Bizarre incident won't change LA governor's race

No doubt if Sen. David Vitter truly had the power to control newsroom personnel Louisiana would be littered with jobless former reporters. Instead, the gubernatorial derby got treated to a bizarre episode instigated by an apparently unprofessional television journalist.

When Vitter showed up for qualification for the contest on Tuesday, lying in wait was one Derek Myers, then working for NBC’s Baton Rouge affiliate. Myers, who alludes to himself in his Twitter feed as a deliberately aggressive reporter, has done some job hopping this year, beginning in Ohio, then Florida, and, less than a month ago, landing in Louisiana.

And now, maybe elsewhere. Independent reporting reveals a chain of events where, as Vitter departed, he asked him about Congressional hearings in Louisiana that also could serve as campaign opportunities and then about whether Vitter dallied with prostitutes. In 2007, Vitter expressed remorse for commission of a “serious sin” believed to be related to availing himself of prostitution services.

Edwards packaging to test Democrat playbook

Louisiana’s 2015 governor’s race may tell us whether the standard playbook of southern Democrats needs permanent revision.

The party’s endorsed candidate for that office, state Rep. John Bel Edwards, finally joined his major Republican opponents in running a television ad – perhaps so late because he trails them on in fundraising. In it, we discover, as testament to being a “born leader,” that he was the all-American boy in high school, a West Point graduate who served his country in elite capacity in the Army, and is “pro-life” and “pro-Second Amendment.” Also, he’s a “fighter for education, health care, and working families.”

How nice, but aren’t we all? Time constraints I imagine precluded the spot from telling us he’s attentive to his aged, widowed mother and he doesn’t kick stray dogs. And this gloss is all the campaign will disseminate, because the only way a candidate like Edwards can be competitive is to create an impression at odds with the essential ideology of a candidate like him: he’s a liberal Democrat that wants in his communications to the mass public to sound like a Republican as a solid majority of Louisianans are right-of-center in political views.

If LA budget troubled, pursue spending cuts first

Advocates of tax-and-spend government ought to be increasingly happy at the turn of fiscal events in Louisiana. Not only did they get several hundred million dollars in tax increases for this current budget, they might be in line to do it again with next year’s – if the public buys their specious argument that this represents the only alternative.

A couple of months into fiscal year 2016, already budget problems have cropped up. The effect of the tax increases, largely of the pass-through variety that will affect almost everybody, was forecast slightly too low, as were expenses for the Taylor Opportunity Program for Scholars. So was the price of oil, which so far is running on average a good $10 below the figure on which the budget was based. Throw in health spending that did not get about $350 million in projected expense increases, and this year’s version might be a half-billion dollars out of balance when all is said and done.

While some help with the health care expenditures may come in the form of a legal settlement to the tune of over $100 million for this year, the next year’s looks perilous as well. Projections combining the effects of tax changes, legal settlements, and funds sweeps about doubles the amount of money not available for FY 2017 to make the revenue-expenditure gap around $1 billion, should current revenues and expenditures in the aggregate otherwise stay the same.

Joke mayor Landrieu keeps disserving N.O.

Riddle me this: what’s the difference between Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk of court held in contempt of court for refusing to sign certificates for same sex marriages, and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, found in contempt of court for not having the city pay what is due to the city’s firefighters and firefighter retirees? Answer: nothing; neither are doing their jobs.

Of course, that’s nothing new for Landrieu, who carries about him a fantastic obtuseness when it comes to doing what matters most for New Orleans. This is the guy, after all, who has spends rhetorical capital and publicity trying to take down monuments because some see them as symbols of racial oppression, a removal which would cost millions of dollars that the city doesn’t have (although, ironically, one such target’s object of commemoration actually preached racial reconciliation), rather than to address the city’s crime rate (undoubtedly exacerbated by Landrieu’s acquiescence to New Orleans acting as a “sanctuary city”). Then, when Sen. David Vitter calls him on it, he tries to link Vitter to racial animus.

On the matter of crime he also enjoys picking fights with another Lincolnesque statesman, Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman, who faces a court order to reduce his prison population. While New Orleans must pay for its prisoners, Gusman decides whether to take some state prisoners that balloon the prisoner census but who bring in compensation. That cost would increase if city prisoners would have to be located elsewhere. Landrieu petitioned the state to intervene and threatened a suit if the state kept housing its prisoners at OPP. With its silence, the Department of Corrections basically told Landrieu to go pound sand.

