BC power elite grasping at anti-limits straws

Just how low could certain members of the Bossier City Council go – and just how hypocritically they may act – now that there’s a very real chance city voters will have a term limits proposal before them in December not to the liking of a majority of councilors with no way to counter it?

This week, a citizen petition for one of three items to appear on the Dec. 7 ballot was certified, that would establish a retroactive three-term limit for mayor and city councilors. By city charter, as certified now it must be presented to the City Council, where at that point the Council must approve it within 90 days or the next scheduled election, which would be Oct. 23 but no scheduled election is before then and the deadline for the next, Nov. 5 has passed, so that would be Dec. 7. If it does not, it is required within 30 days, or Aug. 24, to add the item as an ordinance automatically amending the charter, meaning that if for whatever reason the Council fails to forward it at any regular meeting or any special meeting before Aug. 24 it must by then vote to amend the charter with the item. Failure to do either puts it in violation of the charter and sets up a slam dunk declaratory judicial judgment that essentially goes over its head.

Expect there to be resistance by the five councilors who have voted against efforts to put a previous similar term limits amendment on the ballot which was ruled out judicially by a technicality – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio; Democrat Bubba Williams; and no party Jeff Darby, of whom all but Maggio would be disqualified from running for office this spring or ever again – that will take two forms. The first will be to refuse to follow the charter in passing any enabling ordinance, instruments which any of GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler or Republican Councilors Chris Smith and Brian Hammons who have advocated for term limits since their elections, can introduce.

Edwards cheerleaders silenced by report

The warnings went unheeded, and the silence from those who claim to speak for Louisianans with disabilities speaks volumes about their enabling.

Recently, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor issued a scathing report about care of the disabled in congregate settings. At least 3,500 incidents of abuse or neglect occurred in the state’s care facilities over the past five years. Further, in that span the Louisiana Department of Health discovered nearly 5,000 deficiencies, of which a few hundred escalated into noncompliance issues.

Most disturbingly, the numbers grew from 2020 through 2023 (reporting requirements being implemented in 2019 made those numbers less reliable for analysis). And, LDH didn’t have the investigatory resources to compel a better reporting rate by facilities of critical incidents within 48 hours of occurrence (about a quarter missed the deadline) and it only conducted an independent full-scale investigation in fewer than one percent of instances.

Democrat ticket switch won't impact LA contests

What does the revolt against the electorate by Democrat powerbrokers that chased Democrat Pres. Joe Biden from another term in the White House, almost certain to be replaced by Democrat Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, mean to Louisiana electoral politics? Absolutely nothing.

Much of the party’s leadership and activist cadres turned against Biden not because they were concerned he couldn’t lead the country, not because they feared for his health, but because they saw an electoral landslide for Republican former Pres. Donald Trump and the GOP in the offing should he have remained at the top of the ticket. The move came from purely political calculations as an exercise in attempting to hold the maximal power possible starting in 2025.

For them, ideally that would include reversing the existing campaign momentum and promoting Harris. Yet realistically they and the political left know this to be a long shot with Harris as perhaps the weakest possible replacement. It’s telling that all her presumed competitors quickly assented to her elevation, because they see this election likely as doomed for their party’s nominee and they don’t want to have that around their neck. Such is their aversion to potential damage to their political careers that some even are summarily turning down the job as vice presidential running mate.

BPSB accountability void expanding

As if on cue, a reinforcement of insularity led to a consequence of that insularity, which for the Bossier Parish School District breeds contempt for families seeking the best education for their children.

Last week, qualifying for a special election for District 5 of the School Board came and went with no one challenging Republican Logan McConathy, who had been appointed earlier this year to replace Republican Adam Bass, who had been elected to the state Senate. Logan McConathy is the son of Mike McConathy, who at one time taught in the school system but gained fame mainly after he moved on from coaching basketball at Bossier Parish Community College to Northwestern State University (where Logan was one of his players), and who last year ran unsuccessfully against the other state senator representing the parish, the GOP’s Alan Seabaugh. Logan is the grandson of and Mike the son of John McConathy, who after a professional basketball career eventually became superintendent of Bossier schools.

If all of this legacy made Logan McConathy’s layup into completing a term inevitable, it also fit the pattern. In 2022 elections, nine of the returning incumbents running faced no opposition, and neither did newcomer independent Craton Cochran (although his father sits on the Police Jury) for an open seat. The other two incumbents, both of whom had gained seats through special elections, easily defeated challengers.

New maps provide only Democrat electoral hopes

Although there might be a couple of interesting intraparty matchups ahead in Louisiana’s last round of blanket primary elections for Congress before 2026, the Public Service Commission, and the Supreme Court, partisan outcomes are almost certainly already secured after qualifying for these offices ended last week for the 2024 cycle.

With a new and almost certainly one-off congressional map for this cycle, all GOP incumbents will defeat, and handily, the political unknowns and lightweight retreads of all parties up against them. As testimony to the disarray state Democrats find their party, they couldn’t find someone of their label to run against Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who drew only another of his party as an opponent. Typically, the party out of power in a chamber of Congress makes it a priority to run someone to run against the body’s leader of the other party just to create national talking points, but that didn’t work against Johnson (who at least this time will have competition, having run unopposed in 2022 before he became speaker).

The only serious competition will come in the new and transient Sixth District, whose boundaries were declared unconstitutionally gerrymandered to elect a black candidate by the federal judiciary, that to prevent election administration difficulties will be allowed to stand for this election. It spanning from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, Democrat state Sen. Cleo Fields hopes for the third time to win in an unconstitutional district – his previous two successful elections to Congress in 1992 and 1994 came under maps also declared unconstitutional – whose main challenger should prove to be GOP former state Sen. Elbert Guillory. Both are black.

Alter legal presumption to reduce clergy scandal

Running afoul of legalities, Louisiana’s attempt to bring serial sexual predators to justice may be revived in a different way, as an unfortunate instance of this crime reminds.

This week, Florida authorities on a Texas warrant arrested Anthony Odiong, charging him with illegally possessing child abuse imagery depicting unclothed children. Until last year, for a several years Odiong had been pastor of St. Anthony’s in Luling, in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Although his home diocese technically is in Africa, Odiong had spent many years in the Diocese of Austin during the time of then-Bishop Gregory Aymond who when assuming the archbishopric of New Orleans eventually transferred Odiong there.

