Con man Edwards saves biggest lie for last

With Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards having produced a track record of mendacity so obvious that his schtick has become knee-slapping to the guffawing informed public in Louisiana, he saved his best for last at his end-of-year news conference/end-of-office funerary, its ridiculousness punctuated by the most recent census data release.

This obloquy represented another segment of his ongoing propaganda campaign to convince any of the gullible within earshot that his two terms weren’t an undisputed failure. At it, he topped what had been his previous most egregious of many fibs – when he told a radio audience he doubted black motorist Ronald Greene had died at the hands of Louisiana State Police without resisting arrest all the while having to know that was the case within hours of the incident over two years before – when this week he blithely and with all seriousness declared, “I can tell you that by any metric you can come up with and objectively speaking, we are much better off today than the day I first took office.”

Let’s count the many ways in which this assertion strays so far from truthfulness:

Landry interested in exciting Medicaid reform

Incoming governor Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, for now, is showing he’s seeking a home run when it comes to smaller, more efficient yet as effective government when, as part of his introduction of new (and solid) appointees to his administration, he noted willingness to establish co-payments and work requirements for Medicaid recipients in Louisiana.

Medicaid blows away any other single spending item in the state’s budget. The latest projections have it spending $3.75 billion this year in state taxpayer dollars, which in terms of those dollars only elementary and secondary education rivals, but throwing in $13.5 billion in federal dollars means about three-eighths of total state spending goes out the door for this program.

Both cost sharing by and community engagement requirements of some program recipients not only could return a little offsetting revenue but also could results in wiser utilization that reduces costs, as clients behave more responsibly in their consumption of health care on the dole. Research profusely demonstrates over a variety of welfare programs that asking for exchanges of resources with clients, whether that be cash, labor, or action or desire to participate in the paid or unpaid workforce reduces dependency on welfare without a decline in well-being of the clients.

BC extending transparency, Jury still obscurant

While Bossier City continues to make progress with its transparency, Bossier Parish’s easily-fixed struggles continue.

In its meeting this week, the City Council approved a measure that ultimately could make ordinances and other legal items readily available. This will enable digitization of decades-old material, as part of a preservation effort, that potentially could make it all available online.

At present, for these records Bossier City’s online access is hit and miss. On its Municode website that presents the charter and ordinance, the listing for ordinances by year and number is maddeningly incomplete. For example, all passed in 2016 are archived, but there are none for 2015, and even the most recent 2022 only has seven out of 127. Hopefully, this will lead to an online searchable database that lists every passed ordinance and resolution text going several decades into the past.

LA universities need better free speech policies

Louisiana State University System President William Tate IV, on the eve of a change in gubernatorial administrations to one which he doesn’t see eye-to-eye, is saying the right things. Still, he needs to put his money where his mouth is on others.

With the cocoon in which higher education exists catching out some prominent university leaders recently over their schools’ reactions to anti-Semitic activities, Tate has avoided any such problems with a very sensible attitude that should be made official policy at all Louisiana public institutions: the Kalven Principle of university neutrality regarding public issues. Recently, he spoke to his faculty members at the Louisiana State University campus about how he’ll not comment on political controversies but then try to defend faculty and student commentary.

It shows he’s come a long way from almost three decades ago when his academic publications complained about how math education, an allegedly white-created/"Eurocentric" pedagogical environment, stultified and misjudged black children’s learning, as well as missed opportunities to become an agent of social change. With a woke worldview dimly looked upon by incoming governor Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, in his over two years leading the system Tate hasn’t publicly articulated an opinion for any agenda related to his past published views or any others, including his silence over a measure that failed this year in the Legislature for a report about “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts in state higher education criticized by two other system heads.

Another week, another chance to derail LA case

The rollercoaster ride that is the suit against Louisiana for its congressional apportionment continues, although the real drama for this week came courtesy of parties completely unconnected to the case.

Last week, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals turned down the state’s request – backed by a dozen others who signed on to argue in its favor – to have the entire circuit hear whether the case should be reconsidered in light of its northern neighbor the Eight Circuit’s ruling on a similar case. In that other case, a panel of the Eight Circuit held that plaintiffs, backed by private special interest groups, had no right to intervene in a reapportionment case by taking literally the wording of statute to rule that only the U.S. government could bring such cases against states and local governments.

A Fifth Circuit panel had said the issue didn’t warrant throwing the case out, and after the state had asked for an en banc hearing the federal government had joined the plaintiffs, for the moment seemingly making the matter moot. In the meantime, the district court which officially has the case in its hands ruled that the Louisiana Legislature had until Jan. 30 to make another attempt to draw a map conforming to reapportionment jurisdiction as it stands at the moment, and if it didn’t act then the court would draw the map, but if it did and the plaintiffs protested, a trial over it starting Mar. 24 that could lead to the imposition of a new map if the revised one was found wanting could be done by the court shortly thereafter.

