Thanksgiving Day, 2025

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday 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 Sunday through Thursday 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 Thursday, Nov. 27 being Thanksgiving Day, I invite you to explore this link.

Hydrogen panel wants to tap taxpayers needlessly

Whistling into the wind is all right as long as Louisiana taxpayers don’t get put on the hook.

The Louisiana Clean Hydrogen Task Force released its report this week. Its mission was to study current hydrogen production, transportation, storage and use, and to recommend how Louisiana should respond to emerging “clean hydrogen” markets. “Clean” hydrogen is one that in its manufacture produces little in the way of carbon byproducts or carbon used in the process.

Typically, clean hydrogen production involving carbon in any form is paired with carbon capture and sequestration, certainly the most common form coming from use of fossil fuels especially natural gas. Louisiana has inherent resources to facilitate this process, such as an extensive pipeline network, shipping points for end products such ammonia, and geological formations suitable for sequestration. Plus, its manufacturers consume a large amount as well, often coexisting with production.

Scrambling Moreno decreases public safety

When you suffer political humiliation, create a straw man and make yourself look heroic to obscure your inherent culpability with silliness, Democrat New Orleans City Councilor and mayor-elect Helena Moreno reminds us.

Earlier this month, Moreno politically suffered a brutal debasement when she had the state dictate terms to her about a budgetary rescue. Allowing the State Bond Commission to issue $125 million in revenue anticipation notes in exchange for close oversight of city finances by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office, it forces her and the incoming Council to kowtow to outsiders on financial matters, even some very specific ones.

With city government’s wings now substantially clipped, what to do in order to prop yourself up and make people forget your substantial loss of power, to think you have more than you do and are more relevant than you actually are? In Moreno’s case, she decided to make city policy-makers look tough in opposing Republican Pres. Donald Trump’s, with the blessing of GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, plan to send Department of Homeland Security personnel to the New Orleans area next week to conduct intensive sweeps to locate and detain illegal aliens, particularly trying to nab those who committed crimes other than being in the country illegally.

Fiscal issues may shape W. Monroe mayor's race

Maybe West Monroe voters will get a choice they didn’t have in 2022 in their city’s mayor’s contest.

Republican businessman Don Nance tried to offer himself in 2022 as an opponent to Republican incumbent Mayor Staci Mitchell. She was running for reelection after having defeated 10-term incumbent Don Norris in 2018. Back then, she criticized Norris for what she termed a depopulating city and declining sales taxes, and as one idea for bucking the latter proposed building a facility across the way from the Ike Hamilton Exposition Center, a Norris project.

Nance was critical of that idea and other of her spending priorities. But that matchup never happened because he was disqualified when his residency, specifically his failure to register to vote at the residence at which he claimed a homestead exemption as required by statute, was challenged. West Monroe requires a year of residency within the city, and Nance’s exemption was on a property outside the city limits (although that didn't seem to matter when it came to the Shreveport mayor's race later that year).