Odiong in 2023 was removed from his position by the Archdiocese apparently on complaints from women about sexual improprieties as well as for financial irregularities attached to his ministry. Since then, he ignored his Nigerian bishop’s call to return and instead holed up in an expensive home in Florida. He complained his removal, which included revoking his ministerial authority, was in response to his complaining that Church policy under Pope Francis was too lenient that validated homosexual liaisons.

Caddo commissioner non-apology shows unfitness

The sickness that has pervaded the political left in recent years that, displaying an authoritarian ethos, declares its opponents as twisted if not evil, a Democrat Caddo Parish Commissioner put on full display in reacting to the unsuccessful assassination of Republican former Pres. Donald Trump this past weekend.

At a rally on Saturday, while making a speech Trump suddenly halted after popping noises rang out and blood appeared running down the right side of his face as Secret Service personnel took him to the ground and huddled over him momentarily, then hauled him off stage. A bullet from nearly 150 yards away had pierced the top of his ear, and others wounded and killed spectators before the would-be assassin was located and shot dead by snipers.

Anybody viewing the incident, whether afterwards from recordings, could tell immediately what had happened. Agents don’t dogpile on their charge and rush him away if they aren’t highly suspicious that bullets are headed his way, and it’s not firecrackers or children’s popguns or a Bidenesque stumble if blood is so visible on the intended target. Two plus two always should equal four, even to student journalists much less to so-called professionals.

LA buffer zone law in some form should prevail

An upcoming Louisiana law will draw a law suit. Whether that will succeed may depend upon the U.S. Supreme Court and the state’s persistence.

This past regular legislative session, lawmakers passed and Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed HB 173 by GOP state Rep. Bryan Fontenot. The bill creates a new crime, approaching a peace officer lawfully engaged in law enforcement duties, by prohibiting approaching peace officers – most notably, police – within 25 feet of them so long as they legitimately are performing their assigned duties, they warn those encroaching, and the warning is delivered in a manner understood by those encroaching.

The law takes effect at the start of next month. Special interests have declared the law is unconstitutional, which means as soon as they can find – or perhaps engineer – a situation where a person receives such a warning, they will sue on the basis of infringement of First Amendment rights. They argue that such a law prevents public oversight of police actions, stopping observation of potentially illegal behavior by law enforcement.

Authoritarian Monroe Council set for conflict

If the first Monroe City Council meeting of the new term for it and independent Mayor Friday Ellis conveys any indication of the next four years, that would flash plenty of conflict ahead as well as a more authoritarian tack taken by the new Council majority.

In his first term, Ellis didn’t encounter an inordinate amount of resistance to his agenda, despite being only the second white non-Democrat ever elected in the city’s history by an electorate that these days is majority black and Democrat. The two white Republicans on the Council, Doug Harvey and Gretchen Ezernack, almost always supported his initiatives and budgets, and usually on important items he could count on a vote from black Democrats Carday Marshall and/or Kema Dawson. Only black Democrat Juanita Woods consistently opposed him on these.

But in this spring’s elections Marshall and Dawson fell to black Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad, both of whom essentially ran against the direction Ellis was taking. Their first meeting extended that theme.

New laws too late to fix left's fatal errors

If only some parts of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s and his legislative allies’ crime package had been in place prior to this year, likely at least one more person would be alive today, along potentially with reductions in many other crimes committed.

At the end of June, a woman who worked as tour guide was found shot dead early in the morning in the Vieux Carré. The next day, New Orleans police arrested Joshua Bonifacio-Avila, 19, Jerben Albarec, 17, and Kevin Nuñez, 15 for the robbery/murder with Nuñez as the alleged triggerboy.

That unhappy circumstance reflects poorly on Democrat Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Judge Candice Bates-Anderson’s decision-making, as Nuñez – despite his not being old enough to operate legally a vehicle – already had a record of seven counts of aggravated assault, illegal possession of a handgun, and domestic battery at his latest appearance earlier this spring. Bates-Anderson nevertheless sentenced him to home arrest and monitoring. Yet in another system failure, for some reason his ankle monitor was deactivated in May, allowing him to roam the streets that led to his alleged role in the robbery that escalated to murder.

Reforms may depoliticize future coastal plans

A faux ruckus raised over a recent reorganization of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority illustrates just how uninformed – aided naturally enough by oversimplistic if not mendacious publicity by special interests and subsequent stenography by news organizations – is the public about climate change and how it relates to the state’s management of coastal lands.

Last month, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law HB 806, which alters membership on the CPRA Board (note that the CPRA is divided into a policy-making arm, the Board, and an implementation arm, called the Authority which typically is denoted by the acronym). It removed six of the 23 and added three more.

This may be the first step in Landry’s planned overhaul of the CPRA as a whole. A transition committee of his recommended integrating it with the Department of Energy and Natural Resources. A bill to do that stalled in the past legislative session, perhaps over the perception that this attempt to make coherent a patchwork of quasi-independent entities that make coordination of conservation policy difficult instead somehow would deemphasize that function, if not degrade it.

Petition submission pressures BC establishment

It’s no accident that the collapse of Bossier City’s Charter Review Commission coincided with the successful conclusion of a citizen initiative to petition a city charter change introducing term limits. It leaves the political establishment, especially the elected officials part of it who would be devastated with subsequent enactment, clinging to lawfare as its only remote chance to derail an almost-assuredly ratification of term limits prior to next year’s city elections.

Heading into a scheduled Jun. 18 meeting after the previous meeting had seen the four Commission representatives generally favorable towards limits take advantage of two absences of establishment representatives, who were against the idea, to gain commission approval of a term limits measure like the one on the petition – three terms retroactively applied immediately – the establishment commissioners faced some tactical considerations in trying to reverse that outcome at the meeting, which would depend upon how many of their numbers they could muster. Apparently, they couldn’t maneuver enough to have presumably the last meeting of substance before forwarding all approved items to the City Council as they appeared to boycott without warning the scheduled meeting, leaving in attendance just three of the reform commissioners (one had announced previously his intended absence) and no quorum. (Determining whether the boycott was planned is now subject to a contested public records request.)

