Fantasy virus ending continues needless pain

Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards continues to fight the last war, unable if not unwilling to surrender the zero COVID fantasy underpinning his political party’s and liberalism’s ideological assault.

This week, Edwards continued a face covering mandate until Oct. 27 in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. This came despite new case growth slowing dramatically and, of course, relies on suspension of disbelief when it comes to the efficacy of mask mandates in the first place; at the micro level, masks do a moderate to poor job of stopping transmission, and at the macro level mandates fail to have any measurable positive effect because the attenuated micro impact is diluted further by improper wearing and not wearing. Worst of all, potentially physically but certainly psychologically mask wearing harms children, and Edwards’ order extends to any kids in school.

Most importantly, at a theoretical level, insistence on this mandate betrays propagation of the belief that public policy can eradicate the virus. If you understand, as health officials in other countries increasingly have come to, that this horse left the barn a long time ago and the virus is now endemic, mandates do nothing; certainly individuals can wear them for their own protection, as little as this may provide, but doing this will not alone, nor in combination with anything and everything, wipe out the virus. That’s why public health authorities increasingly have ditched them, even in jurisdictions with higher case rates.

Caddo overtaking NO as most ridiculous LA govt

It looks like New Orleans has competition for the most ridiculously leftist local government in Louisiana – Caddo Parish.

Because on one important metric – implementing a pilot program for a universal basic income – while Orleans has talked a good game, Caddo has walked the walk, pulling along its main population center of Shreveport. Last year, both New Orleans and Shreveport’s mayors signed up for participation in this program organized by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (headed by a former mayor turned out of office because of his support of ideas like this) with money donated largely by Jack Dorsey, Twitter and Square founder.

The idea of paying every family a fixed amount of money every month, when as a sole means of income security without any additional public welfare programs, isn’t bad. But this program seeks not to replace but to supplement existing programs, to negative effect as research has demonstrated. Nevertheless, in the middle of a statewide drubbing in his running for U.S. senator, Shreveport Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins signed on, later joined by Democrat New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

Better guidance needed to avoid tragedy

The frustration Louisiana legislators have with the Department of Health must turn into regulation and legislation that protects better vulnerable patients in nursing homes.

Last week, a joint committee that oversees Medicaid service provision met to review the tragedy surrounding several nursing homes that evacuated clients to decrepit facilities with the coping of Hurricane Ida. Over a dozen have died since, although at this point only the perishing of five has been attributed directly to occurrences at the evacuation site.

That site essentially was a warehouse ill-equipped to handle over 800 patients, with a number of them designated under the Louisiana Administrative Code Tit. 48 Sec. 9767 as code “red” or high-risk, intensive need patients. Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry has opened an investigation as to whether criminal charges should come over the incident, while Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, whose office ultimately oversees the department, also said scrutinization was in the offing.

Partisan Campbell hypocritically chides GOP

When Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell penned his latest jeremiad about partisan political actions, no doubt he stood in front of a mirror to get a good idea of what a political partisan looks like, and a hypocritical one at that.

Campbell recently fobbed off an opinion piece onto some northwest Louisiana media outlets, in it complaining about Louisiana Republicans elected to Congress. He wrote that the state needed federal disaster aid owing to a string of destructive storms, but that its House Republican members voted against a bill that contained such relief. He alleged that these highly-paid representatives turned their backs on constituents due to GOP orders, letting partisanship get in the way of fulfilling the state’s needs.

Then there’s the rest of the story that Campbell deliberately leaves out. The bill to which he referred has as just one part authorization to spend on disaster-related matters. It also extends several expiring programs and continues funding federal government activities, with the existing budget expiring at the end of this month, through Dec. 3 at those current levels.

Bring virus policy sanity, emulate Scandinavia

The political left of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards often points to the more-taxing, freer-spending, greater-regulated Scandinavian states as worth emulating. In Louisiana, Edwards needs to put his money where his fellow ideologues mouths are by following Scandinavia on Wuhan coronavirus pandemic policy.

Last week, Norway joined Denmark in stripping just about every restriction placed on their societies and economies designed to combat the virus. Over the past 18 months, each varied tremendously in response where at some points they had so few as to emulate almost entirely restriction-less Sweden and then at other times (briefly) clamped down as hard as the current vaccine passport regime in New Orleans. But now just about all restraints are gone, unless a future huge spike in cases occurs. For its part, Sweden already has announced it will join them in ridding its few at the end of the month.

Health officials in these countries noted higher vaccination rates, such as having at least half of people over age 50 with complete immunization, led them to begin dispensing with restrictions over a month ago. Most notably, Norway’s official in charge in assessing the danger presented by the virus has proposed terming it a as one of several respiratory illnesses with seasonal variation, much like influenza.

