Budgetary estimates continue to trend in positive directions, meaning Louisiana has yet another lucky chance to make up for prior mistakes in its fiscal management. But because those who have made those mistakes continue to hold power in the state and given the timing, whether this actually happens remains questionable.
Early indications predict a budgetary surplus of around a half billion dollars. Despite the 2005 hurricane disasters, Louisiana has gotten lucky because the price of oil has remained high and construction workers (among others) have taken a disproportionate part of their share of federal rebuilding dollars and gambled it away (which I guess why many are construction workers). The state takes a cut of both, and added to all of the temporary recovery funding flowing in, has created this desirable situation.
The problem is, the state has been down this road before with its Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Democrat-controlled Legislature. After the disasters when prudence dictated cuts, they responded but missed the opportunity to cut permanently the truly unnecessary, low-priority and/or inefficiently done items, settling on blanket cuts (as well as using chicanery in computing what could be spent). Then much of that got restored instead of allocating it to reduce long-term, growing, unresolved and underappreciated problem areas such as underfunded pension plans and road needs.
Unfortunately, the Blanco administration talked about but didn’t deliver optimal use of “extra” funds. The Legislature was little better: it brushed aside efforts to tackle the $12 billion-plus pension deficit, didn’t do anything out of the ordinary to reduce the road backlog, and was unable to use some of the money to offset insurance hikes that every citizen, directly or indirectly, will have to pay as a result of the disasters. The same forces that caused no positive change continue in power into 2007.
Worse, that is an election year. Blanco well may succumb to her liberal instincts and spend money blindly to pay off constituencies that will get her votes but to the detriment of the entire state. With Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell almost sure to enter the race against her thus pressuring her from the left, the temptation will be greater to for her to co-opt that agenda and thereby behave irresponsibly. Democrats in the Legislature, whether running for their same jobs or others in the other chamber, likely will do the same.
The refrain is old: Louisiana looks to have yet another chance to progress and start pulling itself out of the last-place ranking morass its liberal/populist history has produced. Let’s hope the usual result, missing that chance, won’t happen again.
30.8.06
Faulty ruling requires LA Supreme Court intervention
Faulty jurisprudence has kept Joe Shyne’s Shreveport City Council campaign alive for the moment, but it appears likely that the Louisiana Supreme Court will have to take up this matter to resolve it fully.
Reversing the lower court decision by Judge Jeanette Garrett, the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a pardon issued by former Gov. Mike Foster, which restored all rights except gun ownership to Shyne after his conviction on federal corruption charges, did in fact apply to a federal crime and thereby got around Art. I Sec. 10 of the Louisiana Constitution’s prohibition against convicted felons running for office until after 15 years have passed since sentence completed. Since Shyne’s sentence ran out (including probation) in 1998, he otherwise is ineligible to run for office.
But in a decision that has the hallmarks of washing, wringing, folding, spindling, and mutilating the Constitution to achieve a desired effect, the Court argued that the literal wording of the relevant section, an amendment added in 1998, didn’t actual mean what it says:
Reversing the lower court decision by Judge Jeanette Garrett, the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a pardon issued by former Gov. Mike Foster, which restored all rights except gun ownership to Shyne after his conviction on federal corruption charges, did in fact apply to a federal crime and thereby got around Art. I Sec. 10 of the Louisiana Constitution’s prohibition against convicted felons running for office until after 15 years have passed since sentence completed. Since Shyne’s sentence ran out (including probation) in 1998, he otherwise is ineligible to run for office.
But in a decision that has the hallmarks of washing, wringing, folding, spindling, and mutilating the Constitution to achieve a desired effect, the Court argued that the literal wording of the relevant section, an amendment added in 1998, didn’t actual mean what it says:
28.8.06
State, local politicians helped cause, made worse disaster
Hurricane Katrina roared ashore a year ago, landing but a glancing blow on the New Orleans metropolitan area, but that was enough to overtop and to cave in levees, flooding 80 percent of the city (and practically all of St. Bernard Parish). And what have we learned in this past year about who or what was most responsible for the destruction visited and lives lost, and how to move forward? In order of culpability:
#1: Inseparably, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Orleans Levee District. The ACE did as well as could be expected in the implementation phase, with whatever shortcomings appearing there because of difficult circumstances to foresee (for example, designs and technology from a half century ago being made to work in the present). But it fell down dramatically in the supervisory phase, letting flaws creep in, allowing some contractors to do substandard work and not keeping a close eye on the OLD which paid scant attention to flood protection. In recent years, the OLD has been more interested in building marinas and bringing in gambling facilities while reducing levee responsibility to ridiculous drive-by inspections that smacked more of an excuse to entertain than perform any serious maintenance. Had the ACE kept a tight watch on contractors and a secure leash on the OLD, or the OLD had actually done what it should have, the breaches and overtopping may not have happened at all.
#2: Gov. Kathleen Blanco and her predecessors. Among other things, Blanco delayed federal troop assistance out of fear she would not receive proper political credit, remained paralyzed in leadership in the first couple of days of the tragedy, and even could not perform the proper procedures as governor to facilitate the recovery effort – even though only a year earlier an exercise was run simulating such a catastrophe and real-life Hurricane Ivan had presented the same threat. Since then, she has been incredibly slow to respond (Mississippi, by contrast, had its basic procedures by the beginning of October, before Blanco even had put together a group to coordinate any recovery effort), in part because of her lack of awareness and of her desire to put political expediency ahead of practical effect. Blanco bears some of the blame for the OLD’s underperformance, since she appoints some of its members, as did her predecessors.