The non-meeting devolved into an acrimonious exchange between then-Chairman Preston Friedley and Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray over the agenda-setting process – an important point because what appeared on it would affect the numbers needed by the establishmentarians to try to overturn a past vote. Of particular concern to that faction was the past typical absences of one of them, Paderina Soumas, that if repeated would deprive them under most scenarios of the votes needed for the overturning.

LA judiciary could use paring, reorganization

A recent decision made by a little-known panel of elected Louisiana judges illuminates how with reorganization of the state’s judiciary taxpayers could save around $100 million annually.

Last month, the state’s Judicial Budgetary Control Board voted to give stipends in most instances representing almost 8.5 percent of a judge’s salary, out of an internal fund not dependent on taxpayer dollars that has accumulated a significant surplus, to judges on the bench as of Jul. 1. With this decision, which doesn’t appear to follow legislative intent to dole out periodically to active judges this bonus it authorized, if a judge does not serve the entire fiscal year he still receives the whole amount, even as this appears to be an unconstitutional donation of public funds.

The stipends came from the judiciary appropriation bill, following on pay raises in recent years recommended by the special panel created to evaluate these and legislative approval. It had been conditioned upon completion by a district or appellate judge of a workload study, but Republican Gov. Jeff Landry cast a line-item veto on that requirement, stating that the judiciary should evaluate its own members and the study would be completed with over half the fiscal year over.

NO officials enable politicized police missteps

Increasingly it seems necessary for the gutting and reconstitution of the New Orleans Police Department, given the escalating rogue behavior it exhibits throughout itself, but that might require accomplishing the more difficult task of exchanging city political elites.

The ongoing saga involving a member of the department once assigned to Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s security detail on the surface seemed isolated to the officer involved. Both are under federal investigation potentially for defrauding taxpayer resources. That officer was suspended in April and since has filed to retire from the department.

But a twist to the apparently sordid affair, which includes alleged assignations between Cantrell and the officer on the taxpayer dime as she lived unauthorized on city property, a privilege recently revoked by the City Council, Cantrell filed for a protective order against a neighbor at that location supposedly out of pique that the woman had provided video recordings of Cantrell at a public venue that ended up in media reports and possibly as evidence in the looming federal indictments that could involve Cantrell. According to the woman, almost the entire filing was bogus, to which a civil court judge agreed in tossing the entire thing.

Independence Day, 2024

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Wednesday, Jul. 4 being Independence Day, I invite you to explore the links connected to this page.

Political shuffling to benefit Court, maybe NSU

The political musical chairs that may commence with a new Northwestern State University presidency in the near future could lead, with voters ratification, to a quality lineup in the state’s Supreme Court – but at the cost of refreshing a questionable tendency in governance of Louisiana’s higher education institutions.

At the end of May, NSU Pres. Marcus Jones announced he accepted an offer to be kicked upstairs in the University of Louisiana System. The ULS just prior to statewide elections last fall swiftly moved to put former Grambling State University Pres. Rick Gallot into the system presidency, but then hit the brakes when Republican incoming Gov. Jeff Landry asked to meet with Gallot prior to any final contract offering.

Landry has no control over such a hiring decision. But he does have control over appointments to the ULS Board of Supervisors, almost half of whom come up for that at then end of the year, and most of them before Landry’s term is up (and all of them if he serves another). While because of the political allegiances of some they will not return, many have a decent chance of reappointment and not acquiescing might have mooted that.

LA must support efforts to bring EPA in line

Either by legal action or election results, the run of politicization of science that has marked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory regime on emissions looks to wither away, bringing relief to a major Louisiana industrial concern punished for political reasons.

As of the middle of last week, things weren’t looking great for Denka Performance Elastomers in LaPlace, the country’s only producer of neoprene. For over a decade, Denka and its predecessor have been in the crosshairs of the EPA that alleges production of neoprene emits too high levels of chloroprene that supposedly causes cancer. The EPA has tried to impose emission strict standards even as the company has instigated a huge decrease in these amounts.

That battle escalated in a rule proposed in April and made final in May that broadly changes the emission regime, but specifically for Denka creates a level that the company has said is impossible to meet by an Oct. 15 deadline. It has gone to court to suspend this implementation.

Next Ellis term may feature choppy waters

Fresh off a successful four years and convincing reelection, Monroe independent Mayor Friday Ellis looks to face a different – and possibly less tractable – set of challenges through 2028.

This week, he took the oath for a second term, along with new terms for Republican Councilors Doug Harvey and Gretchen Ezernack and Democrat Juanita Woods. In 2020, Ellis, who is white, shocked the political world when in a city with black voting majority and Democrat voting majority as a novice candidate he defeated black long time mayor Democrat Jamie Mayo.

Proving this no fluke, he overcame Mayo again earlier this year, more than doubling up on him with 63 percent of the vote, an improvement of about 10 percent in the rematch. Ellis credited his victory to taking largely a service-oriented approach deemphasizing ideology that focused on attention to constituents, which seemed to resonate among black voters as he captured at least a quarter of the vote in a number of supermajority black precincts.

Consequential election frees Bossier legislators

Persecuted in past years, if not attacked for reelection purposes, Bossier Parish-based legislators saw their efforts flourish this year.

The 2023 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature brought adversity for the likes of Republicans state Sen. (then Rep.) Alan Seabaugh, Raymond Crews, and Dodie Horton, as well as GOP state Rep. Danny McCormick who prior to reapportionment that took effect this year also represented parts of the parish. That’s as they advocated reining in spending, favoring the use of surplus dollars to pay down unfunded accrued liabilities and other measures to stabilize state finances, which meant leaving in place a spending cap.

By contrast, Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards wanted to lard up the budget as much as possible in an attempt to bake in larger government prior to his departure at year’s end, knowing as soon as he left office his legacy of bloated government and redistribution to favored special interests would start to crumble. He found willing allies in a legislative Republican leadership of House former Speaker Clay Schexnayder – himself running for higher office where higher spending could leverage him more campaign support – and Sen. former Pres. Page Cortez who wanted to spread largesse to legislators, many of whom were running for election.

Landry veto encourages genuine Catholic action

As previously noted, while Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s line item vetoes reflected generally fiscal probity while signaling even more emphasis on that in the future, he also made a statement about unwarranted political activism within Louisiana’s Roman Catholic Church’s bureaucracy.