The Advocate column: Sep. 6, 2015

A hollow case against school reform

http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/13350213-123/jeff-sadow-a-hollow-case

Vitter debate engagement improves voter choice

Perhaps the winner on the issues at the junior-sized Louisiana governor candidate debate was the only quality candidate who didn’t make an appearance at it. But his being a bit less circumspect about occasions to discuss these would validate that assessment.

The debate wasn’t quite a big boy encounter, not so much because college students rather than interests typically more involved and less insulated from public policy organized and delivered it but because the race favorite, Sen. David Vitter, didn’t grace it with his presence. According to his Senate website, the Republican was only a few dozen miles away yesterday inveighing on the lesser prairie chicken, but declined attendance with an unspecified prior engagement.

Naturally, Republicans Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle and Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne and Democrat state Rep. John Bel Edwards made disapproving noises about his semi-excused absence. Then they proceeded to underwhelm in their answers to the menu of questions.

Visions compete to forecast gubernatorial election

It now appears that at least one pollster of the 2015 Louisiana gubernatorial contest figures a different electorate than recent trends suggest on which other pollsters base their samples. If he is correct, the contest’s dynamics differ from what commonly is believed.

Market Research Insight has polled monthly on behalf of a small group of subscribers. A portion of the proprietary information gets leaked from time to time and made some news last month when it gauged a neck-and-neck race between Sen. David Vitter and Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle. This was contrary to every other poll from several other outfits that consistently have Vitter and state Rep. John Bel Edwards, the only Democrat in the race, leading the pack considerably over Angelle and the other Republican, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne. The MRI poll basically replicates other polls’ results on the placements of Edwards and Dardenne when assigning 90 percent of the total black vote to Edwards and the remainder proportionally to the others.

That July poll truly resided as an outlier as polls immediately before and after it showed clear Edwards/Vitter and Angelle/Dardenne tiers. It was speculated previously that the differences could come only from two sources, one being that particular MRI poll suffered from an “unhappily randomized” sample. Simply, it could have been an instance, with most pollsters choosing to risk this degree of inaccuracy, where the five percent chance of drawing an unrepresentative sample of the population actually did occur.

"Rebels" nickname, mascots don't need eradication

In a frenzy to follow fad, should area government dissociate anything reeking of the Confederacy from schools and other public spaces?

Sparked in particular by savage murders earlier this summer, questions have risen anew about the appropriateness of symbols identified with the long-gone Confederate States of America serving as names of streets, buildings, monuments, and nicknames and/or mascots of public schools’ competitive teams. Bestowing such attention on these items in the public space risks conveying the impression that the less salutary aspects of the Confederacy continue to receive endorsement even to this day.

Of course, the idea that having some Confederate-associated label disgraces irredeemably the object is terribly oversimplified. The controversial monument celebrating the last Confederate national government located in Shreveport that (for now) sits proximate to the Caddo Parish Courthouse serves as a valued historic reminder, for example. Yet, at the same time, the historical record makes clear that, of the several reasons why the southern states rebelled, their governments’ desire to preserve slavery was paramount, lending evil to the treasonous enterprise, thus making invalid any argument that to fly before any other choice the (Third) Confederate (Battle) flag celebrates certain virtues, for the present American flag does the same without the baggage.

Dardenne remark shows his campaign desperation

It’s official: Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne has gone into desperation mode in his quest for Louisiana’s top office.

For months, the governor’s race dynamics have presented a challenge to him. Sen. David Vitter’s strong conservative credentials plus ability to meld populist preferences into him make his a formidable Republican challenger. Meanwhile, Democrats wishing to have an affair with Dardenne on their endorsed standard-bearer state Rep. John Bel Edwards, given the former’s good government record while in the state Senate but willingness to raise taxes to fund it, have another suitor from the right-of-center in Republican Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle. With the vote closer to the center split by Dardenne and Angelle, Vitter and Edwards have clear sailing to dominate among voters at the ends of the ideological spectrum, leaving Angelle and Dardenne dragging the rear and considerably behind the others.

Now with fewer than eight weeks remaining until the Oct. 24 election, the stability of these dynamics suggest nothing will change as long as the candidates continue to stress the same themes and issues. So, perhaps shaken by a recent report, Dardenne decided to do just that.

The Advocate column, Aug. 30, 2015

Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco deflects blame for Katrina response

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_cf6782bc-91d9-5465-a69b-af819a2b18b4.html