GOP must keep free-spending Edwards boxed in

Louisiana’s House of Representatives Republican leadership put the budget ball in Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ court this week – a playing surface Edwards finds contracting in size.

Speaker Taylor Barras transmitted a letter to Edwards outlining GOP caucus demands attached to any revenue-raising package. They include enhanced spending transparency, a change in the expenditure limit calculations, and patient responsibility and work or other requirements for able-bodied adult Medicaid recipients not pregnant, exempting parents of newborns or children with disabilities and people in drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs.

The easier dissemination of expenditures would build upon efforts begun under former Gov. Bobby Jindal, something Edwards should not contest. As for the other issues, expect obfuscation and counterattacks because the realization of Republicans’ goals would separate Edwards too much from his desire to lock in inflated state government.

Diversity unnecessary for an impartial judiciary

So, are we to assume that Louisiana’s electoral system suppresses an inherent goodness of racial and gender diversity on the bench, utilized by males in a white majority electorate indifferent to the place of racial minorities and women in the courtroom?

That’s the implication from a report issued by Tulane University researchers, who compiled a profile of the racial and sexual characteristics of Louisiana’s judges the municipal level all the way to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the authors have not released it online where the public could judge the comprehensiveness and quality of their efforts.

They note that, in demographic terms, minorities and women remain underrepresented in robes, at both the state level and typically at the parish level, with one major exception. They do not ascribe causes for this, but assert that benefits would accrue from ameliorating this condition, saying that efforts to “demystify” the judiciary would produce greater proportions of minorities and women wielding the gavel to bring more “credibility.”

Medicaid expansion defenses again mislead

You always can tell when a response to an opinion column comes from Louisiana’s Health Secretary Rebekah Gee, for these ignore the points made by the authors and distract from the validity of these through dubious and non sequitur assertions.

Readers of the Baton Rouge Advocate received two doses of that last week in separate letters published. The first came after a column by state Sen. Sharon Hewitt. In that, Hewitt made the points that the state pays $500 per person enrolled in Medicaid every month and a third of those able-bodied Louisianans enrolled reported earning no income. Further, fewer than 17 percent of those enrolled are actually using the physician services provided through expansion. These numbers buttressed her larger point that the state could use work requirements or substitutes for able-bodied adults to receive Medicaid, as other states are pursuing.

A week later, in a letter Gee belittled that view, even though she tangentially at best addressed the twin issue of non-working able-bodied adults getting free Medicaid and large-scale underuse of Medicaid. She claimed work criteria should not apply to the majority of Medicaid recipients who are children or disabled – but Hewitt never proposed they should be.

LA Democrats sinking further their fortunes

The point isn’t so much that Democrats’ positions continue to deteriorate in Louisiana, or even why, but why Democrats continue to let it happen.

My Advocate colleague Tyler Bridges wrote a piece on how, despite enthusiasm stemming from Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ 2015 upset win, indicators keep showing the party’s fortunes declining. Updating statistics that have appeared in this space on several occasions, it shows the sea change as the state hurtles towards a Republican registration plurality for the first time in recorded history.

It repeats that Republicans, through a series of special elections and party switches, gained a majority in the state House in 2010 and in the state Senate in 2011, for the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. Those majorities increased in 2011 and stayed essentially locked in as a result of the 2015 elections.

The Advocate column, Jan. 28, 2018

Instead of blasting Rick Scott's visit to Louisiana, Gov. Edwards should take notes
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_62bbce9c-0208-11e8-a05a-9b6e31b42bf0.html

Links:
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_7d1703de-fb9f-11e7-9a39-27fc53ad24e8.html
https://www.flgov.com/2018/01/16/gov-rick-scott-two-years-of-louisiana-tax-increases-makes-florida-better-destination-for-business/
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c31c3a7b-34c9-47a4-8499-4995a6731d29/louisiana-employment-update.pdf
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/7816b6f0-1bb6-462f-8cb8-e18b41296693/florida-employment-update.pdf
https://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/qgsp_newsrelease.htm
https://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm
https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0L1E?output_view=pct_12mths
https://data.bls.gov/cew/apps/table_maker/v4/table_maker.htm#type=17&from=2015&to=2017&qtr=1&own=0&ind=10&area=22000&supp=1
https://data.bls.gov/cew/apps/table_maker/v4/table_maker.htm#type=17&from=2015&to=2017&qtr=1&own=0&ind=10&area=12000&supp=1
https://data.bls.gov/cew/apps/table_maker/v4/table_maker.htm#type=17&from=2015&to=2017&qtr=1&own=0&ind=10&area=US000&supp=1
http://lfo.louisiana.gov/files/revenue/1_RelUnempRates_09_17.pdf
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LASST220000000000006?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/what-s-behind-the-drop-in-oil-prices/
http://www.doa.la.gov/opb/pub/FY16/StateBudget_FY16.pdf
http://www.doa.la.gov/opb/pub/FY18/StateBudgetFY18.pdf

Lou Gehrig Burnett, 1941-2018

On Jan. 7, as I had done almost every other Sunday for about 15 years, I sent my column to the publisher of Fax-Net Update, Lou Burnett. It was that night, after the New Orleans Saints had triumphed in their playoff game, which put a smile on my face and I knew would on Lou’s as well. The next day, the edition that was supposed to have my piece came out, reading only this:

Delays delays delays.  Seems old man winter has hit the staff of Fax-Net with the bug thats going around.

