LA shouldn't duplicate laudable TX law

It was brilliant construction and strategy, but there’s no reason for the Louisiana Legislature to rush to special session, or even wait and do it during the 2022 regular session, to implement a potentially life-saving law like the Texas Heartbeat Act.

The law prevents, except for cases of medical emergency, abortion of a fetus with a detectable heartbeat, often in as few as six weeks after gestation. However, state officials can’t enforce it. Instead, in state court any private citizen may engage in a civil action against an offending abortion provider, with damages of at least $10,000 an incident plus fees against those aiding and abetting in the act, but not against the female undergoing termination of the human life inside her.

Passage of the law basically set a trap for anti-life special interests. Because the matter goes to state court, it allows for a much broader assignment of standing. And as it doesn’t involve the state, no government officials may be enjoined in executing the law. Essentially, it makes abortion mills police themselves. And when the law took effect Sep. 1, that’s what those in Texas did by turning away clients.

Shape policy for endemic, not pandemic, virus

To understand the uselessness of the virtue signaling made by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards by the extension of his face covering mandate now in effect, it is necessary to comprehend his entirely mistaken conception, widely shared on the political left, of the course run by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

At an instrumental level, policy studies tell us mask mandates do little to slow the spread of this virus relative to their absence (and much evidence suggests these overall hurt children, who have a greater chance of dying through a lightning strike sometime in their lives than from a virus in their childhood that has an infection fatality rate for the population hardly higher than seasonal influenza). The only thing that does work to a significant degree are economic and social lockdowns, which Edwards is unwilling to do because of the severe public reaction that inevitably would occur.

And the reason this reaction would happen is because, unlike Edwards and many of his leftist friends in power, the public has grasped or is willing to admit the reality why at the theoretical level such policies do more harm to society and the polity than good. This is because such draconian policies misalign with the realities of the present situation.

Politics impedes B.R. refund on Sterling case

Hammered by Hurricane Ida, Baton Rouge government sure could use the millions of dollars it designated for, among others, an indicted child rapist. At least that’s what the federal government’s handling of the Capitol Police fatal shooting of an unarmed protester would indicate.

In 2016, former Metro officer Blane Salamoni shot to death Alton Sterling while the latter struggled against an attempted arrest by the former and another officer. Sterling possessed drugs, had ingested some, and appeared to be reaching for a concealed handgun, which triggered the decision to fire.

Numerous reviews, inside and outside of public safety agencies, determined that while Salamoni deployed tactics questionably that likely served to escalate rather than defuse the situation, his action to fire was reasonable. Nonetheless, the department pressured him successfully to resign, and Sterling relatives sued Baton Rouge for wrongful death, claiming improper training of the officers involved and too much racism tolerated in the department – the officers involved were white and Sterling was black – lead to that outcome.

Ida shows N.O. stuck on stupid with energy

Fortunately, Hurricane Ida largely spared New Orleans from destructiveness of life and property. Unfortunately, New Orleans didn’t save itself from its own politicians’ stupidity in the aftermath.

The entire city plunged into the dark after the storm made landfall, with the only power coming from generators. This included Sewerage and Water Board pumps needed to keep flooding at bay. While power likely will become available within the next few days for the majority of the city, some areas, mostly outside the parish, could take much longer.

The southeastern area of the state, through which Ida ripped, saw about a million customers lose power. Transmission line failure caused this, with Orleans comprising the plurality of people affected. Yet Orleans is exceptionally vulnerable to this because of deliberate policy decisions made by politicians chasing an unnecessary and expensive goal.

Latest LA tragedy exploited to back nonsense

Hurricane Ida has struck Louisiana, plowing inland. Hopefully no deaths or injuries will occur, but property damage will be great. And insult added to injury when catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hucksters try to use the event to popularize their unscientific, destructive agenda.

These acolytes started the drumbeat prior to landfall, and undoubtedly will continue it for the indeterminate future. The hot air they project goes something like this: greenhouse gas emission will hike temperatures, all in the air, land, and oceans, to provide increased fuel for more hurricanes to form, to allow these to strengthen more, and to make them endure longer.

The only problem with this line of reasoning is the scientific evidence doesn’t back it up. Were the above scenarios to play out, this means hurricane data could serve as indicators that increased emissions create CAGW. Setting aside that gas increases seem to show little relationship to temperature changes (and more to other natural phenomena, such as solar activity), the hurricane hypotheses rest upon measurable and significant temperature increases exclusive and unaltered by other natural phenomena, as well as records of storm frequency and intensity.

