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14.6.18

Frivolous LA suit part of far left's long game

If you can’t win by playing by the rules, try to use undemocratic means to change the rules, a frivolous suit aimed at reshaping Louisiana’s congressional districts illustrates – but with an eye on the long game.

An arm of national Democrats, the National Redistricting Foundation, recently filed suit in Louisiana plus two other states, alleging in all three instances the drawn congressional districts violate voting rights. In all cases, the proportion of black residents exceeds the proportion of seats held by black Democrats in Congress as set up by the respective districting plans.

This leads to complaints by plaintiffs that they can’t elect the candidates they want as their votes are “diluted,” referring to prohibitions in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Their only problem is, their position has been litigated for over three decades and found wanting.

12.6.18

Vindictive Edwards punishes Ouachita residents

Once is an accident. However, twice is not a coincidence but intentional, much to the chagrin of Ouachita Parish.

That’s the reality area legislators and local officials must accept regarding flood control. Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed – again –  state money for the River Styx pump station. The repairs would decrease the chances of flooding in the northeastern part of the parish, near CenturyLink headquarters and surrounding neighborhoods that suffered high water encroachment in 2016.

The year after that, area legislators placed the request in the state’s capital outlay budget. They did so near the end of the process because funding attempts by local government to procure federal dollars didn’t materialize. This also caused a Priority 5 assignment to the project, the lowest. The governor, despite the previous year’s flooding, vetoed it.

11.6.18

Edwards enters Round III weaker than ever

It’s Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards vs. Republican House of Representatives majority III, a showdown that, like some prizefights, basketball championships, etc. may prove less competitive than its predecessors.

Edwards called the year’s third special session because the lower House GOP will not accede to backing his requests to spend all outdoors. It will grant him spending all indoors, witnessed by the fact that in the second such session that a majority voted for reinstituting a third of a cent increase in the sales tax due to expire, but that offer, representing 80 percent of his desired total, his party found wanting and defeated that measure the second time it came up (any tax increase requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber of the Legislature).

Therefore, back to the salt mines go legislators, as Edwards attempts a sitzkrieg strategy to wear down House opposition (in the Senate his lapdog GOP Pres. John Alario has enough feckless Republicans to muscle through whatever the governor wants). Yet the call he made to do it illustrates how his position has weakened.