While recent publicity about Louisiana State University’s
Baton Rouge campus lowering its admissions standards has
caught people’s attention, state universities doing this neither is new nor
may end with LSU.
LSU announced it would institute holistic admissions,
or removing fixed standardized test score minimum requirements, in favor of adding
in essays, recommendations, and potentially other inputs to make a decision on
admission. Designated as a “flagship” university according to the Board of
Regents, most students don’t receive consideration unless they score at least a
25 on the American College Test, although in some
circumstances that score can be as low as 22.
The institution can do this because it set its own
standards prior to the creation of the three-tiered
categorization system first implemented in 1990. The Regents wanted to give
each level its own distinct mission that would suit best the needs of students
at varying levels of development.
Louisiana environmentalist tinpot totalitarians got
a taste of their own aggressive medicine, and they didn’t like it.
Such individuals, operating through a group called
L'eau Est La Vie Camp, have run
afoul of a new law
that, under felony penalties, prevents interference with construction and
operation of pipelines. Utilizing the new statute, authorities have arrested a
baker’s dozen trying to obstruct building of the Bayou Bridge pipeline.
Along the way, some of those arrested may have
encountered government overreach. Some arrests, while legal, appear to have exceeded
a state mandate for personnel use, which caused the state to withdraw off-duty
law enforcement officials working on pipeline security. Others arrests may have
occurred on land where questions
have arisen about whether the builders have legal rights-of-way, which the
courts may have to sort out.
Political campaigning for elections later in the
year generally picks up after Labor Day. But, regardless of impending 2018 contests,
it appears some Louisiana
politicians have decided to beat the rush for 2019 and start more than a
year out.
In the case of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
that’s an understatement. Edwards has run a perpetual campaign that never
stopped after his 2015 win. Trust him to take an issue no matter how unrelated
to his political fortunes and find a way to appropriate it to achieve his next
goal, in this case reelection.
Several states have launched investigations into
alleged coverups of patterns of abuse by Catholic priests and others associated
with the Church. In Louisiana, Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, in response to
queries, said his office did not have the authority to do such a thing until it
received a criminal complaint forwarded by a local law enforcement agency.
Why shouldn’t a local government just do it to strike
a blow against a culture of narcissism?
Last
week, in a move that doesn’t appear to have its origins in
publicity-seeking, Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn dispersed a memo to donors of apparel
and equipment for the city to use in parks and recreation. It requires city
approval of such items and bans outright anything from Nike.
While the letter doesn’t mention the event
specifically, recently the company started a marketing campaign honoring the 30th
anniversary of its “Just Do It” slogan. This featured one of its representatives
for the next several years, who will receive a reported tens of millions of
dollars million for his trouble: Colin Kaepernick, an ex-professional football
quarterback known for having one good season and a penchant for using the pregame
playing of the National Anthem as a prop to air personal grievances against his
country’s policies and political system.
What to do with drag queens hosted by public
libraries?
Publicity over story times for children featuring
transvestites provoked the citizenry in one large Louisiana city, while it
largely elicited a yawn in the state’s largest city. In Lafayette,
many in the public expressed concern over the concept, and opposition by
Mayor-President Joel Robideaux
led to the resignation of his appointee to the board that runs parish
libraries. By contrast, similar events in New
Orleans haven’t generated any real controversy.
A board of appointees from local government entities
govern Lafayette’s libraries. It receives about $1.4
million in general fund money from the city and another $14
million from the parish, mostly from a dedicated property tax. In New
Orleans, a dedicated property tax is forecast to pump over $18 million
into its libraries, governed by a board of mayoral appointees.
It has become increasingly clear that change must
come to the Ernest N. Morial New
Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority’s greased path to raising and spending
money.
In
recent years, a steady drumbeat of questions has risen over the
ever-increasing pot of money that the organization, which runs the city’s Convention
Center and Exhibition Hall, sits on. At the close of 2017,
it had over $150 million lying around in cash equivalents and for many years running
its revenues have exceeded its expenses by over $20 million annually.
That’s due to taxes which, if there’s any real
need to collect these in the first place, should better go to other pressing
priorities. Instead, with so much dough rolling in the Authority spends some on
matters that have nothing to do with its functions such as nearby roads and
public safety as a kind of peace offering to New Orleans, and banks the rest
with an eye on tremendous pie-in-the-sky capital projects that stray
further and further away from its actual footprint and/or mission.
Yes, taxpayers must pony up more for north Louisiana
charity hospital services. But because that largesse on a continuing basis comes
from the federal level, that begs a very interesting political question.
Last
month, this column mused about the financial ramifications of a pending
deal on University Health hospitals in Shreveport and Monroe. For months, the
state has sought a takeover of these from BRF, and last
week the deal finally came to fruition. Beginning Oct. 1, a combination of
the Louisiana State University System and Ochsner Health System would run both.
The former runs and owns entirely Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center, and the
latter operates Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center.
Legislators had gotten wind that the deal would
throw more money to the new operators. This seemed odd, as the Gov. John Bel Edwards
Administration previously
had cut subsidies to operators, maintaining the existing deals – thrown together
hastily as the state had to respond to a large federal government retrenchment
in health care aid – paid too much.
If in fact Louisiana politics are evolving into so-called
“Washington-style” politics, it seems that has extended to “first spouse” as
well.
Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
makes an incessant talking point about allegedly more conflict developing
between partisans in the Legislature. Of course, he defines “partisanship” in a
nonstandard way, coming when you disagree with him on something, but he is
correct in that Louisiana is evolving away from a more personalistic style of
politics to one more driven by issue preferences that has marked politics in
the nation’s capital for much of the national government’s existence.
But it seems another “Washington” aspect has crept
into Louisiana’s political scene, that being the unprecedented political
activism of First Lady Donna Edwards. Until
her family moved into the Governor’s Mansion, gubernatorial spouses, if ever
seen and heard, didn’t involve themselves in issuing political statements over
any controversial issue.
