LA bishops wise to disregard ideology-driven agenda

Social Justice U. strikes again with a pushing of a political ideology that carries the university further away from the spiritual to a secular agenda, one that Louisiana dioceses seem willing recklessly to follow that only can reduce its influence in public policy on things that matter.

Researchers at Loyola University in New Orleans, a nominally Catholic college under the auspices of the religious order Society of Jesus, has for years proclaimed itself “Social Justice U.” and is replete with trendy features to back its boast, such as its community participating in various marches and vigils to protest the outrage of the day, and with various centers with the phrase in their names or in their mission statements. One such unit, the Social Research Institute, decided to create a report arguing that not only should society see that all people live decently, but that they live quite “a modest, dignified life.”

According to its definition of this level, that equates, at a bare minimum for a couple with one child, to around $55,000 to ensure “economic security,” claiming this constituted a “no frills” existence. Contrast this with the federal poverty limit – the amount below which many welfare programs kick in, although some start lower and some begin higher – of the same kind of family, which is presently about $20,000. For this $35,000 annual difference, the authors recommend, it is the responsibility of people through their government to compensate.

Reducing testing's role invites regression in education

Louisiana’s education policy-makers need to resist any changes at the federal level that may prompt foes of reforms in this area over the past few years to claim these as justifications for retreating down the long path of educational excellence, and embrace state-based school accountability alterations that will complement these reforms.

This week, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s committee dealing with school and district accountability heard a report it commissioned on potential improvements to its rating system for schools. Currently, while it varies among levels of schools, all scales used take as its major input, at least half of the appropriate rating, achievement of students on tests and then a letter grade gets assigned as a result to the school.

The study recommended that the grade be computed at least half on aggregate student academic growth rather than level of achievement, mimicking that component for assessment of many teachers in schools, in that level of achievement has too many exogenous factors such as socioeconomic background of students affecting it. Also suggested was to create more gradations in the letter grades, such as awarding plusses and minuses, because otherwise movement from one category to another took such an amount of change that this could encourage staffs from satisficing with a particular non-poor grade and discourage them from trying to move out of it if much effort would not be rewarded with an incrementally higher grading.

Legislature must lead in more LA pay raise reform

That the more Louisiana’s system of evaluating the majority of its employees has changed when it really remained the same illustrates the unfinished business remaining to creating a more efficient state civil service.

Last week, the Department of State Civil Service issued statistics regarding the past fiscal year’s evaluations of the roughly 39,000 employees that fall under this rating system for civil servants. While around 3 percent could not be rated mostly for reason of insufficient length of time of employment, about 96 percent ended up qualifying for a raise, although about a tenth of them will not have one as their agencies’ budgets lack funds to deliver it. This concluded the first full implementation of changes made in 2011 that at the time sparked controversy.

Needlessly, as it turned out. After pulling back on a more far-reaching overhaul, Gov. Bobby Jindal accepted a much more tepid set of adjustments that only marginally created incentives for a more efficient workforce through compensation policy. The data from last year verified that, from a system which had raised almost every employee’s wages annually and almost always with uniformity, the state now has a system that awards about as many of these proportionally with a slightly greater range of variation. Administration officials asserted still this represented improvement because with a different worldview installed that spells out expectations of employees that this approach would raise the standard of performance.

Unproductive LA tax credits finally may get whacked

As the good news/bad news trajectory of oil prices overall negatively impacts Louisiana’s bottom line, political cover to rid the state of counterproductive tax exceptions could be at hand.

It’s not so much that revenues from the state’s excise tax on extracted oil comprise a large part of the state’s budget – the 12.5 percent levy’s proceeds making up about a fifth of budgeted revenues – but that a shortfall can be spread only around a limited portion of the entire budget. When last year voters unwisely locked in reimbursement rates for nursing homes and hospitals and cordoned off tens of millions of dollars to build artificial reefs until the end of time and still never could spend it all, that put over 80 percent of the budget off limits to reductions in the normal budgeting process for next fiscal year (most of this money could be touched if a budget adjustment during a fiscal year would occur with supermajority legislative approval). This means for FY 2016 one area is set up most for reductions, higher education, and another somewhat so, what has been left unprotected in health care.