#1: Inseparably, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Orleans Levee District. The ACE did as well as could be expected in the implementation phase, with whatever shortcomings appearing there because of difficult circumstances to foresee (for example, designs and technology from a half century ago being made to work in the present). But it fell down dramatically in the supervisory phase, letting flaws creep in, allowing some contractors to do substandard work and not keeping a close eye on the OLD which paid scant attention to flood protection. In recent years, the OLD has been more interested in building marinas and bringing in gambling facilities while reducing levee responsibility to ridiculous drive-by inspections that smacked more of an excuse to entertain than perform any serious maintenance. Had the ACE kept a tight watch on contractors and a secure leash on the OLD, or the OLD had actually done what it should have, the breaches and overtopping may not have happened at all.
#2: Gov. Kathleen Blanco and her predecessors. Among other things, Blanco delayed federal troop assistance out of fear she would not receive proper political credit, remained paralyzed in leadership in the first couple of days of the tragedy, and even could not perform the proper procedures as governor to facilitate the recovery effort – even though only a year earlier an exercise was run simulating such a catastrophe and real-life Hurricane Ivan had presented the same threat. Since then, she has been incredibly slow to respond (Mississippi, by contrast, had its basic procedures by the beginning of October, before Blanco even had put together a group to coordinate any recovery effort), in part because of her lack of awareness and of her desire to put political expediency ahead of practical effect. Blanco bears some of the blame for the OLD’s underperformance, since she appoints some of its members, as did her predecessors.
Hightower fails to meet needs, creates more burdens
All the Bob Odom-built sugar mills in Louisiana cannot produce enough of the white sweetener to sugarcoat the colossal drain on the city of Shreveport caused by its new convention center and, worse, soon-to-be-opened publicly-owned hotel.
Mayor Keith Hightower, whose political fortunes will be tied with his bringing the center about to fruition and any appearance of success of it, along with the city-paid managers of it, have done their best to spin some favorable news out of it by announcing it had exceeded initial expectations in a number of categories. Of course, they neglected to mention a couple of things, one being that it takes years to judge the performance of such a structure, so any conclusions rendered now mean nothing.
The other they downplayed is far more troubling: will the revenue, both direct and indirect, the facility is anticipated to bring in pay for the operating costs? The managers answered that concerning direct revenues: no, not ever. They predict the best case scenario of losing only $900,000 annually (so far it’s twice that), but then city officials incredibly optimistically argue that the remainder will be made up by the hotel and money pumped into the local economy by out-of-town visitors.
Oh, really? Leaving aside for the moment that the hotel is predicted to lose even more money than the center, let’s just investigate this claim that sales and occupancy taxes will make up the difference. To begin, assume the loss per year is only $980,000 (a figure this low essentially sneered at by perhaps the most preeminent researcher in this area, the Heritage Foundation’s Ron Utt, who thinks the loss will be much higher in the face of declining convention demand and increasing supply). Let’s also assume that for every dollar spent that otherwise would not have been spent on Shreveport hotels and restaurants as a result of the center, the city sees 7 percent of that.
Doing the math, it shows that convention attendees and exhibitors would have to spend $14 million a year. Assuming the typical person in these categories spends $350 in Shreveport for their trip. This means the center would have to books events that total per years 40,000 people visiting Shreveport, or about an 800-(non-local-)person convention a week! Also keep in mind that the vast majority of events, as admitted by the managers, so far booked are local in nature. Even if it can achieve half of this level, that’s still a $490,000 loss a year.
But the news gets much worse. When all is said and done, including the interest paid on the bonds to build it, the city will have forked over in the neighborhood of $200 million for the center. That’s $1,000 for every resident in Shreveport at current population levels, for the privilege of something that will lose them about another half million dollars a year. And just how many police officers could the city hire at half a million a year to keep city councilmen from being shot at and small businessmen from being murdered?
And again, there’s the hotel to consider. The only independent study ever done to assess its profitability concluded it would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Throw in the roughly $75 million in principal and interest it will take to finance the hotel and with the center’s cost, just think how much of the infrastructure problems facing Shreveport, totaling in the hundreds of million of dollars, could have been solved in the near future. Instead, taxes and fees will go up to reverse the crumbling – one reason being the city’s bonding capacity has been stretched beyond recognition by these facilities.
The sheer folly of it all was stated no better than by Utt, whose remarks deserve to be quoted here in full: “What your folks are doing is deplorable. It's an awful waste of money. Are there no unmet needs in Shreveport? Of course not. If you want to benefit the city, you might want to think first about what are truly the public needs that only government can provide.”
As Hightower closes out his mayoral reign and after, look for him and his pals to try to distract the public as much as they can from these facts, that inescapably lead to the conclusion that Democrat Hightower – and a City Council Democrat majority – cared more about building monuments to themselves as part of an economic development strategy that preferred to boost egos and deliver business to cronies rather than to empower the peoples’ ability to grow the economy, through preserving the city’s assets and reducing the monetary burdens (taxes, fees, regulations, and the like) on the citizenry.
