Keep the grains of salt handy when evaluating a recent
report
claiming to tie in last month’s heavy
rains in the Baton Rouge area that caused extensive flooding to significant anthropogenic
climate change. If you don’t believe me, that’s the judgment coming from the
report itself.
These researchers, including some who have peddled
the hypothesis in various forms for many years, came together to issue a “rapid
attribution study” that alleges the odds of a “50-year” storm in reality have
dropped to more like occurring every 30 years because of man-made global
warming. Intended for publication in a scientific journal, this kind of submission,
in the authors’ words, “arises from the current intense public discussion that
results from the significant societal impacts of this particular event” reporting
results recently after an extreme event may enhance the societal understanding
of climate change and extreme weather, and provide often requested information
for management decisions following the event.”
In other words, don’t let a crisis go to waste:
appropriate it as fodder to advance the data- and theoretically-challenged
man-made global warming crusade. Even if this effort really cannot do that: as
the authors note, “specific scientific statements for the event as observed in
south Louisiana cannot be made based on general assessments of the connection
of global warming and extreme rainfall.”
A new report adds impetus to the idea that Louisiana
can save money by rearranging resources in correctional policy.
Last week my column
for The Advocate noted how greater
reliance upon private operation of state prisons could save the state money,
contrary to the budgetary decision this year that cut reimbursement to private
operators. By doing that, those operators need no longer provide rehabilitative
and treatment programs, on par with local facilities holding state prisoners
that receive the same $24.39 per day per inmate. About half of all state
prisoners at any given time serve time in a local facility, but fewer than half
of those institutions provide this kind of programming standard in state
lockups.
The value of such programs a recent audit
from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor emphasized, which said that a
comparative study with other states showed increased usage of these could save
an unknown amount of money by reducing recidivism generally, but specifically an
expanded re-entry program would save $14 million annually. Currently the state
pays for nine regional centers to provide the 100-hour course as well as
funding other for some other local initiatives.
North Louisiana’s hopes of sending one of its own
to Washington to serve as a U.S. Senator for the first time in two decades
looks increasingly dim, according to the latest
poll of that contest.
A joint effort between the website The Hayride and
Remington Research found Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy leading the field with 27
percent, with north Louisiana’s Public Service Commissioner Democrat Foster Campbell a distant 11
points behind, followed closely by Republican Rep. Charles Boustany and lawyer and
former statewide candidate Democrat Caroline
Fayard. Northwest Louisiana Rep. John Fleming, 2014 Senate
candidate Rob Maness, and white supremacist
and 1990 Senate candidate David Duke,
all Republicans, lag around each other in the middle single digits.
The race’s future jumps out from these numbers: it’s
Kennedy’s to lose. As things stand, only those in double-digit territory as of
now have a chance to join him in the runoff, and the dynamics show they have
little chance of defeating him. The poll’s only heads-up match with him and
Campbell showed him over 50 percent with Campbell garnering barely half of the
remaining electorate. As for the others, another indicator shows they would have
great difficulty in eating into Kennedy’s current support: he pulls in higher support
than any of them across all of Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
If you make a bluff, you don’t need to fold at the
first hint of trouble. Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary
Charlie Melancon seems to know that as he continues
to place obstacles in the way of giving the state’s citizens more control
over one of its natural resources in the hopes of winning the hand.
H.R.
3094 by Republican Rep. Garret Graves
would transfer authority to manage red snapper from the federal government to a
consortium of states. Until earlier this year, every state stakeholder of
Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas supported the bill, which
they called necessary to ensure more vigorous and inclusive management of the
species.
Then Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
took office and named Melancon, a former Democrat congressman and lobbyist who
runs in the same political circles as Edwards, to head up the agency. The
secretary runs it administratively while the gubernatorial-appointed Wildlife
and Fisheries Commission makes policy – which voted to support the bill that
Edwards and Melancon then proceeded to announce opposition to it.
As the law of the instrument goes, give a small boy
a hammer and he will find everything he encounters needs pounding. That vibe
emanates from a recent article
from the Lafayette Advertiser concerning
Louisiana’s college enrollments, where the author fixates on one factor explaining
variation in that level when in fact this one thing, tuition and fee levels,
has less to do with enrollment variance than many others.
