Objections discarded to make worthy state pay plan

Wisely, the State Civil Service Commission passed new standards regarding Louisiana classified civil service employees, over the objections of a few commentators. To understand the merit of the new regime, it is instructive to review it and the weakness of the complaints against it.

Slightly modified from a proposal rejected by Gov. Bobby Jindal earlier in the year, whose final approval must come to enact the new standards, it gives agencies discretion to give annual pay raises to these employees of up to three percent for employees evaluated in the middle category of merit, up to four percent for those evaluated in the second-highest category, and up to five percent for those evaluate in the highest category. Employees in the two lowest categories, which are the ones designating less-than-satisfactory performance and typically comprise less than one percent of all rated employees, receive no raises. Agencies may give lesser percentage hikes as long as levels from lower eligible categories do not exceed higher ones, for budgetary reasons.

Currently, typically almost 60 percent of employees are rated in the two highest categories.

Clearly this system better matches pay to performance than did the old one, where the 99 percent or so rated at least satisfactory except in times of high budgetary stress got four percent raises regardless of rating. Now, financial incentives will exist to motivate better performance and to guide less enthusiastic workers out of the state employment. The improved performance will provide better service delivery at reduced costs (even if the current bias towards unrealistically-high evaluation remains, which hopefully will be the next matter that the SCSC reviews for change).

But a few complained about this among the comments gathered pursuant to the drafting of the new regulations. One argued that the change really needed was addressing unclassified employees, specifically political appointees, that there were too many. Yet the fact is that fewer than five percent of all state full-time employees are appointees so savings would be pretty marginal by their reduction in numbers. At the same time, dealing with that does not mean then you don’t have to deal with compensation reform; they are not mutually exclusive.

Another opined that the new system would allow agencies to adopt informal policy not to give out ratings in the highest categories, which was echoed by a union flak at the hearing who added then raises may not be granted at all. However, that can be done already (and the failure to grant happened last year) under the current system so that is irrelevant as to why the new system would not be as good. And, as noted above, the evaluation system does need work precisely in the direction of realism that should cause fewer high evaluations to be given out.

Also, one seemed to be confused by calling potentially smaller increases “a cut in pay” when in fact no pay cuts are proposed (they are illegal without cause or when part of a reduction in force, in any event) and they were “a slap in our faces.” To which the appropriate response would be that if the remuneration was found inadequate and the organization demeaning, perhaps exiting the organization and finding a job elsewhere would bring the assumed deserved pay and respect. If enough quality people leave, then pay scales will rise to attract them back if this new compensation plan truly is flawed.

Finally, a note lodged by another union hack named Rodney Dufrene showed he neither understood the purpose of a classified civil service nor could use math as part of his critical thinking. He wrote, in advocating higher maximum levels of increases that “Any less than a 4 percent raise is in reality, a hardship on an employee, denying him or her the possibility of a true living raise.” Perhaps only he knows what a “living raise” is, but he certainly doesn’t know that the inflation rate for the past decade has been on average just about 2.5 percent, so what he suggests at 4.5 percent or better is almost twice the rate of cost-of-living increases.

Further, he wrote, “Please remember that the Civil Service Commission’s original goal was to protect the state’s workforce,” which is not in the Constitution as a duty of the SCSC. Even the broader concept, that of a civil service, is to provide protection for workers from political interference, not from salary increases lower than some would like.

This incoherent whining fortunately did no good as the SCSC astutely moved on, and by approving the resolution Jindal will allow the state to start saving perhaps tens of millions of dollars annually and to get better service from its bureaucracy. Jindal needs to sign this version and with that another hidebound institution would be reformed for the better under his watch.

Caddo Parish avoids blunder on debt unlike Bossier City

Recently, the Caddo Parish Commission voted to send, and then not to send, to voters on May 1 a $25 million bond issue devoted to road, park, and building maintenance. In essence, it would have renewed a pair of 1991 issues that are serviced through 1.95 mills dedicated to the Debt Service Fund. Passage of this effectively would have more than doubled the amount of debt of the parish and, in terms of proportion of debt service to all general expenditures would be at an all-time high. To sweeten the deal, the Commission also voted to reduce gradually the rate over 20 years millages dedicated to funds to pay for health care, detention facilities, and public works from 10.4 to 8.45 mills.

