Hiring freeze tactics align to larger strategic goals

Gov. Bobby Jindal has bent, slightly, in his order to freeze hiring of essentially all unfilled positions in state government. The move to allow a blanket waiver for all health care positions in direct contact with patients, after at first saying there would be no blanket waivers, represents only a small tactical shift in a larger strategy.

Some wondered when as one of his first official acts Jindal implemented the freeze by executive order. After all, promises of budget surpluses rung, on top of recent surpluses, so why was it that Jindal seemed so concerned about saving $25 million? There are three reasons why.

First, it was campaign promise of sorts. Jindal had long and loudly complained about an expanding government. Even if most of the recent increase came as a result of recovery monies from outside the state, there still was some government spending growth at a time the state actually had fewer people to service. On top of that, Jindal had expressed annoyance that the state not only continued to keep hundreds of jobs unfilled for years running, but that these open slots got pay raises in 2007. The freeze was a way to make good on this campaign issue.

Second, one of the great con jobs of last year by the Kathleen Blanco Administration and Democrat legislative leadership was the creation of programs and redistribution into them of monies coming from temporary sources (even if technically these funds were classified as eligible for spending on recurring items), as well as their ignoring of the false economy created by recovery spending which resulted in increased but in part temporary revenues. The Jindal Administration recognizes this fully as a ticking time bomb and one way to deal with it is cutting back basically unneeded personnel spending.

Third, the freeze helps Jindal in his quest to reform certain areas of government. For example, the current indigent care system rewards state institutions to be less efficient by dropping a sum of money in their laps rather than tying their rewards to performances on indicators – which is how the non-government sector must work compelled by market forces. Even if only a few million dollars can be pulled from the existing charity system, it reduces its size and frees the money to be used to implement a money-follows-the-person regime that eventually will force the charity system to perform more efficiently.

Jindal was correct that blanket exemptions as a whole would detract from the basic goal of his administration – hinging on another campaign promise – that is tied into the reform idea: it’s not the savings of money that is as important, but that agencies use the opportunity to justify its use as the first step towards a more performance-based attitude reigning in agency budgeting and operation. Jindal and Republicans like House Speaker Jim Tucker have insisted that fat still remains in the state’s spending habits: this exercise can initiate the process of agencies to get thinking in those terms as well.

Nonetheless, the Jindal Administration realized that on the direct provider issue that the nature of the service and the turnover in it made the exemption sensible; otherwise, Commissioner of Administration Angèle Davis would be spending far too much time reviewing exemption requests while agency heads would spend too much time writing them. It does not mean, for those reasons cited, that the Administration’s strategy will change anytime soon.

GOP LA caucus results point to Romney benefitting

Just as at the national political level there are attempts to define victory in Iraq in a way to withdraw U.S. forces without actual victory in place, here in Louisiana a battle rages to declare victory for Republican candidates in the party’s recently-conducted caucuses.

As far as any one candidate goes, the edge seems to be held by Sen. John McCain, a situation trumpeted by a pro-McCain news aggregator website. But in real terms, the victory likely will go to former Gov. Mitt Romney – but “likely” for now for two reasons.

One is that the actual winner – both plurality and majority – of the delegates statewide appears to have been an uncommitted slate termed the “Pro-life/Pro-family” delegation. They seem to have captured a smashing 86 of the 105 slots, while the McCain slate looks to have gotten fewer than 10. (These numbers might change a little as the party is still verifying provisional ballots.) Given these candidate's records of the issues the uncommitted delegates signal are important ot them, it would appear that the bulk of the uncommitted delegates will swing Romney’s way if given that chance, in addition to the handful of Romney delegates by name winning.

The other reason it's not set in stone is because Louisiana Republicans can moot this. The week after the Feb. 9 caucuses comes the state convention where the actual delegates to attend the national convention will be selected. If state GOP voters give any candidate an absolute majority, that candidate gets pledged to him all of the convention delegates apportioned in this manner – 20 delegates. If no candidate does, these and 24 other delegates are up for grabs on Feb. 16. It seems unlikely any candidate will win an absolute majority.