Landry’s vetoes in three appropriations bills followed a general guideline he included in accompanying messages: that gifts of state money had to fulfill state purposes. In some instances, projects he zeroed out were too narrow geographically or too disconnected from state priorities, while others didn’t provide information to determine that.

Not that he didn’t manage to use the power simultaneously to pull political benefits from frequent opponents. The best example of that came from the axed $250,000 from The First 72+, a charitable organization backed by several prominent election officials that seeks to aid the recently incarcerated. According to its Internal Revenue Service Form 990 from 2022, that would have exceeded the entire contribution from government grants, and represents around 15 percent of its revenues. But no request ever was filed, as by Legislature rules, so that made it easy for Landry to vacate.

Landry delivers warning on dubious line items

On a small scale with appropriations bills, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry gave warning he was going to party like it was 2008.

This week, Landry revealed his line item vetoes of HB 1, HB 2, and HB 782 – the general, capital outlay, and supplemental appropriations bills, respectively. The governor has the power to excise individual items in each, which historically never have been overridden.

He didn’t pare much. HB 1 lost four items worth $2.125 million, HB 2 had three items lopped off worth $1.75 million (although one item was a bureaucratic direction), and HB 782 saw 16 items off into the ether worth around $3.5 million.

Vax hesitancy, media mistrust related in public

The same reason why Louisianans appear to be a bit more skeptical about vaccinations generally is behind why Americans have fallen to just about record lows in trust of the media – with a perfect example recently teed up by the state’s largest newspaper.

Last week, the Baton Rouge Advocate ran a piece with scare headline “Anti-vaccine movement gains steam with Louisiana politicians. Here's why doctors are concerned.” It contended that “An unprecedented number of bills and resolutions aimed at weakening vaccine requirements are now law in Louisiana following a wave of successful legislation taking aim at public health authorities.” Hold on to your hernia belts, as “The anti-vaccine movement … is becoming more mainstream in the Louisiana statehouse, causing concern among doctors and public health officials who worry it is eroding decades of health policy and will result in more disease and death.”

Of concern, the article offers, is the drop in kindergarten vaccination rates from 90 to 86 percent, and similar drops in other age groups. The absolute number is small, but it’s contended even a little erosion can be risky to allow a breakout of disease. Charles Stoecker, a Tulane health economist, laments that if there comes something like this, “we'll have only ourselves to blame.” Dr. Mark Kline, physician in chief at Children's Hospital New Orleans said alleged “dismantling” of vaccine policies runs “counter to everything we know about the legitimate practice of public health. It jeopardizes all of our safety, and particularly the safety of people who have medical conditions that make them vulnerable to these diseases.”

Move now to fix LA fiscal policy, next budget

With a constitutional convention apparently off the table for the immediate future, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry appointee Department of Revenue Sec. Richard Nelson has a difficult task to lead in steering state fiscal policy away from deficit shoals.

The convention would have proposed transferring some revenue and spending imperatives out of the Constitution so that the Legislature in 2025 would have had more flexibility in dealing with the disappearance of a temporary 0.45 percent sales tax first imposed in 2016, as well as a 2 percent tax on business utilities purchases for fiscal year 2025. Only the political far left – ironically as it alleges to support lower income households yet sales taxes disproportionately hit those individuals – is advocating keeping the sales tax.

The sales tax generates about $455 million annually, the utilities tax generates about $211 million, and the estimated state budget shortfall without this revenue is $558 million for FY 2025. Landry and Nelson now hope to have a special session of the Legislature meet late this or early next year to tackle the expiration, after legislator fatigue of two special and a longer regular session this year that turned sentiment against a special session acting as a convention this summer.

BC establishment ready to chuck new charter

Months of work on potential Bossier City Charter changes circle the drain, an apparent victim of a feature, not a bug, of the process shaped by City Council graybeards and their allies.

This week, the city’s Charter Review Commission attempted to meet for one last time to complete votes for changes and to pass an enabling motion sending the whole package to the Council. That officially would compel the Council to place the changes, shaped as a replacement (despite the questionable legality of that) of the document, on the Dec. 7 ballot.

At its previous meeting, taking advantage of a couple of absences among the five appointees of city councilors against term limits – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby, the only votes originally in favor of establishing the Commission – the four other appointees added into the package of consensus and voted-upon approvals a retroactive three-term limit for the mayor and councilors. With eventual voter approval, all but Maggio would be ineligible to run in next year’s city elections as a result.

Landry Regents picks, agenda to shape policy

While conservatives aren’t wrong in expressing concern over some of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s appointments to the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors, understand that in policy terms that it does little injury to their cause.

Last week, after a June meeting where several just-expired appointees served, Landry made his picks to replace them. Some weren’t and rewarded with new terms, while other new picks were promising. However, three irked observers on the political right because these new supervisors, especially in one case, hadn’t been their allies if one having been an outright opponent.

The choices of Jimmy Woods and Rémy Starns appeared to be forms of political payback. Holdovers, Woods is an ally of Landry non-enemy Democrat state Sen. Cleo Fields, who fronts the most extensive network of black Democrat party activists in the state and who stayed largely out of the governor’s race last year despite Landry facing his main opposition from a black Democrat, while Starns is the state public defender who went to bat for Landry’s reforms of the soon-to-be-renamed-to Office of the State Public Defender, but who otherwise has stumped for Democrats.

BC term limits subject to last ditch power play

The empire will try to strike back at the upcoming Bossier City Charter Review Commission meeting, aided by questionable collusion, but potentially failing to bear fruit depending upon who shows up and perhaps what courts of law may have to say in the future.

Of course, the issue in question is term limits, which at its last meeting were voted in favor to forward for citizen approval as part of the entire package, three terms and retroactive in nature starting at the end of this year in advance of next year’s city elections. It passed 4-3 with two absences, one of whom by past rhetoric seemed likely to vote against it.