If all these needs are genuine, there might not have been any controversy – except that the parish is sitting on over $30 million in its Oil and Gas Fund which holds the proceeds from royalties derived from this kind of activities on parish lands, or about half of the annual intake of the parish excluding royalties and intergovernmental revenues. Every indication is that, thanks to the discovery and exploitation of the Haynesville Shale, several million dollars a year will flow into this fund, meaning if the $25 million was extracted for capital needs immediately (which is unlikely) it would not be emptied and would be replenished in only a few years.

Yet commissioners voted for the issuance anyway, with Lindora Baker saying savings should be maintained as the reason why. This is despite the fact that the interest expense from the debt almost certainly will be higher than any interest earnings from the full fund. Only Commissioners John Escude and Matthew Linn who originally voted against this seemed to understand initially it made more sense that, in essence, servicing debt no longer is necessary because capital projects no longer will require debt for the foreseeable future. The entire Commission agreed eventually and pulled the item.

Proponents may argue to vote down the measure means an immediate loss of around $2.7 million a year (as of 2008) and a gradual loss of the same again in constant dollars. However, if they are so concerned about revenues, why borrow so much with a gradual tax cut? Hopefully, Caddo voters will figure out they don’t need this extra expense and won’t be fooled into thinking a renewal is inextricably linked with a tax cut – the parish can afford things both without the former and with the latter so they must defeat it at the polls.

Across the river, the $30 million figure has held prominence now for nearly 15 years. Among Bossier City politicians, it is a figure cited in sacred tones as it was the magic number proclaimed when riverboats pulled into town as to how much revenues from them had to be held in reserve (in the Riverboat Gaming Special Revenue Fund) before amounts past that could be spent. It was invoked by several elected officials when discussing the budget meltdown of last year caused by the city’s profligacy concerning money-losing, unneeded capital expenditures.

Thus, dipping into this to resolve the $6.5 million, 13 percent shortfall never was discussed, nor the tactic of paying of debt early with it to release debt service money the need for which will cripple the city for years to come. Yet this was despite the fact that there is no provision by ordinance nor in the charter that mandates such a lockbox.

Where it comes from is a mystery. The 2008 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report states that funds collected prior to 1999 were required to follow this by city ordinance – which not longer appears on the books (through the Municode update of Jun. 2, 2009). It reported nearly $32 million in the account.

Seeking the legal basis for it, over the span of a month beginning at the end of last year I made repeated inquiries of both City Attorney Jimmy Hall and members of his staff for an explanation. Perhaps befitting a government whose willingness to provide information makes North Korea look transparent, I never received any reply. (One request to the Council was acknowledged, recommending that I ask Hall.) Apparently not only is the Bossier City taxpayer overburdened, he can’t even get his employees to give him a straight answer about their tax dollars.

With even more long-term financial problems coming down the road, Bossier City must look to emptying this account to reduce debt and certainly before it acquires more debt. It will be the final chapter to the squandering of riverboat bounty engineered by the ego-driven coup counters that have filled the city’s elective positions since the opportunity arose, matching the bankruptcy of public trust already frittered away, but it regrettably is the best course of action to save the city from themselves. Caddo Parish wisely avoided the same ruinous road.

Thompson prefers saving govt than taxpayers or disabled

One reason why Louisiana struggles to provide efficient services, where the failure to do so retards economic development and shortchanges overall service provision, is that certain policy-makers prefer to protect government and special interests before people.

One such dinosaur is state Sen. Francis Thompson, famous for such abuses of taxpayers’ trust as getting the state to spend tens of millions of dollars to build a reservoir for which his brother was convicted for corrupt activities surrounding it, trying to add fees to milk to facilitate oversupply in the milk production industry, and forcing fuel consumers to send subsidies to ethanol producers. Now he’s whining about trying to save taxpayers more than $8 million without any deterioration in government service provision.

Earlier this year, and confirmed with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s presentation of his budget, the state plans to close 31 state government-run community homes for the developmentally disabled focusing on residents who cope with what used to be called mental retardation. This would result in the relocation, mostly to homes not run by government, of about 155 clients at a savings of about $57,000 annually each – more than enough to pay for an additional client currently without services to receive services through a waiver program for every current client transferring out of a state-run home. These non-government homes, many in existence for decades, are fully authorized by the state for this kind of care and also are by the federal government, allowing Medicaid to pay for services.

