It bears repeating,
in a little different way: the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
Administration and Democrat legislators are from Mars, Republican legislators
are from Venus.
That became painfully obvious in yesterday’s special
session meeting
of the House of Representatives’ Appropriations
Committee in questioning and testimony by members of Edwards Administration
officials. Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne stumped
for Edwards’ plan to use nearly $120 million from the Budget Stabilization
Fund. He conceived this as a bridge to further fiscal reform that Legislature
intends to investigate during its regular session in two months.
Dardenne bases this strategy on the
recommendations forwarded by the Task
Force on Structural Changes in Budget and Tax Policy, which looks at how
Louisiana collects revenues. To him, “structural deficit” describes the
inability to gather as much revenue as necessary to fund what Edwards wants to
spend.
It’s time for Louisiana’s Department of Education
to intervene more forcefully with struggling Caddo Parish schools.
After some period of treading water, CPSD as a whole took a
step backwards last year as it slid solidly
into ‘C’ territory (in absolute terms; for years "grading" of schools has occurred on a curve) according to the state’s district accountability measure.
What comfort came from its overall performance as not absolutely dismal hides
the fact that a majority
of its schools rank as ‘D’ or ‘F’ and these enroll over half of all district
students.
Yet despite a history of having a significant portion
of its school performing below par, unlike the other two major metropolitan districts
in the state little educational choice developed in the parish. The state
oversees only one charter school there, Linwood, and only three charters
operate independently (one with two campuses). Several other schools operate
under a memorandum of understanding model that leaves the district in charge of
these but having to meet certain objectives negotiated by the state.
Louisiana Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards is from
Mars, legislative Republicans are from Venus. I chose the ordering since
Edwards once served as a professional warrior and some GOP legislators are
women. I chose the metaphor to illustrate the completely incompatible mindset
of the two that threatens to launch fireworks during the state’s whirlwind special
session.
Edwards pulled the starting gun trigger on it last
night by speaking
mainly to the virtues of using Budget Stabilization Fund Money. As
policy-makers grapple with a $304 million deficit fighting a ticking clock registering
just four-and-a-half months remaining in the fiscal year, use of the Fund has emerged
as the biggest point of contention between the governor and Republican-led
Legislature to solve for the shortfall.
In the speech, Edwards noted the short time frame and
his belief that a straitjacketed fiscal structure begging for reform presented
few options other than use of $119.6 million in Fund money. Citing its creation
as a means to address short-term budgetary crunches and past use in what he saw
as less critical times, failure to dip into it he alleged would force
undesirable cuts into areas his current plan using Fund money to close the gap
would avoid. He argued that, past this hurdle, soon the state could start
attending to fiscal reform that should alleviate such problems in the future.
A day after my last post
came out, which analyzed a column written by Mark Lorando that discussed and
denied the presence of liberal bias at the newspaper he edits, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he followed
up with another on the topic that in some ways addressed points I had made.
Yet accompanying his that day was a piece that served to subvert his mission.
My post pointed out the ways that the T-P transmitted
liberal bias, largely in story selection, while Lorando defended against that mainly
along the lines that content remained neutral, at least on the news pages. I
demonstrated that’s not necessarily the case, more because of the liberal smog
enveloping the industry of journalism than in any intent. He also pledged for
greater balance in the opinion pages, where one may expect biased commentary.
But the one thing that he did not, and could not,
promise in trying to divest the T-P of liberal bias that he at least conceded
was perceived was to provide more informed commentary. Liberalism often festers
and grows because its
adherents tend to be less informed about politics (which carries
over into partisan differences as well with the typical Republican more
informed and open-minded than his Democrat counterpart). Liberals also more likely
mythologize and caricature conservatism than vice versa, a logical consequence
as liberalism relies more on emotive referents to sustain belief in it while
conservativism places greater emphasis on fact and logic.
Last week, in a futile gesture, the New Orleans Times-Picayune (or NOLA.com,
or whatever Advance Digital calls the outlet now) suffered a defensive wound
regarding the publication’s ideological leanings.
Its editor Mark Lorando had written a column
inviting reader comment about the newspaper’s performance. He followed it up
with one addressing the comment, by far, most commonly made: that the paper has
a liberal bias. Predictably, the headline read “Yes,
we have an agenda. But it's not a liberal one.”