Mayor Keith Hightower, whose political fortunes will be tied with his bringing the center about to fruition and any appearance of success of it, along with the city-paid managers of it, have done their best to spin some favorable news out of it by announcing it had exceeded initial expectations in a number of categories. Of course, they neglected to mention a couple of things, one being that it takes years to judge the performance of such a structure, so any conclusions rendered now mean nothing.
The other they downplayed is far more troubling: will the revenue, both direct and indirect, the facility is anticipated to bring in pay for the operating costs? The managers answered that concerning direct revenues: no, not ever. They predict the best case scenario of losing only $900,000 annually (so far it’s twice that), but then city officials incredibly optimistically argue that the remainder will be made up by the hotel and money pumped into the local economy by out-of-town visitors.
Oh, really? Leaving aside for the moment that the hotel is predicted to lose even more money than the center, let’s just investigate this claim that sales and occupancy taxes will make up the difference. To begin, assume the loss per year is only $980,000 (a figure this low essentially sneered at by perhaps the most preeminent researcher in this area, the Heritage Foundation’s Ron Utt, who thinks the loss will be much higher in the face of declining convention demand and increasing supply). Let’s also assume that for every dollar spent that otherwise would not have been spent on Shreveport hotels and restaurants as a result of the center, the city sees 7 percent of that.
Doing the math, it shows that convention attendees and exhibitors would have to spend $14 million a year. Assuming the typical person in these categories spends $350 in Shreveport for their trip. This means the center would have to books events that total per years 40,000 people visiting Shreveport, or about an 800-(non-local-)person convention a week! Also keep in mind that the vast majority of events, as admitted by the managers, so far booked are local in nature. Even if it can achieve half of this level, that’s still a $490,000 loss a year.
But the news gets much worse. When all is said and done, including the interest paid on the bonds to build it, the city will have forked over in the neighborhood of $200 million for the center. That’s $1,000 for every resident in Shreveport at current population levels, for the privilege of something that will lose them about another half million dollars a year. And just how many police officers could the city hire at half a million a year to keep city councilmen from being shot at and small businessmen from being murdered?
And again, there’s the hotel to consider. The only independent study ever done to assess its profitability concluded it would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Throw in the roughly $75 million in principal and interest it will take to finance the hotel and with the center’s cost, just think how much of the infrastructure problems facing Shreveport, totaling in the hundreds of million of dollars, could have been solved in the near future. Instead, taxes and fees will go up to reverse the crumbling – one reason being the city’s bonding capacity has been stretched beyond recognition by these facilities.
The sheer folly of it all was stated no better than by Utt, whose remarks deserve to be quoted here in full: “What your folks are doing is deplorable. It's an awful waste of money. Are there no unmet needs in Shreveport? Of course not. If you want to benefit the city, you might want to think first about what are truly the public needs that only government can provide.”
As Hightower closes out his mayoral reign and after, look for him and his pals to try to distract the public as much as they can from these facts, that inescapably lead to the conclusion that Democrat Hightower – and a City Council Democrat majority – cared more about building monuments to themselves as part of an economic development strategy that preferred to boost egos and deliver business to cronies rather than to empower the peoples’ ability to grow the economy, through preserving the city’s assets and reducing the monetary burdens (taxes, fees, regulations, and the like) on the citizenry.
27.8.06
Blanco will continue to politicize disasters for campaign
Some observers have speculated that Gov. Kathleen Blanco has, in some way, deliberately delayed disbursements of recovery monies from the 2005 hurricane disasters in order to have them appear closer to next year’s election day to assist her reelection efforts. That explanation seems unlikely – Blanco has been the main reason why it has taken so long for these funds to get out but because it’s probably a function of her ineptitude and unshakeable faith in pursuing blank check, big government solutions controlled by her, which the federal government had to take time to moderate and to allow federalism to play out.
Still, in the upcoming 13 months one can expect Blanco to run a campaign having it both ways. On this issue, she will try to deflect the public’s attention away from her lack of leadership and ideology at cross-interests with Louisiana’s majority by blaming the federal government (or New Orleans’ which does deserve approbation but does not excuse Blanco for her mistakes) while at the same time publicizing heavily that she is (inaccurately) largely responsible for the money that does come dribbling out.
The fact that her main opponent is very likely to be Rep. Bobby Jindal makes even more expected this strategy. With no real positive record to run out, Blanco’s only chance of winning is to emphasize the redistribution aspect of her term, in the hopes that a majority of voters will feel that, in classic Louisiana style, that they have gotten enough goodies doled out to them, while simultaneously attacking Jindal by linking him to the mythology she and others have tried to create that the problems of preparation and response to the disasters were not primarily Louisiana’s and hers, but the federal government’s – and Jindal is part of that organization.
For his part, to counteract this, Jindal must point out how Blanco’s unsuitable actions caused needless harm, emphasizing how the federal government in general and he in particular, steadfastly corrected for Blanco’s dithering and excesses. He must know he cannot out-liberal Democrat a liberal Democrat on the check-cutting part, but must make clear his intervention was helpful in getting the ultimate solution in place, despite Blanco, in a way that provides good stewardship and wise use of taxpayers’ dollars.
