Last chance debate shows unsuitability of participants

Defying the expectation that after seven televised debates viewers possibly could learn anything new about Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, and state Rep. John Bel Edwards, they did: in tonight’s edition, they learned why each by way of personality is unsuitable to be governor of Louisiana.

Actually, in the case of Democrat Edwards, it was continued confirmation. On this occasion, it came down to a matter of lack of trust that he would not hit Louisianans with massive tax increases to fund his never-ending spending promises despite his claiming he won’t raise taxes. Let’s see, he wants to excise entirely the portion gasoline tax dollars that goes to the state police, costing $60 million this year although by law to be reduced in future years (with this representing 0.5 percent of the entire roads backlog, so it really doesn’t solve anything). He wants to double the Earned Income Tax Credit, meaning about $50 million in forgone revenue collection. He wants to equalize self-generated revenues of Louisiana higher education with the taxpayer’s proportion, which this year would have meant finding another $103 million (and he pledges no more tuition increases, so this figure will go higher). He wants to expand Medicaid immediately, which for FY 2016 would cost the state at least $18 million but by FY 2030 is forecast to cost an additional $574 million annually.

Just what he promised on these items during the debate equals at least $231 million more for a state, in order to balance its budget, that this year raised taxes more than three times that amount, of which he voted in favor of over $400 million in additional tax liability that will be experienced directly by or passed on to consumers and by income-earning individuals. All along, Edwards has held out the paring of tax exemptions, curiously disregarding that these do often entail tax increases (when not in the form of rebates), as the uber-solution to what ails the budget. It’s nothing more than an appeal to Louisiana’s populist history, promising all sorts of things as if it were a gift to the people but hiding the fact that they ultimately pay for it. You can’t trust a guy who doesn’t tell you that upfront and continues to insist he won’t raise taxes, and that disqualifies him from any serious consideration for the office.

BESE outcomes could halt needed education reforms

They aren’t make-or-break, but elections later this week to Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education could blunt the pace of education reform in the state.

All eight elected spots appear on Saturday’s ballot and in an indirect fashion so do the other three appointive positions. The governor selects these members for terms concurrent with the elected members with an eye towards supporting his policy preferences, and with a new man coming on board it’s likely none of the members currently serving will get invited back by someone wanting to put his own stamp of authority onto BESE.

Three issues played large roles in the term now concluding: accountability for all of schools, districts, and teachers; school choice; and usage/implementation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. By no means is BESE the determinative factor in policy-making on these accounts; in fact, its role is minor compared to the governor’s and Legislature’s.

Media debate critiques based on their self-interests

Seems that in 2015 Louisiana gubernatorial debates are as common as pairs bared on Bourbon Street during Carnival. Which is why whatever flaws observers may suggest with them that they allege need correcting makes for much ado about nothing.

Last night there was the sixth televised mostly statewide where at least three of the major candidates participated. The 99 percent of the electorate that typically tunes these out shouldn’t worry about missing anything as long as they’ve seen at least one, since it gave yet another chance for Republican Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle to speak French, for Republican Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne to say he might raise taxes, and for state Rep. John Bel Edwards another chance to lie about Medicaid expansion (the newest one being that states that accept it can get out of it, when the legal analysis and political ramifications of Arkansas’ experience prove otherwise), and for all of them to moan and gripe about Republican Sen. David Vitter not attending and to make sport of him in his absence.

Of course, of that 99 percent, about 99 percent of them will have had no plans to watch one of these or the last of these prior to the general election this weekend. To almost every voter, these are seen not as chances to inform, but as interruptions to their television viewing schedules. So when the chattering classes get upset about the presentation of these, it’s really a tempest in a teapot.

Senators must disregard Medicaid expansion myths

Today, Louisiana’s Senate Finance Committee will converge to discuss Medicaid costs. Undoubtedly part of the discussion will include expansion of Medicaid and its impact on the state’s budget, which continues to face pressure. Forces with an ideological motive to see the U.S. move towards government single-payer insurance have promoted a mythology about expansion that continually confuses debate on the subject. As a public service, myth and reality on this topic are explored here.

Myth: Medicaid expansion has saved states money.

Fact: The program deliberately was front-loaded with the federal government picking up all the provider costs for the first three years, although states did have to pay administrative costs. It could be argued that all the federal dollars being redistributed about could make certain states winners, although this ignores that, if left uncollected from taxes and/or through the consequences of increased debt, allowing earners of this money to keep it would have resulted in more efficient uses of it that may increase economic activity beyond that artificially stimulated by the redistribution into health care spending by government. Further, some states had state-run programs that could be passed off to the federal government in very large part because of expansion.

