Blanco ready to aid reelection chances at state's expense

Like a foolish poker player, Gov. Kathleen Blanco has continued through on her weak bluff to squeeze more money out of the federal government. It will be called and Louisiana will be the poorer for it.

Blanco appears to be committing the state to filing suit against the federal government to block its annual August sale of oil leases off Louisiana’s coastline in an effort to get the federal government to fork over more royalties to the state. Through a tragicomic series of historical events, the state gave away access to an estimated $5 billion a year from them.

The law setting up those sales permits a governor to object to them, but then the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service can override that. Blanco did exactly that, saying the sale of leases threatened Louisiana’s coast by its being inconsistent with the state’s coastal management plan, so MMS naturally came back and rejected the reasoning, and quite properly so. It’s not the sales that could cause environmental degradation, but rather the activity that occurs after the sales.

Any court will recognize this distinction, so Blanco has no hope to win that way. Instead, she’s trying to tie up the process to frustrate the federal government’s collection of these revenues in a timely fashion, attempting to goad Congress into approving legislation (such as Rep. Bobby Jindal’s H.R. 4761) that would shovel more of the royalties Louisiana’s way.

As is its wont, the Blanco Administration and its lackeys are disseminating plenty of disinformation the public’s way about the matter. The legal counsel hired for the proposed suit, Robert Szabo, claims the federal government is depending on revenues from the sale. Her Executive Assistant on Coastal Activities Sidney Coffee claims they could be between $300 million and $1 billion.

Neither assertion likely is to come true. Last year’s sale was one of the highest ever, at $285.2 million. At current rates, that’s an amount of money the federal government runs through in 54 minutes. In short, Blanco is embarking on a course that will not lead her to legal victory over stakes that the federal government would consider trivial if not insignificant. It’s a bluff with no leverage that will only antagonize Congress, which must approve of any additional monies going to the state.

So why has Blanco gone to lengths to create such publicity about the issue? Because she continues to flounder as governor with low opinion poll ratings heading into an election year (fourth lowest in the nation comparing approval to disapproval), and publicizing this may make her look better to the uninformed. She would rather spend in the neighborhood of a million dollars in state money on legal fees on a tactic whose only productive outcome is to assist in her own re-election campaign than to use it for the good of Louisiana.

When will Blanco learn that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and that it’s wasteful to use the people’s money to buy the vinegar?

Mayor's race results tell something about Jefferson successor

With most of New Orleans focused on election returns last Saturday, many miles away the federal government conducted a raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s office, discovering very condemnatory evidence on top of the hot cash he had put in a cool refrigerator in his house found right before Hurricane Katrina. This event may prove more significant than Mayor Ray Nagin’s successful reelection.

As a result, national Democrats have thrown Jefferson overboard, calling for resignations of various kinds. The national party is eager to put out of mind perhaps the most prominent of its trangressors, having no popular positions of their own on which to campaign in the fall elections, in order to try to fool the American public into thinking it is uncorrupt compared to the Republicans and to manufacture that as a campaign issue.

Thus, it has become open season in the Second Congressional District. Historically, chances to nab this spot come far and few between. Jefferson won it 16 years ago and is just one of four, and the only one not married to, or who defeated, or who was Hale Boggs, who has served in the district representing the majority of Orleans since the 1930s. With a very weakened Jefferson pledging he will not resign anything and regardless that he has not indicated that he will not run, ambitious politicians will not let him run unopposed if he does choose to attempt reelection.

Winners and losers from New Orleans elections

So who are the winners and losers in the aftermath of New Orleans’ elections?

Winner: Mayor Ray Nagin. Starting with the obvious, Nagin completed an improbable reelection, reinventing himself from a political outsider that endorses Republicans who happened to be a black Democrat to a black Democrat who touted his insider qualifications to oversee the city’s recovery. Since he did and said what many consider to be outrageous things (at least to those around the rest of the country) and still won, coupled with his term-limited status he has carte blanche to do pretty much what he pleases. Never forget, there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the New Orleans way, and a majority of Orleans voters proved that to the rest of the country with their votes for him.

