Nungesser Vieux Carre crime plan falls flat

If trying to compete with other putative candidates for governor next year, Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser would do well not to publicize half-baked ideas.

GOP Treas. John Schroder already has announced he seeks the state’s top job, and Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry seems poised to do the same. Schroder occasionally in the activities of his office can publicize policy credentials transferable to being governor, such as aligning with similar officers in other states to oppose viewpoint discrimination, and for Landry the far left policies pursued and overreach of government power to pursue these committed by Democrat Pres. Joe Biden is the gift that keeps on giving, presenting him many chances to take Biden Administration policies the bear directly on governance to court, among the latest being stopping the sidestepping of environmental regulatory law.

It's tough to stand out against all that, especially with a day job of overseeing parks and museums and begging tourists of all types to visit the state. So, Nungesser may have thought himself clever when he attempted to leverage public safety concerns to his limited and largely inconsequential official duties to concoct an issue on which to gain publicity.

Data negate Edwards, Orleans kid jab mandates

Science dealt Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards another blow, and Orleans Parish School District officials even more of these, with the latest data out about one Wuhan coronavirus vaccine’s effectiveness on children.

Late last year, over legislator objections, Edwards forced onto the academic year 2022-23 vaccination schedule inoculation for this virus. His muddled reasoning leaned heavily on ideology because the facts – principally that while for children as a whole the virus is more deadly that the flu, but infinitesimally deadly that poses as close to zero risk as conceivable for children and there are elevated levels of side effects that go with vaccination plus a bevy of unknowns – gave him little support for his action. Now, his case has deteriorated even further.

Recently available data, as part of a study undergoing peer review of over a million New York schoolchildren, shows the Pfizer variety works minimally among older children and not at all after about a month among the younger. This mirrors another study of adults that shows after a few months’ protection disappears and at that point the vaccinated become more likely to catch it than the unvaccinated (with many in this category already having had it, developing natural defenses). The culprit appears to be the omicron variant’s architecture, where vaccines initially were developed around other strains. Several accomplished epidemiologists argued the results erase any case for such vaccinations, especially among the youngest, and suggest this would prove universal across different vaccines and variants.

Needed LA pro-female competition bill returns

Republican state Sen. Beth Mizell returns, with SB 44, to the Louisiana Legislature a bill that events have proven even more necessary than when she offered it initially, where it passed only to meet with a mean-spirited veto by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards eventually upheld.

The bill mirrors her 2021 effort, with elaboration. It mandates that all athletic competitions, from collegiate on down except for those explicitly designed to have biological males and females compete together, provide for same-sex competitors. It very correctly notes the scientifically-indisputable inherent biological development advantages that males obtain over females, regardless of subsequent attempts after birth to change sex by medical interventions, in athletic competitions of speed and strength which would make a mockery of legal equality measures if competitions weren’t kept separate. As of this writing, 17 states have laws of this nature.

While the mainstream media do their best to publicize sob stories about children and young adults of one biological sex trying to participate in sports with the other, along with their predictable slant in favor of that (the limousine liberals at the Louisiana Radio Network headlined their story about the bill starting with “Anti-transgender”), they have little to say about how letting that happen so uncompromisingly discriminates against females and the suffering that girls and women endure with this form of legalized discrimination. However, that blackout hasn’t kept out of the public eye the controversy surrounding formerly male University of Pennsylvania swimmer Will Thomas.

LA wise to drop voting group until its reform

Lost in all the controversy about reapportionment in Louisiana, another election-related matter cropped up right before that special session began, with Republican Sec. of State Kyle Ardoin handling the matter appropriately.

Ardoin withdrew the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center in January, citing questions about the confidentiality of the data involved. The organization serves as a hub for data sharing among over 30 states regarding their voter registration records.

Established a decade ago ostensibly as a clearinghouse for states to check on voter roll accuracy including duplicate registrations, it came under question initially because its seed money came from leftist activist George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and those seven startup states included mostly those governed then by the left. Moreover, it appeared to be a response to the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, established years earlier comprised initially of midwestern states but which expanded to over half the states by the time Louisiana had joined ERIC.

Leftist hypocrisy unmasked at Endymion event

There were two good reasons to attend (if you had the connections or the dough) the Krewe of Endymion’s “Extravaganza” celebration in the Superdome Saturday night or (as I did via the Internet) watch its WVUE TV broadcast or narrowcast: its feting of author and media figure Raymond Arroyo and the rank and overwhelming civil disobedience – and the related hypocrisy – displayed.

Arroyo served as the krewe’s grand marshal. The New Orleans native, who in an interview described his selection as highly desired and enjoyable, even unthinkable when he was a child watching such parades roll by, drew controversy upon his selection. Some killjoys got upset that a guy who appears on Fox News, guest hosts the popular The Ingraham Angle show, and works for the Catholic traditionalist Eternal Word Television Network could draw the honor.

If that upset these nattering nabobs of negativity, none of that came through in the Dome. Images of joyful people abounded without a protest to be seen (or even strategically skillful throws from the crowds designed to bean him, which I observed suffered by marshals from time to time at the dozen or so Endymion parades I attended in the 1980s and 1990s).