But the data show that many states on balance have seen huge cost increases well beyond what was anticipated by expansion, because they underestimated costs – new enrollees who were predicted to actually cost less ended up costing on average 19 percent more – and enrollments – where almost all states have seen more enrollees than expected. The overall number of enrollees climbed a stunning 28 percent, with some states underestimating enrollments and costs by at least half. Go figure – give something away, and more people using more of it want it.

The Advocate column: Oct. 18. 2015

John Bel Edwards' actions show he's no social conservative
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_5548b61c-b18b-5234-96b6-51bfbfae2134.html

Debates confirm governor's race revolves around Vitter

Whether he’s present at them, the Louisiana gubernatorial debates have been all about Sen. David Vitter and his campaign strategy, as witnessed in the two most recent this week.

For the first and last time presumably this election cycle, statewide televised forums occurred on consecutive days, the first with Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, and state Rep. John Bel Edwards, and the second including them and Vitter. The events’ tones differed as a result.

Two things distinguished the first: the bland, technocratic presentation that lacked almost any ideological referents and almost as much discussion and referents made about Vitter by the other three. Knowing nothing else about the candidates or contest, one might have thought the Republicans Angelle and Dardenne and Democrat Edwards all were moderates of the same party as they differed by small degrees in their issues preferences as expressed there and almost went out of their way to avoid drawing distinctions on their core beliefs.

CCSSI/PARCC critics unwisely try to shoot messenger

The predictable disappointing results from Louisiana’s first round of Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing has led to an equally forecastable palaver from critics of education reform in the state built upon killing the messenger rather than a desire to improve children’s educational attainment.

Superintendent John White released results using a scale he hoped that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would ratify, presumably aligned with what the other ten states and District of Columbia that comprise PARCC will use, which it did. Louisiana is the first state to embark upon evaluating the results so it must anticipate here, and also when all others have done the same it is expected that Louisiana’s students in the grades 3-8 who took the tests in the aggregate will be among the lowest scorers; the state’s students usually perform near or at the bottom of state’s on scores of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test given to samples of students in all states mandated by the federal government.

With White announcing that only 22 to 40 percent of students hit the benchmarks, this set off a chorus of carping from observers more generally against reform and those specifically critical of PARCC testing because of its connection to the Common Core States Standards Initiative. Perhaps most obsequiously attuned to criticism was state Rep. Brett Geymann, who declared on this basis that the whole of Common Core, introduced in full last year in Louisiana classrooms, had failed.

Edwards again fails religious freedom defense test

One can rest assured that those who run the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union remain on their medications if at least twice a year it launches into some manufactured outrage. They all seem well, courtesy of an ill-advised attempt to curb constitutional religious expression at Bossier Parish School District’s Airline High School that has broader implications in state politics.

The excitable lot in continuing its quest to promote a secularist religion last month fulminated over the penchant of AHS principle Jason Rowland to throw out references to God on his page attached to the school’s web site and that prayer boxes, marked with crosses, sprinkle the campus. It asked for the school to cease and desist in supporting this activity and requested reeducation sessions of school employees.

Perhaps the organization felt emboldened by its apparent success in browbeating Caddo Parish officials earlier this year when it scolded employees at Walnut Hills Elementary-Middle School for posted website material such as a newsletter to parents asking for prayer for exam-taking success and in its publicizing a student-run prayer group. While the community rallied on behalf of the school, the district said it would investigate and since then has mentioned nothing more publicly about the matter. Such references have disappeared from Walnut Hill’s communications.

Edwards expansion omission, lie speaks poorly of him

If by his reaction to partisan criticisms of his position to expand Medicaid gives voters an indication of gubernatorial candidate state Rep. John Bel Edwards’ command of facts and use of logic, then a vote for him backs someone who has neither ability.

The Democrat got upset when a Republican Governors Association ad pointed out he had sponsored this year a resolution to enact the Medicaid expansion portion of the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That measure went nowhere, but the Legislature did pass a resolution allowing it and the governor to act in the first quarter of next year to assess a fee on many hospitals to pay for the state’s share of expansion, which then undoubtedly would be passed along to health insurance ratepayers and taxpayers.

Other major Republican gubernatorial candidates have expressed qualified desires to expand Medicaid. Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle wants to pursue a hybrid public/private strategy as in Arkansas – apparently oblivious to the fact that this meant that state had to accept such restrictive rules that the cost overruns from these now has it trying to abandon the effort. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne seems to want to accept the arrangement as is except with a provision that the federal government not raise the proportion the states are to pay into it, known as “cost blending” – except that the fiscal evidence shows cost blending is approaching inevitability. Sen. David Vitter seems most dubious about expansion, averring that he would look at it as long as it undergoes programmatic changes that likely radically would overhaul Medicaid as a whole.

The Advocate column: Oct. 11, 2015

Louisiana’s gubernatorial candidates should embrace state’s limits to its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_33a57c69-bca5-51d9-8555-3f74f924bb50.html