Don't do this when cancel culture comes calling

In northwest Louisiana cancel culture strikes again, providing another object lesson that confession in response doesn’t necessarily do the soul nor the bottom line good, but only emboldens the mob.

Last week, the Caddo Parish weekly Focus SB/Inquisitor – a combined publication with one half dealing with community events, news, and opinion and the other replete with crime stories and mugshots of the jailed (as the masthead of that side of the paper warns, “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen”) – published an editorial by owner John Settle. Formerly a lawyer, for many years he peppered local media with opinion pieces until purchasing The Inquisitor in 2019 and expanded it from its scandal sheet roots, giving him a chance to blast away through his own print forum. (When the change came, for several months I was employed as an opinion writer by the revamped publication.)

While Settle certainly has his favorites among local politicians, he takes a very uncompromising view on government transparency, with his critical comments at one point leading Bossier City Attorney Charles Jacobs to wish Settle would have an up close and personal encounter with a Zamboni ice-cleaning vehicle. As it turns out, this would have been preferred to what hit him as a result of the recent column, which delivered a laundry list of do’s and don’ts and general advice for councilor candidates in Shreveport’s upcoming elections.

Expected power play won't impact 2023 races

The springing of the expected power play won’t change a thing for Louisiana House and Senate election districts enacted for 2023 elections, and likely for the remainder of the decade.

With the decision by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards not to veto special session bills that reapportioned each chamber, this triggered special interests to sue over maps that barely added any majority-minority districts over what exists currently demographically. With an increase in black population statewide to about a third and with the proportion of M/M districts in the upcoming maps in each chamber below 30 percent, the suit alleges this violates the law and calls for injunctive relief in the form of forcing new plans from the Legislature, and if that doesn’t suit them quickly enough then to use the judiciary to write plans to their liking that would add several new M/M districts to each chamber.

The thin case on which this resides asks the federal judiciary to disregard current jurisprudence on redistricting, contrary to the one-sided arguments the plaintiffs make. The sleight of hand they demand, which would represent a sea change in constitutional doctrine on the matter, gives race primacy over all factors in reapportionment where a cohesive minority exists, to the point that courts would define adequate minority representation as roughly the same proportion of M/M districts as that minority population living in the jurisdiction, dismissing all other valuable factors such as maintaining community of interests and compactness that the federal judiciary for decades have backed as inputs to drawing districts.

LA finally free from misguided virus policies

Free at last, Louisianans are free at last – from a shackling not necessary for at least a year-and-a-half, courtesy of how Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards botched the policy response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, with huge consequences.

At the State of the State address earlier this week, Edwards announced this week the series of emergency declarations he had issued appertaining to the pandemic finally would expire. It became the 41^st state to do so, and not coincidentally all others still with some statewide restrictions Democrats helm as governors.

Which puts Louisiana about 40 states behind where it should have been. The early days of the pandemic two years ago featured a rapidly-spreading virus with little information about it, so understandably taking drastic measures in fearing the worst didn’t seem unreasonable. The theory then was by halting a great deal of interactivity, including most commercial interaction and all schooling, for a few weeks with adequate contact tracing this would isolate transmission enough to cut off spreading.

Edwards speech reflects ignorance, hypocrisy

In his 2022 State of the State speech, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards reminded listeners of how after six years in office he has learned nothing about good governance, or even how to pursue public policy that benefits Louisiana instead of spreading the stench of politicized hypocrisy.

In this explanation of his agenda at the start of the Legislature’s regular session, about his only reasonable proposal came in his thoughts about utilizing the non-recurring portion of state funds derived from the debt-driven, inflation-inducing firehose of money coming from a Washington controlled by his party. This he asked to earmark for some major infrastructure items, looming debt to the federal government for coastal restoration, and to replenish the unemployment insurance trust fund to avoid large interest payments.

As for recurring monies, he lapsed into his familiar grasshopper foolishness. He fronted a number of items expanding government, ignoring that the false economy boosting revenues will diminish in short order, that a recent tax reshuffle will reduce general fund dollars available in the future, and that the temporary sales tax hike he instigated will roll off the books not long after he leaves office. Hence, the state can afford little if any in the way of new commitments.

Chavez copying Ellis best to negate Perkins

The entry of Republican Caddo Parish Commissioner Mario Chavez into Shreveport’s mayoral contest likely would be the only way incumbent Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins doesn’t win reelection – by Chavez not running as a Republican.

Last week, Chavez announced his intention. His makes for the fourth such entrance, joining in challenging Perkins another commissioner, Republican Jim Taliaferro who also ran in 2018, and former city councilor Tom Arceneaux of the GOP.

However, Chavez gave every indication he would eschew his partisan label in this race, even if that party very much is the strong conservative’s natural political home. He wisely would do so, following the Friday Ellis gambit.

