Landry tries again to thread needle, on centers

Just as he has found himself trying to thread a needle concerning carbon capture and sequestration, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has tried to do the same regarding data center presence in the state.

Last year, under growing popular pressure, Landry issued an executive order that had the effect of slowing down CCS projects in the state. It allowed only a few to go forward, rendered when increasing public and legislative opposition advised that the impact particularly of the sequestration process had not had sufficient study for the application of appropriate safeguards.

This issue has caught Landry between its two aspects of capture and sequestration. With federal tax credits (and, for now, carbon credits paid by foreign concerns) for capture enabling a profitable industry, Louisiana has a competitive advantage only because of its abundance of sequestration options. It has no leverage over capture policy, just sequestration policy, but it precisely is sequestration around which major opposition has coalesced.

LDH free condom giveaway strategy shift beneficial

If you’re a dude (or you’re a gal who’s about to have an assignation with such a guy) who can’t keep it in your pants, go grab yourself a free state-issue condom. And here’s a map to help you.

Yes, Louisiana participates in an HIV (and, more generally, sexually transmitted and infectious disease) prevention program that, among other things, tosses loads of free condoms to nonprofits and businesses to distribute. For example, feeling randy in Bossier City but concerned you’ll pick up a gift that keeps on giving? Check in to any of four motels on East Texas St. and not only can you get a room for the deed (maybe even by the hour), but a free state-issue wrapper as well.

According to the most recent numbers, the state spent $3 million of federal money on the broader program in the latest year available; how much of this went to condoms and if there were state taxpayer dollars at work is unknown. And, before accusations arise about how this is a looney leftist politicized waste of money, it is a Republican Pres. Donald Trump Administration initiative.

Groups oppose rule that would uncover true selves

If you throw water on a dog and it yelps, the water must be scalding to the dog. The interesting question, as in the case of the hue and cry emanating from leftist special interests over a proposed Louisiana Public Service Commission transparency rule, is why what seems lukewarm to everybody else feels radioactive to them.

At its next meeting, the PSC is expected to approve a rule requiring intervenors in cases to reveal in broad terms whether they receive funding from entities outside of Louisiana including foreign governments and if so the proportion. Additionally, money from foreign governments or entities that they control received over the past five years would have to be specified, including whether domestic donors to organizations received money from these sources. The rule would apply to any entity that comments on a case, all the way from climate alarmist organizations to corporations, including regulated utilities, who have a potential monetary interest in an outcome, including lobby groups.

It's not like this information is hard to come by. Corporations or cooperatives have to file tax forms that draw upon this information, and nonprofits, even those designated as charitable, also have to collect information on donors to satisfy reporting requirements such as indicating sufficiently large donations or determining whether they meet a public support standard to qualify as tax exempt.

Media outlet falls for reporting flawed narrative

If you’re a special interest group basing your policy preferences on bad science that needs donor dollars, you must scare people, and a Louisiana media source bought it, hook, line, and sinker.

This year, the group Climate Central put out a report alleging that summers over the past 35 years have warmed in almost all of 243 U.S. cities and that anthropogenic climate change is the leading driver in nearly all of those. Then the group, which prides itself on fronting the fable that anthropogenic causes necessarily have triggered more extreme weather such as rising average temperatures and packages this for local media, snookered the Louisiana Radio Network into swallowing this line for a story about summer temperatures in Louisiana, blaming supposedly higher temperatures on increases in carbon emissions that eventually will lead to doom.

Chasing the story was defensible, given alarmist reporting about temperatures. However, swallowing the bilge whole proved a lapse in judgment.

Monroe unwise to change mayoral veto standard

A frustrated set of Monroe City Council Democrats are advocating the gutting of the intent and purpose of the city charter because the system works.

Last week, the Council addressed a pair of vetoes issued by no party Mayor Friday Ellis. He struck a measure that would have established a constitutionally problematic procedure for addressing allegedly discriminatory statements and actions among city employees, prompted when his chief operating officer Morgan McCallister hit back at baseless accusations of such alleged statements. Another denied ordinance would have had the city annex a neighborhood, against the decision of the city’s zoning board, with questionable liabilities involving a principal whose other project is stalled by the city, discussion of which in front of another government body was what prompted the accusation against McCallister.

Council Democrats complained that Ellis had the power to create an extra hurdle for things he didn’t support – in other words, carping about a venerable and basic check and balance in American government. Democrat Juanita Woods said she was bringing a reworded version of the investigatory ordinance one of which was introduced later, and she insinuated racism lay behind the annexation veto, while Democrat Rodney McFarland said the stated basis of the veto was “lies” and made the similar comparison that the largely-black southside area of Monroe was getting shortchanged; all Council Democrats are black while Ellis is white.