The latter, since its levels of expenditures are the largest in the budget, presents an opportunity to cut with the pain most spread out, even after a few hundred million bucks got removed from the equation with the vote last fall. However, it lately has borne mid-year cuts when necessary, and another unfortunate development new to the calculus is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in order to create the ruse that it actually was not going to cost the country extravagantly, dramatically has lowered its temporarily boosted reimbursement rates for Medicaid to doctors. The state holding back even more from the rate only would compound the impact of lower quality care through greater wait times and increased costs by pushing recipients to emergency rooms.

Willing misdiagnosis perpetuates belief in nonstory

Recently, in the context of Rep. Steve Scalise inadvertently speaking about taxes over a dozen years ago unbeknownst to him to a handful of white supremacists, this space noted that the political left needs to embellish the episode in order to fit it into its narrative, despite having to buy into some incredible assumptions in order to accomplish that. The thinking of its members that enables them to overcome this high degree of credulity merits discussion.

Given the insignificance of the event, its datedness, and paucity of recorded evidence concerning it, two stories have emerged about it. The much more plausible of them (an excellent recounting of the nuances of both is here) is that the same guy, Kenny Knight, who headed the group also headed a neighborhood organization and scheduled the former to meet after the latter in the same location. Republican Scalise in 2002 was invited to speak to the organization and did so on tax issues, knowing nothing of the existence of the other group nor that it had some of its members wander in early to listen to him. Both Knight, who never was a political ally of Scalise, and his then-paramour confirm this account of events, both of whom could gain lasting political relevance and immortality if they argued Scalise knowingly and willingly spoke to the group; they gain nothing to say otherwise. What little documentation exists of the group’s meeting makes no mention of an appearance scheduled for Scalise.

The implausible version contends they, for unknown reasons, are covering up for Scalise or sanitizing his appearance, with this resting on that after the group’s meeting the existence of a couple of Internet forum posts mentioned his speaking and that a political opponent of Scalise’s, Kenny Lassalle, said he ran another organization in that same neighborhood, that Knight was antagonistic to it, and that Knight’s group didn’t exist, backed by that it was not registered with the Secretary of State as a nonprofit corporation. The holes in this should be obvious: dissatisfied with Lassalle’s organization, Knight could have formed a rump organization to counter and which like many such organizations he did not formally incorporate it, and the consideration of cui bono shows that Lassalle has everything to gain by trying to damage Scalise politically.

Call content good; politicized timing for it bad

Right idea, wrong time; a day late, a dollar short; pick your pithy aphorism but regardless they accurately describe the request by state Rep. Joe Harrison to have a special session of the Louisiana Legislature called prior to this year’s regular session.

Harrison wants the subject matter to encompass the loosening of budgetary dedications that steer revenues to specified expenditures; some end up funding items well beyond any actual need and then forces the state to sweep these funds into other areas of higher priority, a cumbersome and confusing process that has turned annual and makes responsible budgeting chaotic. He also hopes that such a convening would take the opportunity to discard tax exceptions that do not stimulate economic development in a cost-effective fashion that also generate budgetary inefficiency.

Both are good ideas and worthy of pursuit. It’s just that the timing’s all wrong. The upcoming regular session the Constitution specifies as “fiscal-only;” after the session’s commencement, each member may introduce only five each non-fiscal bills, and only during these regular sessions may matters that have the effect of raising taxes be introduced. In other words, even as it is shorter than the “general” kind of regular session that occurs every even-numbered year alternating with this, it exists precisely to concentrate on the kind of fiscal matters Harrison proposes.

LA should pursue beneifts of increased civic literacy

As the amount of rhetoric increases concerning policy responsiveness by government, Louisiana would do well to embrace a growing sentiment that emphasizes civic literacy to address this.