Jindal can really negate this Blanco ploy should he be successful on a related issue, getting the federal government to bump up Louisiana’s offshore extraction royalties to levels commensurate with other coastal states to be used to combat coastal erosion. This he should contrast to Blanco’s flailing efforts entailing a wasteful, nuisance suit.
It’s unfortunate that the disaster issue took on political overtones, but from its first hours of it already Blanco was making decisions based upon political considerations. That genie has long left the bottle, and so Blanco’s opponents to win will have to accept that template and use it against her.
Still, in the upcoming 13 months one can expect Blanco to run a campaign having it both ways. On this issue, she will try to deflect the public’s attention away from her lack of leadership and ideology at cross-interests with Louisiana’s majority by blaming the federal government (or New Orleans’ which does deserve approbation but does not excuse Blanco for her mistakes) while at the same time publicizing heavily that she is (inaccurately) largely responsible for the money that does come dribbling out.
The fact that her main opponent is very likely to be Rep. Bobby Jindal makes even more expected this strategy. With no real positive record to run out, Blanco’s only chance of winning is to emphasize the redistribution aspect of her term, in the hopes that a majority of voters will feel that, in classic Louisiana style, that they have gotten enough goodies doled out to them, while simultaneously attacking Jindal by linking him to the mythology she and others have tried to create that the problems of preparation and response to the disasters were not primarily Louisiana’s and hers, but the federal government’s – and Jindal is part of that organization.
For his part, to counteract this, Jindal must point out how Blanco’s unsuitable actions caused needless harm, emphasizing how the federal government in general and he in particular, steadfastly corrected for Blanco’s dithering and excesses. He must know he cannot out-liberal Democrat a liberal Democrat on the check-cutting part, but must make clear his intervention was helpful in getting the ultimate solution in place, despite Blanco, in a way that provides good stewardship and wise use of taxpayers’ dollars.
Jindal can really negate this Blanco ploy should he be successful on a related issue, getting the federal government to bump up Louisiana’s offshore extraction royalties to levels commensurate with other coastal states to be used to combat coastal erosion. This he should contrast to Blanco’s flailing efforts entailing a wasteful, nuisance suit.
It’s unfortunate that the disaster issue took on political overtones, but from its first hours of it already Blanco was making decisions based upon political considerations. That genie has long left the bottle, and so Blanco’s opponents to win will have to accept that template and use it against her.
24.8.06
Stuck on stupid XIX: Blanco denies delaying housing money
A year ago, Hurricane Katrina was churning towards the Gulf Coast and Louisiana officials kept an eye on it. Despite that, crucial figures such as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco bungled, through poor planning followed by erroneous execution, attempts to cope with and minimize the loss of property and lives that would result from the storm’s landfall.
How they have coped with that spawned a new phrase, courtesy of a no-nonsense military man, for the Louisiana political lexicon, “stuck on stupid.” It’s the attitude demonstrated when public policy problems created by these officials’ own actions instead are blamed by those officials on others; they are incapable of understanding that it is their own beliefs and doings causing problems, and so they have to try to blame others for their own faults. Unfortunately, Louisiana has demonstrated in the past year that it has far too many politicians emblematic of this phrase (hence my nineteenth such named column), and it frequently has been lead from the top by Blanco.
Her latest exposition of why she remains stuck on stupid comes from her remarks at the grand opening of a state branch office of the Road Home program, designed to assist Louisianans in rebuilding their residences. Or, as wags have put in deference to the fact that a large number of state citizens have picked up on Blanco’s poor term in office, the “Road to the Governor’s Mansion,” as Democrat Blanco tries to use the program’s giving away of lots of money to entice people to support her for reelection next year.
It was all vintage stuck-on-stupid Blanco at the New Orleans ceremony. Trying to forestall criticism that it took nearly a year to get all of this going, she said the center's opening “culminates extraordinary days, extraordinary battles” in which the state had to spend months demanding greater help from federal officials who “at first didn't want to help us.” She spouted more such nonsense when she said part of the delay occurred because the White House decided to oppose Rep. Richard Baker’s bill in Congress to create a public corporation that would have bought hurricane-damaged homes and resold them to developers.
In truth, the delay mostly was Blanco’s doing. First, she took forever to get things going, in terms of providing leadership for institutions and laws to deal with recovery. (By contrast, Mississippi, which in some places had everything flattened as far as 60 miles inland, immediately got going and is far ahead of Louisiana as a result in all but the most severely damaged places.) Then, she refused to support important measures such as flood control legislation proposed to better protect the state and to show the rest of the country the state meant business, that recovery monies wouldn’t be poured into the same untenable situation, until a barrage of criticism made her change her mind.
Instead, she wasted time and efforts first by backing a ludicrously-large, few-strings attached $250 billion gift request to the federal government, then by backing the Baker bill which would have created a huge wasteful bureaucracy and likely would have put the U.S. taxpayer much more on the hook with fewer protections of their monies. National lawmakers derided the first and wisely deferred on the second. She wasted valuable time and effort conducting a public relations campaign, even in the halls of Congress, trying to blame others for her shortcomings in dealing with the storm during and after it (even being less than candid about it all).
What we know of as the “Road Home” came about only after all of this, where Blanco had to call another special session of the Legislature just to make up for errors she made regarding the first – and then in the regular session she had to wait for approval of the government structure to carry it out because her suggestion how to run it was too bureaucratic and put too much power in her hands, leading to Legislative modification. Only after all of this then did the federal government feel it could trust Louisiana to use wisely its tens of billions of dollars of gift monies.
