Results in FL argue for LA public union reform

If Florida can ameliorate the effect of zombies, surely Louisiana can do it just as well, if not better.

In its original sense transported from Africa to the Americas, zombies are a reanimated creature from the dead found in voodoo practices, whether they know. Voodoo finds its way into Louisiana folklore, but in other places like Florida they’re more often found in labor unions.

That’s the conclusion a recent article drew about the state of these organizations in the Sunshine State’s public sector. Since that state, like Louisiana, doesn’t make employment in a bargaining unit subject to a closed shop – to work at that place you must join a union – but permits a bargaining unit to form and to negotiate on behalf of all employees regardless of whether they join and pay dues, those assessments essentially become optional.

Good LA crypto moves should exclude reserve

Suddenly, Louisiana has found a cutting edge technology gear with policy changes that landed a pair of data centers in the state and cryptocurrency use . But it shouldn’t take the step that some states and the incipient Republican Pres. Donald Trump Administration have under consideration, establishing a cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, reserve.

Trump in his campaign talked this up, and GOP Sen. Cindy Lummis followed through recently by introducing a bill to do the same. The idea is for government to buy bitcoin tokens (the federal government already has a couple of hundred thousand or so bitcoins seized from law enforcement actions) in order to provide some financial backstopping as well as use these as investment vehicles that could take a bite out of the huge $36 trillion debt.

Bitcoin is “mined” by solving complicated computational problems, open to anybody. Thus, wealth is created in two ways: by mining bitcoins or portions thereof which become recognized as a unit of account, or by a marketplace bidding up the value of a bitcoin in other currencies.

Christmas, 2024

This column publishes every Monday through Friday around 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 Easter, 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 Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Wednesday, Dec. 25 being Christmas Day, I invite you to explore this link.

Bossier Jury shaping image to avoid controversy

It’s almost as if the Bossier Parish Police Jury is striving to keep attention away from any of its potentially controversial doings, given the disconnect between the parish’s news release about the latest Jury meeting and what happened at that meeting.

Not that the Jury is known for its transparency. Unlike other major governing authorities in Bossier and Caddo Parishes, its agendas contain almost no supporting documentation so citizens can make informed commentary about them. It broadcasts its meetings through the non-robust Facebook Live platform that makes difficult following and replaying, and it doesn’t publicly archive at all its committee meetings although it did recently start to do that for its two utilities the governing boards for which are all the jurors. There practically is zero discussion on almost all issues except specific zoning requests even for some vastly important things (the 2025 budget and 2024 amendments to the budget each were handled in less time that it takes to flush a toilet), so citizens remain in the dark about such significant matters unless they file a public information request or troop to the courthouse during business hours and ask to see stuff – a 20^th century mode of operation despite the first quarter of the 21^st coming to its conclusion.

Rarely do the media attend Jury gatherings and if they report on these they use the news releases issued by the parish. For the Dec. 18 meeting, the release highlighted comments from the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau, tax notice information from the Sheriff’s Office, Jury efforts to coordinate better zoning changes, and broad parameters of the parish’s Three-Year Overplay Program and even more generally transportation.

Elites panic at LA Health's holistic messaging

More interesting than the news that the Louisiana Department of Health has taken a more holistic view of public health is the motivation behind those, including the media, who bemoan it.

Last week, National Public Radio ran a breathless piece about how LDH had deemphasized indiscriminate pushing of vaccines for the Wuhan coronavirus and influenza and maybe the flu-like mpox, although its incidence in the U.S. in its weak form is rare and in its more virulent form nonexistent. Allegedly, LDH officials instructed employees not to make vigorous efforts to advise the public to get these vaccines and noted the department “is shifting away from one-size-fits-all paternalistic guidance to a more informative approach aimed at enabling individuals, in consultation with their doctor, to make better decisions for themselves.”

That is an entirely appropriate and productive approach to these illnesses, all of which share the same characteristics, to varying degrees, that people with healthy immune systems and/or co-morbidities rarely become seriously ill from these. Mpox potentially is the most serious but can be taken care of with smallpox vaccination, although the less prevalent vaccine version in the U.S. dedicated to it does present a relatively high 1 in 175 rate of developing myocarditis/pericarditis among other less severe side effects, while the more prevalent vaccine hasn’t been studied enough to come up with a hard number although it is thought to be less deleterious.

New Landry panel should cite grifting well deal

There’s a layup waiting for Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s new Fiscal Responsibility Program which it should take: cancelling the behind-closed-doors grifting by political insiders that has contributed to the state’s inability to reduce the numbers of orphaned oil wells.

This week, Landry created this new board designed to find savings in state government through reviewing spending choices, seeking efficiencies in expenditures, and vetting contracts. One of the very first things it needs to look into is the Louisiana Oilfield Restoration Authority’s sweetheart, if not illegally-administered, deal with the state.

Created during the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration, LORA formed in response to a law that attempted to mitigate the incidence of orphan oil wells. These once-productive wells were abandoned by owners when faced with cleanup costs, leaving the state to have to deal with them. This method of contracting out rather than the state handling it (through its own resources or federal grants) sought to build a fund from well production into which owners paid that could be used to address abandoned wells, operating like a form of insurance and less expensively to encourage closure rather than abandonment.

Deficit gone, but only first right-sizing step

The good news is Louisiana appears to have enough revenues to cover continuation costs in state government for the next fiscal year, 2025-26. The bad news is the costs remain too high and a net tax increase had to cover these.

