Bossier City voters must reject stealth tax hike

The timing is bad, but the idea worse, for a Louisiana local government like Bossier City to ask for a tax hike on citizens.

Next Saturday elections will occur in most parishes in Louisiana three months later than intended. Almost all of these feature local runoffs, tax renewals, or requesting new funding for a bond issue. Uniquely among large jurisdictions, Bossier City asks for a property tax increase.

Not that city politicians wanted to make that obvious in order to increase the chances of the measure passing, as the ballot wording indicates: should the city

Edwards wants taxpayers liable for his mistakes

With news of a federal government deal on unemployment benefits in the offing, Democrat Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards went to the liberal playbook to pull out a classic tactic to cover up for his mistakes.

Congressional House Democrats and Senate Republicans with GOP Pres. Donald Trump have agreed in principle to slather on more taxpayer largesse soon after the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits expire at the end of this week. Currently, that means in Louisiana someone who asserts he is looking for work – which by the numbers includes people who weren’t until the bonus became law – can make as much as $847 a week for idleness, which is 92 percent of the state’s median household income for 2018.

The current approach theoretically, as well as anecdotally, has a tremendous moral hazard problem of essentially creating a universal basic income at a relatively high level. This creates a disincentive to work that has caused employers to shut down permanently as well as spawned resentment among those still working.

LA Democrats extend non-labeled strategy

Reviewing Louisiana’s contests this fall for the Supreme Court and Public Service Commission, whether to act as a stealth Democrat and whether that will cost a candidate are questions that will be answered.

A growing trend in Louisiana, which first began in local contests in the northern part of the state but increasingly has become visible statewide, is for Democrats to run for office without a party label or as an independent, or even calling themselves Republicans. This way, they try not to turn off potential voters who increasingly register as Republicans that turn up their noses at any Democrat while using labelling or other means to signal to faithful remaining Democrats that they are safe to vote for.

In some places, that tactic is irrelevant. For the 7^th Supreme Court District contest to replace retiring Democrat Chief Justice Bernette Johnson, which comprises Orleans and some of Jefferson Parish, with a large black and Democrat majority only a Democrat can win. It has three largely interchangeable black Democrat women jostling to replace Johnson – Appellate Judge Sandra Cabrina Jenkins, Orleans Civil Judge Piper Griffin, and Appellate Judge Teri Love.

CD 5 tight; other LA federal races snoozers

It looks like all but one of the federal election contests in Louisiana will turn out to be electoral yawners, although with more drama spread around.

There’ll be no drama, but déjà vu, in the First Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Steve Scalise will meet two retreads, and win just as decisively as always. Second CD Democrat Rep. Cedric Richmond also drew a retread and also several newcomers among them two Republicans challenging him for the first time in eight years, but he’ll still win easily.

Third CD Republican Rep. Clay Higgins also doesn’t look to encounter much trouble. Democrats didn’t want to let the outspoken disruptor go without more than token opposition so enter pastor and nonprofit manager Braylon Harris, who has a slick web presence but little in the way of resources. Still, if any congressional incumbent gets held below 60 percent, it likely would be in this race given Higgins’ bombastic style that might turn off some voters and the presence of two other minor candidates in the contest.

NW LA contests to test partisanship power

While the judicial cycle has come around to tag onto this time the presidential contest, state and local races in Caddo Parish have a bit of intrigue that will reveal the power of partisan perceptions.

Every six years all state district court and some appellate court jobs come open. Additionally, local justice of the peace, constable, and many municipal judgeships also are contested. Thus, every other time they compete with the presidential race, in contrast to only House contests (and Senate races two out of every three times).

Regardless, Bossier Parish and Bossier City, the land of the super-apathetic citizenry, displayed its typical slate of nearly-universal uncontested, Republican-incumbent contests. None of the six 26^th District (the district also incorporates Webster Parish) divisions had anything but a GOP incumbent running, nor did Republican District Attorney Schuyler Marvin pick up an opponent.