Loser: Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Mary’s little brother now is 0-for-2 in his New Orleans mayor’s bids. Recall that his 1994 loss was followed next year by sister Mary’s failed gubernatorial bid, so only recently has any aura of invincibility been formed around their political family. That’s been dusted again by someone the rest of the country thinks is a political gadfly. This has damaged any aspirations of his beyond his current office for the next few years, maybe forever.

Winner: Pres. George W. Bush. As scorn got heaped upon Nagin for his handling of affairs directly after Hurricane Katrina’s swipe, he eventually sensed that rehabilitation lay in getting things done, and that meant cultivating a good relationship with the man with the most power to grant his wishes, the President. As time went on, he essentially got into a competition with state officials for direction in rebuilding New Orleans, and it’s fair to say he emerged with the upper hand, for Bush as endorsed actions more like Nagin’s and less like those coming from the state.

Loser: Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Increasingly, she was the one Nagin competed against with the federal government, and no doubt harbored resentment towards him even before the hurricane disaster for his Bobby Jindal endorsement during the 2003 governor’s race. A Landrieu win would have put a Democrat regular like herself in the office rather than the unpredictable Nagin – and would definitively eliminated Landrieu as a potential competitor for the governor’s mansion in what is sure to be a free-for-all against Blanco next year. Even if Landrieu’s luster has worn off, at the very least he would make it difficult for Blanco to make the general election runoff.

Winner: black/liberal interest groups. They were the ones that launched massive get-out-the-vote operations, running buses and the like. They didn’t care if Nagin was cozying up to Bush and endorsing Republicans, as long as he looked black enough they were going to get likely voters going his way.

Loser: the Republican Party. As winter approached some in the GOP were getting quite giddy that the tremendous demographic dislocations of the hurricanes could do the unthinkable and make New Orleans a Republican city. A quick look at even the sketchy statistics available as early as November should have put to rest that notion. Even with a higher proportion of Republicans on the ground for both elections than had been in the city for years, if anything the election revealed a step backwards, with its best mayoral candidate finishing fourth and losing its only representation on the City Council. Maybe its statewide fortunes are better off, but the situation for it is as hopeless as ever in Orleans Parish.

Winners: the citizens of New Orleans. With Nagin continuing as mayor, recovery can continue apace without stopping to adjust to a new administration. Nagin’s business background also cannot hurt in getting recovery going.

Losers: the citizens of New Orleans. But, Nagin’s also erratic. With him, chocolate is relevant not just in terms of describing the city, but in revelation of the box that is him – like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get with him. This characteristic might retard recovery.

There you have it. Now with these elections resolved, can everybody get back to business as usual – not Louisiana usual, but the business-like attitude needed to get the state fully rebounded?

Myths dispelled about Orleans mayor vote: it was all about race

After having done this for two decades, it should not surprise me but it always does how myths about the causes and determinants of election results get propagated so quickly. The general election runoff of the 2006 mayor’s race appears to be no exception.

One myth appears to come from political convenience. From his concession speech on, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu has asserted that, from his perspective, the best things about his defeat was that it demonstrated the building of multiracial coalitions with crossover appeal. In an absolute sense, that’s ridiculous. A number of politicians have shown far greater crossover appeal (like this guy’s wins). But even if we start to put qualifiers in play, Landrieu makes quite a reach for us to buy that.

Let’s narrow the scope of the claim, to say that for a race where you had a white and black candidate in the deep South this showed relatively high cross-racial voting. All right, best we can tell (no surveys yet having been done) from surrogate voting results data and weekly registration reports, the division was in the neighborhood of 80/20 – 80 percent of whites voted for the white Landrieu, 80 percent of racial minorities voted for the black reelected Ray Nagin. That’s still around 4:1, and considering both ran as Democrats, not really remarkable.

Does Nagin read my posts? Or do we think alike strategically?