Shreveport Democrats rule for Arceneaux failure

Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux may helm Shreveport, but its gerrymandered Democrat supermajority City Council keeps spending more money than the city has that puts off a more severe day of reckoning which perhaps cloaks a cynical exercise.

This week, the Council approved the 2024 budget, making several changes to Arceneaux’s plan that had the effect of spending more or putting off debts. In all, for its general operations the city will shell out $283 million, down $11 million budgeted for this year, but overall spending is pegged at $676 million, up $81 million, largely as a result of increased revenue projections for water and sewerage and righting retained risk costs, which in the past couple of years ate into general fund reserves.

But Arceneaux’s plans to begin replenishing general fund reserves, which dove by two-thirds over that period to around $25 million, the Council thwarted by amending away a 20 percent increase in water and sewerage rates, a $3 monthly solid waste charge, and retaining open positions in public safety, with police particularly understaffed, altogether which could have recaptured $25 million. The Council unanimously wanted to keep open proactively the ability to hire into public safety departments, and in the cases of the higher charges felt the public not sufficiently prepared to endure the increases at this time.

Leftist group's beliefs, not message, fail in LA

The story remains the same, and helps explain why the group dedicated to putting leftist women in office has crashed and burned in Louisiana.

It seems the national group Emerge America is in retreat. In its decade of existence, it has established chapters in over half the states, recruiting and training female Democrats to run for office. It has roughly 1,300 of serving in elected office, eight members of Congress and 24 statewide officials among its alumnae. But discord has set in among a few of its state chapters, and some essentially have been cut loose.

That’s happened in Louisiana, in which the organization began operating in 2017, where almost two years ago the then-leader of the state’s branch left and hasn’t been replaced, with the organization asserting its strategic profile was served better by having the state’s leftist women interested in its services attend regional and national training, as well as having alumnae available for mentoring. This has disconcerted some, who see the move as surrendering and selling out leftist activist women to whom it had proffered promises of assistance.

Dubious dissent attaches to wise election ruling

The dissenting judges on Louisiana’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals advanced a novel and quite possibly ruinous interpretation of election law rooted in the wisdom of the 1967 movie The Dirty Dozen, when a five-judge panel of the Court ruled upon the ongoing suit to determine the winner of the Caddo Parish sheriff’s contest.

In the film, renegade officer Maj. John Reisman is given the job of taking twelve Army prisoners held for serious crimes during World War II to conduct a near-suicidal mission, in exchange for commutation of their sentences. One, Joseph Wladislaw, landed in prison because he shot an officer displaying cowardice in battle that threatened his entire unit. Upon hearing this during his pitch to Wladislaw to join the unit, Reisman commented that Wladislaw had done right, but made only one mistake: he let someone see him do it.

That’s the philosophy endorsed by Democrats Marcus Hunter and Shonda Stone in their dissent to the majority’s decision in the case authored by Republican Jeff Robinson and backed by Republicans Jeff Cox and Craig Marcotte. The majority upheld the district court decision of ad hoc District Judge Joseph Bleich, who ruled a new election was in order.

Subversion underscores need to repeal bad policy

Like rats leaving a sinking ship, bad policies continue fleeing the state’s executive branch as Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ time in office melts away – and even from unlikely sources.

One example is the loosening of high school graduation standards promulgated by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education scheduled to take effect this week. Until now, if students didn’t score barely better than fogging a mirror on two standardized tests – 38 percent and 10 percent – they didn’t qualify for graduation.

But this fall BESE, which through almost all of his eight years in office rebuffed measures favored by Edwards and his allies, awarded them a win by putting into place a highly subjective appeal process with little oversight that would waive that requirement. It narrowly passed only because as governor Edwards appointed three members who shared his view that government should maintain a monopoly on education that puts adults’ desires ahead of children’s needs – in this case, trying to make government-run schools look better and less likely to face sanctions by having higher graduation rates.

Another legal issue to slow LA map challenge

Another joker popped out of the deck last month concerning the increasingly-voluminous and complex litigation surrounding Louisiana congressional reapportionment that likely makes the odds even more certain that resolution won’t come until the 2026 election cycle.

North of the state in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel agreed in an Arkansas case that only the federal government can file judicial action against maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Louisiana case, which seeks to invalidate the state’s current map with one out of six majority-minority districts in a state where residents claiming some black ancestry make up almost a third of the population, was filed by a private group, not the federal government.

That case, which has ping-ponged between the state’s Middle District and the Fifth Circuit, as part of its deliberation by a separate three-judge panel briefly addressed this issue, known as a private right of action. It conceded that as other jurisdictions had acknowledged the right exists that it would assume the same in this instance.