The Commission generally has been debating changes, classifying them as consensus or not, with the intent of bringing the latter to a vote at this, the final meeting. But at the previous one, term limits was moved and approved already, to the chagrin of the political establishment whose membership comprises the four city councilors – Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby – who could not run for reelection with these limits in place, plus rookie GOP Councilor Vince Maggio. Lights began burning late at night at City Hall to come up with a countermove to prevent the measure from going to a vote of the people, utilizing the appointees of these five who make for a majority of the Commission.

Graves political exit not likely to last long

The announcement by Republican Rep. Garret Graves that he will not seek reelection might constitute a short-term setback for him, but leaves him other valuable opportunities in the future.

Graves faced an uphill battle to preserve the seat he has in the Sixth District. It was redrawn dramatically earlier this year to create two majority-minority districts in response to a Middle District federal court decision that declared the 2022 map that had kept the Sixth little changed as one of five out of six non-M/M districts likely violated the Voting Rights Act – into a form that a Western District special court panel recently declared was unconstitutional.

But that district and map on which it is part will stand for fall elections, as the U.S. Supreme Court enjoined throwing it out for now on the basis that the impending election created too little time to administer voting properly if suddenly changing the map. That transformed Graves’ district into a majority-minority district almost all of which he never has represented and which would favor a black Democrat, one of the prominent of which, state Sen. Cleo Fields, already has started campaigning to represent it.

BC term limits edging closer to reality

The high-stakes game of poker goes on between citizens rebellious to the Bossier City political establishment and those insiders who will fight by any means necessary to suppress any threat to their power, which may include a tactical retreat on term limits that, once again, is consumed by lawfare?

That may be at issue after the latest meeting of the city’s Charter Review Commission, which over the past four months has plowed through proposed charter changes. Upon releasing a final product, the charter dictates that the City Council must accept it and schedule for an election. The earliest possible date for citizen approval would be for the Dec. 7 general election runoff, which means if approved changes would go into effect prior to 2025 city elections.

The whole rationale for commission formation came as a result of a near-miss for the establishment on the issue of term limits. A petition amending the charter to include a three-term retroactive limit for all elected officials gained enough signatures to land it on the ballot last year, but a City Council majority – comprised of Republicans David Montgomery and Jeff Free, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby, all of whom would have become ineligible to run, plus GOP rookie Vince Maggio – a few times voted to violate the Charter by not scheduling the vote of a certified petition, and then went to court to knock out the petition through a legal technicality about its format.

New standards boost LA education accountability

After years of tolerating a somewhat misleading evaluation system of individual schools and their districts, starting in academic year 2025 Louisiana will enjoy an improved version that provides better information for families and policy-makers.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education today promulgated new rules to determine accountability, which didn’t happen overnight. An attempt failed two years ago, made from a growing recognition that the scoring system under use aligned poorly with actual student proficiency, as measured by testing, as they progressed and received diplomas which had the effect of making some schools and districts appear to be doing a better job than they actually were.

This attempt replaces a more complicated computational exercise, and reverses emphasis on proficiency, or knowledge and skill gained, and growth, or how much students improve in achievement. Through the eighth grade, the growth factor is increased at the expense of proficiency.

LA should junk 2024 map, party like it's 2022

A recent Supreme Court ruling clarified why the Court allowed Louisiana fall congressional elections to continue under a map declared unconstitutional, and increased the chances this will be the only such election this decade that will have a two majority-minority district map.

In Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference, the Court ruled that a congressional map that otherwise didn’t violate traditional principles of reapportionment, such as compactness and contiguity of districts, did not have to have the proportion of M/M districts somewhat equivalent to the proportion of minority race (almost always black, but sometimes others) residents in the state if the legislature wished to draw districts to maximize partisan advantage even if incidentally related to racial division in voting. This launched panic among leftist and far left commentators because it signaled that in reapportionment disputes the Court no longer would permit the left’s and Democrats’ shadow agenda to remain in the shadows.

That is, those forces try to gain partisan advantage in reapportionment by equating maps that give them that as necessary to prevent racial discrimination, made possible because for the past half-century blacks typically have voted overwhelmingly for candidate of the left, almost always black candidates. This has been tolerated because courts for decades had made the presumption that racial prejudice against a minority group had to lay behind any reapportionment decision that did not draw district majorities roughly proportional to that group’s proportion in the population, and so to do this required satisfying certain criteria that didn’t include partisan advantage as a mitigating factor.

Spiked column exemplifies newspaper meltdown

If you had any questions about why the mainstream media is dying and it steadily is losing influence politically in Louisiana and elsewhere, look no further than the rumpus over a column by Republican Sen. John Kennedy the largest newspaper chain in the state recently accepted and then rejected.

Last month, Kennedy, whose opinion pieces the media frequently have published spanning more than a decade, initially had one published in the Shreveport Times and farmed out to the several other Gannett newspapers in the state. The piece exhorted Congress to prohibit natal males from competing as and against natal females in female-only competitions, citing sustained evidence about the physiological advantages those born male would have regardless of attempts, if any, to change physical sex.

After a few days, without making any announcement or informing Kennedy, the piece was removed from the sites that had published it. Later still, an explanation to the broken web link was infused, saying the content had been removed because it didn’t “meet our editorial standards.”

Veto bill weakening education accountability

A last-minute end-around sabotaging Louisiana’s school accountability measures that prominently featured two Bossier Parish Republican legislators with extensive connections to local schools now may be stopped only by GOP Gov. Jeff Landry.

HB 762 by Republican state Rep. Dennis Bamburg originally would have repealed the state’s requirement that students take the ACT, one of the two standardized tests offered for college admission nationally and the one designated by Louisiana public universities to gain admittance. For several years Louisiana statutorily has required this of all students seeking a diploma, one of eight states that does so. Even the career diploma graduates must, although they also can take the WorkKeys test designed for more vocational-oriented learning. The rationale for this has been not only to allow students to have this in place should they wish to enroll in higher education but also as a means of measuring performance of high schools and school districts.

This has chafed among legislators generally Democrats and some Republicans like Bamburg, a former Bossier Parish School Board member, with ties to the educational establishment, and has aggravated many local school board members and their district superintendents. This is because the nationally-normed ACT continues to show generally low performance, along with end-of-course tests, among Louisiana students (although ranked in the middle of the eight) that meshes poorly with performance scores given out to high schools that feeds into district scores. Currently, for accountability determinations all ACT scores count unless a WorkKey score equivalent is higher.