Tax hike chance spurred by inability to admit mistakes

March has arrived and time has just about run out on Bossier City as to whether it wants to try to make taxpayers foot the bill for the mistakes of its politicians.

At year's end, more unintentional humor wafted from the Bossier City Council chambers as it concluded its 2010 budget deliberations under the rarest conditions: actual debate and dissent forsaking its typical Politburo-like unanimity behind Mayor Lo “Obama Lite” Walker. But at least the end product and comments about it showed some awakening from the dream its members blissfully and ignorantly have lived in for the past dozen or so years.

The passed version took a more nuanced approach than Lo Ob Lite’s meat cleaver approach in hacking away at the debt-induced deficit. In the end, it eliminated only five line fireman, so if attrition isn’t too bad over the next year with a hiring freeze in effect, the city may yet avoid losing its Class 1 firing rating and prevent passing its mistakes on to property owners in the form of higher insurance rates. Freezing many salaries, especially at the top levels, also was welcome and another year or so of this might actually bring top bureaucrats’ salaries in line with their counterparts in Shreveport who typically have more responsibilities to deal with.

However, the black comedy continued when the Council pledged throughout 2010 to monitor the budget to forestall any unpleasant surprises such as happened late this year. It’s a wonder that the audience did not then stand and break into sustained applause for the Council’s members saying they’ll actually do their jobs for once, rather than spend their time celebrating their names going onto plaques and signs on city buildings and roads. Anytime this past year, as each of them knew the national economy was going into the tank, they could have made a few calls and found out from the city, which keeps regular tally on this, how far behind its revenue projections were running.

(If they were actually in the dark. Since the city does keep regular tabs on revenues and it was clear to all the decline in the economy, do not be surprised if LOL kept a deficit projection quiet, and even warned councilmen running for reelection to do the same, so that word would not leak out prior to qualifying for city elections, information about which surely would have drawn many more opponents to perhaps send them and Walker packing as a result of the spring election.)

But while common sense has been in short supply on the Council for ages, at least there are faint signs at least some of its members are acquiring some. No such luck is evident from LOL and some sycophants in their support, however, of his idea that the city call an election to raise property taxes. Yet before dismissing this stupidity as a classic case of cognitive dissonance, understand the political motivation behind this thinking.

As by now is well known, Bossier City doesn’t have a revenue problem, but a spending problem. This is because by the end of 2008 it had taken on more than $317 million in debt, or more than $4,900 per capita (with more on the way – looks like the city will have to spring for a sewerage fix that will cost $21 million). Repaying this equates in the neighborhood of a quarter of the city’s total revenues annually – for the next 15 years, then it slowly begins to diminish. To put it another way, the total receipts minus earnings by the U.S. government budgeted for 2010 are about a fifth of its total debt; Bossier City’s total receipts minus business operations are about a seventh of its total debt – and Bossier City can’t print more money to mask its deficit. Repaying debt has sucked away resources that could have gone to financing sensible current operations.

Although Bossier City is exceptional in its huge debt, by contrast it is average in its property tax level. Among its four peer cities in Louisiana, two are higher, two are lower (and all noticeably lower in debt), shattering the myth that it is “under-taxed.” LOL’s plan rests on this assumption, as he is asking the Council to approve an election that if successful would raise property taxes to the rate prior to constitutional reduction.

Of course, after making repeated statements that he would not raise taxes, LOL has to make his backtracking look like it isn’t by trying to put the political onus on, respectively, the Council and citizenry by having them approve of the election and then pass the measure. It would give the Council cover as well, as it already can unilaterally raise rates to that level, in taking this route by having voters ratify.

All of these machinations leading to a tax increase are to dodge reality: it was inane capital spending decisions by the city that made the debt bomb what it is. Plowing around $112.5 million into a money-losing arena, a parking garage gift that is unlikely ever to be repaid, and into part-ownership of a high-tech office building that is even less likely ever to recoup expenses and opportunity costs set the stage for the crisis. Without this spending, absence of the principal and interest payments would mean no yearly deficit would exist now or for the foreseeable future.