While inexact at to claim to know the intent of all the uncommitted delegates, probably enough of them backing Romney will control the convention to decide who gets 44 of the GOP's 47 available. Thus, claims that McCain had the best outcome of all candidates running ring very hollow.

Reform officials must rid state of pest legislation

If anybody unfamiliar with traditional politics in Louisiana needs any instruction into how dysfunctional the situation has been, one need look only at the mess created over pest control in the state’s Department of Agriculture and draw lessons from there on how to change it.

Former commissioner Bob Odom diverted funds dedicated to fighting boll weevils, in part paid for by cotton farmers for that very purpose, to projects that, if they had any connection to agriculture at all, were money-losers to the state as a whole. Now it seems the so-called dedicated funds to the project won’t be enough to cover the expenses needed to maintain progress on the eradication.

The trouble began years ago when Odom first got the state Legislature to pass a law apportioning as much as $12 million a year culled from slot machines at race tracks to fight the pest. Initially, the money went for that purpose but as the program became more successful needing less money to keep progress going, Odom began to find these creative outlets to finance other ventures.

Romney-leaning, not Roemer, LA ticket best for GOP

Within the hour Republicans will gather at statewide caucuses to select delegates to attend in about a month a state convention to pick delegates to the party’s national convention. Not only will this affect the outcome of a GOP nomination for president still very much in flux, but may also shed light into competition and the eventual nominee for the House Sixth District for Congress for the party.

Courtesy of a web site that shills for former Gov. Buddy Roemer, e-mail was sent to drum up support for Sen. John McCain. In the note, Roemer argued that McCain was the only candidate that could defeat front-runner for the Democratic nomination Sen. Hillary Clinton – a highly mistaken notion, given Clinton’s negatives are so high that any GOP nominee would enter the contest at worst even odds against Clinton. In fact, because McCain would discourage the conservative base of the GOP who would be likely to take the attitude that the inevitable failure of a Clinton presidency would strengthen the conservative cause more than the as-inevitable failure of a Clinton-lite (McCain) presidency, McCain would be the least likely of the major Republican candidates to beat her.

Despite his mistaken analysis, Roemer’s endorsement and placement on a ticket to support McCain firmly places him ideologically within the state GOP, reducing his chances of wining nomination for the 6th District seat. With the advent of closed primaries for federal elections, conservatives will have the greatest say in determining Republican nominees (as will liberals for Democrats). Roemer has more recently dismissed rumors that he will run for the seat of resigning Rep. Richard Baker and instead his son Chas (who appears on the McCain ticket as well) has expressed interest in the seat.

Shreveport Times irresponsibility could hurt policing

Maybe it’s because it appears to have dropped quite a chunk of change on getting the data for the stories. Or maybe it wanted to make a big splash for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Whatever the motivation, the Shreveport Times produced a series on “racial profiling” riddled with muddled thinking, inappropriate insinuation, and harmful public policy prescriptions.

The Times studied traffic citation data and found that black drivers were receiving perhaps twice as many citations – usually for minor offenses – as were white drivers in both Shreveport and Bossier City given population levels. On this alone, it concluded there must be something “troubling” about this outcome, without ever spelling out exactly what that is.

But instead of providing a fair and balanced analysis of the issue (the closest it ever came was one quote from my colleague at LSUS who pointed out the many factors that go into decisions made by police about traffic stops and admonished it to “do a little more work” before making any conclusion), instead it made the elementary mistake, intentionally or otherwise, about which I warned my statistics students on many occasions to avoid, treating association as if it were causation.

As an example of this error, suppose you observe that the larger a fire is, the more firemen there are that show up to fight it. As a result, you conclude firemen cause fires: where there are no fires there are no firemen, and the size of the fire grows directly with the number of firemen present. What you have done is erroneously posited a relationship between to things based solely on the evidence that they covary. They are associated, but that does not then imply they must have a causal relationship. Without paying close attention to plausible theory, any causal conclusions are recklessly made.