Law may force sunshine onto Bossier Jury actions

Many local governments across Louisiana, and inside Bossier Parish especially the parish’s Police Jury, will have to increase substantially transparency as the result of a bill poised to become law.

HB 103 by Republican state Rep. Mike Johnson headed to GOP Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk just before the 2024 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature ended this week. The bill, which Landry is expected to sign into law, expands real-time broadcast of governing authority meetings, in whole or part, for a number of jurisdictions across the state.

At present, any multimember taxing authority in the state must record, by audio or video, meetings of the entire body, but it doesn’t have to broadcast these live. The bill changes that to require live broadcast of parish governing authorities and school boards in jurisdictions of greater than 24,999 residents and for municipalities with populations greater than 9,999. All in all, that means 36 parishes, 58 cities, and 41 school districts, if they already aren’t, by the effective date of Aug. 1 must broadcast (presumably through video and audio) their parish commission or police jury, city council, and school board meetings live and advertise how to view that for each meeting.

Appointments provide fading embers to session

Away from typical flashpoints over the budget and policy, the 2024 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature ended with some controversy over gubernatorial appointments, or lack thereof.

The Senate traditionally vets these on the last day of a regular session, given that any appointments made after the end of the previous regular session remain in effect without confirmation until the end of the next regular session. With Republican Gov. Jeff Landry onboard after last fall’s elections, essentially he cleaned the closet of the roughly 80 executive branch line agency appointees by naming his own appointees.

With one exception. Landry didn’t name a new Department of Public Safety and Corrections secretary to replace Jimmy LeBlanc, but expects him to stay on the job referring to statute that says public officers are to hold office until a successor is inducted. However, the Constitution states that the governor “shall” appoint the head of each department in the executive branch whose election or appointment is not provided for in the Constitution, leaving the question whether the “governor” is a previous one.

Amend LA civil service to improve performance

As in the case of other bills that would expand the governor’s appointive powers, reform opponents produce stale if not gamey arguments in the case of stalled SB 181.

The bill by Republican state Sen. Jay Morris would amend the Constitution to give the governor more discretion in appointments to the State Civil Service Commission and the Legislature the option to include more appointments to executive branch line departments. At present, although the bill drew a solid majority in a House of Representatives vote last week, it fell eight votes short of the two-thirds requirement to pass along an amendment to voters.

Currently, the seven-person Commission has six gubernatorial appointees, in the form of the governor picking from nominations made by six private university presidents, three each, serving staggered fixed six-year terms. The only stipulation is that a president’s nominees all must come from different congressional districts. The final member is elected by members of the state’s classified civil service, who in fiscal year 2023 numbered around 34,500.

LA left throws fit over lost education agenda

Controversy over an endorsement of elementary and secondary education options stoked by Louisiana’s political left and its fellow travelers serves as a reminder that they cannot tolerate invitations to open, comprehensive, and fact-based inquiry in the education process, a state of affairs only now being corrected.

Earlier this week, Superintendent of State Education Cade Brumley announced a partnership with the web content producer PragerU. Founded by opinion columnist Dennis Prager, its materials provide primers on issues of the day, and has resources dedicated to educational dissemination from kindergarten to 12^th grade. PragerU holds itself out as presenting information as an alternative to leftist paradigms that frequently plague education that completely ignore contrary information questioning their validity, giving students an incomplete picture that serves more to indoctrinate than to educate that PragerU materials seek to overcome.

Mirroring arrangements in several others states, PragerU will make easily accessible to Louisiana educators material congruent with meeting state standards adopted at the beginning of this now-concluding academic year. PragerU was chosen because it has such material. Note that its content doesn’t replace core instructional material, which is determined by local education agencies and not the state, nor is it required for use in state classrooms.

Ignore silly arguments against appointment bills

Some of the silliest, most alarmist, most partisan-driven dog-whistle debate over legislation this session of the Louisiana Legislature has come over a couple of bills determining appointed officials to state boards.

HB 462 by Republican state Sen. Valarie Hodges would give the governor power to appoint chairmen to the boards where he has at least half the appointments. Out of the 483 boards currently extant, when parsing out gubernatorial apportion proportions, appointment by other elected officials, and other statutory constraints, the bill would affect about 30 percent of these.

Political leftists, some special interests, and their water carriers inside and outside the Legislature have gone apoplectic over this, alleging it’s some sinister plot by GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, who supports it, to run roughshod over that part of state government. They appeared most perturbed by the fact that this bill would extend this new authority to the five boards that oversee and manage higher education, characterizing it as “politicization.”

Let LA teachers teach, panel wisely advises

As Louisiana elementary and secondary education has climbed its way slowly from the basement of achievement, another tool presents itself to accelerate this.

Recently, the state’s Department of Education released result from a task force convened on improving teachers’ experiences. The latest data available showed in academic year 2023 15 percent of teachers left their positions, and of those hired three years ago only about three-quarters remain on the job. And academic research reveals that the most prominent reasons teachers leave the profession aren’t those related to issues of compensation, resource availability, relations with administrators, and the like, but with teachers encountering impediments to actual instruction, or what prevents them from devoting their time to teaching.

The panel, convened three months ago by Superintendent Cade Brumley and called Let Teachers Teach, was comprised mainly of ground-level practitioners with the odd politician thrown in. Their recommendations mirrored the research, identifying reforms that would let teachers focus on classroom instruction.

Memorial Day, 2024

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday around noon U.S. Central Time (maybe even after sundown on busy days, or maybe before noon if things work out, or even sometimes on the weekend if there's big news) except whenever a significant national holiday falls on the Monday through Friday associated with the otherwise-usual publication on the previous day (unless it is Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas, or New Year's Day when it is the day on which the holiday is observed by the U.S. government). In my opinion, in addition to these are also Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Monday, May 27 being Memorial Day, I invite you to explore this link. 

Bill to save lives, boost left's future numbers

In the future, maybe this week’s action by the Louisiana State Senate to send SB 276 to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk will help out the political prospects of Democrats bitterly opposed to it.

That bill makes the pair of drugs used for chemical abortions available by prescription only in Louisiana, as part of an effort that creates the crime of coerced abortion. By making these prescription-based, this makes more difficult obtaining these to induce nefariously ingestion by an unknowing pregnant female, as well as throws up a roadblock to those aiding and abetting in induction of abortions in Louisiana, which by law almost always is illegal.