Several other states are considering either increasing secondary and/or college requirements regarding basic knowledge about American government or requiring high school students for their diploma to pass tests based upon the citizenship test for naturalized citizens, or both. Interestingly, education in civics has declined in the past decade because of the implementation of No Child Left Behind education standards that emphasized science and language content. Testing of high school and college graduates on the subject of how their government formed, works, and basic facts about it and the political figures part of it often show discouraging levels of knowledge overall.

By increasing this knowledge, even if it’s just elementary facts based upon historical and current events, it’s argued that this increases awareness about the political world that spurs participation and reasoned deliberation in it. Political scientists long have noted that the more familiar that people are with the political world, the less intimidated they feel in trying to understand and participate in it; people shy away from engaging in an activity if they do not understand it and/or do not feel competence in trying to interact with it. Presumably increased efficacy on these attitudes would spur more people into voting, spending more time considering their vote, become more active through other modes in political participation, and might trigger discussion of politics more with others, perhaps encouraging them to increase their attentiveness to and participation in politics as well.

Double standard: Scalise guilty before proven innocent

In the aftermath of the guilt-by-association show trial that some persist in waging against Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, an interesting observation raised is that Scalise could have avoided problems of this nature by proactively disavowing extremist political figures and their messages. As it turns out, such advice applies only selectively and reflects a larger narrow-mindedness in the minds of those who give it.

Louisiana’s Scalise, then a state representative in 2002 and along with the Red Cross and Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, addressed a neighborhood association organized by one of its officers, his topic being an impending tax vote. Yet that organizer also was an official in a white supremacist organization that hours later would use the same room for its meeting, and says some of the look-in audience to Scalise’s brief speech was comprised of members of that latter group.

Gossip about that hit the media last week. Scalise, barely remembering the episode and as most politicians of the time having no idea about the racist group, allowed discretion to be the better part of valor and apologized anyway, considering the odiousness of the group’s views. No sane politician who wanted any kind of political career since the 1970s knowingly would have anything to do with such a toxic group, such would be the backlash if discovered. Indeed, testimonials by others in the world of politics about his character and his record in office show Scalise would be one of the last people not to be repelled by hanging around such a group.

Kennedy move would help Kleckley, hurt Caldwell

The odd musical chairs that comes about every four years in Louisiana, only accelerated by the introduction of legislative term limits that first took hold in the 2007 election cycle, again has elected officials positioning themselves to abandon current offices in seek of higher/different callings later this year, with dominoes falling as a result.

The gubernatorial term limitation already has the current lieutenant governor, a current Public Service Commissioner, and a state representative ready to rumble for that office (and a sitting U.S. senator). For the vacated lieutenant governor’s post, a big-city mayor, a recently-retired parish president, a continuing parish president, and a state senator have pledged they’ll run. A former congressman looks to take on the current attorney general for that post. None are term limited.

Regardless of limits, potential candidates often feel an imperative to run for something for other reasons of timing. They may feel if they aspire to such an office if they wait longer they may get too old to run effectively, or that the near-term dynamics of the contest may be less favorable to them in the future than in the present.

LA tax rate relief, exception paring possible in 2015

It’s never not the time to discuss state tax rate relief in Louisiana. In fact, it may provide the way by which to get rid of counterproductive tax exceptions.

Increasingly both lawmakers and analysts have decried the presence of some of these on the books as sapping the state’s revenues for little beneficial impact. The trenchancy of this condition has accelerated as the state continues to fight its way past revenues over the past few years that struggled to keep up with escalating costs. Some lawmakers hope to deal with this issue in the upcoming legislative session, but the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote this year to disband these plus Gov. Bobby Jindal’s strong tendency to see these as tax increases the concept of which he doesn’t support makes that difficult. And as in 2016 constitutionally the Legislature cannot take up these items in a regular session that may push back reforms until 2017.

Yet a number of states lead by Republicans are looking to make tax cuts in this coming years. Fresh off of elections that in some cases brought them to power and in other cases increased their majorities – in some cases because they cut taxes – these states look to continue momentum in this direction, even if cautiously given that some states have budget environments not dissimilar to Louisiana’s.