Zestful Jindal takes advantage of compliant legislators

In reaction to some choice line-item vetoes, no doubt detractors of Gov. Bobby Jindal will voice the usual canards about how the governor’s position in general is too powerful and specifically especially how Jindal is mean and vindictive. But if they wish to place accuracy over emotion and ideology, they’ll come to understand that the real culprits in setting up the exercise of gubernatorial political power don’t include but rather majorities in each chamber of the Legislature.

HB 1 featured ten vetoed line items, although almost all of them dealing with amendments that restricted the scope of executive branch discretion, showed favoritism to certain health care providers, or with funding legislation already vetoed. But it was items dealing with spending by the Departments of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism and Treasury that caught attention.

Out of the former, $2 million for marketing in the Office of Tourism got hacked away. For months, the official serving as the secretary of the department Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, has moaned about how the budget directed him to use part of his dedicated funding stream, from a .03 percent sales tax levy (classified as going to the Tourism Promotion District), to fund big sporting and cultural events – a reasonable use as these events attract tourists. From the latter, whose head Treasurer John Kennedy carps consistently, with ideas from the attention-grabbing while highly impractical to the competent, about how cuts can be made in government but Jindal and legislators won’t do it, got whacked around $511,000 said to be a “retirement adjustment” (meaning making up for unfunded accrued liabilities) excised because, the veto message said, the amount was overestimated from the three-year average and was inflated because it was funding four vacant positions.

Signing one, vetoing other rebate bill aids public education

Those legislators with an interest in maximizing government control grumbled somewhat when state Rep. Kirk Talbot’s HB 969 got put into law, which would allow tax rebates for donations to organizations that would help pay for tuition of lower-income students to private schools. Some responded by getting behind HB 1106 by state Rep. Katrina Jackson, which would allow tax rebates for donations to all but the most successful public schools. Their discontent reached new heights when Gov. Bobby Jindal, in contrast to Talbot’s bill, vetoed Jackson’s – as it is, for very good reasons beyond what he stated.

That perturbed the bill’s author, among others, who declared, with a flair for the inaccurate and sanctimonious, that this had been the only bill out there “which truly helps our public schools to receive much needed resources.” Jindal’s veto message noted that the initial $10 million that the program could cost was unfunded (and by the bill could have created an unfunded mandate by escalating every year). That practical objection aside, there was a huge conceptual objection to it as well, related to the differences between the monopoly and market natures of the different approaches to providing education to the state’s children.

Talbot’s bill provides incentives to donate money to independent organizations although affiliated with private schools that could use the money only as direct awards to families for their children to attend those schools, with preference if demand exceeds supply given to those who would otherwise have attended an underperforming public school. Accountability measures put in place in the new law, which will be supplemented by departmental rules, minimize opportunities to subvert the system on the basis of favoritism to families for reasons of friendship, athletic ability, etc. (but does allow earmarking on the basis of disability). The schools do not get the money directly, which is capped at only 80 or 90 percent of the aid given to public schools for each child, and are not shielded in any way from market forces; you can have all the money in the world flowing into the organization but if families are turned off in having their children attend the associated school, it doesn’t get these funds (and donors who do not have their dollars used can request a refund minus the five percent allowed overhead charge), and donations would decrease to these organizations until the schools improved.

Enforced parsimony improves program menu, delivery

For all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth that occurs relative to budget cuts in Louisiana, the fact of the matter is they have a cleansing effect, wringing out impure inefficiencies otherwise potentially tolerated without the imperative of tighter money. Case studies show the benefits they bring to taxpayers.

In the waning days of the just-completed legislative session, one high-profile program that seemed on the chopping block when there was a movement afoot to exclude some recurring funds from the budget just because they weren’t classified as being in the general fund was Early Steps, which seeks to assist developmentally disabled children to overcome as much as possible learning impediments at an early age to prepare them for regular schooling. If the program does what it should, this makes sense to avoid having more intensive and expensive services later administered without this intervention.