Democrats raised all sorts of essentially phony objections to this, which marginally would change the ability to obtain these drugs, even to have an illegal abortion performed, and wouldn’t materially alter the ability and alacrity in using these for other purposes. As GOP state Sen. Jay Morris noted during debate, the real but hidden objection was it could prevent a portion of these illegal abortions in the state that runs contrary to the abortion-on-demand philosophy of the political left.

Left goes bonkers over woman, child safety bill

The faux outrage over a commonsense bill illustrates the agenda of Louisiana’s political pro-abortion left.

SB 276 by Republican state Sen. Thomas Pressly would prohibit coerced abortion by drugs and inhibit that by making illegal purchase of over-the-counter mifepristone and misoprostol. While separately the two drugs can address certain ailments, when used together they can cause a chemical abortion, which is outlawed in Louisiana except for rare instances. As a result, possession without a prescription would be legal only for pregnant females, as the bill assumes other people will use these to coerce an abortion. A pregnant female with these in possession without prescriptions would not be breaking the law unless she subsequently consumed these to induce an abortion, under a different statute.

Pressly has a compelling story to demonstrate need for such a bill. His sister while pregnant without her knowledge was manipulated into consuming these drugs. Fortunately, her child survived but with impairment. That demonstrates the harm from misuse unambiguously. And, if taken improperly, they can have serious consequences, such as for pregnant females miscarriages, premature labor, or birth defects, or more generally several life-threatening conditions.

BC charter fixes should include ethics reforms

Critics derisively call him “King” – or “Queen,” given his penchant for drama during Bossier City Council meetings – but disclosure data demonstrate that among Bossier Parish officials Republican Councilor David Montgomery truly is the monarch when it comes to grifting taxpayer dollars, something about which the city’s Charter Review Commission should take notice and repair, along with a couple of other potential conflicts.

Financial disclosure forms for Louisiana elected and appointed officials, except judges who don’t have to file, were due May 15, detailing 2023 activities. Of the 52 such Bossier officials from government bodies or executive offices that have taxing authority and whose jurisdictions are almost exclusively within the parish and are sufficiently large – the Police Jury, School Board, Bossier City, the Levee Board, the Cypress Black Bayou Commissioners, sheriff, assessor, clerk of court, and coroner – of the 50 required to file (because two appointees only assumed their posts earlier this year), 40 did so by the end of last week.

In all but two cases, in their reporting about compensation they or their spouses received from other governments they listed items such as salary (including if a spouse worked for a government), money received for serving on a board connected to their positions, or pension payments, with two exceptions. One was recently-elected Republican Coroner Mike Williams, who received in 2023 over $37,000 as he serves, and has for 23 years, as medical director for city fire, police, and emergency medical services.

Winners, losers of map delay not yet all known

The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling to keep in place Louisiana’s most recently-enacted congressional reapportionment plan for now draws to a close the first phase of a struggle that ultimately should define jurisprudence in this area for decades to come. Four distinct winners and losers have emerged from this -- for now.

That map contains two majority-minority districts, but was declared unconstitutional by a three- judge panel last month. Despite that, the Court, citing the controversy as yet unresolved so close to the start of the elections process, halted that injunction in order to provide adequate administration of the 2024 elections. The timing was such that the trial’s remedial phase could have produced a constitutional alternative, likely a plan very close to the 2022 single M/M version that was prevented from implementation but never had a trial on its merits, but the Court majority decided not to let that play out as a signal it will take up this case over the next year.

The map to be used this fall is highly unlikely to survive that scrutiny, thus to understand who wins and who loses, the short and long run must be analyzed for each, although one is pretty easy to figure out: national Democrats win in the short run. Essentially, they pick up an extra seat in the House of Representatives for 2025-26. As certainly they would lose it in 2026 elections by which time the Court most likely will have ruled a single M/M map can be drawn legally, but as the 2024 outcome could be close between the two major parties, for this cycle every seat helps.

Two M/M map headed for binning gets reprieve

Maybe it shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise, if the U.S. Supreme Court eventually will use Callais v. Landry to reduce the prominence race has in reapportionment.

This week, the Court stayed an order by a three-judge panel that declared the congressional map that Louisiana had enacted earlier this year was unconstitutional. That means that this plan, which adds a majority-minority district to the single one in the 2022 map that was subject to litigation then statutorily replaced by this one, will be used for elections this fall.

The panel appeared poised to issue its own map for use if the Legislature, which it would not have, had acted to draw a remedial map prior to its adjournment Jun. 3. By definition, it could not be the invalidated map, and any other options but the revoked 2022 map or something extremely close to it could not have been implemented in time by the state’s Department of State. In fact, although in the case of that preliminarily enjoined map State argued it needed by the end of May, 2022 to have a map to run the subsequent election, this time it declared May 15 was the cutoff despite the very similar situations.

Make better case for LA public records reform

In an unfortunate case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, some desirable changes to Louisiana public records laws face deferral due to adverse, if not in some ways undeserved, critiques of them.

Several bills addressing the subject the Legislature perused this session. Among them, SB 423 by Republican state Sen. Jay Morris originally would have limited records requests to Louisianans; SB 482 by GOP state Sen. Heather Cloud would shield the governor’s and his family’s schedule if safety is a concern and would exempt advisory and deliberative communications; and SB 502 by Republican state Sen. Blake Miguez would require that an actual Louisiana citizen be verified as making a request. A later iteration of SB 423 essentially would have combined these elements.

It's important to note that in terms of breadth Louisiana has one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching open records laws among the states. Many restrict coverage to certain branches or levels while Louisiana shields only parts for each. Often these restrictions go much further than Louisiana’s; for example, a number of states exempt the advisory and deliberative processes. That, in fact, is the approach taken for the most part by the federal government and most recently was strengthened by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Landry must stop harmful ganja legislation

The Louisiana Legislature seems on the way to compounding a mistake it began making years ago, with perhaps only Republican Gov. Jeff Landry able at this point to prevent that.

