John Bel Edwards governorship off to a rocky start
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/14641197-123/jeff-sadow-new-governor-off-to-a-rocky-start
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21.1.16
Letter distorts truth concerning nursing home largesse
When you’re making over
$250,000 a year, you’re going to try to make it appear that policy that
benefits members of the organization paying you looks good, even if you have to
distort and falsify the truth as Louisiana Nursing Home Association executive
director Joe Donchess did recently in a letter
to The Advocate about a column
of mine.
Part of the piece pointed out the
privileged status of nursing homes in Louisiana and how that would impact
Medicaid spending in light of Gov. John Bel Edwards’
declaration to expand Medicaid. It noted:
A constitutional amendment passed
in 2014, for which Edwards voted as a legislator, exacerbates the looming
crisis. That change essentially locked in the reimbursement rate for
privately-operated nursing homes, adjustable upwards by inflation, despite
Louisiana’s institutions having among the lowest occupancy rates of the states.
Worse, the formula used pushed up the rate artificially by including
non-Medicaid patients and also pays operators over $15 million annually for empty
beds due to over-capacity ….
20.1.16
Edwards includes needless tax hikes in deficit plan
Almost three years ago he railed
against a plan that would have given Louisiana in the aggregate the highest
sales tax in the country. During his run for governor, he said he would not
raise taxes and decried the use of “one-time” money to balance budgets.
Yesterday, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
eight days into office, declared he wanted to do all of the above to address this fiscal year's predicted budget deficit.
Of course, Edwards
disclaimed all responsibility for the about-face in his economic policy,
alleging that he had not known of the mounting difficulties with the fiscal
year 2016 budget, which his administration now asserts to be $750 million in
the red. Never mind that as a legislator Edwards had access to all of this
information, which comes to the Legislature on a monthly basis, that should not
have made for any surprise of an escalating deficit and leaving plenty of time
to start planning.
Naturally, as part of that he
indicated the real responsibility for this lay with his predecessor former Gov.
Bobby
Jindal. He contended that Jindal’s budgeting tactics – which he ratified
five out of eight times as a legislator – brought matters to this head,
implying he bore no blame for whatever he suggested. He then laid out a plan
that, at the very least by its verisimilitude to Jindal’s budgeting, makes them
kissing cousins.
19.1.16
Unserious fiscal paper puts agenda before value
Just as inevitably the first
couple of transition team reports for Gov. John Bel Edwards
looked to lead the coming bunch in sensibility, when it showed up the one
concerning fiscal matters kept its promise as the least serious of all to
come.
You know when a document thanks
several organizations and individuals for expertise in its report and singles
out by name, among the government agencies and interest groups and academicians, the
rancher, mega-landowner and royalty recipient, and insurance agent Public
Service Commissioner Foster
Campbell, that the proposal has diluted its gravity with politics and
ideology. Campbell, who has no expertise in economics or fiscal matters but who
led the group as a co-chairman, likely got the mention because of his herpetic
pushing over the decades of the tired and discredited
notion of an oil processing tax to replace the severance tax that therefore
naturally had to find its way into the document.
The facile
populist belief behind it maintains that some alleged surplus profits of
oil companies plus the 98.5 percent of the country that resides outside of the
state would pay for it, forgetting that state concerns consume a much higher
proportion – at least 28 percent – of the processing maximum and that the tax
gets passed along to consumers. That such a measure would go into effect in era
with low worldwide prices putting on the ropes the industry in Louisiana and,
as a result of the soft market, excess refining capacity brimming outside the
state makes it not just a stupid idea, but absurdly so.
18.1.16
Preposterous Obamacare speculation flees reality
Sometimes the media go with a story
just so far detached from reality, one must marvel at their obliviousness.
Louisiana readers received one such treat last week after Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards unwisely
decided to expand Medicaid.
Just after that happened, Pres. Barack Obama
visited the state and there proclaimed that he would authorize the period in
which the federal government picks up all reimbursement costs of expansion
(Louisiana still will have to fork over several million dollars extra the first
half of the next fiscal year to cover administrative costs) to the first three
years of it for a state, not in the 2014-2016 period as the law reads. As it
currently stands, Louisiana would receive total reimbursement for care costs only
during the first six months of its next fiscal year.
Keep in mind that Obama typically operates
in a dictatorial mode whenever Congress insists on following the Constitution
in its power to make law by refusing to pass Obama’s requests; he responds by issuing
extra-constitutional executive orders and signing statements to attempt to
bypass the rules by which this representative democracy exists, so he has
gotten into the habit of saying he will make things happen that constitutionally
he cannot. The fact is, he can promise only to put this idea into the budget
for the Republican-led Congress to do with it whatever it sees fit.