A real leader would have lopped six months off this process. And so, almost a year later, with heavy hearts we’re still forced to proclaim (all together now), “Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, you remain thoroughly stuck on stupid.”
How they have coped with that spawned a new phrase, courtesy of a no-nonsense military man, for the Louisiana political lexicon, “stuck on stupid.” It’s the attitude demonstrated when public policy problems created by these officials’ own actions instead are blamed by those officials on others; they are incapable of understanding that it is their own beliefs and doings causing problems, and so they have to try to blame others for their own faults. Unfortunately, Louisiana has demonstrated in the past year that it has far too many politicians emblematic of this phrase (hence my nineteenth such named column), and it frequently has been lead from the top by Blanco.
Her latest exposition of why she remains stuck on stupid comes from her remarks at the grand opening of a state branch office of the Road Home program, designed to assist Louisianans in rebuilding their residences. Or, as wags have put in deference to the fact that a large number of state citizens have picked up on Blanco’s poor term in office, the “Road to the Governor’s Mansion,” as Democrat Blanco tries to use the program’s giving away of lots of money to entice people to support her for reelection next year.
It was all vintage stuck-on-stupid Blanco at the New Orleans ceremony. Trying to forestall criticism that it took nearly a year to get all of this going, she said the center's opening “culminates extraordinary days, extraordinary battles” in which the state had to spend months demanding greater help from federal officials who “at first didn't want to help us.” She spouted more such nonsense when she said part of the delay occurred because the White House decided to oppose Rep. Richard Baker’s bill in Congress to create a public corporation that would have bought hurricane-damaged homes and resold them to developers.
In truth, the delay mostly was Blanco’s doing. First, she took forever to get things going, in terms of providing leadership for institutions and laws to deal with recovery. (By contrast, Mississippi, which in some places had everything flattened as far as 60 miles inland, immediately got going and is far ahead of Louisiana as a result in all but the most severely damaged places.) Then, she refused to support important measures such as flood control legislation proposed to better protect the state and to show the rest of the country the state meant business, that recovery monies wouldn’t be poured into the same untenable situation, until a barrage of criticism made her change her mind.
Instead, she wasted time and efforts first by backing a ludicrously-large, few-strings attached $250 billion gift request to the federal government, then by backing the Baker bill which would have created a huge wasteful bureaucracy and likely would have put the U.S. taxpayer much more on the hook with fewer protections of their monies. National lawmakers derided the first and wisely deferred on the second. She wasted valuable time and effort conducting a public relations campaign, even in the halls of Congress, trying to blame others for her shortcomings in dealing with the storm during and after it (even being less than candid about it all).
What we know of as the “Road Home” came about only after all of this, where Blanco had to call another special session of the Legislature just to make up for errors she made regarding the first – and then in the regular session she had to wait for approval of the government structure to carry it out because her suggestion how to run it was too bureaucratic and put too much power in her hands, leading to Legislative modification. Only after all of this then did the federal government feel it could trust Louisiana to use wisely its tens of billions of dollars of gift monies.
A real leader would have lopped six months off this process. And so, almost a year later, with heavy hearts we’re still forced to proclaim (all together now), “Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, you remain thoroughly stuck on stupid.”
22.8.06
Shreveport mayor's poll tells little now, maybe more later
The Shreveport Times commissioned an exit poll concerning the city’s mayor’s race and it tells us … really nothing.
That’s perhaps a bit terse. Actually, it does tell us a few things. It says that state Sen. Max Malone has a long hill to climb to get himself into City Plaza – not impossible, but such a late start is not going to make it easy for it. It also reveals that Liz Swaine, relatively speaking, is doing stronger-than-expected – but probably some of the choices of her are a reflection of residual name-recognition from her television anchorwoman past rather than a genuine commitment to vote, meaning her overall strength is overstated because some of her supporters now will turn out the be unreliable later (and with such a high name recognition, she doesn’t have much upside).
But the utility of this poll is doubtful because barely half of the polled electorate even professes a choice, unusual in a situation where the campaign has been going on for months with only fifty-odd days out from the contest. This should be most worrisome to state Rep. Cedric Glover, who barely polls above his presumed closest competitor for votes, retired television executive Ed Bradley, and who trails Swaine. Somebody who would be expected to roll up more than half of the black vote at a minimum should be expected to have higher figures barely a month before the election.
However, all in all, the poll leaves us with far more questions than it can answer. Are Swaine’s totals firm? Are Malone’s a reflection of his late entry or that former city attorney Jerry Jones has done a solid job of building committed support among a significant number of voters that could carry him into a general election runoff? Can Bradley broaden his base beyond a few white liberals and angrier black supporters, indicated as a possibility given Glover’s relative weakness? Could a poll also-ran like city director of economic development Arlena Acree, with so much of the vote still outstanding, take advantage of the large proportion of undecided voters to disproportionately improve her standing?
(Tentative answers in reverse order are: (1) Acree has a lot of room to move up with the favorable ratings she has, but whether she can trigger this is another matter, (2) Bradley’s upside with his ratings looks pretty limited, while Glover does has some room to move up, and (3) with so many saying they don’t know of Malone, expect a dramatic rise in his fortunes if he can make himself know which, again, is a problem given his late entry – but forget about the absolutely inane comment about Malone’s placement that “He's got a very incendiary rhetoric. Those who will vote for him don't want that to be known,” because it’s the lack of name recognition, not undercounting, driving his total as of now.)