The piece begins by alleging “Eight years of state
budget cuts have led to some student turn-offs to public higher education in
Louisiana, and it's showing,” then further postulates cuts translated into
higher tuition and fees, which then discouraged some students from attending.
As evidence, it points to the number of attending students in academic year
2010 – a figure derived from what is called the “14th day registration,”
or the number enrolled at an institution on the 14th day of the fall
term – compared to 2015, a drop of around 10,000.
The obvious question appears immediately – if “eight
years of state budget cuts” caused this, why do we view only five years of
data; why not view AY 2008 to AY 2016 data? Not including the latter endpoint
makes sense at this time because it’s impossible: the 14th day
number for all institutions won’t come through for another month. Which then
begs another question: why did this piece get written now, using nearly
year-old data when waiting a month would have produced fresh data?
They
may have a point, but good luck in ever getting the state to pay off or
change its ways, so compromise should be the order of the day.
Walker Mayor Rick Ramsey feels the state’s
construction of Interstate 12 exacerbated flooding the town received in the
middle of the month. Specifically, the retaining wall of the east-west highway running
down the median appeared to trap water that pooled into the municipality. More
aggravatingly for Ramsey, years ago he requested that the state’s Department of
Transportation and Development provide more drainage underneath, which largely
went ignored.
Present DOTD Secretary Shawn Wilson, who served as
chief of staff of the agency almost a dozen years prior to taking the helm
earlier this year, as much as admitted Ramsey’s proposition. Framing the
argument in expectancy value terms, he said the decision to put in the barrier
and drainage associated with I-12 did not factor in such a severe weather event
because of its remoteness in happening. He hoped the department could work with
those aggrieved by the outcome rather than have the controversy go to court, as
Ramsey as threatened.
Quite correctly the Louisiana Republican Party refused
to censure Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle and Commissioner of
Administration Jay
Dardenne for their failure to support a Republican candidate for governor
last year, even as Dardenne deserves approbation for the greater disservice he
did the state’s people.
Last weekend the GOP’s State Central Committee
met, with items for consideration including a vote of formal disapproval for Republican
Angelle’s staying silent when Republican Sen. David Vitter made the
runoff against eventual victor Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
and one for Republican Dardenne’s endorsing of Edwards. Angelle now runs for
Congress while shortly after the election’s conclusion Dardenne took the top
job in the Edwards Administration.
Angelle deserved no such condemnation. He gave no
reason for his reticence, which clearly came from two sources even if he never
publicly will admit this: his pique at voters’ rejection of him and a belief
that Vitter should not have bested him but also he wanted to continue to have
an elective political career. Thus, he would not endorse Vitter who in his mind
he felt “unfairly” bested him (because Vitter had admitted commission of a “serious
sin” believed to have been soliciting prostitution yet whose bare-knuckle style
of politics kept him in power despite that embarrassing revelation), but he
also would not endorse Edwards as a way to pay back an ungrateful electorate
and to count coup on Vitter because to do so probably would anger his
conservative base too much, leading him to forfeit any chance for him to run
for Congress successfully.
Louisiana’s Republican Party wisely
pulled back on a resolution that reputes to prevent felons from running for
office using its label, but pledges made to try again continue to ignore what
state and constitutional law have to say on the process.
This past weekend, the party’s State Central
Committee rejected bringing to a vote such a measure amid concerns that it did
not have the legal authority to do so. Members had fewer than 24 hours to
review the proposal that emanated from the Executive Committee made up of party
leaders, even as it wisely
dropped ambiguous language prone to politicization that also would have
prevented “racist” individuals from running as Republicans.
Party leaders maintained that a Louisiana
political party did have the legal authority to limit use of its label in this
fashion by candidates, alleging that both the state’s chief legal officer,
Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry,
and the state’s chief elections officer, Sec. of State Tom Schedler,
both Republicans, concurred. If so, whatever rationale purportedly lies behind
this argument seems counter to statute.
