Schizoid legislators' votes aid, betray kids

How could a few Louisiana legislators find themselves able to do the right thing on one bill for children, then betray kids on another?

This week, the House Education Committee dealt with SB 44 by Republican state Sen. Beth Mizell and HB 837 by GOP state Rep. Dodie Horton. The former would allow scholastic and collegiate athletes to participate in single-sex sports only that align to their biological sex (except that females could voluntarily participate in male-designated sports), while the latter would prohibit discussions during classroom sessions about sexual orientation or gender identity up through eighth grade.

SB 44, a replicant of a bill that both chambers passed last year but which suffered a veto at the hands of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and survived an override attempt, sailed through the panel with only Democrat scold state Rep. Aimee Adatto Freeman voting against, although her partisan colleague state Rep. Tammy Phelps ducked the vote and state Rep. Ken Brass missed the meeting, leaving only state Rep. Patrick Jefferson also there, who voted for it. The compelling case for it was buttressed further by testimony from a former Shreveport soccer player, Anne Metz.

Edwards heads to last chance on Greene matter

Metaphorically, through some gamesmanship, former Louisiana State Police Superintendent Kevin Reeves asked Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards to join him at the Last Chance Saloon to salvage Edwards’ reputation, if not his job.

Both face scrutiny in the coverup at the LSP over the death of black motorist Ronald Greene. He lost his life in May, 2019 after leading LSP troopers on a high speed chase that resulted in a low speed crash. Outside his vehicle, troopers restrained him roughly and beat him for minutes, recordings show, and he died on the way to medical care.

How involved were Edwards and Reeves in the coverup has become the focus of a special legislative panel. Reeves has been coy, although insistent that he didn’t participate in a coverup, in describing his knowledge of the incident and what followed up to his sudden resignation 16 months later, after evidence of LSP behavior was presented to the Edwards Administration. For his part, Edwards has insisted he didn’t even know questions surrounded the event and its aftermath until that time.

LA on brink of proper safeguarding of life

An unprecedented leak from the U.S. Supreme Court as an apparent leftist pressure tactic portends Louisiana coming close to outlawing abortion, and it may come closer yet.

This week, a majority opinion apparently authored by Assoc. Justice Samuel Alito became public. Dated nearly three months ago, it addresses a case over a Mississippi law extremely similar to one on Louisiana’s books that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks gestation except in emergency situations. Neither operate but are designed to if the U.S. Constitution is amended to give states the right to restrict abortion past Roe v. Wade standards or the Court alters or abandons that case.

The opinion, if issued which likely would be at the end of June, would chuck Roe. The wording attributed to Alito comprehensively exposes Roe’s and its successors’ constitutional infirmities, and appears to have support of at least four other court members, those appointed by Republican presidents minus Chief Justice John Roberts.

Poll shows LA Democrats veering far left

Studying the world of politics the thing you find accidentally occasionally turns out more important than what you intended to study, the results of a survey in Louisiana remind us.

Each spring, Louisiana State University’s Public Policy Research Lab conducts the Louisiana Survey, which polls residents on a number of issues of the day in state and national politics. It released the results from this year’s edition in stages, with the final segment addressing views concerning capital punishment and abortion.

It found that for the former a seven-point dip had occurred in approval, down to a bare majority of 51 percent from the last time it asked the question in 2018, although opposition to it didn’t quite increase as much, by four points to 38 percent. More eye-catching, it discovered support for unrestricted or lightly-restricted abortion swung 12 points towards it, from 40 to 46 percent, leaving 49 percent to say they favored many restrictions or a total ban on it.

Latest shots must wake up NO to abandon woke

The wages of “progressive” criminal justice policy continue to mount in Louisiana, with New Orleans still the poster child for the growing legacy of failure yet tolerated by a citizenry that perhaps finally will start to care.

Anyone paying attention in the Crescent City will know matters have gotten worse since Democrat District Attorney Jason Williams assumed office at the start of 2021. Since taking over, numbers of releases without filing charges has increased dramatically, even among those accused of violent crimes. He also has accelerated making pretrial release decisions more lenient.

Compared to 2021, year to date – and 2021 was perhaps the worst year in the city’s recent history for violent crime in the aggregate – show a 13 percent increase in total incidents and a 41 percent surge in murders. But even as things have spiraled out of control over the years – last year differed only in the severity of its spike upwards over rolling multi-year trends going back a couple of decades – many Orleanians could shut their eyes and cover their ears and chant that things like homicides, shooting, and other violent crimes didn’t happen around them, so it wasn’t all that bad.

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.