LA should vote aye on three crucial amendments

Had Louisiana’s fall elections remained at their original dates, early voting for the general election would be in the offing. That has been kicked back over a month because of the change necessitated by Hurricane Ida, but mail-in voting has been open for about a month, so now’s as good as any time to review the four constitutional amendments on the ballot now scheduled for Nov. 13. Regardless of when, these offer some easy decisions.

Amendment #1 – creates a commission consolidating two existing overseers of the state’s highly decentralized sales tax collection system that would permit centralized filing of sales taxes then distributed to state and local entities, after implementing legislation passes. This would ease greatly business compliance costs, both in administrative submissions and in dealing with multiple taxing agency jurisdictions, such as with audits. It’s a slam dunk. Yes.

Amendment #2 – sets the stage to engineer a tax swap of lower income taxes for inability to deduct federal income taxes from those. The amendment itself sets the individual rate ceiling at 4.75 percent, down from 6, and jettisons required deductibility, but a whole raft of companion legislation triggers on its passage. Under this legislation, the statutory deductibility disappears; individual rate brackets go from 6 to 4.25, 4 to 3.5, and 2 to 1.85 and could go lower the higher the growth rate of state revenues; excess itemized deductions for them disappear except for medical expenses; corporate rate brackets go from five to three by eliminating the highest ones and the rest diminish by a half point; and the corporate franchise tax goes away for the majority of filers and for those remaining still paying can go down further depending upon future state revenue growth.

Enlightened MS choice makes LA seem like joke

The punchline often quoted, out of relief, by Louisianans about Mississippi has gone flat as far as higher education goes.

Conscious of their place as one of the least economically and socially backwards among the states, Louisianans traditionally have reverted to gallows humor to commemorate that distinction. The joke takes a variety of forms, but it always invokes Mississippi as a foil as to a worse place to be. For example, it might take the form of “We might be among the nation’s leaders in unemployment, poverty, and overall health, but at least we’re not Mississippi where they’re just now getting indoor plumbing.”

But recently the Board of Trustees for the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning decided the state’s eight public universities can’t mandate a Wuhan coronavirus vaccine for enrollment or employment at these institutions. It actually stipulated the policy in August, but some confusion over the motion to do so and the language of the measure in its minutes prompted a restatement. It allows an exception for health care-related employees and students.

Cassidy pleads to let him evade responsibility

When Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy voices concern over his party’s messaging for the 2024 elections, he really is delivering his relying on misdirection to promote a 2026 reelection attempt.

Since voting for conviction on impeachment of GOP former Pres. Donald Trump earlier this year, amplified recently by his acceptance of a demonstrably bad spending bill, Cassidy has won Strange New Respect from America’s leftist mainstream media, opening the doors for television appearances from networks in need of a pet conservative who will debase the principles he supposedly holds dear on air when needed. Such an opportunity arose for Cassidy this week on controversy about the fidelity of the 2020 election.

That came up on NBC’s Meet the Press, in the context of Ohio Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez’s retirement in the face of a difficult intraparty battle to retain his seat. As did Cassidy, Gonzalez essentially voted to remove Trump from office – after, of course, Trump already had left office – in voting to send forward the impeachment.

CAGW hysteria advantages LA comparatively

And here’s another trend Louisiana can take advantage of regarding the climate alarmism sweeping the Luddites of the world.

Highlighted recently, Louisiana enjoys an economic comparative advantage in mining cryptocurrency. This opportunity magnified recently when red China, perturbed that the process used so much energy, essentially kicked miners out of the country.

Now another opportunity to reap economic and quality-of-life benefits continues to grow, courtesy of a related development. Elite- and media-driven hype over the most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report – built upon confirmation bias – has ratcheted up fear and panic among the overwhelmingly uninformed public or those of it in denial about the actual science behind climate study. So much among some, in fact, that they despair their current living situations as they envision fires, floods, gales, and possibly hordes of insects as part of their futures promised by their faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

Stuck on stupid woke NO causing own problems

If there’s a textbook example of Louisiana elected officials stuck on stupid, look no further than Democrat New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and her lapdog City Council whose mistakes point to the city’s bleak future.

Cantrell has caught more heat than usual in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida’s blustery attack. The storm plunged the city into darkness for days, an aftermath which itself serves as an indicator of Cantrell’s idiocy because she and the all-Democrat Council have steered deliberately away from provision of reliable power by their fixation on renewable energy.

Yet as this problem became slowly and haltingly resolved, another began to pile up. Trash, and lots of it, some from the storm but also the normal output from households and businesses began accumulating because the city wouldn’t pick it up. Worse, the problem began days prior to Ida’s landfall.