Something I seldom do is have to eat my words, when I pronounced six months ago that Ray Nagin could not win the New Orleans mayor’s race. At least I knew enough to figure out how Nagin did it before he did.

It’s a bit early to tell just how one part of the strategy, attract Republican voters, fared. (That will come, when I can get the post-election statistics available in the next few days.) Certainly anecdotal evidence would suggest that was happening when former Republican candidate Rob Couhig provided a lodestar to these individuals with his endorsement of Nagin. You heard at best veiled references from Nagin and his supporters about the “Landrieu dynasty” with a Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu win that would encourage these voters either to back Nagin, or to sit this one out – either worked to Nagin’s advantage.

But that could only neutralize potential Landrieu votes; Nagin also needed to create new votes to win. And that’s exactly what it appears he did, since it would have to be from two sources, the black-majority areas of town repopulating faster than the others because they have been depopulated the most but, most importantly, from displaced voters.

Consider that in the primary that 21,351 absentee/early votes were cast. If we put together Nagin’s and Couhig’s, they were about 9,000 of those, but Landrieu’s and those of the one major candidate that endorsed him, Ron Forman, were in the neighborhood of 11,000. For Nagin to have a chance, he would have to create at 2,000 more votes.

As it turned out, almost 25,000 did vote this way in the general election runoff, and of these “new” votes, it appears that Nagin grabbed almost all of these 3,500 as his total went over 12,500 (Landrieu’s plus other candidates inched up a little). Do not be surprised it if turns out that the black percentage of these votes comes closer to 70 percent this time out.

No doubt it was the assistance of some interest groups who wanted to see a black face as New Orleans mayor come Bobby Jindal endorsements or not helped Nagin to his win. And many other intriguing stories abound as a result of this – how does this affect Landrieu’s career, even his entire family’s, or state-level politics, or the recovery, or what about the parallel storylines that only one elected official in the majoritarian branches in New Orleans (5th District Assessor Tom Arnold, no less!) is a Republican, or how six of those assessors managed reelection, or even how just days ago it appeared the displaced vote was not going to come in at the level he needed to win?

But, for now, I’ll just say, a lot of people underestimated Nagin.

Minimum wage encourages inefficiency, illegal immigration

In the debate now raging in Washington about how to deal with illegal immigration, too much it focuses on trying to treat the symptoms rather than the disease – and the progress of a piece of legislation in the Louisiana Legislature shows it does no better.

Why is there an illegal immigration problem in the U.S.? It’s not because there are too many Mexicans or too few Americans wanting to work or employers are skinflints or there’s not enough border enforcement or too little effort in monitoring noncitizens and punishing miscreant employers. It’s because there’s too much regulation involved in running a business which makes inviting the hiring of illegal aliens despite legal sanctions.

The more regulation that is required, the greater the costs will be. An entirely unregulated labor marketplace is unrealistic, but clearly the labor marketplace in America today is over-regulated. One way in which that is the case is with the artificial minimum wage.

Extra revenues need to go to pay down retirement liability

Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s plans for additional revenues declared for this fiscal year by the Revenue Estimating Conference reflect more prudence than not, but she can do better.

The portion of the funds declared as non-recurring wisely will go towards paying off debts owed to the federal government for disaster assistance, as well as creating a fund to respond to future disasters. However, it must be noted that the state, over the next few years, is estimated to owe as much as $3 billion more. The emergency fund should be structured so that it could be used to pay off past debts such as these as well, but that still will leave the state with a huge bill.

However, her plans for the recurring funds are questionable. Pay raises for school support workers probably are more justifiable than those for teachers without measures for accountability attached. But her other priorities proposed for the recurring revenues, money needed for the state to build a new public school system in New Orleans, helping retired educators in the damaged areas, and taking care of health-care needs, probably are more important.