This LOL, the Council, and stenographers parroting their line cannot ever acknowledge. For to do so becomes an admission of their own bad judgment in their enthusiastic backing of these wasteful projects and of others of much smaller scale. Thus, they must pretend the consequences of these mistakes don’t exist to legitimize the wish to export their costs to taxpayers

Fortunately, even the Council probably has figured out the political price is too high for as torpid as Bossier City voters as a whole may be, so much resentment has developed over the arrogance of the city’s officials that this measure could not pass and the Council would not want to be seen as supporting it and wasting the money on an election it knows it can’t win. Still, the public must keep the reminders coming over the next three years that the best solution to the crisis, in addition to efficiency measures in the works and others (for example, has anybody checked on the expenditures of the City Marshal’s office recently?), is by debt reduction through sales of unneeded assets and privatization, not by needlessly squeezing the citizenry for more resources in a time of national economic difficulty.

Regardless, the deadline for putting an item on the May 1 local elections fast approaches. and with LOL in charge and a critical mass of moronic councilmen available, the citizenry may have to go to battle this time not against stupidity, but deprivation of property and therefore liberty.

Jindal, Legislature must act to support legal integrity

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell will make the right move in appealing the decision made by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that would impose New York law on Louisiana, and now it’s up to the Legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal to back him up.

The case involves a couple of men who, according to New York law, legally could adopt a child, who was born in Louisiana. They requested a copy of his birth certificate to be out with their names as the “parents.” However, state law permits only a married couple, defined constitutionally as a man and a woman, or a single person may adopt, thus only one name could appear on the certificate in the view of the attorney general, whose office recommended that the Louisiana Supreme Court hear the case to determine whether by implication that the constitutional provision defining marriage and the law regarding adoption meant that only one name had to appear on the certificate.

The panel agreed with the lower district court decision that the full faith and credit clause of the U.S. Constitution decide in favor of allowing New York law to trump the implicit relationship in Louisiana law and indirectly in the Constitution, negating any need to have the Louisiana Supreme Court deal with the matter. That clause is interpreted to mean that states reciprocally honor laws from other states unless they explicitly conflict with an existing law in an area in which states are assumed to have express power as in this case regarding what is termed the general police power of states.

So Louisiana would strengthen its argument by passing a law that makes the linkage direct. State Rep. Jonathan Perry tried to do so last session, but after House passage Senate leaders kept the bill from moving forward until the end of the session when it was too late to overcome apparently sufficient opposition in the Senate. This additional clarity will either entice higher courts to deal with the constitutional question of the meaning of the full faith and credit clause instead of the procedural use of it, or to overturn lower court decisions altogether now satisfied Louisiana has the power to make the refusal.

Perry or another legislator needs to take the initiative to get a similar bill going again, and Jindal needs to give his explicit support for this kind of bill and make efforts to get it passed into law this time. Unfortunately, last year those in the Legislature who wanted to make this case into a political football as a backdoor attempt to chip away at the state’s same-sex Constitutional prohibition got away with using intellectually unsound and emotive arguments that did not convince the House but may have led to enough senators to feel they could prevent the bill from passing. Some resolute legislators and Jindal’s intervention can preserve the integrity of Louisiana's law and Constitution by preventing this allowance of their degradations from potentially occurring.

Ethics members still push flawed retrenchment idea

From the statements that continue to emanate from members of Louisiana’s Board of Ethics concerning the possibilities of political interference in ethics adjudication, you have to hope they bring the a higher level of information and logic to their roles on it.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, they keep pushing this fiction that allowing the Board itself to adjudicate cases, as was the case until a couple of years ago, contains less possibility for political interference than the present setup where administrative law judges with civil service protections deliberately designed to minimize political interference perform this function. The latest reiteration of this erroneous view comes from the Board Chairman Frank Simoneaux from a larger discussion about Board reform.

Simoneaux argues that another board to perform adjudication with political appointees should be created. This follows a model suggested by the Public Affairs Research Council and is one followed by several other states. But that only would create the same potential for political interference if the same method of selection is used.

