Good ESA bills expose LA's big govt hypocrites

If trying to make seismic policy changes, you can’t do it all at once, but where you can start in one instance has brought a bonus of exposing the hypocrisy of the opposition.

Over the past two weeks, the Louisiana House of Representatives has made notable progress in expanding educational choice for deserving families. Last week, it passed on to the Senate HB 33 by Republican state Rep. Phillip Devillier, which establishes education savings accounts (ESA) for children of military families, those in foster care, and students attending D- or F-rated schools that have been denied a transfer to higher-rated schools. ESAs would take an amount equal to the state's average per-pupil allocation as provided in the Minimum Foundation Program formula, considering all student characteristics, and set them aside for family use in education at a qualifying nonpublic school.

Presenting this opportunity to these families seems appropriate. Children with a parent actively serve in the military and in foster families often have to switch schools frequently and can benefit from the extra flexibility the ESA provides. Children who otherwise may qualify for transfer out of poorer-performing schools but who can’t find space at another public school also would have increased options for a better education.

Strain's climate alarmism raises questions

Unless he wises up, if Republican Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain keeps talking about climate change as he did earlier this week, he’s begging to forfeit reelection.

Earlier this week in remarks to the media, Strain addressed this subject. Bidding to make the most obvious statement in the world, he noted, “Climate change is real,” and for the most part it went downhill from there.

Perhaps nobody in the world believes the climate will be static until doomsday, so he really went out on a limb there. Where the debate commences is the role of human activity in that. There’s a lot of bad science on the topic, and where there’s quality its conclusions typically are warped by the media and special interests to serve a political agenda. Best we know is there is a lot we don’t know, but that human activity may or may not significantly affect climate, and even if so, other natural factors that we don’t have the technology to affect almost certainly are far more important drivers of it.

LA must restart trimming burdensome licensing

It’s a great first step, but as longtime observers of Louisiana oversaturated occupational licensing regime have advocated, more needs doing to cut the red tape and bureaucracy plaguing entrepreneurs posed by the state’s tradition of overly aggressive and needless requirements on professions.

Monday, a Louisiana House panel passed to the floor two bills that will ease this regulatory burden at least slightly. HB 639 by Republican state Rep. Thomas Pressly would allow previously incarcerated individuals the chance to petition licensing boards before attending school or training to determine if a past conviction disqualifies them from obtaining a license. HB 597, now HB 1062 by substitute, by Democrat state Rep. Aimee Adatto Freeman would allow individuals to request a review of a regulation from an occupational licensing board to ensure the regulation is the least restrictive method of regulating the occupation.

Both bills try to cut down on the unnecessary hoops to work a trade in the state. HB 639 would prevent situations where somebody spends time and money to train for something and then doesn’t get surprised by a licensing regulation to pursue that trade that excludes ex-convicts. Even more helpfully, it sets up a challenge process that would force licensing boards to justify why a conviction matters and what went into making that determination. Publicizing this could lead to dismantling such requirements where they don’t appear necessary.

Genuine criminal justice reform merits enactment

Now more than ever, changes fronted by Republican state Sen. Jay Morris need to correct mistakes made in the name of criminal justice reform as well as tackle a newer phenomenon threatening public safety.

Five years ago began changes Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards spurred the Legislature to agree upon in the criminal justice system such as reducing sentences, different sentencing, and increased eligibility for release on a periodic (for work release) or permanent basis in the name of cost savings. With fewer people imprisoned and some of the money otherwise spent on that diverted to other programs that supposedly would reduce recidivism, this reputedly “smarter” approach to crime was sold as a way to lower imprisonment numbers, crime rates, and save money all at once.

Half a decade later, evidence on the cost side at least casts doubt on that proposition. The emptying of jails, where in the past local jailers housed roughly half of the state inmate population, hit some sheriffs’ bottom lines hard so they couldn’t cover costs for the larger and newer jails they had built to help incarcerate state prisoners at the previous higher levels, so legislators bumped up the daily rate paid $2 to $26.39 per prisoner. This wiped out the “savings” going back into state coffers.

Dubious bills push LA towards more toking up

Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards might be all right with letting biological males prance around female locker rooms, and the former U.S. Army officer may frown upon allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms without government permission, but despite this he’s the Louisiana politician willing to stand up to Big Ganja?

