Totalitarian impulse present in repeal of education bill

I’m not sure what the pathology is here – paranoia, delusion, some combination, or maybe something entirely different – but it’s not healthy to become fixated on an imaginary fear. Especially when it can be exploited for political purposes to stifle open societies.

Once again, the opponents of free inquiry and critical thinking are trying to make Louisiana look stupid, spearheaded by state Sen. Karen Peterson’s SB 374 as another attempt that would repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act. This law mandates that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education “shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Yet Peterson and her supporters seem to be against supporting this idea of encouraging critical thinking, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories because, they claim, this opens the door to teaching “creationism,” the view that some kind of deity formed Earth and the life upon it. This leads one to wonder just how good are the reading comprehension skills of her and her ilk.

Appointee embarrassment try leaves questions unanswered

Apparently, there’s a backstory to the dramatic testimony given by a Gov. Bobby Jindal administrative appointee that shows a lack of honor of her part and perhaps indicative an orchestrated effort to try to embarrass her former boss of three levels up and/or leading to further questions about her former office’s role.

Martha Manuel formerly headed up the Governor’s Office on Elderly Affairs, until today when she was canned as a result of casting doubt on the utility of a switch of her office overseeing program deliveries through Councils on Aging. The Jindal Administration wishes to have the Department of Health and Hospitals take over that role, which makes some sense as there is an ongoing consolidation of programs to serve the elderly with those of the disabled, which DHH oversees. It also says more federal funding would be available by this reorganization.

But announcement of the move, as part of the budgetary process, set off consternation among the various COAs. And then Manuel sprung the surprise when, in front of the House Appropriations Committee, which meets prior to the session to start work on the budget, she opined negatively about the shift.

LA officials must root out inefficient corporate tax credits

Last year, in Louisiana politics the issue arose, in debating the role of income tax reduction, concerning whether the vast myriad of state tax credits was cost effective. The Louisiana Legislative Auditor has released a report that makes answering the question more imperative than ever.

In it, the LLA notes that over the past several years the state has allowed credits to be claimed by corporations to total more than half of all corporate income taxes paid. The figure seems to be accelerating; for the last year (2009) for which there is complete data over three-quarters of the equivalent of taxes actually paid were forgone through use of the tax credits. For individuals over the time span, the amount is about a ninth, much of that due to special write-offs to deal with the underfunded state insurer after the hurricane disasters of 2005. In the 2005-10 span, on the corporate side this came to around $3 billion.

The report helps answer the question posed by other observers about why there seems to have been such shrinkage in corporate income tax take over the past few years. It also notes that such a high volume could make questionable whether all of the state largesse represents a cost-effective investment. The highest-priced bellhop over in the Department of Economic Development, Secretary Stephen Moret, defended them in general, whose agency oversees a plurality of them, by stating biannual reports reveal four to five dollars of economic activity accrues to the state for every dollar credited.

Bill aims to cap pass-through tax by LA local govts

Last year, Shreveporters got set up for the same one-two punch that Bossier City government delivered to its abused citizens in the past year, but the area's new state senator hopes to curb local governments' abilities to foist this on any utility user.

Last August, Shreveport's City Council hiked from two percent of sales the franchise fee SWEPCO pays for the monopoly privilege to deliver power to city residents, after the previous agreement expired. State law allows a municipality to charge up to five percent, which of course then the company can pass through to ratepayers, by charging half to them and spreading the remainder around to the entire service area.

The Council narrowly passed the increase, along party lines with all Democrats in favor.

School plan critics continue peddling flawed arguments

As always, this column offers assistance to those befuddled about important political issues of the day. Some need more help than others, and in that category appears to be Melissa Flournoy, head of the leftist Louisiana Coalition for Progress who after , she reports, facing (very mild, and not even as incisive as this) criticism over her remarks about expansion of educational choices delivered in a public forum, took to a keyboard to complain.

In remarks to Baton Rouge media representatives, Flournoy, said the plan by Gov. Bobby Jindal to make scholarship vouchers available to a wide range of students in fair-to-failing schools would not work. She said there was not enough system capacity, that it would be too expensive, it would divert money from public schools, and it would lack accountability. These carelessly-considered views, built on a foundation of red herrings and straw men, drew several critiques.

In the newspaper column serving as her quasi-response, she tries a slightly different angle. She repeats the claim in new packaging that few would be helped, therefore more attention (and thus money) should be given to public schools where the vast majority presumably would be assisted. She also repeats the assertion that the program would remove money from public schools, hampering that assistance.

Bills promise protection of civil liberties of vulnerable

While people’s civil liberties would be protected better by a ban on smoking in any public place, a half measure is better than what violations of some people’s are allowed currently, undertaken by a pair of bills offered up for this year’s legislative session by state Rep. Frank Hoffman.