Causation is demonstrated only when there is theory that most plausibly explains why there must be a relationship and what affects what. On this issue, The Times and a number of “experts” (with the exception of an academician all vocal politically liberal elected officials or activists) used the association of race determining probability of ticketing and grabbed their ideological biases to give an immediate, unreflective, erroneous conclusion (that, again, they are reluctant to state unambiguously no doubt because it would sensitize readers to that bias and lead them to dismiss their argument): blacks are disproportionately ticketed because local police departments refuse to change irredeemably racist institutionalized policies and to punish racist behavior.

This is despite the fact that local departments (including Shreveport’s black police chief) steadfastly maintain that “hard” profiling (with race being the only standard being used to decide whether to make a stop) is forbidden. It is despite the fact that policies are in place to prevent hard profiling (which is dismissed by The Times and the consensus of its interviewed as unsuitable without releasing data to the state). It is despite the fact the departments handle and resolve complaints of this. It is despite the fact that in three crucial ways the analysis failed to explore evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.

One was to look at the conviction rates of the offenses cited. That data is not presented but chances are it was pretty high. In other words, legitimate crimes were being committed, but in one sense The Times is nevertheless blaming the police for being too vigilant. Its response probably would be that this shows selective enforcement, or that white motorists committing the same crimes were being given a pass because of either cut-and-dried racist attitudes among the police and/or because they were making race the primary factor in deciding about a traffic stop.

This leads to the second piece of evidence that The Times easily could have (or did?) gather – the race of the citing and/or arresting officer. One would expect that if hard profiling if not racist behavior was going on, you would find white officers ticketing significantly more black offenders than would black officers. Indeed, the data collected by The Times contained the names of the officers; unless the departments objected, it should have been little problem and just taken a few extra hours of coding to put that information into the database, and then analyze whether officer race made a difference in proportion of tickets issued by race.

But The Times didn’t do this. If it couldn’t because of departmental objections, it needed to act responsibly by noting this argument and tempering its own. If it could but didn’t, this was a simple, stupid mistake that greatly detracted from the series. If it could and did but chose not to report the results, it was disingenuous if not outright fraudulent. Even though their editor preaches about how there needs to be “transparency,” The Times appeared not to practice that, nor did it do sufficiently what he counsels the reading audience to do, analyze the numbers.

(Also interesting: The Times has a comment feature on its stories where registered users can leave notes which are moderated. For the stories in this series, the function was disabled – doesn’t seem like they want a whole lot of debate on this despite their editorializing in favor of it.)

This neglected the probable true explanation, the final bit of evidence ignored by The Times, for why we see differences in proportions cited by race is a possibility confirmed by every statistic and study on crime in America: like it or not, unfortunately blacks simply are more likely to commit crime, in almost every category of crime. It may well be that, for example, you have, given relative population, twice as many black motorists being cited for windows too heavily tinted or music played too loud because twice as many engage in that behavior. But, once again, The Times could, and maybe did, excuse itself from entertaining and investigating this notion by blindly believing crime rates are disproportionately higher for blacks because of that old bogeyman racism again – even as what federal government evidence does exists seems to indicate blacks are more likely to operate vehicles unsafely than whites.

While it is undesirable that The Times should choose to create an issue out of nothing or at least half-baked, the real damage can come as its insinuations could detract from law enforcement optimally carrying out its job. As summarized in a report about the issue of racial profiling which revealed the ideological politics behind the crusade against it in all forms and gave examples of the harm a prior assumption that racism was behind the use of race in fighting crime, “The anti-profiling crusade thrives on an ignorance of policing and a willful blindness to the demographics of crime,” that threatens to shatter the “commonality between law-abiding inner-city residents and the police.”