LA drug message both protects, risks lives

In its warning about the drug ivermectin, Louisiana’s Department of Health both potentially helped protect people and put lives at risk.

Echoing a recent reminder distributed by the national Food and Drug Administration, LDH “strongly” advised not to use this drug, authorized by the FDA for use in humans and animals to battle parasites, for prevention and treatment of the Wuhan coronavirus. Several states have done the same, and reports of increased volumes of calls to a few states’ poison control centers have emerged logging incidents from taking the drug for this purpose and a few precautionary hospitalizations have occurred from this, although no reports of medical intervention have surfaced as a result.

The LDH news release notes that dosage for animals and human differs, that “[u]sing any treatment for COVID-19 that is not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” and urges “do not take ivermectin unless you have a prescription for an FDA-approved use, get it from a legitimate source and take it exactly as prescribed for the condition it was prescribed for.” These kinds of uses ensure a correct dosage and unadulterated product, such as through a compounding pharmacy.

Conservatives rightly flex bond panel muscles

Elections have consequences, and it’s good to see Louisiana’s elected conservative majority break from its typical pattern by stamping its authority onto opponents to try to stop them from doing the wrong thing – even if that majority avers that’s not the intent.

This rare display of power occurred during last week’s State Bond Commission meeting. Usually a sleepy affair, over the past few years it has become perhaps the most visible instrument by which Republicans, who control the Legislature and all statewide elected offices, have used to rein in the leftism of state Democrats led by their only official with power, Gov. John Bel Edwards – despite having huge majorities in both legislative chambers, which until this year largely have hesitated in throwing their weight around.

Most prominently, a couple of years ago it reined in anti-Second Amendment actions by changing its rules to penalize bidders for bond business that discriminated against firearms makers and sellers. Now, it has acted to prod Edwards’ sister-in-arms Democrat New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell into abandoning its useless and counterproductive Wuhan coronavirus pandemic policies.

BESE shirking duty creates campaign issue

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s sudden adjournment last week looks to be on the way to becoming a campaign issue in 2023.

At its regular meeting, BESE rapidly plowed through a number of items witnessed by a much larger than usual audience. A large portion of the attendees didn’t wear masks, in apparent violation of a proclamation by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards ordering face coverings be worn in state office buildings, which included where BESE meets.

After a nearly hour-and-half foray into executive session to discuss the performance of Superintendent Cade Brumley, the body reconvened in public. At that time, Republican Ronnie Morris reminded the audience that matters had to remain orderly or the meeting would be adjourned.

LA print media political relevance fading

So, the Shreveport Times has a new editor; what’s the big deal? Because it clues us in on the direction of Louisiana’s print media and how its ongoing decline will impact state politics.

Understanding the significance requires knowing the bleak context of print media. The rise of the Internet and technology companies that control the bulk of advertising revenue on it have crushed the newspaper industry. Since the mid-aughts, print advertising revenues have plunged by nearly three-quarters, and this is reflected by newsroom staff being cut in half and a quarter of all newspapers have disappeared. Worse, many survivors have become “zombies,” where they hardly generate any hard news, instead relying upon content from elsewhere with local stories largely produced from the outside and many from non-media sources.

The Times is getting there. A quarter century ago, about a decade after the Gannett chain bought it from local owners, in the course of any given year I might have been interviewed by three different Times reporters covering various beats. Now, outside of entertainment and sports, it has just two reporters and an intern to cover the entire metropolitan area. Its daily edition has trouble reaching 30 pages, with almost all of those mainly taken up by advertising and the majority of content in the form of sports or entertainment.

BC councilors putting political careers first

The Bossier City Council shows it remains committed to working for its own members’ interests rather than the people’s, a recent rejection of changing its meeting times confirmed, reinforcing the necessity of term limits for the body.

Republican new at-large member Chris Smith offered up a resolution to change meeting times on the first and third (and fifth if existing) Tuesdays of each month from 3 PM to 6 PM. He argued that it would bring grater citizen participation, both in meeting access and in candidacies to serve on the Council.

Opponents – the rest of the Council – responded with a weak counterargument. They asserted that in the unspecified past the panel had met at that time but with little visible improvement in attendance, backed by almost of citizen communications advocating for the change. And, they claimed, it would cost more with overtime for city employees meeting after the normal work day ended.