With 34 percent of the vote still unpledged, so much still could happen. That’s the real message this poll gives us.
That’s perhaps a bit terse. Actually, it does tell us a few things. It says that state Sen. Max Malone has a long hill to climb to get himself into City Plaza – not impossible, but such a late start is not going to make it easy for it. It also reveals that Liz Swaine, relatively speaking, is doing stronger-than-expected – but probably some of the choices of her are a reflection of residual name-recognition from her television anchorwoman past rather than a genuine commitment to vote, meaning her overall strength is overstated because some of her supporters now will turn out the be unreliable later (and with such a high name recognition, she doesn’t have much upside).
But the utility of this poll is doubtful because barely half of the polled electorate even professes a choice, unusual in a situation where the campaign has been going on for months with only fifty-odd days out from the contest. This should be most worrisome to state Rep. Cedric Glover, who barely polls above his presumed closest competitor for votes, retired television executive Ed Bradley, and who trails Swaine. Somebody who would be expected to roll up more than half of the black vote at a minimum should be expected to have higher figures barely a month before the election.
However, all in all, the poll leaves us with far more questions than it can answer. Are Swaine’s totals firm? Are Malone’s a reflection of his late entry or that former city attorney Jerry Jones has done a solid job of building committed support among a significant number of voters that could carry him into a general election runoff? Can Bradley broaden his base beyond a few white liberals and angrier black supporters, indicated as a possibility given Glover’s relative weakness? Could a poll also-ran like city director of economic development Arlena Acree, with so much of the vote still outstanding, take advantage of the large proportion of undecided voters to disproportionately improve her standing?
(Tentative answers in reverse order are: (1) Acree has a lot of room to move up with the favorable ratings she has, but whether she can trigger this is another matter, (2) Bradley’s upside with his ratings looks pretty limited, while Glover does has some room to move up, and (3) with so many saying they don’t know of Malone, expect a dramatic rise in his fortunes if he can make himself know which, again, is a problem given his late entry – but forget about the absolutely inane comment about Malone’s placement that “He's got a very incendiary rhetoric. Those who will vote for him don't want that to be known,” because it’s the lack of name recognition, not undercounting, driving his total as of now.)
With 34 percent of the vote still unpledged, so much still could happen. That’s the real message this poll gives us.
Senators' grandstanding impedes real insurance solutions
You know there are elections around the corner when you get a bunch of grandstanding by members of the Louisiana Senate who make a lot of silly, unhelpful statements, but who really offer no serious solution to insurance problems in the wake of the 2005 hurricane disasters.
We seem to be having Senate Insurance Committee meetings left and right across the state, even though the Legislature won’t convene for another eight months. Chalk that up to its chairman’s Republican John David Cain running in the Sep. 30 special election for insurance commissioner, as if doing this makes it look like he’s doing anything constructive at all.
Other members seemed to have seized the opportunity for free publicity to make themselves sound like champions of the little people in order to win votes – a dangerous but prevalent mentality among Louisiana politicians which casts aside the desire to thoughtfully analyze public policy problems and has lead the state to being at or close to the bottom of every measure of quality of life.
Running for Congress, Republican Craig Romero sputters about how allowing insurer Farm Bureau to cancel policies after previously being allowed to raise rates – in essence, pocketing all of this money during a period of low risk – was akin to theft. Well, I don’t know the minute details about how the state’s Department of Insurance works, but I do know that the Department’s actuaries regularly review rates with a company’s financial position being part of that calculation. If Farm Bureau sopped up this money now, then in the future the higher balances will mean they will be forced to charge lower rates. That’s not theft; it’s the “pay me now or pay me later” choice where the company has opted for the latter.
Running for mayor of Opelousas, Democrat Donald Cravins thundered about “companies are basically exercising a free hand to do as they will with very little regulation from the state Department of Insurance. There's a law in effect that says a company can raise a premium 10 percent. They're raising them 20, 30 and 40 percent.” Well, I’m no senator, but I do know that R.S. 22:1401 says the Insurance Rating Commission may permit an increase of any size after appropriate review by the Deaprtment. So is Cravins charging, because he sees a “free hand to do as they will” by the presence of some large increases that the Department of Insurance is not properly vetting rate increase requests, and that the Insurance Rating Commission is derelict in its duty? Unless he has proof of these things, making such allegations is irresponsible.
Running for reelection next year, Democrat Nick Gautreaux wants to introduce a bill to allow the state-owned insurer to lower its rates. What Gautreaux doesn’t seem to understand is rates are going up because they have been under-priced relative to actual market conditions – and the subsidizer in the past to compensate still are Louisiana taxpayers and home insurance ratepayers, who thusly are compelled to transfer some of their wealth to other individuals who live in high risk areas. This would just under-price risk even more and put greater redistribution demands on those who chose not to buy home insurance in risky areas.
