Informally, LA gubernatorial jockeying begins

And, they’re off! With Republican Treas. John Schroder’s informal announcement that he’ll vie for the Governor’s Mansion next year, the highway to there has started to populate.

Schroder apparently sent to supporters notice that he will run, also saying a formal announcement would follow in the not-distant future. Up to last year, he had raised more money for a future campaign than most state politicians, and reports due out soon likely will show a noticeable acceleration there.

He joins others of the GOP, Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, as notable fundraisers from last year, who like him also seem destined to rack up more impressive numbers for 2021. Almost certainly the pair will join him at some point.

Reject bill that misunderstands property rights

When a legislator fundamentally misunderstands the nature of property rights, he produces a bill like Republican state Rep. Paul Hollis’ HB 9.

The bill cued up for the 2022 Regular Session would negate large swaths of homeowner association rules, although no one can say for sure just how extensively because of its incredibly broad language. It would make null and void any provision of a community document which restricts a “constitutional right” of a lot owner or a person residing in a residential planned community.

He provided an explanation for its filing, calling it a response to HOAs selectively enforcing rules, essentially by getting rid of rules that don’t deal with matters such as entry, common areas, maintenance, security and the like subject to enforcement. He also said he planned on filing a bill that would allow for owner in the boundaries of an association to withdraw from it.

Bogus argument behind left's BESE gerrymander

For the political left, sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Rather, it’s heads they win, tails you lose when it comes to gerrymandering Louisiana election districts.

Groups allied with Louisiana Democrats have shown great willingness to manipulate rules to get their desired ends on this issue. They have delivered a steady drumbeat demanding, and threatening, how the state must draw two minority-majority districts for the U.S. House of Representatives for elections later this year, saying because with a state population just about one-third black thus blacks should have constituent majorities in those many districts of six.

Never mind that, because most of the state’s black population resides in large cities distant from one another and along the Mississippi River, to draw a second such district would produce such oddly-shaped boundaries among multiple districts connecting areas hundreds of miles apart with little in common other than race as to make any plan like this constitutionally suspect. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled race cannot be such a prominent factor in drawing lines as to render several other criteria essentially meaningless.

Blacks to dominate candidacies of LA Democrats

Developments in this year’s Louisiana U.S. Senate contest ensure that, barring extraordinary circumstances, Democrats won’t win a statewide election for years, perhaps even a generation.

In the past quarter-century, the party recognized it had a problem. The national party’s relentless march to the political left, the rollout of the Internet that began eroding mainstream media domination of the political communication universe, and rising educational attainment among the population encouraging greater knowledge of and use of critical thinking in evaluating politics, detached increasing numbers particularly of white voters from voting for the party’s candidates, as increasingly the electorate understood preferences identified with the party went against their own self-interests.

State Democrats responded by trying to control candidate entry, especially by discouraging black candidates from running statewide with the 1995 gubernatorial election as ground zero. There, black Democrat former Rep. Cleo Fields aced out white Democrat Treasurer Mary Landrieu from a runoff against new Republican state Sen. Mike Foster. When Foster crushed Fields in the runoff, this brought home fears that a black candidate – more easily perceived by the electorate, both black and white, as farther to the left thus turning off Louisiana’s center-right white majority – if making a runoff would set up Democrats to fail.

LA's 15th casino license looks set to sink

Bossier City and Louisiana soon will discover the limits of casino gambling as a source of economic development and government revenue with one of the state’s most venerable riverboat operations on the cusp of sinking and perhaps unsalvageable.

In May, 2020 the city’s DiamondJacks casino – the fourth-oldest continually-operating in the state and longest under the same license – announced it would shut its doors permanently, a victim of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic caused by having the most co-morbid condition of all 15 licensees. It regularly competed for the sickest man of Louisiana casinos with the small-market Amelia Belle and the Baton Rouge market’s version of the canary in coal mine warning of market saturation, the Belle of Baton Rouge.

As the Isle of Capri it started off strongly almost three decades ago, and as late as the end of the century ran up $123 million in revenues that year. But it went out with a whimper, having just a fifth of those revenues when fiscal year 2020 closed its books and the lowest revenue per admission.