17.1.16
14.1.16
Edwards can take solace in Alario reelection
Maybe the governorship of Democrat John Bel Edwards hit
its high point prior to his taking the oath of office, but it may not go
downhill too far or fast depending upon the wiles of legislative leader who
already has served two terms in that role under a governor then named Edwards.
State Sen. John Alario gained unanimous reelection
for Senate president from his colleagues earlier this week. Just as Prisoner #03128-095,
known back then as Gov. Edwin
Edwards, held the state’s top office for 16 years, Alario now threatens to
do the same in serving as top officer of the House of Representatives,
accomplished in non-consecutive terms during the last two terms of Prisoner #03128-095’s
reign, and now if completing his term would log two consecutively additionally
in the equivalent position in the Senate.
Interestingly, for this final
voyage on the hayride he will take the trip, for the first time, as a member of
a different political party than the governor. Alario switched from Democrat to
Republican prior to his reelection as senator in 2011, after which he would
take the Senate’s helm. In some ways it did not seem all that unusual as by
then his voting record more often reflected conservativism and reformism. His Louisiana Legislature Log voting record for
his last term in the House averaged 35; he registered an average of 61 his
first term in the Senate and then posted a 63 during his chamber presidency
(100 denotes all conservative/reform votes cast, with 0 meaning none).
13.1.16
Early pedestrian Edwards papers likely best of bunch
Much like when the Khmer Rouge took
power in Cambodia over four decades ago, the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
Administration seems set upon rewriting history to declare the day it took
office as beginning the Year Zero, if the first transition team report
released
serves as any indicator.
The Economic
Development Committee's conclusions were followed by the predictable Transportation
version, which inevitably and sensibly argued for looking for more efficient use of
infrastructure dollars, directing all of them to roads needs, before implementing increased
taxation. Naturally, to follow this means putting a greater strain on the
operating budget, since some of the money that could go to roads ends up spent
on the state police and other matters, but beggaring other parts of state
government did not concern this group’s focus only on transportation priorities.
Other than for transportation
needs, the economic development recommendations actually may turn out the least
controversial of the several documents that will come out over the course of
the month. It lauds the state’s Department of Economic Development, citing
statistics to position it as a national leader – all without mentioning it made
the progress to gain this status through the two terms of former Republican Gov.
Bobby
Jindal.
12.1.16
Barras win could signal Edwards' term peaked
Did the governorship of Democrat John Bel Edwards
peak two hours prior to his swearing in?
Approximately at that time, state
Rep. Taylor
Barras became
Speaker of the House, an unexpected choice combining with a rare contested
election for the post. In the past, overwhelming majorities of Democrats
elected a Democrat as speaker regardless of the party of the governor. The
modern Republican governors, except for former Gov. Bobby
Jindal, complied by backing a Democrat both he and the majority found
acceptable; Jindal in his first term backed a Republican when neither party had
a majority and when the GOP, which would gain that majority over the next four
years, trailed Democrats by just one seat.
But Edwards within days of his
election publicly
announced
he would back a promotion for Democrat Speaker Pro-Tem Walt Leger. Not
only would this make for the first time in history the party not with a
majority not to possess the speakership, but it also would promote to speaker
someone from a party with only about 40 percent of the total chamber seats,
trailing the majority party in this instance by 19. It would have become an
unprecedented foray into House minority rule.
11.1.16
Edwards starts gubernatorial career by flunking speech
In
his inaugural address, Gov. John Bel Edwards preached
about how Louisiana needed unity, how its diversity need not descend into
division, and that he would give the “unvarnished truth” about issues and
solutions to pressing public policy problems – and in it proceeded to contradict
all of that.
Edwards sprung no surprises in
terms of policy preferences; indeed, the familiar bromides he presented played
an integral part in the contradictions. His repeating of the statistic often
used to mislead concerning pay between men and women, that when looking only at
total pay to total workforce, the typical woman makes 66 percent of the amount
of money that the typical man does, as something needed some kind of “correction”
ignores
the mountain of statistics that demonstrate with all intervening factors
equal, no significant pay gap exists. In doing so, he promotes division over
unity concerning an alleged “problem” that exists only in the minds of
ideologues besides dodging the truth of the matter.
He argued as a chief concern raising
the minimum wage needs to become a “living” wage, even though fewer
than 1 in 100 mature workers earn it, only 1 in 400 serve as a household’s
primary breadwinner, that for many of those jobs the minimum wage has risen at
a rate five or six times as fast as justified by the gains in worker
productivity over the past quarter-century, and that the most widely-used welfare
programs pay more than the minimum wage in 35 states – Louisiana included
among these. Nothing like trying to unify by starting off stoking some class
warfare, is there?
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