The Board has it members selected for fixed terms directly separately by the governor, House, and Senate, from nominations produced by presidents of independent (that is, private) accredited universities in the state. Even if nominations come from sources outside of state government, this does not mean that they are nonpolitical (nor that their nominators cannot be pressured – there are plenty of ways the state can regulate these institutions) nor that those who get nominated do not bring their own agendas to their potential jobs that may align with certain political forces in the state. The selection process then clearly invites the chosen to get their jobs on the basis of politicians’ beliefs, if this is part of their agenda, based upon who would be most favorable to them in any potential ethics case.

Contrast this with the selection process for the judges. Several dozen of these civil servants (an example job description is here) are employed in the Division of Administrative Law at any given time. They must meet merit qualifications in the hiring process and after their probationary period have full civil service protections. After a couple of layers of bureaucracy, their ultimate agency boss is the DAL director who approves of the hire and is appointed by the governor for a fixed six-year term with Senate confirmation. Among their many potential duties are to adjudicate ethics cases.

To adjudicate in ethics cases, further insulation is present. Of the judges, annually seven are chosen randomly to hear cases that year. For each case, three of the seven are randomly chosen. Supervisors have no authority over them in these matters. And it is worth reaffirming that civil service regulations prohibit any outside interference with standards that make it impossible to cut pay and virtually impossible to fire them as means by which to pressure the kinds of decisions they make.

It’s worth restating because Simoneaux doesn’t appear to have a clue that these regulations exist, which is the only thing that can explain how he possibly could think there’s a greater chance of putting political pressure on ALJ’s than on Board members. Consider the following scenarios:

Under the present system, in order to exert political pressure on a decision, let’s say a governor wishes to do so, and thus makes contact with the DAL director. Subtly, his representative tells the director a case that has been sent over by the Board must be decided a certain way or he won’t reappoint the director.

First of all, given the long length of her term there’s a decent chance that governor won’t even be in office when the director’s term expires, and with Senate confirmation required the governor can’t even assure that nomination again is tantamount to retaining the job. Second, in order for the director even to have any influence over assigning the case to presumed “favorable” judges, she would have to go through an extraordinary amount of corrupt and hard-to-disguise behavior in (if it’s coming up the next year) rigging the selection of the seven judges and/or rigging the three-judge panel selection. Finally, in tandem with this or alternatively, she would have to undergo a very risky course of action which could result in legal action against her to try to pressure judges to decide a certain way when it is strictly prohibited by regulations with many recourses by employees so threatened.

Contrast this with a similar scenario under the old system, which is proposed as the selection method for this new adjudicatory panel. The governor’s agent calls up the Board member, subtly says he cannot expect to be reappointed later this term or after the governor’s reelection if a case gets decided a certain way … and that’s all there is to it. Instead of four layers of insulation (chain of command, two randomizations, regulations that protect), there are zero. And Simoneaux (and PAR) seriously believe the new system is more open to political manipulation? (Not to mention they cast aspersions on the integrity of the entire DAL which decides cases in many different areas besides ethics using procedures which are actually less insulated.)

Apparently, so does Board member Scott Schneider who at least tries to find a different rationale to argue the same point. He asserts that because making these decisions is part of a job, that the “livelihood” of the ALJ’s could be pressured, whereas less ability to pressure exists because the Board appointees do not serve in those positions as their employment.

Apart from the facts that, as demonstrated above, it is nearly impossible to exert political pressure on judges and it’s a bit unsettling to imply unintentionally that Board service is a hobby by comparison, Schneider’s argument also logically fails. Lack of being employed by an institution does not mean that other avenues to put pressure on a person serving for that institution do not exist. Board members are there obviously because they want to be, so any hint that they might not be pending a certain decision certainly is a nontrivial inducement that, by comparison with the protection afforded judges, has much more potential to influence a decision.

Simoneaux is right about one thing, that the Legislature is unlikely to revisit this aspect of ethics adjudication – because it’s a better system also currently used by several states. While some other changes would be beneficial, going backwards on this is not the answer.

Good Jindal plan for higher education needs refining

Legislation backed by Gov. Bobby Jindal regarding finance and performance of Louisiana’s higher education is welcome and necessary, but questions remain about it that must be answered satisfactorily for it to truly revolutionize the provision of this service.