And the looming problem few elected officials seem willing to tackle isn’t mentioned at all but which represents perhaps the most compelling need, paying down the unfunded accrued liability in the state’s retirement systems. Sen. Walter Boasso’s SB 526 would commit the state to pay in the neighborhood of $110 million a year until 2029 which would lop off almost $2 billion of the interest owed on the estimated $12 billion that will be owed by then that the state is required to pay according to the Constitution.

Wisest would be for Blanco to commit to the spending under this bill, and the remaining $65 million can go for education and health care in damaged areas (retired educator needs will be more than addressed by shoring up the retirement systems). She should concentrate on these areas and pass on any pay raises. Again, prudence dictates that old problems be dealt with before new commitments get made.

Liberal hack writes Katrina polemic disguised as history

It’s official: it looks like the job of historian for the Gov. Kathleen Blanco administration has been filled, courtesy of Tulane academician Douglas Brinkley’s The Great Deluge.

Brinkley has published an impressive array of books designed to recount history – almost as impressive as, from a 2004 article (premium content) about his previous work the hagiography Tour of Duty about Sen. John Kerry, his being “passionately devoted to just about every liberal cause and cliché – and, in Tour of Duty, it shows.” (The article goes on to show how Brinkley painted a selective, flattering picture of Kerry’s Vietnam days, ignored less-salutory evidence, riddled the book with errors, and then waged pejorative public relations campaigns against his critics.) But it’s something everybody in my profession already knows.

In my Twentieth Century American Foreign Policy course, I use as one of my textbooks his and his late colleague Stephen Ambrose’s Rise to Globalism. Here’s a line from its latest edition from p. 351, summing up their learned, complex, erudite impression of Pres. Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy: “[R]eagan, despite the sneers of sophisticated critics, who regarded him as an object of ridicule, was somehow doing something right. Or perhaps he was just lucky.”

The voluminous documentation and analysis of Reagan’s foreign policy demonstrates beyond question just how shallow and uninformed this opinion is. And like his Kerry tome, it contains errors in fact, repeating falsehoods (such as the “October surprise”) designed to score partisan points in sections rather than present itself as serious history. (Needless to say, a reason I assign this book is that most of the rest are even less balanced than it, and it gives me a chance to provide contrast and correction to it; yes, Louisiana tax dollars are being used wisely.)

So it’s with little confidence that one should expect to see in Brinkley’s latest effort a dispassionate rendering of the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. And, while I’ve not read (nor plan to waste money in order to) read the book, the excerpts of it I have read indicate that he doesn’t disappoint on this expectation.

I’ll stick to juts a few things, demonstrating how he tries to defend the poor, if not politically-driven, crisis management of Democrat Blanco while criticizing the man who beat his friend in 2004, Republican Pres. George W. Bush. He argues that the best course of action for Blanco, when asked by Bush to let the federal government take control of the state’s national guard (for political reasons), was in fact what she did, dither awhile and turn him down. Further, he asserts that, if not too detached, Bush was more interested in acting to shape his image, while Blanco was acting decisively to get buses into the city to evacuate people.

But if Brinkley bothered to read contemporary media accounts, he would know that Bush’s offer would have resulted in quicker action; instead, because Blanco saw the tragedy from the start through an entirely political lens, that was precisely why she delayed on the decision and then ultimately turned down an offer that could have started rescue operations much more quickly. Instead, she was more interested in who got what political credit or not than in getting help on the ground.

This is confirmed by Blanco’s own e-mail messages (some of which she initially tried to hide from investigators) that showed from the moment the magnitude of the crisis became apparent, she already was worried about how she and her actions would appear. She hand her staff obsessed about how they could shift blame to the White House – public documents Brinkley should have known about that absolutely refute his argument. Those same messages also reveal that she was very hesitant about the bus issue, thinking (finally, waiting two days despite her own evacuation plan) to send them, then apparently issuing a recall of them, and then sending them again.

All of this escapes Brinkley. It doesn’t get by local officials who, recently concerning a pending bill that would allow greater state takeover of local government during disasters, opined that the lesson they drew from Katrina was state government was the greatest impediment during the crisis. They felt they should be given the resources in the future, let them do their thing, and keep the state government out of the way.