When funding did come through, obviously program participants were relieved, but the near-miss also induced some retrospection about what the program does and how it goes about doing it. As one functionary noted, restructuring and review of the core assumptions of how the program can operate to achieve its goals using fewer resources are tasks inspired by the threat of budgetary reductions. Without such external stimuli, incentives for this kind of evaluation may never exist sufficiently to prompt money-saving measures.

Jindal thwarts lemming's political ploy at taxpayer expense

If lemmings could understand human language, as you watched them run towards the cliff you could run with them, trying to reason with them, telling them if they would just stop and look at the evidence and think about it, they’d hightail it in the opposite direction. But because they are lemmings, because they feel they should be making that dash regardless of the truth that awaits, they wouldn’t stop. Which is why if she could choose to be an animal, state Sen. Karen Peterson would feel right at home as a lemming.

Peterson, a staunch ally of Pres. Barack Obama, recently took command of Louisiana’s Democrats in a state where the embattled Obama remains extraordinarily unpopular and the party unusually inert. She pledged to take the party even further to the political left, its steady drift in that direction already having weakened it, mimicking the actions of Obama at the national level.

As a legislator, this session she signed on to the usual moonbattery as is her wont, but one of her sanitized obnoxious ideas actually made it all the way to the governor’s desk. Her HB 577 came in as a related measure to her HB 568, which was based upon the sham that structural imperfections in society and economics discriminate institutionally against women by forcing them to be paid less than men for comparable work, limited in this bill to government positions. Through careful, valid research this myth long ago and repeatedly has been disproven.

This space helping to endanger LA newspaper industry

In the past few months, plenty of turmoil has swept through the newspaper industry both in northwest Louisiana and the state as a whole. You may thank this column in part for that.

Earlier in the year, Gannett Corporation, the owner of the Shreveport Times and several others newspapers in Louisiana, notified the world that by the end of the year its websites would be converted to paid models of delivery as a response to the rapidly declining revenues from its print versions. The idea is that too much of the product was going out for free and therefore to monetize it beyond the small contributions of digital ad sales.

But this tactic only will slow the decline, because you can’t compete against others still giving away essentially the same content for free. In the good old days, in almost any area of interest, the only source of information or entertainment one could get in a portable, on-demand way was a newspaper. However, you had to pay for it.

How to try retirement reform again to avoid coming crisis

Hopefully, it won’t take a massive crisis to get Louisiana policy-makers to realize the necessity of pension reform – but wait much longer and that imperative will force itself onto the state.

California exemplifies what happens when policy-makers ignore a pending crisis of this nature. The state and many of its political subdivisions in flush times became extremely generous to government employees with the people’s resources, creating a compensation structure that made these employees significantly better off on this account than those in the private sector paying for it. But good times don’t last forever, especially when decades of imprudent state fiscal management combine with periods of the same (such as currently) from the federal government, and now local governments are turning the spigot to ease the flow to public employees as pressure builds on California’s state government to do the same.

Louisiana isn’t yet to that point, but the situation parallels California’s and today’s present in the Bayou State reminds of the Golden State not long ago. Similarly, Louisiana’s employees are overcompensated relative to the private sector for jobs doing similar tasks. Similarly, a huge liability grows as a result that threatens to consume a large portion of future state budgets – with certainty if nothing changes as the Constitution mandates expenditures to reduce the unfunded accrued liability to zero by 2029. And the crisis might come sooner, with a predicted draining of funds to pay liabilities by 2020.

Ft. Polk social experiment risks negative consequences

Who would have thought that Ft. Polk would appear on the cutting edge of societal evolution? But, as with many other changes wrought in recent decades, perhaps bringing decidedly negative consequences that policy must try to prevent.

Last month, there on base a military chaplain of the Disciples of Christ performed for two service females who practice homosexuality what is known as a “commitment ceremony.” In some religious faiths, this mimics exactly a sacrament of marriage. Louisiana constitutionally permits only a marriage between one man and one woman, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act does not recognize anything but this kind of union for administrative purposes, such as filing status of federal income taxes or for survivor benefits. This is the first known instance of such an event occurring, and its timing may have reflected association with Pres. Barack Obama’s campaign-related recanting of opposition to same-sex marriage.