Edwards expected actions set maps through 2023

Predictably, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards has given Louisiana’s state majoritarian institutions new maps that don’t change much and a congressional map that will look exactly the same for this fall’s elections.

Edwards managed this combination by vetoing the identical bills from the recently-concluded special session on reapportionment that left congressional districts largely the same in producing one majority-minority district of the six, letting go into law bills drawing up the Legislature, and signing bills concerning the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Public Service Commission. The bills addressing each legislative chamber effectively add one M/M seat to each while the BESE arrangement keeps two such districts of eight and the PSC retains its one of five.

Special interests and Democrats saw differently the products of the Republican-run Legislature, with that party’s Senate supermajority plus one seat and its being only two seats shy of a House supermajority. They wanted another BESE M/M district and at least one more in each legislative chamber, besides the extra such seat in Congress. But vetoes to reflect those desires never were in the cards, for two reasons.

Expanding term limits would break new ground

Legislators, and perhaps voters, will have a chance to redefine conceptually what terms limits mean under a bill amending the Constitution to impose such limits on sheriffs and tax assessors.

HB 199 by Democrat state Rep. Mandie Landry would give a parish’s top law enforcement officer and tax collector up to three consecutive terms in office, and the same for assessors in her HB 288. As a rationale for limiting sheriffs, she complains that “You have a lot of power over money, over law enforcement, over all politics … centered in one person. And to know there is no end in sight really, really puts a lot of power in those two hands.” And, she may just be getting started, expressing a desire to extend limits to all elected offices.

Let’s slow down and think about this. At present, the constitution imposes term limits on only four kinds of officers: the governor, legislators, members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and public service commissioners. A sort of limit exists on judges in that they can’t run for this kind of office past the age of 70, but that doesn’t stem from the argument that staying in power too long can have detrimental policy effects but that advanced age may impair adjudicatory skills.

LA should conserve, not blow, bonus oil bucks

Now isn’t the time for Louisiana to blow another bounty, a sentiment that must triumph in the upcoming regular session of the Legislature in the face of yet another temptation.

Largesse has come the state’s way through a firehose of federal aid fed by an orgy of debt indulged in by Washington Democrats under the guise of response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. That has boosted state tax coffers to produce hundreds of millions more of additional dollars for next year’s budget, plus something similar in direct grants that to some extent can offset existing state sources needed for operating expenses.

All this extra dough has Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and his minority legislative party salivating to go on a spending spree, an unwise proposition given large one-time expenditures that loom within the next couple of years, plus that not long after the sales tax hike engineered by Edwards in his first term will roll off the books. The GOP majority party in the Legislature would do best to make few, if any, new commitments in order to prepare for these fiscal realities.

Convention bill empowers elites, not people

It’s a needed solution, but as always the execution of the idea matters and that’s where, to date, Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee’s constitutional convention bill HB 259 fails.

The bill follows in the footsteps of many that failed to reach their destination, all proposed over the past three decades. The last major effort to do so occurred two years ago and went nowhere, although descendance of the Wuhan coronavirus certainly played a part in that.

This was HB 680 by GOP state Rep. Mark Wright, which would have opened up the whole document for revision. While perhaps wholesale changes being optimal, politically speaking that would have decreased chances for passage, for as among political elites there seems widespread agreement that big changes must come, specific agreement breaks down over ideology. Democrats don’t want fiscal changes that reduce state government’s ability to tax and spend so they rather like the inflexibility inherent to the current document in this policy area – the precise area that conservatives see as a hindrance. However, conservatives split among the need to change, or inviting change they don’t see as needed in, other policy areas, which combined with leftists’ disdain has thwarted past comprehensive efforts.

Term limit extension against people's agenda

Republican state Rep. Stuart Bishop’s HB 205 that would bump up from three to four term limitations on legislators doesn’t create better policy-making, but does slake the appetites of politicians.

Bishop, himself term-limited for whom the bill wouldn’t apply, to justify the extension trots out the old and tired argument that a lot of “institutional knowledge” goes up the road when legislators hit the limit, which then allegedly passes control of matters more into the hands of special interests and staff. It’s yet another affirmation that elected officials are like man-eating lions: like with humans for big cats, the taste of power is foreign to them until they have some, and then they acquire a taste for it to the point they must have more.

The argument to increase limits has so many holes in it, beginning with the assumption that, in his formulation, a dozen years isn’t enough to grasp the inner workings of the legislator’s job. Yet, according to him, 13 (at least; it could be all the way to 16) is the magic number. Why 13 instead of 12? And not even his own allies agree; GOP state Rep. Barry Ivey has argued that some matters simply are beyond the time and energy a legislator has at any point in a legislative career, forcing too much dependence necessarily on staff and lobbyists no matter how long you’ve been there.