You get foolishness (and bottom-shelf state rankings) like this because of an attitude that too many have in this state that other people ought to pay instead of you paying for your own decisions. For those who go around saying home insurance now is “price-gouging,” and that if rates aren’t forced lower that “quitting, going on welfare and letting everybody else pay my stuff” is the preferred alternative (as if somebody hasn’t been paying for part of their insurance all along because of under-pricing revealed by the disasters), let’s be clear: nobody is putting a gun to your head and making you own a home wherever you want to live. If you think home insurance is too high, sell out and rent. Or, move away to a lower-risk area or to a less-grandiose property if you want lower rates.
I’m sorry, it’s just that simple. There’s no grand conspiracy among insurers to artificially inflate rates; even in a heavily-regulated industry such as insurance there’s enough of the free market left to prevent collusion and to ensure that private insurance will be made available to all who want it – if the state doesn’t allow the reward to not compensate for the risk involved by pursuing a populist solution of lower rates just because they were under-priced for so long. And it’s certainly unfair to make others pay for a few to have the privilege of artificially lower rates. But perhaps the worst thing of all is to hear these politicians, instead of offering serious analysis based upon some understanding about how the real world works, spout off with drivel that only makes coming up with the optimal solution all the more difficult.
We seem to be having Senate Insurance Committee meetings left and right across the state, even though the Legislature won’t convene for another eight months. Chalk that up to its chairman’s Republican John David Cain running in the Sep. 30 special election for insurance commissioner, as if doing this makes it look like he’s doing anything constructive at all.
Other members seemed to have seized the opportunity for free publicity to make themselves sound like champions of the little people in order to win votes – a dangerous but prevalent mentality among Louisiana politicians which casts aside the desire to thoughtfully analyze public policy problems and has lead the state to being at or close to the bottom of every measure of quality of life.
Running for Congress, Republican Craig Romero sputters about how allowing insurer Farm Bureau to cancel policies after previously being allowed to raise rates – in essence, pocketing all of this money during a period of low risk – was akin to theft. Well, I don’t know the minute details about how the state’s Department of Insurance works, but I do know that the Department’s actuaries regularly review rates with a company’s financial position being part of that calculation. If Farm Bureau sopped up this money now, then in the future the higher balances will mean they will be forced to charge lower rates. That’s not theft; it’s the “pay me now or pay me later” choice where the company has opted for the latter.
Running for mayor of Opelousas, Democrat Donald Cravins thundered about “companies are basically exercising a free hand to do as they will with very little regulation from the state Department of Insurance. There's a law in effect that says a company can raise a premium 10 percent. They're raising them 20, 30 and 40 percent.” Well, I’m no senator, but I do know that R.S. 22:1401 says the Insurance Rating Commission may permit an increase of any size after appropriate review by the Deaprtment. So is Cravins charging, because he sees a “free hand to do as they will” by the presence of some large increases that the Department of Insurance is not properly vetting rate increase requests, and that the Insurance Rating Commission is derelict in its duty? Unless he has proof of these things, making such allegations is irresponsible.
Running for reelection next year, Democrat Nick Gautreaux wants to introduce a bill to allow the state-owned insurer to lower its rates. What Gautreaux doesn’t seem to understand is rates are going up because they have been under-priced relative to actual market conditions – and the subsidizer in the past to compensate still are Louisiana taxpayers and home insurance ratepayers, who thusly are compelled to transfer some of their wealth to other individuals who live in high risk areas. This would just under-price risk even more and put greater redistribution demands on those who chose not to buy home insurance in risky areas.
You get foolishness (and bottom-shelf state rankings) like this because of an attitude that too many have in this state that other people ought to pay instead of you paying for your own decisions. For those who go around saying home insurance now is “price-gouging,” and that if rates aren’t forced lower that “quitting, going on welfare and letting everybody else pay my stuff” is the preferred alternative (as if somebody hasn’t been paying for part of their insurance all along because of under-pricing revealed by the disasters), let’s be clear: nobody is putting a gun to your head and making you own a home wherever you want to live. If you think home insurance is too high, sell out and rent. Or, move away to a lower-risk area or to a less-grandiose property if you want lower rates.
I’m sorry, it’s just that simple. There’s no grand conspiracy among insurers to artificially inflate rates; even in a heavily-regulated industry such as insurance there’s enough of the free market left to prevent collusion and to ensure that private insurance will be made available to all who want it – if the state doesn’t allow the reward to not compensate for the risk involved by pursuing a populist solution of lower rates just because they were under-priced for so long. And it’s certainly unfair to make others pay for a few to have the privilege of artificially lower rates. But perhaps the worst thing of all is to hear these politicians, instead of offering serious analysis based upon some understanding about how the real world works, spout off with drivel that only makes coming up with the optimal solution all the more difficult.
21.8.06
Challenge should negate ex-con, felon candidacy
Maybe starting tomorrow we’ll finally get a clarification about Article 1, Section 10 of the Louisiana Constitution to see just how airtight it is in preventing felons unpardoned for their crimes from running for elective office in the state before 15 years have passed (assuming their sentence has been completed).
Prisoner #08515-035, Joe Shyne, was convicted in 1994 of soliciting a bribe while performing duties as a Shreveport city councilman office, a federal crime. He served his time in prison, a year, but then came back to win back the seat in 1998. State Sen. Max Malone (now running for mayor) didn’t think this was right, as did a large majority of Louisiana citizens, when he introduced a constitutional amendment that they approved that theoretically should keep Shyne from running for that office again until 2010.
