Poll shows Cassidy still trapped in death spiral

The death spiral of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy’s Senate career continues, according to a new poll. Worse for him, there’s little he can do about it.

The firm Quantus Insights released results polling the contest, where he faces major challengers for the GOP nomination in the forms of Treas. John Fleming and Rep. Julia Letlow, from earlier this week. They show Fleming at 34 percent, Letlow at 25 percent, and Cassidy at 20 percent, leaving another 20 percent or so undecided.

It’s hard to shoot the messenger on this one. The firm isn’t affiliated with a campaign – not that this disqualifies such a poll, for as long as the protocol (question orderings and their wordings and answers) is unbiased, the sampling frame reasonable and sufficiently large, and the contact methods of respondents can produce that desired sampling frame, it (barring unhappy randomization, i.e. a bad sample) will produce valid and reliable results for the population of voters – and this appears to be a quality poll (although a bit vague on the specific sampling procedure and claiming it captured “likely” voters, including those unaffiliated that historically have voted for Republicans as both GOP registrants and those registered without affiliation may participate in the primary, without spelling out that procedure). Unless it drew that one-out-of-twenty bad sample, this is reality.

Bills to expand constitutional rights aim true

 

A frequent proponent of individual rights for their defense has cued up a couple of bills to expand these in the upcoming session of the Louisiana Legislature.

 

Republican state Rep. Danny McCormick has prefiled HB 94, which would prohibit “red flag” laws in the state. He also has prefiled HB 99, which would allow carry of firearms, even concealed, by non-law enforcement individuals on a college campus.

A red flag law is one that allows judicial interdiction to prevent someone from possessing or carrying a firearm, whether concealed, on some kind of assessment that judges the person dangerous in some fashion, typically for reasons of presumed mental health. Advocates argue that random shootings by someone not in possession of the faculties could be prevented with these laws on the books.

The problem is, research into such shootings finds little to support that judicial officials have the ability to predict the future on this, which would produce a monstrously-high amount of false positives that end up depriving an enormous number of people of their constitutional rights (which also may be politically-driven), where even mentally-ill people are highly likely not to engage in this dangerous behavior. Moreover, there seems to be little relationship between such laws and observed benefits with the exception that such laws might deter suicides, and even to implement such a law requires the herculean task (and one smacking of the potential for civil liberties violations) of accurate gun registries.

Confirm big development win with water study

It looks like another economic development win for Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, and one that may pass muster with those concerned about resource-hungry industries that might hike prices to Louisianans.

This week, Landry confirmed a long-believed supposition that both Caddo and Bossier parishes were going to pick up some data center action. While the $12 billion in infrastructure Amazon has said it will spend on three such centers in the two parishes, that it estimates will create hundreds of permanent jobs nearing six figures in pay, is well short of the $27 billion Meta is spending on its Hyperion project in Richland Parish, it’s still quite a shot in the arm for a flailing Caddo economy and juicing the upswing in economic activity in Bossier.

Key to this are competitive measures that Landry and the Louisiana Legislature passed into law a couple of years ago, and also a commitment by the Landry Administration to expedite large projects. But as importantly, Louisiana holds resource advantages that many other states can’t match, such as abundant and inexpensive (fossil fuel) energy and ways to transport it.

Time to limit four-day instructional school week

If one Louisiana legislator has her way, school districts which don’t perform highly that contemplate but haven’t made the switch to a four-day a week of instruction will miss the boat – which, given the dynamics of which districts have chosen to pursue it, might be an idea whose time has come.

SB 82 by Republican state Sen. Beth Mizell would prohibit any school system that already doesn’t operate on a four-day a week from doing so unless it scores an ‘A’ in performance, requiring instruction five days a week (with holidays as exceptions). Only 15 have gone in this direction at present (one is planning to do that for academic year 2027). The minimum instruction time of over 63,000 minutes annually doesn’t change, although many districts have students spend more than that time in the classroom regardless of how many days a week incorporate instruction.

Should the bill become law, practically speaking that limits future conversions severely. This is as public schools become subject to a new scoring system stricter (and more realistic) than the one used through this year. Only 10 districts ranked as A as a result in simulation, but only nine would be eligible as Vernon Parish already has gone to the four-day schedule, so unless this changes 45 districts for now would be out of luck.

Bill to save bucks, not injure higher education

Louisiana yanking taxpayer dollars from select universities for select programs isn’t as deleterious to the concept of higher education at it might seem at first glance.

Republican state Rep. John Wyble has prefiled HB 229. The bill would prohibit allocations of state dollars in any form from going to low-earning outcome programs of study at state schools, as well as those from any local government, beginning in the summer of 2027.

A “low-earning outcome program of study” is defined by guidance from the federal government made at the beginning of this year. With the data it had in hand, it calculated the average earnings (over four years from several years ago) of a school’s graduates in various certificate programs, undergraduate majors, or graduate degrees, and declared those whose average fell below the average high school graduate’s salary for certifications and associate and bachelor degree awardees, or below the average college-degreed or certified salary for graduate degrees, would fit this category. In Louisiana, the former mark is around $32,200 and the latter about $51,000 in that time period.