We muist have been on Santa's naughty list ater all.

We will publish again as soon.as we can.  Sorry for the delay.

It’s been one of the worst flu seasons in a long time, so bad that my wife, who is severely immuno-compromised, has kept me in the house where I leave only to gather food and occasionally go to campus. Lou was 76 and a heavy smoker all his life, plus the misspellings should have jogged me to give his ailment at least a second thought.

Lapdog Adley hypocritically shilling for Edwards

Not only is former state Sen. Robert Adley a toady, he’s a hypocritical toady.

The Democrat-turned-Republican Adley found himself term-limited out of office after 2015, but landed on his political feet when Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards – to whose campaign account his dormant one contributed $2,500 in 2016 – appointed him to the state Board of Commerce and Industry as his designee. This put him right in the middle of changes Edwards mandated to the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, essentially curtailing to some degree local property tax breaks for capital-spending companies.

As such, Adley has become Edwards’ extension and thereby energetically responded to recent criticism made by Republican state Rep. Alan Seabaugh about Edwards’ tax-and-spend plans for the upcoming fiscal year. Edwards wishes to raise taxes permanently to empower oversized government while calling it tax reform.

Edwards raises hope to pare needless licensing

Welcome to the party, pal: liberal Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards has joined the bandwagon to streamline through reduction occupational licensing in Louisiana. Regardless of his reason for doing so, better late than never.

To his credit, it’s been a small bandwagon, as virtually no Louisiana legislators – Edwards served in the House of Representatives from 2008-16 – recently have tried to do anything to reduce the number of occupations requiring licensing. In fact, during his two terms in the House, eight discrete bills came forward establishing new occupational licensing while none actually tried eliminating any (a couple of dozen tweaked requirements, more often marginally eliminating these than adding to them).  Six of these didn’t make it out of committee, and of the two that did Edwards voted against one and for the other.

No real movement has occurred during his two years as governor, either. As a result of this standstill, Louisiana remains the most overregulated state for occupational licensing, as measured by the Institute for Justice. In fact, the only significant attenuation of licensing in the state over the past decade has occurred because of the Institute’s intervention, in putting pressure on lawmakers to pare substantially the florist license requirements and in winning in court on behalf of monks who wanted to make and sell caskets.

B.L. "Buddy" Shaw, 1933-2018

I actually met B.L. “Buddy” Shaw, who died last week, not in the political arena, but in higher education, through his wife Mary Ann, a colleague of mine at Louisiana State University Shreveport. At that time, Buddy was wrapping up what would become his final term on the Caddo Parish School Board, preparing to launch a 12-year career in the Louisiana Legislature, serving as my representative or senator.

How he traversed that time as a legislator was interesting and unusual. From 1996 to 2004 he made his mark as one of the most fiscally and socially conservative members of the House. Not term-limited, he could have run for a third term but decided at age 70 he would enjoy his time more away from Baton Rouge.

Then, in 2007, he came out of retirement to contest for the state Senate. Former state Sen. Max Malone, elected with Buddy in 1995, had hit his term limit, and state Rep. Billy Montgomery had declared for the seat after he term limited out his House seat.

The Advocate column, Jan. 21, 2018

Edwards' about-face on work requirements a dizzying swivel from last year
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/jeff_sadow/article_106928ca-fbe0-11e7-bf46-d7b975181189.html

Links:
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_81b6dc72-f715-11e7-82e7-d7024172782c.html
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/legislature/article_81992d0c-3015-11e7-bbfe-e34b140c402a.html
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1031011
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1047048
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_c5b54482-fa16-11e7-a1d3-db359a893599.html
https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/mercatus-badger-aca-coverage-v1_update.pdf
http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=up_workingpapers
http://house.louisiana.gov/housefiscal/DOCS_APPBudgetMeetings2016/Dec7/Department%20of%20Health.pdf
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/?activeTab=graph&currentTimeframe=0&startTimeframe=3&selectedRows=%7B%22states%22:%7B%22louisiana%22:%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D
http://www.ksla.com/story/36469580/willis-knighton-idles-55-workers-health-system-to-cut-177-more-jobs
http://jeffsadow.blogspot.com/2017/09/edwards-snap-policy-continues-to-hurt-la.html