Given his past behavior and just from these small snippets from this work, it’s a dubious proposition that it represents any thoughtful, informed analysis of the government response to Katrina, and we’ll have to wait for a genuine historical account that doesn’t aspire to the polemics we’ve come to expect from Brinkley. However, while the American people prevented him from getting a job as a Kerry Administration court historian, the good news for him is he seems well-positioned to get that job with Blanco.

Louisiana must tackle old issues before spending anew

A financial windfall is headed Louisiana’s way, current trends remaining as they are. And this good fortune should be treated this way – as a windfall and not something to count on consistently.

The Revenue Estimating Conference found $584 million in money for this year, but the bulk of it is in what is termed nonrecurring funds. Only around $100 million is expected to be in recurring funds, the bulk of that from sales and income taxes related to rebuilding the state after the 2005 hurricane disasters.

However, even before the hard numbers came out voices arose to bolster the chances of educator pay raises. Somewhat recklessly, despite the great uncertainty about Louisiana’s economy and storm-related costs, Gov. Kathleen Blanco had tossed in her budget this raise. With “extra” money now out there, that might provide enough of a cushion to grant it.

But before leaping, legislators need to take another good, long look. First, the concept of the raise rests on a dubious assertion – that state educators deserve it. Already, they are overpaid relative to indicators of student success. That should being pause to those who simply would hand out raises and hope for improved student achievement; better would be to implement an accountability system that rigorously and regularly assesses the knowledge of teachers regardless of how many years they have been teaching, with correction, demotion, and discharge as measures employed against those who are not capable. No raise should be given without also asking for increased accountability.

Also, there’s still enough uncertainty out there to merit cautious handling of funds. Witness the federal government flood assistance bills that have come due to the state – now up to $291 million for this year with a figure nearly 13 times that estimated to hit the state over the next eight to ten years. And what about the unfunded accrued liability that will cost the state billions of dollars – one bill in front of the Legislature would mandate $110 million a year for over 20 years paid to reduce this?

(As the REC met, the Senate Finance Committee also met to deal with a bill to reduce the state’s crushing $12 billion unfunded accrued liability in retirement accounts. There, Assistant Commissioner of Administration Jean Vandal made it known that Blanco would rather spend extra recurring revenues on raises than on fixing the existing problem.)

Oil prices won’t remain consistently this high forever, and it’s better to bank some money in the unpredictability left in the wake of the 2005 hurricane disasters. Why not work on the accountability system first, so it would be ready to go in a year or two when the true strength of Louisiana’s economy will be more obvious and forthcoming federal bills more predictable? Then, if the money is there on a recurring basis given other priorities, prudently the state can take another step in reforming its underperforming educational system.

Shreveport, Bossier City need to heed pro-growth agenda

From the looks of a summary of a recent report issued by the Urban Land Institute evaluating Shreveport and Bossier City, regarding the cities’ economic development it seems to make the right diagnosis, and in general identifies the correct cures.

ULI has a long history of providing advisory panels to areas for this purpose. In fact, its present highest profile supplicant is just south of here – the Bring New Orleans Back commission. Not that at all times can it provide the best advisors (one on the panel here, former Pittsburgh mayor Tom Murphy, after a good start eventually succumbed to union and pro-tax pressure to help drive that city into financial receivership) or the best advice (one specific suggestion for here is to mimic Shreveport’s “Fair Share” city contracting program that goes to great lengths to disproportionately steer dollars on the basis of societal “disadvantage” which, like practically all other such programs, is ineffective and invites corruption much less discriminates against those business owners who presumably are not “disadvantaged”).

Still, the report does identify a major condition holding back the area’s economic development – parochialism. Both cities’ governments suffer from a “big fish/small pond” syndrome where more emphasis is placed upon using government policy to boost the power and prestige of those with power and their allies, perhaps more out of feelings of inferiority, than any realistic or coordinated strategy that can produce genuine and sustained economic growth.