LDH free condom giveaway strategy shift beneficial

If you’re a dude (or you’re a gal who’s about to have an assignation with such a guy) who can’t keep it in your pants, go grab yourself a free state-issue condom. And here’s a map to help you.

Yes, Louisiana participates in an HIV (and, more generally, sexually transmitted and infectious disease) prevention program that, among other things, tosses loads of free condoms to nonprofits and businesses to distribute. For example, feeling randy in Bossier City but concerned you’ll pick up a gift that keeps on giving? Check in to any of four motels on East Texas St. and not only can you get a room for the deed (maybe even by the hour), but a free state-issue wrapper as well.

According to the most recent numbers, the state spent $3 million of federal money on the broader program in the latest year available; how much of this went to condoms and if there were state taxpayer dollars at work is unknown. And, before accusations arise about how this is a looney leftist politicized waste of money, it is a Republican Pres. Donald Trump Administration initiative.

Groups oppose rule that would uncover true selves

If you throw water on a dog and it yelps, the water must be scalding to the dog. The interesting question, as in the case of the hue and cry emanating from leftist special interests over a proposed Louisiana Public Service Commission transparency rule, is why what seems lukewarm to everybody else feels radioactive to them.

At its next meeting, the PSC is expected to approve a rule requiring intervenors in cases to reveal in broad terms whether they receive funding from entities outside of Louisiana including foreign governments and if so the proportion. Additionally, money from foreign governments or entities that they control received over the past five years would have to be specified, including whether domestic donors to organizations received money from these sources. The rule would apply to any entity that comments on a case, all the way from climate alarmist organizations to corporations, including regulated utilities, who have a potential monetary interest in an outcome, including lobby groups.

It's not like this information is hard to come by. Corporations or cooperatives have to file tax forms that draw upon this information, and nonprofits, even those designated as charitable, also have to collect information on donors to satisfy reporting requirements such as indicating sufficiently large donations or determining whether they meet a public support standard to qualify as tax exempt.

Media outlet falls for reporting flawed narrative

If you’re a special interest group basing your policy preferences on bad science that needs donor dollars, you must scare people, and a Louisiana media source bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

This year, the group Climate Central put out a report alleging that summers over the past 35 years have warmed in almost all of 243 U.S. cities and that anthropogenic climate change is the leading driver in nearly all of those. Then the group, which prides itself on fronting the fable that anthropogenic causes necessarily have triggered more extreme weather such as rising average temperatures and packages this for local media, snookered the Louisiana Radio Network into swallowing this line for a story about summer temperatures in Louisiana, blaming supposedly higher temperatures on increases in carbon emissions that eventually will lead to doom.

Chasing the story was defensible, given alarmist reporting about temperatures. However, swallowing the bilge whole proved a lapse in judgment.