In the final analysis, it’s not bad that The Times looked into this issue, it’s that it did so in such an manner, neglecting a complete, thorough, and balanced analysis, that has the hallmarks of wanting to promote an agenda. One argument it made in its series was that the interpretation they supplied to the data when circulated would lead to greater distrust of the police and thus hamper crime fighting, unless police behavior subsequently changed. It was spectacularly irresponsible of The Times to float an easily-detected flawed argument, raising alarms about the results of such an incomplete, if not ideologically-driven investigation that threatens to lead to the outcome it so piously claims to want to prevent.

Paul comes to LA, disappoints on terror issue

The very first time I voted I did so for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul for that office. Tomorrow he comes to a large city near you in Louisiana hunting for votes for the Feb. 9 Republican presidential preference primary – one of the very rare stops by a GOP candidate in the state this cycle. But I will not be voting for him on that date.

Dr. Paul is an excellent candidate for the presidency on many issues. Best among the candidates he understands the necessity of limited government, of smaller government, and of how all in society are better off by cutting taxes and spending. If you wanted one guy in the White House that you could be sure would promote domestic policies to maximize individual liberty and to reduce the chances of government tyranny while making sure those disadvantaged not by their own fault are supported, in this year’s field Paul would be your man.

However, he squanders and utterly defaults on all of this in his mistaken beliefs about the War on Terror. He generally has favored U.S. involvement in Afghanistan but not in Iraq, arguing the latter was impermissible adventurism that does not directly deal with the terrorist threat. Unfortunately, he cannot see that the two are inextricably linked in a larger picture, and the isolationism that he prizes is a luxury the free world no longer can afford.

Many do not understand the source of terrorism as it exists in today’s world. It’s not about who has what land, it’s not about this religion or that, nor about class and economic conflicts. It’s about a small group of people regrettably with power much beyond their numbers who have concluded that certain civilizations and the ideas behind them are incompatible with their own, and for their own survival these rivals must be destroyed.

The fanatics come from pre-modern societies that devalue individual autonomy, that are so rigid and unforgiving in provision of opportunity for individual advancement and self-governance that radical Islam appears to be the only alternative. Paul (and all the Democrat candidates) cannot (or will not) looks past the symptom to understand the disease: it’s not that, as he argues the U.S. “destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them,” it’s that they already were there and would have come about anyway and still would hate the U.S. and all free societies precisely because we are free societies.

Thus, for our own protection, the environment from which these opponents of Western civilization must be altered, and this is done in two ways. First, the penalty for this behavior must be increased, and that is part of the reason to intervene in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Second, and far more importantly, the nature of the environment must become one where individual autonomy, leading to increased ability of the individual to achieve, is prized to dramatically decrease the allure of radical Islam. This is the larger purpose of the war in Iraq – to create conditions where an open society may emerge without its being overthrown by forces that oppose it. Ironically, Paul, who has championed government of this form, seems disinterested in pursuing it elsewhere other than America even if America becomes safer as a result.

Radical Islam has the most to lose to see an Arab state of this nature emerge, for it will lose its exclusive status as alternative to the present, stultifying regimes in the area. A democratic Iraq will act as a benign virus, its success not only greatly reducing the appeal of radical ideology that leads to terrorism in Iraq, but will serve notice to other closed societies that they need to open up as well as their peoples observe such success. This is why it is putting so much effort into preventing the consolidation of this state – which will fail if the U.S. and allies remain resolute.

This will not be easy on America and it will not be cheap. But it is the best, most reliable way to secure freedom for Americans and all others who share in these values – and that probably includes majorities in the Middle East as well. Yet Paul and the Democrat candidates for office do not, or refuse to, see this, and thus this disqualifies them from leading the country at this crucial time in history.

Lombardi's argument disappoints intellectually, politically

Recently I heard my new boss of bosses Louisiana State University President John Lombardi give the commencement speech at LSUS and was pretty good as far as those things go -- brief, to the point, and actually of some use to a graduate. If only he had brought comparable ability to his criticism of the idea of utilizing transportation-related revenues to fund only transportation-building expenses – both in the exposition of his argument and in its political consequences.

