LA colleges shouldn't use race, sex preferences

Why should Louisiana wait on the U.S. Supreme Court? Ban its public universities and colleges from using race, sex, or national origin in admissions decisions – and go further by extending the same to most financial aid.

SB 128 by Republican state Sen. Jay Morris would accomplish this. Insofar as admissions, it anticipates what the Court likely will do before the quarter is out in a pair of cases before it, although that decision also would apply to private and proprietary schools in the state that receive any kind of federal funding, even indirectly.

It makes sense. Even proponents of the practice of affirmative action, where admittance decisions give extra weight to individuals with certain immutable characteristics as a compensation for past discrimination of the entire broad class of such people, admit at best it has a mixed record in aiding presumably disadvantaged groups, while opponents – which include a solid majority of the American public – point out it actually poses harm to such individuals in that it sets them up for failure by admitting them to more-demanding institutions when their backgrounds on the basis of past achievement suggest they would do better at other, less selective schools.

Agenda shifts might fail ambitious candidates

It’s no accident that earlier this week a Louisiana legislator made a long-predicted party switch and a statewide official would choose to announce a deferral of reelection. Both relate to the political fortunes and future of Republican House Speaker Clay Schexnayder.

State Rep. Jeremy LaCombe proclaimed he had shed his Democrat label in favor of the Republican. By the numbers, that now gives the GOP at 71 seats a chamber supermajority plus one and sends Democrats to a dismal 32, of which only five are white like Lacombe.

LaCombe saw the writing on the wall after losing a special election for state Senate against a rookie but solidly conservative Republican, and additionally as a result of reapportionment his district saw its proportion of white voters increase five percentage points relative to its proportion of black registrants, who typically vote for Democrats. Whether that means much in terms of supporting a conservative Republican agenda at first glance seems minimal: with a Louisiana Legislative Log score averaging just over 53 for the past term, it puts him at a lower score than every Republican along with another relatively recent convert who plans to leave the chamber after this year, state Rep. Malinda White (higher scores mean more fidelity to a conservative/reform agenda, and his score is well below both the chamber mean and that of GOP representatives). Conservative votes on some social issues, primarily related to abortion, elevated his score.

Honesty, not evasion, best remedy for mistake

The toughest thing for an elected official to do is pick himself up off the ground after making a blunder. So it’s encouraging that even if they made the wrong choice on hanging a huge future liability around Bossier City’s neck, Republican City Councilors Chris Smith and Brian Hammons made the right choice to face constituents publicly on this issue, as well as take questions on other matters.

The pair will appear Apr. 12 from noon to 1 PM at the Bellaire South Complex at 4330 Panther Drive Bossier City for the monthly meeting of the South Bossier Lunch Group. Smith is an at-large councilor but who lives in south Bossier City, while Hammons represents the southern-most constituency in the city, District 1.

Last week, both voted for a proposal that would reimburse the Port of Caddo-Bossier for costs related to the Port’s construction of a water distribution and treatment facility on its property. The city would operate and maintain this but would not own it. Using figures stated by the Port Commission’s executive director Eric England and reviewing similar bond issue costs, the total liability the city signed onto is $62 million over 40 years beginning payouts as soon as it draws one drop of water at any time during those four decades.

Edwards last speech sanctimonious, deceptive

It didn’t take eight years to understand the hypocritical charlatan that is Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, but it was his last State of the State speech that laid it out most plainly.

The annual address by the governor to the start of the regular legislative session was larded up with the typical assortment of misleading statements, either because these didn’t have the proper context or implied something false. As examples of the former, Edwards proclaimed how the state’s all-time low unemployment rate equated to more Louisianans working than ever – but not mentioning the unemployment rate is at a historic low largely because of depopulation (the state having 91,000 fewer residents than when he took office, likely largely economic refugees) and the labor force participation rate being at a 45-year low (absent the pandemic period), 1.4 points lower than in 2016 and in the nation’s bottom ten, leaving the state with almost 35,000 fewer nonfarm jobs than six years ago. And as for the latter, he placed “climate change” and “Storms are getting stronger and more frequent” in the same breath to imply a relationship, when in fact storms haven’t changed in severity or frequency in recent times.

At a few points, however, he did outright lie. One he has often repeated cropped back up on this occasion, that because of Medicaid expansion he triggered – which now costs state taxpayers directly, not even counting the extra federal taxes they pay for it, $451 million a year –  “we haven’t had a single rural hospital closure. Not. One.” In fact, even before he ran for reelection that was demonstrably false.

Easter Sunday, 2023

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. 9 being Easter, I invite you to explore this link.

Prudence requires rejecting LA spending cap hike

Conservatives in the Louisiana Legislature can’t flinch at the chance to keep state spending at a more sensible level.