The bill would allow any institution of higher learning to raise its tuition 10 percent a year until it reached the level of its southern peer average, and after that five percent, with a special higher level set for Louisiana State University Baton Rouge. In exchange for being able to have this power, institutions must raise admission standards and hit graduation targets within the next six years.

This is an excellent answer to a system that has lacked coordination that misallocated resources through a failure to demand enough excellence from students, interjected too many marginal students into the system or into inappropriate places in it, and did not demand enough accountability. Still, for it to work optimally, several aspects must be addressed.

Landrieu right to ignore group's corrupted policy view

In Sen. Mary Landrieu’s world, it’s bad enough that her opponents hammer her for doing the wrong thing, and then it’s made worse when her allies on the left pile on – even when the criticism is undeserved and she’s right.

Recently, ads began to run against Landrieu criticizing her for her support of legislation that disallows the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide emissions which the agency now is in the process of doing. Not only is her view that these decisions should be a matter of law passed by Congress intuitively appealing – the people’s elected representatives should decide here, not unaccountable bureaucrats who allow themselves to be influenced and captured by special interests and ideologies – but on this issue it also is constitutionally correct.

Yet this has drawn the ire of an interest group that calls itself Catholics United – although the only thing connecting it to Roman Catholicism seems to be its name given its far left agenda and support of politicians that often take contrary stances to the Church’s teachings. This is why it’s surprising that the group, throughout its history having supported pro-abortion politicians, should attack Landrieu, baptized Catholic yet faithfully pro-abortion.

Perhaps a more appropriate description of the religious beliefs of this group is faith in scientifically unverified environmentalism, which leads to a delicious irony in the ad’s message. It implies that Pope Benedict XVI would support their agenda that Landrieu they argue opposes. But in fact, early in his papacy he condemned exactly the attitude evinced by the group, where he counseled that prudence and basing conclusions on firm evidence rather than on ideology is a necessary part of forming a response to the issue.

While we might expect a pressure group that claims to base its views on religious belief to make public policy assertions based upon faith and not science, it performs a disservice to allow its faith in the existence of significant man-made global warming to substitute for science in drawing its conclusions and in the process to mischaracterize the religion on which it asserts its belief exists. Landrieu and Catholics can safely disregard the blandishments of this group which neither comport to Catholic faith nor to science.

Help me out: is Edwards biography worth buying?

When its publication was announced, despite my obvious interest in Louisiana politics, I hesitated to buy veteran TV journalist’s Leo Honeycutt’s authorized biography of Prisoner #03128-095, known before his conviction on corruption charges as former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards. After hearing more about it, my reluctance remains.

Initially, my main reason was because in doing so it would line the pockets of Prisoner #03312-095, known before his conviction as former statewide elected official Jim Brown. This is because Brown, convicted of lying to investigators (involving a case where Edwards also was indicted, but acquitted), has been singularly unrepentant in insisting on his innocence despite exhaustive appeals where impartial courts continually reaffirmed his conviction. Besides producing his own self-authored book out attempting this argument, Brown published Honeycutt’s.

I don’t wish to reward his inability to admit fault with a transfer of my money to Brown, but a pretty good argument could be made that Edwards was the second-most influential figure in the conduct of state government in the 20^th century, behind only former Gov. Huey P. Long and jockeying with the likes of former Govs. Earl K. Long and John M. Parker. Therefore, this biography could be of great value and something to own.

Then last week I was able to catch an interview of Honeycutt by Moon Griffon on his program. This constituted good fortune for me since I rarely get a chance to hear more than a few minutes of the show and it just so happened I was on the road (to participate in a project; look for it on screen within the next few months) so I could listen to its entirety and especially because it could help resolve my dilemma: would the tome’s contents sound so fascinating that it would override my sense of rewarding those only when integrity was present in them?

Thus it is with a feeling of uncertainty that I have to report the interview did not get me to make up my mind either way. My continued ambivalence doesn’t stem from the information that seems present in it, but, rather, from qualms I now have about the author’s approach, taken from my more than two decades of being a researcher in academia and my modest career in journalism.