The idea initially broached previous to last year’s legislative session was projected to shift somewhere between $300-350 million from the state’s general fund (which represented about $8 billion in revenues this past budget year) to transportation needs – about the rate of one year growth of the general fund. Because of higher gas prices, the most recent estimate puts the amount at over $450 million.

Lombardi is perturbed at this idea of dedication of funds, which if accomplished would eat away at the $14 billion backlog in transportation needs in about 30 years, because he thinks it would take away funds from higher education. He notes that discretionary spending from the general fund (almost half of it) would bear all of the “reduction” and with education as a whole making up about half of that, higher education would lose a significant portion of funding.

Ethics proposals good start, but Jindal should go for more

Although Gov. Bobby Jindal called the report released by his ethics advisory panel a “good start” and that it was not “set in stone,” he should give serious consideration to pushing legislation that is at least as stringent as the recommendations, if not more so.

Especially valuable is the extension of disclosure requirements to all state Cabinet appointees and elected officials even at the local level (except for offices of municipalities of fewer that 5,000). The prevailing philosophy seems to be if you are elected or have a full-time state appointive job at the highest level you should be subject to annual disclosure requirements of income divided into five categories.

But it would be better to go a little further. All administrative (but not those solely designated as policy-making assistants) appointed full-time employees at the state level should be included. Legislation also should empower local governments to apply those same standards to their full-time, appointive administrative personnel.

Having such standards at the state level will be controversial but given the attention to the issue and that a large portion of the new Legislature committed to a similar agenda through Blueprint Louisiana’s pre-election efforts, if Jindal accepts these recommendations they ought to go through. Much more controversial is the extension to local officials, on which Jindal did not specifically campaign and was the reason a combined bill despite overwhelming legislative majorities got sidetracked last session.

Jindal has indicated he would support a separate local bill which makes political sense in that objections to it would not derail automatically a statewide version. Of course, that means it makes it easier to defeat a bill addressing local officials. When about a couple of dozen other states already have such laws covering local officials there’s no reason Louisiana shouldn’t as well, especially with the 5,000 population exception, and hopefully Jindal will push as strongly for this as for a law dealing with state offices.

Entering into state contracts by legislators and their families also will provoke serious opposition among some lawmakers. Some will argue it would discourage quality potential legislators from wanting to run, and might especially be constraining regarding lightly-populated areas where few providers of a service exist to contract with the state.

However a law like this already exists, dealing with hurricane recovery contracts and its presence hasn’t seemed to have damaged the state. Moreover, Jindal has justified a ban of this nature with a very compelling argument: elected office to serve the people is a privilege, not a right, and so one must choose whether to gain access to it by meeting certain requirements. If you want to serve but you have a potential conflict under such a law, you either must decline the opportunity, or change your career and/or job to do so. Nobody is being forced to run for public office at the expense of his ability to earn a living. This point Jindal must drive home again and again to overcome resistance.

Recommending reporting transactions electronically is long overdue. In today’s world of technology, there’s no reason a candidate or lobbyist cannot download simple software from the state, take a few minutes here and there to update transactions, and through the Internet send the report to the state. Under the option to report by paper still available, it is difficult and cumbersome to find out information about campaigns, contributors, and lobbying. Jindal has preached transparency will prevail under his administration: he needs to put great effort into getting this kind of legislation passed.

The board did not recommend a total ban on lobbyist-provided victuals, but that also is worth pursuing. Many other states do it, and there’s no real reason for lobbyists to be able to pay for these things. Why must lobbyists be able to buy meals and the like for officials? Do they have to lobby over the lunch hour? Why can’t they transact business during business hours and leave legislators in peace to eat?

Along with the other recommendations made, adopting these as well will maximize transparency and minimize the potential for corruption. These items must find their way onto Jindal’s special session call coming up within the next couple of weeks.