The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic bonus tax revenues for states, from record increases in federal borrowing sustained by Washington Democrats that force-fed an expanded money supply through the economy, has made state coffers flush last year, this year, and likely the next before it fades away – although this action also eroded the value of those dollars by triggering record price inflation that hardly has moderated. This has produced for last year, this year, and forecast for next year extra dollars to the tune of two and a quarter billion for Louisiana.

Naturally, politicians have plans for that. Around a third has to go to nonrecurring spending that includes mandatory paying off unfunded pensions and replenishing the Budget Stabilization Fund, with the remainder to a few select uses. Both Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and legislative leaders have offered to use the balance for capital outlay projects.

BC politicians may change, imprudence remains

Bossier City elected officials may change, but their stupid policy-making remains the same, reminding citizens that it will take awhile to reorient city policy in a better direction.

This week, a smooth-talking and highly-paid bureaucrat, in cahoots with a private contractor, and bullied by clueless chief executive and a councilor who benefits monetarily from the bureaucrat’s agency, conned the rubes that populate the Bossier City Council into putting city ratepayers, and maybe taxpayers, on the hook for tens of millions of dollars over the next 40 years in a highly speculative venture out of which it will own nothing, for reasons which have nothing to do with the city’s basic obligations to its residents.

The bureaucrat, Caddo-Bossier Port Commission Executive Director Eric England, finally closed the highly-advantageous deal for the Port by a 5-2 vote of the Council. This deal commits the city to pay an estimated $62 million to the Port so the Port can finance building of a water distribution and treatment facility that the city will run but the Port will own, within the next 40 years as long as the city authorizes even one drop of water to run through the system.

LA should appoint, not elect, insurance boss

 The time has come to eliminate one more opportunity for political aggrandizement and reduce the potential for corruption by making Louisiana’s commissioner of insurance an appointive rather than elective office.

Republican state Sen. Kirk Talbot has offered SB 208 for the legislative session soon to start, which would accomplish this. The commissioner would be appointed for a six year term, maximum two, by the governor from a list of three nominees by a committee of legislators, designees of other elected state executives, and representatives of related interest groups. It would apply after inauguration day, 2024. Because of a constitutional provision addressing statewide elected officials, two-thirds majorities would have to assent.

Louisiana goes overboard with its statewide elected officials, with its seven among the most of the states. Elected insurance commissioners aren’t common, with only nine other states having these and in a few instances their functions are combined with others.

That few states elect theirs makes sense when comparing the advantages and disadvantages. Certainly, elections bring a popular mandate to performing the job, but ideally the job largely comprises of administration without much chance to make policy that largely the Legislature dictates. If elected, where policy may be influenced by this official would have a bias towards lower rates, since voters overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, prefer lower rates over higher. However, this can prove problematic if a commissioner can and does influence rates to go too low that discourages policy-writing that either leaves gaps or forces the state to step in regardless at higher costs to other ratepayers or taxpayers.

LA dilatory response to waste huge bucks

In his zeal to keep from diminution Louisiana’s welfare state politics that have given it one of the worst qualities of life and economic development in the union, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards will cost state taxpayers hundred of millions of dollars over his administration of Medicaid in the next 14 months.

That stems from his choices in unwinding the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic extended Medicaid spending. Three years ago when the pandemic descended, Congress declared that it would increase its allocation to the states by 6.2 percent beyond its normal share paying for the program, to last through the last quarter after the president declared the pandemic over. Democrat Pres. Joe Biden, needlessly delaying congressional termination to let the gray train keep rolling in order to try to boost votes for his party’s candidates last November, didn’t do so until the end of last year.

This resulted in an over one-quarter boost nationally to Medicaid rolls. States probably preferred this, as the best estimates are that at the 6.2 level states actually made more despite the expanded clientele.

Name bill good to protect kids, reduce confusion

To date inexplicably hesitant to strengthen protections of children, this session the Louisiana Legislature need not whiff on a bill that not only does that, but that also calms fears of school employees and related personnel.

HB 81 by Republican state Rep. Raymond Crews would have school personnel address students by the names on their birth certificates, unless parental permission grants use of another, as well as use the pronoun associated with the student’s sex unless similar permission is granted. Even the pronoun consideration may be overridden if the alternate choice runs counter to the speaker’s religious or moral convictions.

This should come with welcome relief for school personnel. Emboldened by leftist politicians and media, the increasingly aggressive, even violent, eliminationist rhetoric and action emanating from transgender activist groups and followers puts at risk those who might commit spoken thoughtcrimes in the eyes of these special interests and draw their wrath. Only last year, a Kansas teacher was reprimanded and suspended for addressing a student by the student’s legal and enrolled name and forced her to conceal the student’s social transition from the student’s parents. Fortunately, she sought legal recourse and won a $95,000 judgment against school authorities. A law like HB 81 would remove worry from school personnel that they could face retribution for simply trying to communicate with students using the least ambiguous information about their names and the pronouns that apply.