Denied validation, interests continue divisiveness

Despite hitting the canvas in Round 1, backers of the “war against blacks” narrative signaled they would not take the federal decision not to charge two Baton Rouge police officers with civil rights violations lying down, coming out swinging in Round 2 – to the detriment of the community.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in an investigation spanning the Democrat former Pres. Barack Obama and Republican Pres. Donald Trump Administrations, concluded that while the officers did not engage in perfect policing, it found insufficient evidence that the officers had malicious and abusive motives towards Alton Sterling when he was shot last summer while resisting arrest. A typical reaction from this crowd came from the Alinskyites at Together Baton Rouge, who expressed disappointment and frustration of no charges filed, called the federal government unjust, and implied as suspect the coming state investigation if it resulted in no indictments of the officers in the death of Sterling.

This closed-mindedness indicative of the group by this kind of pre-judgmental criticism and shared by its ideological allies sadly reveals a cancer in the body politic. They seize upon every incident where a black “gentle giant” loses his life in an altercation with police as evidence to back up their narrative, refusing to let facts which do not conform to their narrative inform them.

Excellent budget presses Edwards to defend choices

They did their homework, leaving the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration and the Legislature’s minority party sputtering with little effective response.

Louisiana’s House of Representatives Republican leadership successfully passed its first hurdle with the fiscal year 2018 budget. HB 1 largely adopts a standstill strategy, meaning some agencies would deal with unfunded mandates, plus shaved 2.5 percent from that previous figure to bankroll for unanticipated revenue shortfalls. It also shifted around dollars to reflect the majority party’s priorities while inviting Edwards to reaffirm or change policy choices within that framework. The reductions total $237 million from the current FY 2017 budget.

More specifically, it took from the Department of Health $235 million, but issued instructions as to where cuts could not come – waiver programs for people with disabilities and not disproportionately made to any one public-private partner charity hospital. It also took from corrections and public safety nearly $29.5 million, the Department of Child and Family Services $19.5 million, more than $18 million from the Department of Education, $20 million from the judiciary, and $11 million from itself.

Landrieu audition echoes life under dictatorship

Maybe that explains it. Maybe that’s why Democrat New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered a diatribe full of obfuscation and empty of logic to justify government secrecy: he’s running for president.

A national newspaper threw Landrieu’s hat into the ring for 2020, theorizing his raised profile as a result agitating for and beginning the removal of the city’s statuary makes him someone appealing to a national party veering every further to the political left. His comments regarding stealing away the Battle of Liberty Place monument in the middle of the night certainly suggest compatibility with this goal.

Both opponents and supporters of carving the monuments out of the city’s landscape have expressed that the dissections happen with public notice, even with pomp and pageantry attached. Instead, it happened in the dead of night with no warning. Attired more like Islamic State insurgents than public servants and contract employees, balaclava-adorned participants did the deed while keeping from view any identification of the contractor.

Largesse should serve people, not special interests

The trick to the scam is staying with it. That typifies the reaction of those associated and allied with the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority to legislation that threatens some of their taxpayer largesse.

Better known for its ownership and operation of the Convention Center and Exhibition Hall, diversion of decades worth of taxes collected by state and local governments have let this state-created entity bank (at the end of 2015) $268 million, with only $36 million committed to ongoing expansion projects. Because of these tax receipts, it took in nearly $25 million more than it spent in 2015, although its user fees, concession sales, and other minor charges without the subsidy would have left it $32 million in the red.

HB 622 and 623 by Republican state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty would stop the excessive siphoning to this special interest. The bills would move the proceeds of two citywide levies, a third of a three percent tax on hotel lodging and half of a half-percent tax on food and drinks, to a new special government set up to fund roads. In 2015, the pair, which were dedicated to an expansion project that never materialized yet the Authority continued to collect these, accounted for around $16 million in 2015.

The Advocate column, Apr. 30, 2017

Orleans Parish' Defenders Office claims about finances don't add up
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_2d307378-2b98-11e7-9537-b72280e64992.html

Links:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-new-orleans-public-defenders-decision-to-refuse-felony-cases/
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s
https://www.lla.la.gov/reports_data/Audit/AdvSearch/
http://lpdb.la.gov/Serving%20The%20Public/Reports/LPDB%20Annual%20Report.php
http://www.opdla.org/news-and-events/annual-reports
https://www.lasc.org/press_room/annual_reports/

Not real reform, Edwards tax changes fail anyway

Think of how much Louisiana Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards would have struggled had he actually tried genuine tax and fiscal reform.