But Shyne claims a governor’s pardon, which he got in 2003 from former Gov. Mike Foster, will suffice, even though the state’s Pardon Board a year later concluded the governor had no power to affect a federal conviction (this done to determine whether election rights could be restored to Prisoner #03312-095; no doubt he sees that decision as part of the massive conspiracy of the federal government and its judicial system against him, despite any real evidence). Malone and Shyne’s opponent current councilman James Green, disagree and challenged his candidacy.
Prisoner #08515-035, Joe Shyne, was convicted in 1994 of soliciting a bribe while performing duties as a Shreveport city councilman office, a federal crime. He served his time in prison, a year, but then came back to win back the seat in 1998. State Sen. Max Malone (now running for mayor) didn’t think this was right, as did a large majority of Louisiana citizens, when he introduced a constitutional amendment that they approved that theoretically should keep Shyne from running for that office again until 2010.
But Shyne claims a governor’s pardon, which he got in 2003 from former Gov. Mike Foster, will suffice, even though the state’s Pardon Board a year later concluded the governor had no power to affect a federal conviction (this done to determine whether election rights could be restored to Prisoner #03312-095; no doubt he sees that decision as part of the massive conspiracy of the federal government and its judicial system against him, despite any real evidence). Malone and Shyne’s opponent current councilman James Green, disagree and challenged his candidacy.
20.8.06
Stuck on stupid XVIII: it's the competence, stupid
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is opening mouth, inserting foot once again. And, once again, he displays the tragic ignorance of so many politicians from the Crescent City that ends up exactly disproving the point he tried to make.
Once again speaking before what he considered a friendly audience (the National Association of Black Journalists), Nagin alleged the federal governments’ actions towards New Orleans were biased against its recovery, intimating it was because New Orleans’ is a poorer city with a higher proportions of black citizens. Doing a derivative rap of Spike Lee, Nagin argued, “if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different response.”
Actually, it’s funny he should mention those places, since they aren’t so different from New Orleans in terms of competence of local government. South Beach, which actually is a term of the southern part of Miami Beach which is governed in part by the famously corrupt Miami-Dade County, FL consolidated government, is part of an area with a huge Hispanic population. Orange County, CA famously mismanaged itself through the use of derivatives to lose over $1 billion, and is an area with a rapidly-growing Hispanic population. Nagin didn’t seem to know or couldn’t recognize the effectiveness problems of these governments.
Which is the entire point of why the federal government has appeared so meddlesome, so halting, to turn on the money taps to New Orleans: it does not trust politicians like Nagin, and those potentially far more corrupt, who have run New Orleans into the ground over the past several decades. The federal government understands that if you have a reprobate on your hands, you just don’t turn over the keys to the kingdom to him, you have to guide him, with tough love as needed, to maximize the chances that the best decisions get made. And then the reprobate’s representative accusing the donors of bad intentions is really going to get them to loosen up their wallets.
It is a sign of Nagin’s cluelessness that he doesn’t seem to realize any of this, that he and his ilk have been part of the problem in the past (and now are derided by many who say it’s not other governments’ not greasing city government’s palms enough that’s the problem, it’s that Nagin isn’t doing much of anything). Nagin is ignorant or dishonest to blame race and class for retarding the recovery of New Orleans; if he kindly will line himself up and almost all city elected officials of the recent past in front of a mirror, they will see who ultimately are responsible not only for that, but for depleting New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina that will make a comeback even more difficult.
Once again speaking before what he considered a friendly audience (the National Association of Black Journalists), Nagin alleged the federal governments’ actions towards New Orleans were biased against its recovery, intimating it was because New Orleans’ is a poorer city with a higher proportions of black citizens. Doing a derivative rap of Spike Lee, Nagin argued, “if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different response.”
Actually, it’s funny he should mention those places, since they aren’t so different from New Orleans in terms of competence of local government. South Beach, which actually is a term of the southern part of Miami Beach which is governed in part by the famously corrupt Miami-Dade County, FL consolidated government, is part of an area with a huge Hispanic population. Orange County, CA famously mismanaged itself through the use of derivatives to lose over $1 billion, and is an area with a rapidly-growing Hispanic population. Nagin didn’t seem to know or couldn’t recognize the effectiveness problems of these governments.
Which is the entire point of why the federal government has appeared so meddlesome, so halting, to turn on the money taps to New Orleans: it does not trust politicians like Nagin, and those potentially far more corrupt, who have run New Orleans into the ground over the past several decades. The federal government understands that if you have a reprobate on your hands, you just don’t turn over the keys to the kingdom to him, you have to guide him, with tough love as needed, to maximize the chances that the best decisions get made. And then the reprobate’s representative accusing the donors of bad intentions is really going to get them to loosen up their wallets.
It is a sign of Nagin’s cluelessness that he doesn’t seem to realize any of this, that he and his ilk have been part of the problem in the past (and now are derided by many who say it’s not other governments’ not greasing city government’s palms enough that’s the problem, it’s that Nagin isn’t doing much of anything). Nagin is ignorant or dishonest to blame race and class for retarding the recovery of New Orleans; if he kindly will line himself up and almost all city elected officials of the recent past in front of a mirror, they will see who ultimately are responsible not only for that, but for depleting New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina that will make a comeback even more difficult.
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