House again rejects bad bill, passes anti-woke one

Two years in a row now the Louisiana Legislature has made the right call on a pair of controversial bills. Now if only it can force Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards to back members on one or otherwise push his negativity aside.

This week, as it did last year, the House of Representatives turned back HB 649 by Republican state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty. This would have forbidden a school district from allowing corporal punishment in its schools. This was the second attempt to get the bill over to the Senate, failing both times barely to obtain the absolute majority of the seated House necessary, meaning without suspension of the rules the measure is dead for the session.

That action replicates the bill’s fate from last year, and for good reason. Research demonstrates that as part of a continuum of disciplinary actions, when it occurs sparingly as a last resort, spanking in combination with other methods creates the optimal regimen for discipline. Further, statute makes use of this discretionary by a district, and only when parents approve in the cases of their children.

Errors cost chance to delete burdensome rule

Louisiana remains stuck on stupid concerning required vaccinations of school attendees because Republicans can’t get it together in the state Senate.

This week, the Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee rejected HCR 3 by Republican state Rep. Larry Bagley. The bill would have overturned the decision last year by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Department of Health, ratified by Edwards himself, to add Wuhan coronavirus vaccination to its schedule for both elementary and secondary education and higher education.

Much data has accumulated demonstrating the relatively high risk attached to vaccination of children compared to the benefits. As vaccination doesn’t stop the spread of the virus, there’s no reason to impose such a requirement, as to do so interferes with the autonomy of the family to make health care decisions for its children while being forced into certain conduct, school attendance, by the state. Next school year, Louisiana will be the only state in the country requiring this vaccination.

More bonus bucks, less need for LA to spend

That Louisiana has discovered some extra money likely will comes its way doesn’t change the dynamics of why its Legislature shouldn’t start spending like a drunken sailor.

This week, the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference forecast that tax coffers would be a little fuller than previously believed early in the year. It accepted that this year would see an extra $350 million into the general fund and next year another $104 million would come the fund’s way.

Unless the Legislature can find ways to spend the former in the next 50 days, it will have to go to nonrecurring purposes. There’s plenty of use for that, starting with the billions in infrastructure needs, or defeasance of unfunded accrued liabilities due for payoff by 2029, or going a long way towards the state paying off the final installment to the federal government for flood protection due over a year from now. Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards would like to see it used to entice federal funding for Interstate 10 bridge construction over the Mississippi River connecting Baton Rouge, an idea already rebuffed by the Legislature but to which it could become more receptive with the realization of this largesse.

LA must prevent woke abortion subsidization

If Louisianans don’t want their dollars any time soon going to encourage abortion or mutilation of children, they better hope lawmakers figure something out soon.

With correcting of the jurisprudential wrong done by the wholly invented, hardly-baked Roe. v. Wade Supreme Court decision through its reversal seeming extremely likely, some corporations have broadcast their wokeness by announcing they will fund expenses related to procuring an abortion. The Court’s action would bring abortion policy back to a firm constitutional grounding that empowers states to regulate the practice, so some states will ban it while others will let it occur unfettered, and these firms have said they’ll foot the entire bill for their female employees using their company health care plan in those states restricting abortion to travel to another to snuff life from their unborn infants.

Louisiana has a number of provisions that would restrict, even outlaw, abortions except under the most unusual circumstances. Salutary as that may be, the state’s citizens should want to go further to penalize, if not deter, firms that practice the cognitive dissonance of proclaiming abortion is a kind of health care without recognizing it ends up as death dealing for the most vulnerable members of society.

Poor choices put BC over contracting barrel

Years of bad decisions have put Bossier City taxpayers into a trap, and the same dynamic looks set to cost them even more courtesy of elected officials unwilling to treat the people’s money with the respect it deserves.

At last week’s City Council meeting, Republican mayor Tommy Chandler placed on the agenda an item to boost the city’s contracted payment to Manchac Consulting from $12,500 to $20,000. The firm oversees public works, but as part of that also has had its employee Ben Rauschenbach serve as interim city engineer over a series of short-term appointments for nearly two years.

During the meeting, Rauschenbach defended the company’s request, aided by Chandler. He said he was consumed by the job with so many infrastructure projects in the books, about $150 million worth. The extra money, which works out to $90,000 a year, would be less than the city could expect to hire a dedicated outside city engineer, so in essence with the boost the city could get both him and a city engineer (he was thinking of his assistant). Chandler supported him on this, saying he had tried several times to hire a city engineer, but candidates always backed out.

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.