Despite Landry, Biden takes pound of flesh

Despite Louisiana’s Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry’s best efforts, Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and his party seem determined to make people pay for their climate alarmism fantasies.

Landry spearheaded an effort to scrap the social cost of carbon metric reestablished by the Biden Administration on its first day in office, which about a month later began forcing inclusion of that old figure in, among other things, putative lease sales of federal land for energy exploration. Landry sued shortly thereafter, but until the judiciary late last year ruled that, in another suit headlined by Landry, Biden had illegally prevented such lease sales from going forward and had to carry these out, the matter was moot.

With these set to move forward again, earlier this month a different court ruled that Landry and the other plaintiffs had the standing to challenge the cost forwarded by the Biden group convened to create it (largely a holdover figure from the Democrat Pres. Barack Obama Administration, which early on completed a sue-and-settle arrangement giving birth to the noxious notion that there existed this cost justified by the alleged negative impact man-made carbon emitting on all things) and that this reestablishment violated the Administrative Procedures Act because it hastily acted and did not follow through the entire process. By definition, the injunction issued carries an implication that a full trial would favor the plaintiffs’ argument, on the basis that the framework producing the number didn’t follow the law and therefore was made capriciously.

GIGO report asks LA to double taxes, rates

Now that the relatively small wasting of money is over, the rotten fruit of that effort urges Louisianans to start wasting a spectacular amount to such a degree it would detract from their quality of life.

That comes courtesy of the garbage-in-garbage-out Climate Initiatives Task Force set up by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, which earlier this month issued its final report. It sought to align the state with environmental goals championed by the far left as reflected in lip service through the flawed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report whose recent summaries have demanded reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 26 to 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025, 40 to 50 percent of those levels by 2030, and to net zero by 2050.

The report explains its climate alarmism, and in doing so manages to discredit itself entirely by ignoring climate science. Laying out bombastic yet scientifically unsustainable claims, it contends:

Ivey outburst part of Strange New Respect quest

Just as Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy has put in a strong bid to win Strange New Respect among leftists inside and outside of national government, so has GOP state Rep. Barry Ivey within the state’s borders.

Strange New Respect becomes recognized when a heretofore solidly conservative elected official begins to act in ways that win applause from the left, typically by surrendering on matters of principle that effectively promotes the left’s agenda. In Ivey’s case, it’s more quality rather than quantity: the occasional defective judgment on his part often comes with attention-grabbing histrionics.

For, as the record shows, Ivey still casts a lot of conservative votes. His Louisiana Legislative Log average score over his 2013-22 House career at 73 ranged from the only 100 one year to a low of 45, although in a year that scores were down overall (100 means perfect consonance with a conservative/reform agenda). And he does a good job in the kind of bills he offers: of the 180 regular session bills he has filed as the primary author, a surface review of the Log shows 24 were classified as good (meaning nontrivial and conservative/reform in nature) bills to watch during a session and only two were bad (liberal/populist in nature).

House tallies favor few Edwards plan vetoes

The products of the Louisiana Legislature’s First Extraordinary Session on 2022 dedicated to reapportionment now head to the desk of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. Let’s see what happened and the likely futures of these.

Keep in mind that Republicans hold a supermajority plus one seat in the Senate, meaning party unity will override any Edwards veto. In the House of Representatives, they fall two short of this lofty perch of 70, but also have three no party members on which to draw, of which state Rep. Joe Marino typically leans their way whereas state Reps. Roy Daryl Adams and Malinda White normally cast their lots with Democrats.

Important to note is the final tallies for each chamber on each bill. Whether the GOP can reach the override threshold is a function of its members (including those who cast protest votes because they didn’t like how the plan affected their districts, who will return to the fold in case of a veto) who voted plus those absent who will support any override plus supportive no party/independent members and Democrats. In all cases in the Senate, the threshold was met, so it’s the House where override questions would be and whose numbers are reported below.

LA Congress map may set new legal precedents

Louisiana could end up the tip of the spear in defining voting rights, as court cases swirl about, from how its Legislature concluded its 2022 First Extraordinary Session devoted to reapportionment.

That session sent plans favored by its Republican majority to Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, who has voiced support for other rejected maps that leftist special interests have backed. Almost certainly he will veto a congressional plan that considers not only racial demographics but also largely keeps communities of interest together and provides continuity of representation that increase the chances of incumbents winning with the new boundaries, because it supplies only one majority-minority district out of six instead of two in a state where just about a third of the population identifies as black. Inevitably almost certainly, whether from an override failing that creates malapportionment (whether this attempt only or another is made during the regular session) or it succeeds that aggrieves special interests seeking a map more conducive to electing leftists to Congress, it will become subject to litigation.

A decade ago, elements who keyed on race as a means to increase the influence of Democrats in plenary bodies had means of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to spur that. It required preclearance by the U.S. Department of Justice of districts created in certain jurisdictions that had a history of electoral laws that prevented minorities from voting, based upon a formula. However, in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision declared the decades-old formula in Section 4(b) was too dated to past constitutional muster in that its deviation from reality made impermissible federal intrusion through preclearance into state sovereignty, essentially mooting Section 5 (until Congress passes an updated, realistic formula into law).