Registrant totals show continued GOP momentum

It’s official: for the first time in around 150 years, Louisiana has more registered Republicans than Democrats in the electorate, with implications.

Official beginning-of-month statistics give Republicans an over 2,000-registrant lead over Democrats. Compared to the year’s beginning, the GOP has added over 12,000 voters while Democrats have lost over 18,000. As the electorate increased by around 6,000, this means that all other voters gaining made up the 12,000 or so difference.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the shift. Not even two decades ago when Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal became the first lifelong Republican to win the Governor’s Mansion, Democrats held a two-to-one advantage (and there were 134,000 fewer registrants then). That means the GOP has increased 52 percent since, while Democrats have dropped 41 percent. Even more dramatically, 65 years ago Democrats comprised 99 percent of the electorate.

Trump, markets hand win to LA CCS foes

They may have lost at the Louisiana Legislature, but concerned residents and carbon capture and sequestration foes picked up a win courtesy of the politician who backed the opponent of the U.S. Senate candidate they supported, pointing the way to future successes.

Today, the other shoe dropped when Air Products confirmed that it would abandon its so-called Louisiana Clean Energy Complex, after last year suspending continuation of work on it. The project would have produced “blue” hydrogen, meaning through a process that didn’t emit a lot of carbon. That carbon would have been sequestered around and under Lake Maurepas, which generated significant opposition from those near it including some local governments.

Such was the alarm, with fears that without any history of sustained large scale sequestration to draw upon and isolated past instances of crises in transportation rendered CCS too risky, that dozens of bills hit the Legislature this past session to restrict or prohibit CCS, including a few aimed specifically around Lake Maurepas. Legislative leaders and Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s tacit acceptance of CCS caused these to go nowhere.

Conservatism to see few gains in LA fall votes

In essence, Louisiana’s Senate, one Board of Elementary and Secondary Education spot, and two Public Service Commission posts have been settled, resulting with arguably little in the way of conservative advancement.

That’s not because Republicans won’t triumph in all of these contests come November. That basically was set in stone upon qualifying, with first the party primaries of May 16 and then the ensuing runoffs Jun. 27 setting the exact field. Who gained the respective nominations mattered to determine the advancement of conservatism.

For the Senate, Rep. Julia Letlow’s win over GOP Treas. John Fleming hardly will cause an ideological ripple, if actually regress slightly from conservatism. Her lifetime voting record is actually slightly more moderate than that of who she and Fleming vanquished in the primary and who she replaces, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, although both are to the political right roughly equidistant between centrism and perfect conservatism. Fleming’s record in Congress, by contrast, was much further to the right.

Despite lower turnout, Letlow forges victory

The tumultuous U.S. Senate Republican runoff between Treas. John Fleming and Rep. Julia Letlow ended not much differently than where it had started from the primary election.

After that, it looked as if Letlow could cruise to victory. Leading Fleming in percent of the vote 45-28, that left her with a sizeable advantage not needing to pick up much relative support to notch a runoff win. But a few factors should have raised alarms in her camp.

First, there would be a chunk of voters who showed up simply to boot incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy. A half-baked flipflop on the question of convicting (then former) GOP Pres. Donald Trump as well as subsequent votes backing a big-spending Democrat agenda soured especially conservative voters on him, who would make up disproportionately the party primary electorate. Further, they disproportionately likely voted for Letlow because she was seen as the more moderate of the two, but they had no real commitment to her and with a good portion of the state having nothing but the runoff on the ballot, many of these voters would disappear from the polls, giving Fleming an advantage.

Landry vetoes urge NO to get, keep it together

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry wouldn’t be much of a chief executive by Louisiana’s past standards if he wasn’t using his line-item veto clout. But this year his aim seems different.

In his first two years, Landry employed this technique of vetoing line items animated by a particular purpose. In 2024, he lopped off items that he didn’t see having a statewide purpose that went to nongovernmental organizations, and from there developed criteria by which such requests would pass his muster. In 2025, he used his pen more punitively as retribution against legislators, even of his own party, who opposed some signature pieces of his legislative agenda.

For 2026, the overall theme seemed to be to get Orleans Parish affairs in order. The regular capital outlay bill for 2024 apportioned for projects exclusively in New Orleans some $341 million (keep in mind this doesn’t have to be spent in that year or could include projects from previous years not complete, and this amount includes roads, ports, and recreation money but not for state buildings, and also accounts for NGOs and subgovernments exclusively within the parish), and its 2025 counterpart laid out $514 million (the jump mainly due to a huge appropriation to the Port of New Orleans, counted although technically in St. Bernard, as well as the airport, technically in Jefferson, counted in all years). In 2024, all three Landry line item excisions hit Orleans, for almost $2 million, and in 2025 none of those three affected Orleans.