one most seriously involved in brutality dying in a solo car crash just after its conclusion that had all the hallmarks of suicide-by-reckless-driving. The others lost their jobs, and the deputy retired.

Don't have report distract from DEI solutions

If the recent Act 641 report fools policy-makers into thinking all is clear from the perniciousness of diversity, equity, and inclusion inculcation into every day business at Louisiana higher education institutions, then it will serve as a distraction and not as a tool to counter that perniciousness.

This report, promulgated as part of a recent law, mandates institutions to report spending on activities that classify individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, culture, gender identity, or sexual orientation or promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification. It is for fiscal year 2024 and shows for that year that about $3.5 million spent on DEI activities, a good chunk of which went to programs for international students and study of Acadiana culture.

It's interesting trivia and a cudgel defenders of DEI can use as the tip of an iceberg that they disingenuously claim the underwater body of which doesn’t exist by saying the money spent is but a tiny fraction of total academic spending. This line of argument about foundational DEI misdirects not only by stumping for the idea that spending proportion as an indicator shows it has little sway but also in deflecting from the fact that spending tells us next to nothing as an indicator of DEI spread.

Small stuff paying big dividends for LA education

As is often the case when successful public policy bears its fruit, it’s not headline-grabbing stuff that really made the difference but the nuts and bolts as to why Louisiana is finding more teachers available in public education.

Last week, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education as part of its January meeting received the annual Teacher Exit Data Report, which contains data about trends concerning teachers leaving their current positions in Louisiana public education as well as forecasts of numbers of those being prepared to teach. In academic year 2024 for the second year running, the number of teachers rose in traditional public school classrooms (in other words, not including charter schools), while a lower percentage were leaving these classrooms and for the first time in at least a dozen years a higher number were in the pipeline to enter classrooms in the near future.

This century, for its first fifth Louisiana saw a 23 percent increase in its public school teacher/pupil ratio, although in the past few years it has started to edge downwards even as that might in part be an artifact of fewer students in public classrooms, that ranks by the latest data eighth highest among the states. And while the evidence is at best weak that smaller class sizes improve student performance, lowering the ratio means that more teachers are instructing in fields in which they have competence and they face reduced workloads which both encourage entry into and continued work in the profession.

Another insider ready to take Bossier top job

It’s time for one of Bossier Parish’s plenary-run governments – in this case, the Police Jury – to pick a new administrative leader, and yet again it’s going to be another inside job.

Both the Jury and the Bossier Parish School Board have a long history of disdaining outsiders for their top jobs of, respectively, parish administrator and superintendent. Last year around this time it was the Board’s turn to pick the district’s head and, after unusually actually having a search outside the parish for the job the previous time it was open in 2019 but which then predictably ended up picking the then-interim superintendent Mitch Downey, dispensed with any search and elevated another long-time employee, the health clinic-mastermind and flogger of parents who want school choice as Jim Crow acolytes Jason Rowland was into the position.

Now it’s the Jury’s turn with current administrator Butch Ford riding off into the sunset. In the past, this often meant the parish engineer – as Ford had been – would take the helm, which in this case would have been Eric Hudson (meaning he might have had to take a pay cut, as he makes about $5,000 more than does Ford).

Ruling to aid reducing LA homelessness problems

Even as Louisiana suffers among the least of the states in homelessness, the state has picked up another tool to combat its worst effects.

Last month, the federal government released its annual statistical report on homelessness. At 8 per 10,000 population, Louisiana ranked in the bottom three of states and bucked the national increase of 18 percent by going up only about half of that. The main driver of this record jump seemed to be uncontrolled borders that allowed illegal aliens to flood some of the nation’s largest cities.

However, of those homeless, Louisiana’s 44.8 percent unsheltered rate was among the top 15 states. It is among these people that are found the highest concentration of those with some kind of mental illness that leads a significant portion of them to substance abuse, joining a smaller portion not mentally ill but who abuse substances.

LA needs to have day made on Hutson obstinance

Democrat Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson is asking for someone to make their day on her, so the state of Louisiana should oblige.

Republican incoming and former Pres. Donald Trump has served notice he intends to have his administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency much more aggressively track and cue up for deporting illegal aliens, and the New Orleans area ICE office has kvetched about OPSO’s uncooperative attitude in this task. But on this issue Hutson recently told those demanding greater cooperation from her office to look at her hand with its index, middle, and ring fingers extended to read between the lines.

By law, ICE can ask local law enforcement agencies – who refer about 70 percent of all illegal aliens for prosecution and deportation – to notify as early as possible before they release a removable noncitizen and to hold the noncitizen for up to an additional 48 hours beyond the period a suspect may be held without being charged with an offense under state and local law in order for ICE to evaluate and potentially take possession of the alien. However, this only is a request that LEAs don’t have to follow.

Biden reminds LA to restart capital punishments

Downplaying a heinous New Orleans crime from three decades ago provides added emphasis as to why Louisiana needs to deter crime by aggressively enforcing capital punishment.

At the end of last year, outgoing Democrat Pres. Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life imprisonment. There are few crimes under the federal penal code that qualify for capital punishment (which Biden, ironically, helped to expand three decades ago), with the overwhelming majority of such cases tried for crimes under state law in the 27 states that have the death penalty as a punishment option.