Louisiana legislators seem determined to rush headlong into all but legalizing marijuana use by making medical herb so widespread and easily available in even the most detrimental and least understood forms. A House of Representatives panel last week advanced several measures that cumulatively accomplish this, despite the fact that medical research consistently has demonstrated few effective medical uses for grass, with the most recent research only compounding that trend as well as noting more definitively undesirable spillover effects, including that medical marijuana use may increase risky use of opioids. Indeed, even the nebulous claim that its use reduces pain has come under serious question.

Yet the state has flung itself into permitting its use in any form for any malady, the charge led by legislators who appear ignorant of the science and would rather rely on selective anecdotal evidence to guide their actions on this issue. Their big move this term has focused on creating more pushers, through a myriad of bills that would create more dispensaries, allow more “recommenders,” deal to out-of-state residents looking to take a hit, and even would demand curb service delivery to users.

As Edwards' power ebbs, his sniveling increases

Let’s just say Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards isn’t taking very well his precipitous and still increasing loss of power well before the end of his term next year.

Signs began last year that a Republican-led Legislature would defy Edwards’ leftist elite cultural views as well as attenuating his agenda to grow government. It sent several bills to his desk, most prominently one that would require that biological females only compete in scholastic and college athletic events restricted to females, that curtailed leftist cultural inroads, as well as held back some debt-fueled federal dollars rained on the state by Democrat-led Washington.

Edwards accepted the slimmer budget but vetoed several measures. However, Republicans triggered the first veto session in state history and nearly overturned the veto of the fairness bill. Then they took the next step earlier this year when they forced reapportionment packages onto Edwards, who felt he had enough power only to veto that for Congress because it included just one majority-minority district instead of two, only to have another veto session called where legislators overrode this, the first such success ever.

Fairness bill shows whether LA politics changed

It’s not often that we have a shot at a natural experiment in the study of politics, but Louisiana will cue up one with a replay of a bill to protect fairness in women’s sports.

SB 44, essentially word for word the same as last year’s SB 156, passed the Senate this week, sending it to the House of Representatives. Both offered by Republican state Sen. Beth Mizell, SB 44 would mandate that biological males at the scholastic or collegiate level couldn’t compete in sporting events designated for biological females. In other words, unless a male had completed the entire process to change physically his sex into female, that person couldn’t compete in sports where only females were allowed.

Last year, SB 156 passed both chambers with a smattering of non-Republican support only to suffer a veto at the hands of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. Then at a historic first-ever veto session, in the House enough Democrats and non-party members defected from their previous vote to sustain the veto.

Unsustainable pay hikes foolish, hypocritical

If you’re going to spend money you won’t have, at least don’t be a hypocrite about it.

The entire membership of the Louisiana House Appropriations Committee, mainly comprised of Republicans who should know better, voted Monday to advance HB 1. The entire chamber later this week will take up the bill that will fund most of the state’s operating expenses.

Like most states, Louisiana is flush with borrowed money sent from Washington courtesy of Democrats who just make a majority in Congress that has helped trigger the country’s worst price inflation since Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards started courting wife Donna in high school. Significant other tabs await payment, although the bill appears to take care of big-ticket items such as another installment on flood protection and replenishing its unemployment trust fund that would secure lower levels of payments to employers (although three other bills poised to move through the legislative process would raise permanently payment levels to the unemployed, wiping out part of this rescue).

Little room for LA schools to encourage religion

There’s not much Ouachita Parish school officials can do to counter charges of unconstitutional school-led prayer at West Monroe’s Riverbend Elementary, except to make the ground as fertile as possible for students to engage in prayer on their own.

Last week, news reports surfaced that the school had allowed at commencement of the school day student-led prayer through its intercom system in conjunction with recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, with officials overseeing a system where a student volunteer would recite it. A complaint worked its way to a special interest group that notified the school that it saw this as an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion, and so the practice has been discontinued.

Unfortunately, there exists a decades-long string of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that backs the group’s opinion. If a government entity facilitates with any of its own resources any activity that would appear to grant religious exercise preference, the Court has ruled this to be an unconstitutional state endorsement of religion.

Easter Sunday, 2022

This column publishes five days weekly after noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Sunday, Apr. 17 being Easter, I invite you to explore this link.