Jindal puts money where mouth is, at least as a start

The right way to do things by executive fiat Gov. Bobby Jindal delivered today in executive orders that force beginning next year from Louisiana cabinet members financial disclosure and compels their resignation henceforth if indicted, public listing by state website of what entities get state contracts and grants and for what purposes, and freezing hiring in most parts of Louisiana government (excepting essentially the Legislature and judiciary) and requiring the responsible officers to demonstrate the savings achieved (but also allowing them to ask for exceptions to be made) at risk of losing their salaries.

Hopefully, these actions will begin to put to rest the fiction, embraced by some in the state despite so much overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that we don’t know what Jindal is going to do as governor and/or he’s being too vague with his agenda. As of his first full day in office, he’s doing exactly the specific things he generally promised way before, during, and after his campaign – bringing more transparency and efficiency to government.

Now it is only the first day, these aren’t that far-reaching of policy changes, and the true cynics included in the deluded described above will say they are for show. But the fact is he did these things that could have been done just as easily by the likes of former Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Yet she chose not to take even these easy, elementary steps while Jindal delivered.

The wrong way to do things by executive power, by great contrast, comes as a suggestion from former Gov. Dave Treen – to commute the sentence of felon ex-Gov. Edwin Edwards. To do so would signal that if you are slick enough to avoid being caught until and/or commit felonies in your later years against the people of the state from a position of their trust, you’ll get a reduced sentence. That’s a message hopefully Pres. George W. Bush will not want to send despite pleadings potentially from his father and Treen. Unlike Jindal’s approach, that won’t reduce the temptation for public officials to do mischief in the state.

Jindal’s off to a good start that, especially with the contracts and grants order that will show exactly what organizations are getting what, will anger members of the existing power structure in the state who have shuttled in the shadows money to certain beneficiaries of these contracts and grants. Let’s hope he keeps it up.

New LA Gov. Jindal means business in several ways

At 12:07 PM today, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took the oath of office. At 12:08, the website for that office had changed. The guy means business.

It wasn’t the only indicator of change to come, at least according to Jindal’s inaugural address. I lost count after a dozen of the times the word “change” or a conjugation of it was used. Other new governors have said it before. But Jindal, the first ethnic minority and first lifelong Republican elected to the office, had a bite in his rhetoric concerning its invocation.

Jindal did not just say he wanted to make government work more efficiently, but that “incompetence is not a synonym for government.” He didn’t just say he would work to see honesty prevail in government, but that the state needed to “win a war on corruption.” Government, he said, needed to alter the way it does things in order to catch up with the state’s hard-working people. These were a declaration of war relative to some of the good old boy politicians and their allies who have a vested interest precisely in not seeing such change occur.

He also made clear big changes in economic development policy were forthcoming. He briefly mentioned realigning curricula to meet a 21st century economy, and of a government efficient enough to help but knows “when to get out of the way” – another direct challenge to the good old boys who are more interested in using government to redistribute power and wealth to themselves and their political clients.

To the opponents who camouflage their ill will towards this agenda by asking for detailed plans about how he wants to do all of this stuff yesterday so they start planning how to stop it, he did give a small preview of coming attractions – the promised ethics special session will start Feb. 10 (somebody in the press was asleep and not thinking when it reported the session would be on the 5th – Mardi Gras). And he closed in a way demonstrating a sense of urgency, remarking “We can, we must, and we will change.”

When almost a dozen years ago I began to see Jindal’s name bandied about and how he was discussed as some sort of boy wonder, followed by his rapid administrative rise in state and federal government, I was amused by reaction to him the tone of coverage about him was on the order of “Bobby Jindal is here to save us all in Louisiana.” In a small way, Jindal in a related sense believes that, but only to the extent that he sees himself as the most important cog in a gear made up of the entire state to lead the revolution he and many want that he without their help can’t do: “Join us in our cause. Make everything not just a job but a cause.”

That rhetoric is really going to make some existing power brokers in this state nervous. Let the Jindal era begin.