When his old desk-mate state Democrat Rep. Sam Jones euthanized Edwards’ idea of a gross receipts tax out of its misery earlier this week, that ended what little resemblance the governor’s agenda had to addressing the state’s Byzantine and inefficient fiscal structure. Without the measure in place, not only did his plan lose its primary aspect, the raising of more money for government to spend, but also it no longer had a compensatory mechanism to offset changes to individual and corporate income rates, lowering these while broadening the base through the elimination of targeted exceptions.

Of course, he intended the plan first and foremost to inflate the budget, with any reform a byproduct, and tried to take the easy way to do it. That strategy aimed to avoid what plagued the efforts of Republican former Gov. Bobby Jindal, who four years ago also tried to tackle the same structural issues but in a much more comprehensive way.

Helping Edwards understand minimum wage folly

Louisiana’s Gov. John Bel Edwards, in an interview with my colleagues at the Baton Rouge Advocate, seemed perplexed about opposing a raise of the minimum wage. “I don't understand the opposition to that,” he said to them. “I don't know that it's principled or that it can be well articulated that in why 2017 someone ought to be working for seven dollars and a quarter an hour.”

That’s OK, I’m here to help. Other than the facts that the minimum wage – especially for the least skilled – costs Americans jobs, encourages illegal aliens to flock to America and drives prices artificially higher, it’s a great idea.

It causes a problem as it sets an arbitrary floor on the price of labor. In a free market without a monopoly on labor, such as caused by unions (or the highly unlikely event of monopsony, such as in days gone by when a town formed around a single employer, which as the nature of the economy has changed monopsonic conditions have become almost extinct in America), voluntary transactions correctly price the value of labor, exchanging remuneration for the value added to society that the labor produces. But if government intervention forces greater payment than the actual worth of the work, the inefficiency of the use of that resource ripples across the economy.

NW LA elections feature clash between old, new

Upcoming elections in Caddo and Bossier Parishes revive the ongoing struggle between the old ways of politics and modernization.

This Saturday, Caddo voters face five ballot propositions, although Shreveporters don’t participate in a sales tax maneuver that combines two existing millages for general parish operations worth 1.5 percent on sales for approval into perpetuity. The other four renew property taxes, but in controversial ways.

These take propositions to fund generally facilities, the health unit, the juvenile court and detention center, and courthouse operations, and attempt to extend their terms early, anywhere from over one to four years prior to expiration. That tactic may stem from the humiliating 2013 defeat of a bond issue for capital improvements, repeated in 2014, which would have had the effect of taking the 1.55 mill rate at the time and elevating it to the full 1.75 mill rate allowed for general obligation debt.

Edwards bears responsibility for contract dispute

Recently, a U.S. House of Representative with a Republican majority gave Louisiana’s Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards the business over the speed and execution of flood relief. But did he deserve that?

The committee’s majority probed certain decisions made by the Edwards Administration that seemed to delay getting money into the hands of flood victims. One line of inquiry in particular focused upon the on-again, off-again, now maybe off-again situation with hiring a contractor to coordinate the distribution of aid, which had become entangled with the realities of executive power.

Essentially, the entity responsible for vetting the selection, the State Licensing Board for Contractors, on advice from its counsel Larry Bankston, shaped the original bidding so that the contract would have gone to an entity that employed his son. The disqualified winner then sued the state, in short order the state rebid and again awarded it to the original firm, and now another firm has filed a complaint with the state over the process which ultimately could end up in court.

The Advocate column, Apr. 23, 2017

A road map to transportation fixes without new taxes as speedbumps
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_d5251e44-2602-11e7-84b3-03b15f2a9b29.html

Links:
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_54c5989a-189d-11e7-8e5a-cf42f029e40c.html
http://explorer.naco.org/
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/compare_state_spending_2016p60l
http://house.louisiana.gov/housefiscal/DOCS_APPBudgetMeetings2017/March/DOTD%20-%20PUBLIC.pdf
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ipd/project_profiles/la_timed.aspx
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/law.aspx?d=206557
http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2016/02/inefficient-eitc-needs-to-go-to-cut-la.html
http://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/fiscal/2016_film_incentives.pdf
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_06a9d62c-1e0a-11e7-9638-eb1f201cdb6f.html