It’s always humorous to see newspapers try to deny
the elephant in the room for most of them. A few actually have some balance,
and a few others such as the New York
Times admit they come
off, if not actually, having a liberal bias to them. But the vast majority
like Lorando insist over and over that they don’t – even when it’s painfully obvious
that they do.
If belatedly, the biggest scalded dog of them all,
Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and
Restoration Authority Chairman Johnny Bradberry, wrote a letter
to the editor regarding my Jan. 29 column
in the Baton Rouge Advocate that
noted apparently politicized decision-making in constructing scenarios for the
agency’s draft 2017
Coastal Master Plan. Rather than refute the column, it only raises more troubling
questions about the quality of the decision-making process.
Bradberry’s letter largely stayed away from the
inadequate argumentation, as already
noted, made by previous letter writers defending the change in scenarios
regarding sea level rise (SLR). In 2012,
the team responsible for calculating SLR came up with essentially the 2017
range (31 to 198 cm), yet the CPRA postulated scenarios (100, 150, and 200 cm) where
the highest SLR level of 2012 (100 cm) became the lowest of 2017 and the
highest of 2017 doubled the highest of 2012. The science (as unreliable as SLR
calculations are historically) had not changed, yet the CPRA chose dramatically
higher SLR assumptions, which would indicate politics interceded to explain the
change.
Instead, Bradberry’s effort started off with a
straw man, incorrectly claiming the column said that “increased sea-level rise
predictions for Louisiana’s coast are somehow motivated by election of Gov.
John Bel Edwards and not by science.” He either needs to work on his reading comprehension
or take off his partisan blinders: the column only stated that the Edwards
Administration brought an ethos more supportive of big government that would
lend itself to a more alarmist view on significant anthropogenic climate change
and that Edwards had appointed the majority of members to the CPRA (among them
Bradberry). It never stated that SLR forecasts used did not have a basis in
science, as unreliable as those have been.
Religious leaders face a central challenge in
converting articles of faith to everyday practice in politics. Unfortunately, some
of these individuals in Louisiana recently flunked that test in evaluating
travel restrictions ordered by Pres. Donald Trump.
The executive
order temporarily halts refugee admissions for 120 days to improve the
vetting process, then caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year; imposes a
temporary, 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran,
Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen – “countries of concern”
identified by the former Pres. Barack Obama
Administration as threats to attempt to export terrorism to the U.S.; and puts
an indefinite hold on admitting Syrian refugees to the United States until the
Trump Administration confirms that refugee admission procedures do not threaten
U.S. security. It applies no religious test and allows significant exceptions
for individuals from religious sects undergoing persecution and for individuals
who entry would serve the national interest.
In substance, even as in details some significant differences
exist, policy promulgated by the order differs
little from Obama Administration policy until two years ago. Before 2015,
almost no Syrian refugees came into the U.S. annually, large numbers of
refugees did not attempt to come to the U.S. after spending extended periods in
countries with jihadist conflict zones, and the number of refugees admitted per
year was around the 50,000 level. In 2016, enhanced vetting began regarding the
seven countries.
Stuck pigs squeal, scalded dogs yelp, or insert another folksy phrase to describe the reaction to
my Jan. 29 column
in the Baton Rouge Advocate, with
arguments made from the unconvincing to the incomprehensible.
The column took issue with the validity and
reliability of the science behind some estimates used of sea level rise (SLR),
which actually served as ancillary to the larger point – despite very similar forecasts
in the 2012
and 2017
versions of its Coastal Master Plan, Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and
Restoration Authority accepted drastically higher levels of SLR in the report’s
formulation. The piece briefly noted problems in some of the studies used to assume
those levels that would occur by 2100. Notably, it pointed out that the panel’s
composition has changed dramatically in the interim, with Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards appointing
a majority of its members.
This piqued the interest of the lead author, outgoing head of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Donald
Boesch, of one of the studies used. In a letter
to the editor, he agreed that the 198 cm SLR maximum in the report was “unlikely,
at least during this century, based on my appraisal of the latest science,”
although opining that lower estimates on which the report based conclusions
seemed serious enough.