Word of this event leaking out perturbed several Members of Congress, including Louisiana’s Rep. John Fleming, in whose district resides Ft. Polk. Fleming, who with a House majority at one time had backed an effort to amend into law a clarification that would allow any ceremony similar to one of marriage employing military grounds and personnel to have to comport to the federal legal definition of marriage, spoke of concern that the event contravened DOMA and what impact it would have on combat readiness.

Money conspiracy theories hamper analyzing politics

What do illegal donations intentionally given but unwittingly received, a former presidential candidate preaching jeremiads, and a crushing defeat to the political left all have in common? All together, they underscore the ignorance, from tinfoil-hat-wearing liberals all the way to an ex-officeholder in search of relevance, that many have in understanding the role money plays in electoral politics.

Yesterday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won, easily, a recall election perpetrated by the left, especially facilitated through one of its core constituencies, unions, in an attempt to punish Walker for successful reform efforts that have reduced its power and privilege and as an attempt to intimidate others who may try the reform route in the future. Walker expanded upon his 2010 victory margins that would set the stage for implementation of these and thereby send the left into hysteria.

Naturally, the left refuses to acknowledge it lost because it is wrong on the issues, and instead lapsed into what is called in psychology “displacement,” where the mind redirects an unpalatable conclusion, i.e. losing in the marketplace of ideas, to one that has less to do with reality but psychologically reduces anxiety. In this case, it is the narrative that, because pro-Walker forces raised and spent much more money than did the recall forces, somehow money and money alone made enough people dullards enough to vote against what was best for them.

Long shot suits set to become Democrat campaign staple

There’s nothing like folks who can’t stand losing, especially when one has started campaigning for higher office over three years out, to bring controversy over nothing to the last day of the Louisiana Legislature’s 2012 regular session.

The issue concerned SCR 99, the formula for the Minimum Foundation Program, a mind-numbing exercise in accounting that spits out the state’s allocation to each school district and a few other state schools and charter operators. It creates a base amount that then for most districts is increased, some dramatically, while some are given less because, frankly, they support themselves much better than the typical district. Constitutionally, the MFP formula is concocted by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and shipped to the Legislature, which may only approve or disapprove of it.

Normally approved in a perfunctory fashion, this year the House amended it initially over something called the Early High School Graduation Scholarship Program that would fund high school students who graduated early heading to college with MFP dollars. State Rep. John Bel Edwards, the Old Faithful of lawsuit threats – every time a high-profile but perfectly democratic vote goes against his preferences, he threatens one will pop up – objected to the use of such funds. For good measure, state Rep. Joe Lopinto got passed another to enable the return of the instrument to BESE in order to comply with the Constitution, as it could not be passed in its amended form.

Budget progress possible only if false narratives jettisoned

All is sort of well as ends sort of well: the Louisiana Legislature coughed up a fiscal year 2013 budget after a lot of tugging back and forth that didn’t really go anywhere. It accomplished important objectives insofar as it did not abscond with more of the peoples’ resources yet made reductions in ways that will have little or no impact on the quality of service provision and maintains all but the expenditures of lowest necessity. But in the process of getting there, in no way did it bring clarity or resolution to the largest questions of all: what is the appropriate size of Louisiana state government and how best to fund it?

While elements of both the left and right attempted to ask this question, unusually they came into communion with each other by asking it the wrong way, confusing symptom with disease. Both identified lack of revenues as a problem. Both conceptually err by doing so.

From the antediluvian left, it claims too many tax exclusions and exemptions and too little progressive taxation sap the state of revenues that could pay for stuff, requiring that policy increase them through the excising of exceptions and transfer of wealth from those that disproportionately create it. This myopic view discounts the fact that, on the whole, among the states the state’s tax burden is no better than average, perhaps even a bit on the high end, and also completely ignores the spending side of the equation. It assumes that current spending levels are absolutely legitimate and justifiable, even low, without any thoughtful critical analysis of that assertion. Such an attitude it akin to coming up with a cure, i.e. reduce exceptions and raise taxes, to symptoms, lack of revenues, without understanding the disease, excessive spending which defines revenues as lacking, behind them.