Empire strikes back to protect itself at children's expense

I don’t know what the record is for number of misdirected and ignorant assertions per word in a delivered statement, but jockeying for top position must be one issued by the Louisiana Coalition for Public Education, in reference to announced efforts by the Alliance for Better Classrooms to lobby for election of reform-minded members this fall for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

This group, backed by organizations of school boards, school administrators, and teachers unions, desperately opposes the ABC effort, organized by businessmen and political leaders unlike them with no financial ties to the existing educational system. The opposition has taken on such a desperate tone precisely because the reform group supports measures such as increased accountability in both spending money and delivering results and more parental choice to end the government monopoly on education, which, as ABC notes, is a direct threat to the education establishment’s long history in Louisiana of failing to “protect the rights of the students,” rather than those of “the adults who benefit from the payrolls of the school system.”

Understand that the LCPE represents the interests of those who failed Louisiana children and families by providing substandard education for decades, and fought tooth-and-nail reforms established beginning 15 years ago that have created steady improvement.

Democrat candidacies maybe more tease than strip

Sen. Pres. Joel Chaisson did not take it all off, but the striptease continues for Louisiana Democrats with failed lieutenant governor candidate Caroline Fayard and state Sen. Rob Marionneaux. In the end, they all may preserve their modesties.

Months ago, Chaisson had sniffed around for a statewide race to run, but those inside the incestuous world of St. Charles Parish politics saw Chaisson’s real objective as attaining the district attorney’s position. The final push to open the door wide came when the long-time 29^th District Attorney Harry Morel, Jr. announced he would resign, at the end of a chain of events which will give Chaisson a luxury ride into the post next year.

(I’m not even going to begin to go into how all of got set up, but part of could involve state Attorney General opinions about nepotism rules regarding a father as DA and daughter as a judge, and a brother as DA whose brother would be a judge and other brothers who would work under him, as well as a father working in another government post.

Reports confirms desirability of pursuing privatization

The news about the possible privatization of Louisiana’s Office of Groups Benefits’ health care offerings to state employees and retirees, courtesy of a report issued by the Legislative Auditor is … there’s no news. But between the data it presented and other information omitted, continued pursuit of this option must proceed.

The report, requested by the Legislature, piggybacked on another study compiled months ago, which was supposed to have been kept confidential among state policy-makers until leaked by a state senator (Senate Insurance Committee chairman and past failed lieutenant governor candidate Sen. Butch Gautreaux has been raving against the idea from the start). Therefore, much of it contained nothing new.

Thus, it dutifully repeats that the business could yield the state up to $217 million as a one-time bonus, deriving from granting a non-government insurer the ability to earn money off the administration of the state’s Preferred Provider Organization – in other words, turning it into a similar arrangement as with the state’s Health Maintenance Organization where the vast majority of employees and retirees already have their insurance.

Real policy consequences to come from BESE races

Looks like most of the statewide offices will end up real yawners for fall elections, where there’s little chance that Republicans will lose any of these seats and policy change possibilities seem minimal. The Legislature will become a little more conservative, but, again, featuring only a minor policy shift in that direction therefore. So if you want to go where the real action is, where monumental if destructive policy change could happen as a result of white-hot elections, then you need to check out the contests for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

All eight of the elective positions are up for grabs this fall, and the dynamics of the contests could make matters dicey for supporters of reform that have brought clear improvement to Louisiana’s public schools over the past 15 years. While BESE has 11 members, the governor appoints three of them, and Gov. Bobby Jindal has shown every indication he will put reform supporters in these slots, two of which have signaled they wish to continue to serve.

This means reformers must win at least three of the eight elective positions in order to prevail on policy matters, which would maintain their current edge made up of members Jim Garvey, Glenny Lee Buquet, and Chas Roemer. Typically voting against reform have been Louella Givens, Walter Lee, Keith Guice, Dale Bayard, and Linda Johnson.

Speaker's job intrigue may portend switch to GOP

All the complex machinations going on for the Louisiana House of Representatives speaker’s position likely boil down to a simple case of maximizing Republican numbers by having a reliable conservative hold down the position.

In a contest, the dynamics of which obviously will remain somewhat unknown until elections have concluded this fall, where current Speaker Pro-Tem Joel Robideaux early seemed to have the clearest path to victory, that got shaken up with the proclamation by state Rep. Jim Fannin that he would throw his hat into the rotunda. Fannin, slightly senior to Robideaux, held down for the last term the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, the most powerful panel in the House, and thus was a substantially more important policy-maker than Robideaux was in his largely-symbolic office.

