Cassidy compounds mistake with spending bill

Thus begins Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy’s Build Back Better campaign to reestablish trust with a majority of Louisiana voters – with a swing and a miss.

Just over a month after starting his second term, Cassidy angered a large swath of state residents when he voted to convict GOP former Pres. Donald Trump on specious, if not entirely bogus, alleged misdeeds. Those decisions displayed exceptionally poor judgment and utter lack of principle that, if anything, have aged more and more poorly as more comes out about unrest at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

However, he has six years to repair the damage, and he attempted a first step by approving, along with 16 other Republicans, yet another spending bill on top of those late in the Trump Administration and early in the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden Administration. The vote technically only advances the bill for debate, but Cassidy signaled he clearly favors the bill in its present form, which could see significant changes.

Fix flawed LA schools standards revision

Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley acted wisely to hit pause on its social studies standards review, considering the problematic direction in which it has headed.

By August, the committee conducting this – required periodically by law and behind schedule – had hoped to disseminate standards for public comment. Brumley delayed that until October, acknowledging escalating complaints about the working product.

The current decade-old standards have drawn criticism for a table of organization that produces some gaps and overlaps with cohesiveness problems, which the latest publicly-available draft addresses. Unfortunately, the process let wokeness worm its way in.

Campbell climate change screed all hot air

No doubt one reason for the Earth’s warming of a couple of degrees in temperature over the past several decades is the hot air coming from north Louisiana’s Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell.

Recently, Campbell shopped around an opinion piece into which a couple of online news outlets bit. And it goes off the rails right from the start: “The punishing heat wave in the western United States and heavy flooding in the Northeast from Tropical Storm Elsa provide more evidence that the world’s climate is changing” – yet the data show neither heat waves nor extreme weather events increasing in frequency for the last several decades, so how could these become evidence of climate change?

It goes downhill from there. Finding inspiration from the discredited disseminations of Democrat former Vice Pres. Al Gore, Campbell marries fact-impaired faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming with conspiracy theories he has advanced in half a century of elected office: Big Oil standing in the way of the state’s economic and environmental security, preventing a tax swap that would grow government and benefit him personally while driving away fossil fuel business (mimicking the impact of other tax increases on the industry that invalidates Campbell’s thesis that such predatory behavior won’t cause the industry to reduce its state footprint), and decrying the reduction of the privileging received by the renewable energy sector in the state – even as recently the LPSC stupidly acted to reward a major power producer for ramping up expensive renewable energy production against its own staff’s advice and the state of Texas’.

People power making for better LA virus policy

Applying political power directly didn’t work. But the soft power of an informed public has succeeded to date where other efforts failed to produce reasonable and helpful public health emergency policy around Louisiana.

The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, fueled by a new variant, has ticked upwards across the globe after a few months of simmering. In Louisiana, daily cases have reached their highest levels in six months and hospitalizations and deaths the highest in four months.

But governments from the local level all the way up to Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards have not proclaimed the reinstallation of a plethora of mandatory nonpharmaceutical interventions that existed those months ago. Undoubtedly, some they wish they could, for it would help their political agendas by empowering government (Edwards and almost all of the state’s largest city mayors are Democrats) while giving the appearance that they are doing something positive about the situation.

LA GOP needs to leverage loss into victory

If nothing else, the recent inert veto session, but which nearly overturned a Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards veto, set the stage for inexperienced legislative Republicans not just to govern, but to govern with impunity. But as with everything in life, for that to happen all depends on the execution.

With the state’s history of gubernatorial meddling in legislative affairs (keeping in mind that this largely is self-inflicted; in a strict accounting of formal powers the Louisiana governor’s are not remarkable, but traditionally the Legislature has allowed him to flex informal powers that magnify these), as well as having been a minority party for about a century-and-a-half until the last decade that atrophied their ability to lead, the majority Republicans may be excused for not getting it together. Additionally hampering them, the state’s blanket primary system creates more challenges for coalescing around a conservative agenda, as it enables election of those to the majority who dissent to some degree with that.

However, if allowed to flourish, the dynamics that produced the veto session can translate into unimpeachable conservative agenda success, as witnessed in all the states that surround Louisiana. Two separate immediate tasks are involved here: creating a legislative party with increased loyalty to a conservative agenda by having voters shed unreliable members, and increasing the number in that party with that presumed loyalty, in time for 2023 elections.