Biden didn’t commute the sentences of three convicted of murder in a terrorizing manner. That moral and intellectual inconsistency – so, blowing up or gunning down people as an expression of some political ideology is qualitatively worse than having someone killed because she saw a police officer physically harass a youth and reported it, as corrupt New Orleans police Len Davis, a beneficiary of Biden’s leniency, did – aside, signaling by this action that getting a certain kind of ideologue into a chief executive’s office will convey free lifetime room and board to those who forfeited their lives will cause more crime, including homicides.

LA Ten Commandments law set up for victory

What may end up frustrating the anti-religious Louisiana left is that, as any First Amendment scholar or practitioner will tell you, it’s not so much the law but its application that matters, a viewpoint the U.S. Supreme Coury likely will ratify.

Last week, Republican Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill issued guidance for Act 676 of 2024, what the mainstream media has nicknamed the “Ten Commandments” law. It expands to educational facilities a 2006 law that allows for posting a version of the Decalogue in courthouses and other public buildings as a means of informing about the origins of Louisiana’s laws.

The new law itself specifies text and formatting, and that each classroom must have a document of the Commandments meeting the criteria posted as of the start of this year. However, it doesn’t obligate any educational institution to purchase copies meeting the criteria, nor is there any punishment associated with not following the law.

"Uneducated" W. Monroe voters might give lesson

On a tax measure, West Monroe elected officials hope that the second time is the charm through an effort that this time doesn’t feature too many “uneducated” voters.

In November, the Board of Aldermen cued up a 4.50 mill new property tax accepted for the ballot by the State Bond Commission in its December meeting. As that was previous to the Jan. 2 deadline for such items to reach the Secretary of State, it’s officially on the Mar. 29 ballot. The roughly $800,000 raised annually for the next ten years would go towards capital purchases for public safety.

It doesn’t look too much different from the 4.75 mill effort that narrowly failed last spring. That one would have funded the same kinds of things plus public works. A 1.63 mill tax to support public works the city didn’t try to renew before it expired in 2022.

NO must get serious about vehicle terror attacks

It’s worse than was thought: New Orleans officials didn’t even plan to have a serious security system in place to prevent a terrorist attack such as the one inflicted upon the Vieux Carré early last Wednesday, providing yet another indictment of the unserious Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell and of incuriousness of city councilors who seemed to have other priorities.

This space recently criticized Cantrell and city councilors for poor planning concerning the security bollard functioning on Bourbon Street that had a presumed upgrade not in place for, at the very least, college football bowl season and New Year’s Eve. It assumed that the replacement system would have been one designed to thwart a heavy vehicle at middling speed from crashing through and careening down Bourbon during a heavy of heavy pedestrian use, such as during New Year’s Eve and into the wee hours after in this particular instance.

Instead, it seemed the contemplated system the installment of which began in the middle of football season is not designed with security in mind, but rather with slow-speed typical vehicle encounters more like from inattentive or drunk driving, rather than intentional attempts to kill as many people as possible. Perhaps this is why elected officials after the incident played down the fact that the system had yet to be installed (with its target completion date early February to stand up before the Super Bowl and Carnival) in saying it couldn’t have prevented such an attack.

BC debt binge foists higher rates onto residents

The reckless spending by Bossier City over the past quarter-century has come back to haunt citizens in another way, this time through increased sanitation rates.

This week, the City Council voted to jack up rates on users, inside and outside of the city. Beginning in February, the flat resident charge for water will go from $8.54 to $10.16 and the pre thousand gallon charge of $3.03 will rise to $3.61; for nonresidents, the flat rate will go from $15.80 to $18.80 and the per thousand gallon charge of $4.55 will rise to $5.41. While nonresidential users without water service won’t see increased rates for waste pickup, residents will see theirs go from $24 (curbside or disabled side yard) or $28 (side yard) to $36 monthly; commercial customers will have theirs rise from $28 to $40; churches will see theirs go up from $24 to $36; and containers for use will cost $8.50 rather than $4 (after the free first one, except for side yard pickup). The typical household would see about an $18 a month increase, with the bulk of that coming not from water but sanitation.

There wasn’t much the city could do to avoid the water rate hike. Having accepted money from the state’s Water Sector program in the forms of loans and grants, the state conditions this on sufficient revenue generation potential as determined through a rate study. The results argued that the rate structure for water since 2007 hadn’t kept pace and an increase immediately plus one built in for the next fiscal year would satisfy the program’s conditions. The FY 2026 gap would be resolved with a two percent increase on rates.

NO officials' misjudgments likely increased risk

Sadly, the tragic terrorist incident in New Orleans’ Vieux Carre, contrary to what city officials have tried strenuously to produce as a narrative, was likely preventable because of decisions made by them and their predecessors.

A very few hours into 2025 an American citizen but with potential links to the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Daesh) swung a vehicle onto Bourbon Street around Canal Street and barreled three blocks to the east, killing at least 15 revelers and injuring dozens more before wrecking and engaging in a gun battle with police that led to his being shot and killed. It could have been worse, as later improvised explosive devices were found further east around the street and an explosion some blocks away out of the French Quarter tentatively have been tied to the action.

For many years, in contrast to a couple of decades prior, Bourbon has been open to through traffic. In 2016, city officials recognized that the relatively open nature of a byway with considerable pedestrian traffic could lead to a situation as this, so they reinstituted placing bollards on Bourbon along with removable barriers, but this system proved cumbersome and prone to malfunction because of detritus – much of it Carnival-related – interfering.