That was the unstated conclusion accepted by the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference at its typically-held December meeting. Its last May meeting had the body adopt a general fund revenue estimate of $11.7 billion, a drop from the predicted just under $12.1 billion for this fiscal year attributed to the expiration of a 2016/18 added 0.45 percent sales tax.

As it turned out, the FY 2025 figure ended up just a bit higher. Yet the FY 2026 forecast came in nearly $450 million higher, thanks to the special session of the Legislature last month where both tax law changes that cut income taxes and eliminated the franchise tax while retaining the 0.45 percent extra sales tax and adding 0.55 percent more (dropping 0.25 percent in a few years) as well as redirecting vehicle taxes, estimated at $280 million annually, that year and the year after away from capital outlay and into the general fund.

Natural gas retailer sale won't harm Louisianans

Expect political leftist climate alarmists and class warriors to try to make a last stand this week at the New Orleans City Council meeting to stop the final step in Delta Utilities’ acquisition of gas distribution throughout Louisiana.

During 2024, the entity, a subsidiary of the private investment firm Berhard Capital Partners, has successfully navigated the regulatory hoops to buy up all of CenterPoint Energy’s and Entergy Louisiana’s natural gas business plus the distribution network throughout the state (as well as Energy gas business in Mississippi, also part of the deal). Only Energy New Orleans remains without such approval, which the Council seems poised to give at its Thursday meeting, adding to the Public Service Commission’s nod from earlier this fall.

Over a billion bucks will go towards the effort expected to be wrapped up the middle of next year. If comments planned for submission to the Council from a variety of business and social organizations spanning the gamut indicate anything, approval will be popular.

But not for a select group of leftists who see the deal as a method of inducing more natural gas consumption at potentially higher prices. The separate deals approved pretty much follow the same script: no changes to existing operation and no price hikes for 15 months, although the New Orleans part also promises (and has been set in motion already) locating Delta’s headquarters in the city, boosting commercial prospects and adding a couple of hundred jobs.

However, the leftists complain there’s no guarantee price increases won’t come in 2026 as they allege rising prices are inevitable because Delta isn’t public which makes it easier for it to raise fees and purportedly the boom in LNG exporting is causing a supply pinch that raises domestic prices. They picked up a big backer in the dying embers of Democrat Joe Biden’s Department of Energy that this week issued a report claiming this.

But that’s merely advocacy literature backing the ideological imperative of climate alarmism following its imperative of faith that burning more of a fossil fuel like natural gas will fuel catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Higher quality research exposes the weakness of the belief that prices will escalate, revealing instead that as LNG output has expanded and exports begun this has not affected pricing, because the increased demand was met with increased supply and U.S. household prices continue to be among the world’s lowest. The bankruptcy of the CAGW argument has led regulators to dismiss this opposition.

Nor does the transparency argument hold any water. The PSC will continue to regulate gas provision statewide except for New Orleans, where the Council will regardless of whether Delta is private. It still will have to submit almost-entirely public documentation for any rate increase, and if voters don’t think either body holds Delta accountable enough on rates or other activities, they can hold regulators accountable by replacing them at the ballot box.

There’s no good reason the deal shouldn’t go through, and possibly provisional costs will decrease with integration statewide and economies of scale. The Council doing what is expected of it along and long with other regulators performing its due diligence should make consumers under the deal better off in the long run.

Back to basics paying off for younger LA students

The hits just keep coming for Louisiana’s school children, validating state and local policy choices and shifts made over the past four years.

In 2021, the Legislature required development and implementation of an early literacy program to boost reading skills among students in kindergarten and early grades, which was to be based on what colloquially might be called a “back to basics” approach and included literacy proficiency in teaching in preparation programs. It has rolled out now up to third grade and indicates not only does the overall score of a grade continue to rise but also students in the aggregate experience a cumulative increase over the years. That could be good news to a lot of schools, as the law mandates use of these data in compiling applicable school performance scores, which will begin next academic year.

Another law passed in 2023 took effect this year and relies on this data. It prohibits promotion of third-graders if they don’t achieve proficiently enough in reading, an approach taken by about half the states. This generates some controversy because some studies purport to show retention for any reason is associated with greater propensity to drop out in high school, especially for racial minority students. However, research also points out that earlier intervention and especially when combined with individualized intervention, which the Department of Education has started to introduce in Louisiana, mitigates this impact. Keep in mind as well that as studies show retention increases the odds of eventual promotion into high school this demonstrates an associational, not causal, relationship, where the same reason(s) for underachieving early in a school career also explain dropping out, not that retention causes a greater propensity to drop out once aging out of the mandatory schooling age.

Bond panel acts legally to aid illegal BC action

The irony is that by the State Bond Commission reluctantly following the law it rewarded a majority of members of the Bossier City Council for breaking it and their oaths of office.

Last week, the SBC met in its regular meeting to review, among other things, the dozens of local government requests to put items on the Mar. 29 election ballot. Included was Bossier City’s controversial requests regarding the end products of its Charter Review Commission.

A subcommittee in October denied fast-tracking the request to make it onto the Dec. 7 ballot. At the time, the subcommittee, headed by Republican Treas. John Fleming, decided that would be premature to eschew the normal schedule as the items were related to matters under litigation. To be precise, one of the three items would impose a consecutive three-term limit on the mayor and city council offices, while a citizen-led initiative would impose that but make it lifetime and retroactive.