Warning sign #1: Honeycutt said he tried to lay out a case than neither glorified nor vilified Edwards, but the impression the vast majority of Moon’s callers got was that Honeycutt was defending a politician (in terms of an overall assessment of his value to the state, not his crimes) that (given the majority of Moon’s audience) they brooked no love for. As a result, Honeycutt started to become defensive and essentially began telling callers they didn’t know what they were talking about, saying he dealt in “facts,” he had 1,700+ footnotes to back him up, and he had spent years doing this so, the impression he conveyed was, he knew a lot more than any caller might about this and therefore he was above criticism on the matter.

In academia, when somebody does not feel entirely confident in their work, they will make appeals to external authority like this, rattling off large numbers of sources and citations. That’s all well and good, but the proof of an argument rests not just on source material or even its comprehensiveness, but how convincingly it is woven into an narrative the validity of which we can test using not just a selection of the data, but all of it. Since I haven’t read the work I can offer no judgment on that, but it’s not a good sign in terms of the quality of the argument in my experience when this kind of defense of it is used.

Warning sign #2: One caller mentioned about how Edwards contributed to the perception of Louisiana as a “laughingstock,” to which Honeycutt took exception. He argued that, on a per capita basis regarding convictions for crimes of political corruption, in recent years according to different sources Louisiana ranked only fifth or sixth and therefore, since it was not first, it was not a “laughingstock.”

But this view obviously begs the question, can only the worst state be a “laughingstock?” Are the other 49 exonerated no matter how much political corruption exists in them? I would argue that, even if Louisiana doesn’t lead the pack, the continuing high incidence of corrupt behavior in the state (look at this guy) does continue to make us a “laughingstock.” And if somebody is going to take the line of reasoning on this that Honeycutt sounded like he was doing on the air, then I have to question the analytical power he brings to his subject and whether there’s much of value in a book like that.

Warning sign #3: Another caller related that he had been a state policeman who had been assigned around Edwards many times and that the ex-governor had a very arrogant attitude towards the troopers. Honeycutt agreed there was an air of arrogance about him but expressed surprise at this particular expression of it and said he really hadn’t talked to anybody in the course of doing research with that view. Griffon then related a similar story from someone he had known who also had served in the state police and gave some context as to perhaps why. That two people within a span of a few minutes would relay some information about an aspect of his subject that apparently had eluded the author does not encourage the casual listener to think the job done was very thorough or complete if we are to understand fully the man and his motivations for policy.

Therefore, I remain in limbo on its potential purchase for my voluminous Louisiana politics library. The subject is fascinating but my confidence in the quality of the work, without having read it, was shaken by this interview. Granted, these are little things gotten off a radio show, but evidence is evidence and it's not in the right direction.

Honeycutt has said he wished to have the work avoid being influenced by Edwards’ charm and charisma, but the last caller to the broadcast said she thought exactly that had happened to his effort. If this ended up as hagiography rather than biography, it’s not something I would want. But I welcome any comments about it readers wish to leave who have read it – maybe you all can help me finally decide.

LA should not miss chance to protect citizens' liberty

Perhaps Louisiana has its regular legislative sessions later than in any other state, but that does not means it should miss the opportunity to ensure that its citizenry is not forced into following suboptimal policy where state inaction could lead to deprivation of liberty.

In response to the Democrat-controlled federal government attempt to force Americans to pay into an altered health care system higher costs for lower quality, over 30 states have or are enacting into law provisions that would prevent the federal government from curtailing people’s liberty in their choices about whether to have health insurance. These do not prevent citizens from participating in federal health insurance programs, only recognizing their freedom to opt out of them without penalty.

While an argument could be made that the Commerce Clause (Art. I Sec. 8) of the Constitution could be stretched to interpret this kind of power as a shared power with the federal government and therefore it would take precedence over states’ wishes if it legislated in that area, more than a couple of hundred years of judicial recognition of the general police power of states should prove judicially negating in that regard, affirming that states have supreme power in the abilities to regulate the health, safety, and morals of the public. Thus, there is a very reasonable expectation that these laws are not moot exercises.

That the Democrat effort on this issue seems to be running out of steam does not reduce the imperative among the states to legislate this protection. Still simmering are these plans, not yet dead politically, and there’s no guarantee in the future that a majority of elected officials will not try to take the people and country off the rails in this area again.

So far, no enterprising legislator in Louisiana has prefiled such a bill. Doing so and its passage into law would perform prodigious service to the state.