Shreveport carefree spending LA should reject

Louisiana definitely doesn’t need to emulate Shreveport when it comes to disposing of the bonus generated by hyperinflated, live for today by paying for it tomorrow economic policy of Washington Democrats.

As recently noted, the largesse from huge national debt-fueled spending has created a false economy windfall for state and local governments, with Louisiana running big surpluses from forecast revenue levels. Of course, it will end soon and with lower economic growth nationwide in the future because of higher debt levels while the outsized price inflation from it will hit people and governments sooner.

Louisiana will benefit in the short term from revenue picked up by cramming borrowed money through the economy, but with known big one-time expenses on the horizon and policy changes set to reduce tax revenues for operating expenses, its best course of action would put the bonus to use in fulfilling those looming costs and not to make new commitments. If only Shreveport would have done the same.

LA must resist blowing bounty on new spending

Louisiana lawmakers need to pay close attention to the fable of the ants and the grasshopper as they ponder the latest fiscal news.

This week, the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference came up with some rosy numbers, courtesy of the debt-fueled binge by Washington Democrats. The country is paying for it now with accelerating inflation and later with reduced future economic growth, but at the state and local level it has produced a false economy, both by direct cash grants and squeezing more inflated dollars through the economic pipeline, that is here today and will go away tomorrow.

For Louisiana, that equates to around $1.3 billion in unallocated funds directable to Wuhan coronavirus pandemic aid for the next few years, a portion of which can supplement state and local public safety, education, and social service ongoing spending, as well as nearly $850 million more for state spending generated by its own sources in excess of past predictions (after taking off the top $275 million dedicated to liabilities reduction and revenue sharing). In addition, the REC said for this year another $1 billion would be collected in excess of forecasts, although this batch essentially can’t go to operating expenses.

Better policy, not wall, solution to GSU crime

Lawmakers should give a thumbs down to walling off Grambling State University from surrounding Grambling.

Last week, Democrat Grambling Mayor Ed Jones issued a public complaint about the university’s plans to spend $18 million on a security barrier that would envelop the campus. Last month, the University of Louisiana System formally added the proposal to the five-year capital outlay request for the school, staring next fiscal year. Legislators then would have to approve.

The item, fronted by Democrat former state Rep. Rick Gallot who now presides over GSU, comes as the institution’s response to several shootings on campus over the past few years. Most notably, two occurred in the space of days last October, resulting in a death and several injuries. While one of these occurred in the course of but not at Homecoming festivities, in the quadrangle area, and the other outside a heavily-trafficked building although both after midnight, the principals involved weren’t students nor from Grambling; one was a minor.

LSU surpasses woke with police state tactics

Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge has one-upped most woke universities. It’s demonstrating vividly the inevitable extension of wokeness: living in a police state.

As it and other Louisiana higher education institutions start the 2022 year of instruction, it continues its Wuhan coronavirus vaccine passport regime, which means either having a relatively unaged vaccination or recent negative test. For now, it requires face coverings indoors or on buses and within 50 feet of a building entrance. Passport violation results in student disenrollment and employee discipline.

That such measures have little to do with protecting the public goes without saying. The science consistently has noted that mask mandates don’t really affect transmission, that it is next to impossible to transmit the virus outdoors unless people are on top of each other for an extended period, and vaccination doesn’t prevent transmission especially in closed environments of lengthy co-mingling.

LA era of legal ganja sales compounds problems

The dawn of all-but-in-name marijuana legalization in Louisiana is the last thing needed in a state whose social norms hold back achievement and invite addictive behavior to decrease its citizens’ quality of life.

At the start of the year, laws where almost anything goes in making ganja available legally kicked in. Any physician in the state now can “recommend” (not “prescribe,” to prevent running afoul of federal law) smokable street-potent leaf theoretically in dealer-like quantities to anyone for any presumed ailment, despite the fact that medical research reveals only a small set of maladies have positive outcomes associated with cannabis use.

Most Louisiana doctors won’t go along, much less authorize a large amount. But some will, and shamelessly so. If a small coterie essentially created pill mills at far higher legal risk (and notoriously enough so that a whole television series came from these), don’t think a larger contingent won’t grasp at this opportunity, with the easy money available from consultation fees, and all legal.