One, HB 307, would extend the current ban on smoking for a limited pool or areas such as health care and educational facilities to at least 25 feet outside of state-owned buildings or to those renovated in whole or in part using state money, and would ban smoking within 25 feet of ventilation systems, wheelchair ramps and other structures that help the handicapped enter or leave buildings (although exempting local government buildings, for some odd reason). The other, HB 378, is more limited in scope, just banning smoking within 25 feet of entrances, windows, wheelchair ramps and ventilation systems of private buildings, as well as "other enclosed areas" where smoking is prohibited.

Hoffman argues he wishes to curtail second-hand smoke with these and, while the case that this generally causes maladies among the population in general is circumstantial, it definitely causes distress to a growing segment of the population with reduced pulmonary functions. Even a whiff of smoke can send somebody into immediate respiratory distress who carries around portable oxygen units, uses mechanical ventilation, or takes medication to ameliorate asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or other maladies in order to breathe.

Politics may cause doubling up on merger decision mistakes

Last year, when it was a slam dunk on the merits, the Legislature choked in helping three institutions of higher education. This year, when the evidence weighs against it, the Legislature might end up making an error of commission, with politics to blame for both mistakes.

Yesterday, the Board of Regents forwarded a recommendation to merge Louisiana State University Shreveport into Louisiana Tech University. Just last year, the Board issued a similar approval to a plan to merge the University of New Orleans with Southern University New Orleans, while forging links with the new institution with Delgado Community College. Besides the fact it meant putting institutions from different systems together, nothing else is similar between these cases

If there ever was a compelling case for a merger, as previously noted in this space, it was between UNO and SUNO. Institutions a couple of miles apart, one having a low completer rate and the other having the lowest in the country, with many duplicative programs, with the larger having the excess capacity to absorb the smaller, begged to be put together to create one strong institution. Instead, all of these merits got washed away by the politics of race and symbolism, where almost every black legislator, joined by a few others wishing to score political points on the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration that backed the move, were enough to defeat it.

More Roemer dishonesty may lead to scrapping bad law

Another chapter in the former Gov. Buddy Roemer campaign hypocrisy tome has gotten written, but maybe an appropriate epilogue will come with the elimination of a needless appendage of American national politics.

Roemer, running for president, recently has managed an impressive double feat of saying one thing and then doing another. His campaign has railed against what he says is excessive money, connoting power, in politics, and placed a voluntary $100 limit on accepting contributions. Yet Roemer, who has a political history of promising one thing then backtracking and comes from money and influence, hypocritically has embraced any method that raises and spends money on his behalf, first by saying he would ride on the coattails of the big-money Americans Elect group that seeks to pay for providing ballot access to candidate possibilities they choose and then submit for selection of one by Internet balloting. Now, he has accepted money from the federal government, by qualifying for public funding of a presidential primary campaign.

But he did so on the basis of misleading the public.

Altered, bill can improve service to people and state

State Rep. Dee Richard, no party, has an idea that tweaked a bit would prove excellent to discourage legislators from putting their interests ahead of the people’s.

His HB 212 would prohibit, for two years after leaving their posts, legislators from working for state government. Recently, seven legislators near the ends of their terms, or who actually completed a term through limitation and either retired from elective politics, were elected to another office but who will not assume it for another year, or were defeated for election to the other chamber, or who otherwise decided not to run again, have accepted full-time paying jobs in state government by virtue of appointment by an elected executive.

This motivated Richard to file the bill, arguing that, in these instances, given the way the law affects the individuals involved, taking these positions could increase dramatically their potential pensions from the state. He correctly sees this incentive as costing the state more than it should and skewing decision-making by both legislators and those who appoint them. But there’s another, more compelling, reason why the basic idea behind the law makes sense, given slight modification.

Reductionist views of EWE miss understanding his impact

Prisoner #03128-095 was busy giving speeches this weekend, but complimented the chow in his address to the Louisiana Political Science Association annual meeting last Friday. Democrat former Gov. Edwin Edwards is controversial and thus a polarizing figure, tending to make people simplify the man and his attitudes. As he approaches his 85^th year, the longest-serving governor in the state’s history expressed some interesting thoughts about politics going forward, apparently recovered from a recent illness, even if he is slightly slow in step and a little hard of hearing, and in the process showed he can’t be dismissed solely as a caricature.

At the state level, remarking about the scope and role of higher education, he noted he had assisted in funding it in two ways; first, by creation of the fund, from a successful state lawsuit, that provides grant money to universities and, second, by changing the taxation structure on the severance tax to make it on a percentage basis, bringing in far more revenue than the old capitation measure. He said he predicted 40 years ago that one day oil would get to $100 a barrel – it actually has gone as high as over $144 on spot pricing – which was not that bold of a prediction (anything can happen in the future) except many doubted that then.

Edwards lamented the state fiscal environment of the day and expressed he thought things would be better with a different set of elites – Democrats – in charge at the state level. But he acknowledged the current electoral climate was part of his own doing, in that he championed the blanket primary, which many theorize opened the political system to respond more easily to a shift in partisan-based voting behavior in the electorate that has come to favor the Republicans, even as he said he caught a lot of criticism from Republicans when that law came into effect.

However, he said he saw the national Democrats as making serious policy errors.