Democrats win today, set up for loss tomorrow

Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards won the battle, and progress in Louisiana lost. But the victory for state Democrats looms Pyrrhic.

In the historic veto override session, Republicans were unable to override Edwards’ veto of SB 156. The commonsense bill prevents biological males, who have a genetic physical advantage over females, from competing in female-only sports at the scholastic and collegiate level that would discriminate against female competitors.

The Senate approved an override on a party-line vote, which hit right at the two-thirds threshold because Republican state Sen. Ronnie Johns took a dive. But defections and no-shows from Republicans state Sens. Louie Bernard, Patrick Connick, Fred Mills, and Rick Ward doomed other attempts as Democrats held firm.

Politics over principle marks LA Senate votes

Louisiana Senate Democrats would rather inject divisive partisan politics than stand by superior legislation they once supported, all for reasons of politics rather than principle – joined by a few Republicans-in-Name-Only that in a couple of cases leads one to wonder what inducements Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards offered them to change their votes.

That lesson came through the Senate’s consideration of bills vetoed by Edwards, after taking up five vetoed bills. Eleven Democrats voted both on Senate final passage and on override consideration, while newcomer Democrat state Sen. Gary Carter had voted on final passage in the House and was the only of the bunch to have voted against consistently.

In order, starting with SB 156 by Republican state Sen. Beth Mizell, the most discussed of the vetoes and the only one gaining a successful override vote, four Democrats flipped to oppose the override: Regina Barrow, Katrina Jackson, Gary Smith, and Greg Tarver. Not a single one took to the floor to explain what had changed in less than a month-and-a-half to make them switch from support to opposition. All Republicans held the line on the bill that would prevent discrimination against females in scholastic and collegiate sports on the basis of sex.

Legislature must follow through with overrides

Louisiana’s legislative Republican majority, with help from transient other party allies, need to finish the job during this week’s veto session.

It’s not enough to have triggered a historic veto override session that sets the stage for overturning egregious vetoes by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. Letting him off the hook without reversing anything only will embolden him to keep denying good legislation the kind of which many other states routinely pass. Two-thirds majorities in each chamber will do the trick.

The margins that produced the session provide a clue as to whether and how intensely the GOP can achieve its mission. In the House, 69 – all Republicans minus one plus a Democrat and no party member – voted against not having the session, one short of that majority. In the Senate, all 27 Republicans – one more than a supermajority – did so.

Veto session watershed in LA political culture

Louisiana’s political culture reached a milestone when the Legislature resoundingly rebuffed staying home from a veto override session.

Barely a third of legislators by the deadline last week turned in a ballot signifying they didn’t want one to occur, contrary to what has been the case since the implementation of the current 1974 Constitution. In the Senate, it followed party lines with all Democrats sending in one. In the House, the same happened except that Democrat state Rep. Francis Thompson didn’t and Republican Joe Stagni did. Of the three no party representatives, state Rep. Roy Daryl Adams didn’t while state Reps. Joe Marino and new former Democrat Malinda White did.

Putting down its foot on Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ vetoes makes two telling departures from the past. Firstly, until now a governor’s veto of bills passed late in a session have remained sacrosanct. With an asymmetry of power – the full weight of most of the executive branch compared to the relatively puny resources of the Legislature, especially in information, with thousand of full-time employees versus part-time legislators – governors almost always could maneuver things so that any potentially controversial veto could occur late enough so that only an override session could cancel it.

Special elections to test BC reform movement

As opposed to this spring’s regular election, a choice that could move Bossier City forward seems murkier for the city’s southern residents in this fall’s special election. Such a dilemma doesn’t exist for parish residents further north in the city.

Three candidates queued up to fill the vacancy in District 1: Democrat technology administrator Darren Ashley, Republican small businessman Brain Hammons, and independent consultant Michael “Lun” Lombardino. The election became necessary when spring winner Republican Shane Cheatham didn’t take the seat in anticipation of being named city chief administrative officer under Republican new Mayor Tommy Chandler.

Like Chandler, Cheatham had run under a reform banner that questioned city spending priorities and it lack of transparency in decision-making. They criticized then-incumbent Republican Mayor Lo Walker and the City Council, including Cheatham’s incumbent opponent Republican Scott Irwin, for keeping power-wielding among a close-knit group inside and outside of government.