At the very least, Fannin cuts out state Rep. Jeff Arnold as the preferred Democrat candidate as he can draw more crossover support from north Louisiana members than can Arnold from the New Orleans area.

Incumbent matchup loser may parlay that into Senate

Give Rep. Jeff Landry credit – he’s taking the lemons of reapportionment and turning them into lemonade of a possible extended political career, one way or the other.

The freshman Landry has by no means acted as a shrinking violet in the House of Representatives. During the recent period of extended debate leading to a temporary resolution of the debt issuance issue of the federal government, Landry emerged as a leader among new Republicans shaping their party’s negotiations, eventually voting against the measure that slowed the approach to but did not solve for the economic problems that will result from too much spending. In doing so, he exerted more influence in a few months in Congress than did his predecessor lobbyist. He also has become one of the more outspoken critics of Pres. Barack Obama in Congress, rejecting an invitation to meet with him over a debt deal over concerns Obama had no workable solutions to impart but instead wished to use the meeting with House Republicans as a vehicle for grandstanding.

Some observers speculate that Landry may publicize more his differences with his ideological opponents in Congress and the White House in order to draw a difference between himself and Rep. Charles Boustany, because in reapportionment Louisiana lost a House seat and these two found themselves odd men out after that drawing.

Adley seems set to continue disingenuous fulminations

State Sen. Robert Adley has a history of grandstanding, and his signature bill this session concerns (yet again) opening up records in state government. While it had its good and bad points and would bring some benefits but create some costs, it also lent itself to use of big-government advocates such as Adley as a potential weapons against smaller and more efficient government in Louisiana. And now, reformers may have to suffer four more years of similar behavior.

SB 57 would have removed from many executive branch agencies, and some of it from the governor, chief of staff, and executive counsel, protection from disclosure “any records having been used, being in use, possessed, or retained for use by the governor in the usual course of the duties and business of his office that relate to the deliberative process of the governor, intra-office communications of the governor and his internal staff, the governor's security and schedule, or communications with or the security and schedule of the governor's spouse or children.” It would have created perhaps the most transparency involving interactions between a governor and the rest of the executive branch of any state in the country.

In some ways, this approach comports more to the historical open-records philosophy in Louisiana, which was to assume everything was open to which exceptions existed based upon origins of the communication.

Fall matchups show benefit of diluted term limits

Like vampires, term-limited Louisiana legislators continue to attempt to exist as the undead, revealing perhaps a silver lining to the otherwise-flawed term limit regime enacted into the Constitution some 15 years ago.

When the Louisiana citizenry overwhelmingly voted for term limits for legislators, essentially three or fewer for a position in the House or Senate, this made the state unique, as it was the only one whose legislators proposed it on themselves without the presence of an initiative process that could have allowed citizens to bypass state government. But perhaps the price of that, not realized by many at the time, was their application only to the position held in their specific chambers.

This allowed, when limitation first applied in 2007, to have a number of those limited in the House to try for Senate seats, and a couple of Senate members to go for the House.

Misunderstanding poverty leads to bad lending policy

Yesterday’s post closed with the truism, “… until public policy recognizes it must alter the attitudes, thus behavior, of people to reduce poverty ….” As a recent opinion piece confirms, some Louisiana renders of opinion have a ways to go to reach this proper understanding.

The column argued for more regulation of “payday” lenders – establishments, many owned by large financial institutions, that charge high interest rates (sometimes in the hundreds of percentage points for an annual percentage rate) for small, short term loans. Predictably, the writer equates regulation of the industry to any less extent than terms that almost entirely discourage it as dereliction of the state’s duty and calls for this, as have some policy-makers (for example).

Such a view not only shows ignorance about the issue, but also betrays a lack of understanding of the nature of poverty.

Throwing money at problem causes more child poverty

The annual KidsCount survey came out showing the usual dismal place Louisiana has comparatively regarding child quality of life. This, even more unfortunately, brings out the usual responses whose only contribution to the public policy debate about this issue is they argue to repeat the same mistakes that have caused this situation in the first place.

That’s the conclusion one draws when an opinion writer sought out, for a Louisiana angle, words of idiocy on this subject from state Rep. Regina Barrow. The Democrat asserts that “We haven’t addressed poverty in a consistent manner” and then proceeds to offer the solution that is consistent: throw more money at the problem, which in fact has constituted the most consistent approach over the past several decades – and a failed approach at that.

This is because those of Barrow’s ilk have no clue as to what poverty is and from where it comes.