Perkins Senate run may backfire politically

The big question was whether Democrat Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins would throw his hat into the ring for U.S. Senate. His affirmative announcement doesn’t answer all the questions.

Because behind the question of whether somebody runs is why. You run only for a reason, the most of trite of which is you want to win. Even though incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy has good polling numbers and lots of dough to fend off any challenger, you can’t win if you don’t play, and maybe something weird would happen that could allow Perkins to win.

However, that’s subject to cost-benefit calculations. Simply, you run if you think you’ll get more out of it than what it costs you, politically. Part of the benefits come from winning, but tempered by your expectancy of victory. In Perkins’ case, unless deluded or unquestioningly taking some very bad advice, he must know his chances aren’t great.

On virus, Edwards still ignoring data, science

Passing through another policy inflection point, evidence continues to mount that Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and his Administration haven’t responded competently to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic in Louisiana.

When in the world of the hard or soft sciences a researcher discovers a significant outlier, it often behooves further investigation to understand the phenomenon under study. Considering Louisiana by the reported numbers, its pandemic response truly stands out – and not in a good way.

The state, with a handful of others, the virus hit hard early. In these instances, all had events and commercial patterns that brought a lot of visitors to them and provided opportunities for them to congregate; in Louisiana’s case, Carnival. Since then, almost all have ratcheted down the early spikes in cases and hospitalizations.

Monroe mayor result hard to replicate for GOP

Does Monroe’s recent mayoral election provide a model for Louisiana Republicans to follow to take back governance of many of the state’s large cities?

Last week, independent Friday Ellis not only defeated 19-year incumbent Democrat Mayor Jamie Mayo, but he did it without needing a runoff. And he did it as a white candidate in a constituency with 63 percent black registration.

Ellis – military veteran, former city employee, small business owner – at first would seem typical of the low-profile candidates who almost exclusively challenged Mayo since his winning a special election in 2001 and whom Mayo usually brushed aside easily. But Mayo was more vulnerable this year than most.

LA on brink of huge new spending commitment

Lost in the counterproductive Wuhan coronavirus pandemic policy of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards is how it further kicks and enlarges Louisiana’s unemployment insurance bill down the road.

With his declaration last week that rolled back ceilings on gatherings, closed bars, and required wearing of face coverings in public places that he said would address rapidly increasing positive infection case numbers and declining hospital capacities, he also threw another monkey wrench into one of the worst state economies already hampered by business restrictions. Its latest unemployment rate of 9.7 percent more than doubled last year’s at this time. Worse, its employment/population ratio fell below 50 percent and was the nation’s seventh worst, indicating a disproportionate part of the working-age population had exited the workforce entirely.

As a result, the state has drawn deeply upon its unemployment insurance reserves, about halving the balance it had with the federal government in the past three months. The only bright spot is it has emptied a bit slower than anticipated, with the latest numbers indicating it won’t have to borrow from the federal government until the end of September.

Perkins challenge Cassidy? Not so fast ...

The weakest link in a purported plan for Louisiana Democrats to front Democrat Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins as a Senate pump-primer is his willingness to go along with the deal.

As qualifying for the fall Senate election for Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy’s seat looms, no Democrat of any significance has signaled intent to challenge him. No major party likes to give a free pass to an incumbent from the other in either gubernatorial or senatorial contests because you have to keep giving your voters a reason to call themselves your voters. Making them troop habitually to the polls by serving up candidates with at least a chance of winning, however remote, keeps the ground fertile for future opportunities to flip that office.

Thus has circulated the idea that, to offer up somebody who could pull more than a quarter of the vote, Democrat donors and activists led by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards have pressured Perkins to challenge Cassidy. Not only could this provide a quality candidate, given Perkins’ current status, but it also would provide a public relations boost for state Democrats because, despite blacks having comprised the majority of the party’s base for years, its leadership only once has given serious backing from the start to a black candidate in a major statewide contest – convicted former Rep. Bill Jefferson’s run for governor in 1999. Even within the past three years, getting it to rally behind a black candidate for any statewide office has been like pulling teeth.