From the start in 2015, medical use of marijuana in Louisiana began with dubious premises and has gotten worse since. Since then, almost every control over it has disappeared, step by step by step, so now basically any doctor or nurse practitioner can “recommend” it in any form for any ailment in quantities and often enough to keep one high or to distribute some, whether exchanged for something of value, to others. About the only bottleneck is the limit of dispensaries to 10 (currently nine in operation although since 2022 they have been able to open “satellite” locations that make for 15 physical locations), but they can deliver as well.

So, it’s practically legalized such is the ease of obtaining it. But there’s another legal avenue for addicts added in the past couple of years – hemp products, courtesy of an ill-constructed law that allowed for excessive concentrations of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol that have become so egregiously obvious that the Legislature actually may rein in these products in permitting much lower concentrations.

Redirect spending to support early child ed

This time, presumed conservative supermajorities in the state Legislature need to act like it and not spend just because they can.

With projections of state spending coming in a bit more flush that previously predicted – about $88 million more this current fiscal year and $197 million for the next – plans are afoot on what to do with it. One suggestion has been to restore all current state spending on early childhood education, which at this point is budgeted at $24 million fewer.

A few years ago, legislators set up a fund to entice matching dollars from local governments to dole out to families with child care expenses. Although the law creating the program to draw from the fund cast a wide eligibility net, subsequent rules issued by the fund’s overseer the Department of Education essentially steer most of the money, and encourages all of it, to go to the lowest-income households with preschool-and-younger children for use at better-quality licensed child care facilities.

Specious argumentation shouldn't stop convention

House of Representatives debate over a bill to call a limited constitutional convention in Louisiana exposed the shoddy, illogical, and evidence-free arguments against it, hopefully propelling it to Senate passage and enactment.

HB 800 by Republican state Rep. Beau Beaullieu, in its current form, would convene legislators plus 27 gubernatorial appointees to meet in committees or as one starting as early as May 30 to review what eligible portions of the constitution should be converted into statute. No later than Aug. 1 the entire convention would begin review of the committees’ recommendations with any of these sent forth as a proposition for voter approval accepted by the convention no later than Aug. 15. Separate majorities of representatives, senators, and gubernatorial appointees would have to coalesce for this forwarding. Articles dealing with citizen rights, power distribution, the legislative branch, the executive branch, judges, district attorneys, sheriffs, tax collection, bond funding, the Budget Stabilization Fund, the homestead exemption, state employee rights, retirement matters, and existence of the Southern University System would be off limits to transfer out.

It passed the House 75-27, surpassing the two-thirds supermajority required, with the only GOP member present state Rep. Joe Stagni in opposition but with Democrat state Reps. Roy Daryl Adams, Chad Brown, Robby Carter, and Dustin Miller in favor, with Miller being the only black male among them while all other black Democrats plus the two white Democrat females were against, among those present. Even if badly outnumbered, the opposition went down spewing a lot of hot air.

Signs point to single M/M map for LA in 2024

With the resurrection of Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map or something extremely close to it looming, it’s time for the desperation heaves from special interests vying to bolster Democrats’ chances in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Over the past week or so backers of a two majority/minority lineup, out of six total districts, in the state have a pair of defeats, beginning with the declaration by the three-judge panel for Callais v. Landry trying the map created earlier this year that contains two M/M districts that this violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment. Then these supporters were told the Legislature will get first crack at drawing a new map while a parallel track would operate with parties submitting maps from which the panel could choose if the Legislature didn’t act by adjournment Jun. 3.

The latter setback added insult to injury. As legislative rules don’t permit the chambers to take up a bill this late – the deadline for introduction was over two months ago and substitution rules demand a related bill already introduced present but with the withdrawal of the only one filed dealing with congressional reapportionment none now exist – the Legislature really can’t act, guaranteeing a court-drawn map. And the way the decision was made, it all but guarantees a single M/M map would be chosen by the panel that dramatically reduces chances of Democrats to win another seat among the state’s delegation.

New SC map may provoke rare incumbent challenge

The third time wasn’t the charm for Republican Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jeff Cox, but don’t count him out entirely for career advancement in a couple of years.

Late last year, the Bossier Parish-based Cox began campaigning in earnest for the Second District of the Louisiana Supreme Court, as incumbent GOP Assoc. Justice Scott Chrichton faced retirement at the end of this year. He loaned himself $250,000 and spent nearly $16,000 on mailing out postcards to the district as a soft introduction to his campaign during the Christmas season.

However, one guy that won’t be getting holidays greetings from Cox in the future will be Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. Newly in office, Landry immediately stumped for reapportionment of the Court not only to bring roughly uniform population numbers to each district – the map then used had wildly differing amounts in each district, although this is not a legal nor constitutional violation – but to create two majority-minority districts. While nothing juridically required that – even as special interests were suing the state to produce this outcome that under current jurisprudence had little chance of success but which would cost the state to defend – theoretically it would give the state ammunition to have the consent decree in Chisom v. Roemer lifted, another longtime goal of Landry’s currently awaiting a U.S. Fifth Circuit appellate court hearing.

Landry must overcome resistance to big changes

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is finding tricky navigating as he attempts to revolutionize Louisiana government.

Landry came into office on the back of a big election win and with a healthy supermajority of GOP legislators joining him. The playbook for chief executives under these conditions calls for striking while the iron is hot, especially at the start of a term in office.

His ambitious agenda reflected this. A special legislative session of his calling definitively put his imprint of increased accountability and responsibility onto criminal justice policy. Now a month from adjourning, the regular session already has sent to his desk some regulatory reforms for property insurance, with the issues of high premiums and reduced availability nagging ratepayers for years, with more on the way.

On cash benefit, LA GOP legislators sell out

It’s going to take more than just a big election cycle win for conservative voters to steer Louisiana government from its liberal populist pathology, a recent struggle over welfare spending shows.

It always starts the same way. Something unusual, such as the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, occurs that leftist interests seize upon to leverage into government action and new expenditures. Then after a point it’s declared the new benefit needs to be made permanent, and conservative policy-makers too often capitulate.

Liberals understand fully that a substantial proportion of the public suffers from addiction to government largesse, that once the benefits start flowing many want hit after hit without end. One of the Leninist foundations on which today’s political left is built is the principle that what is its is its forever, while whatever policy space its opponents occupy is always up for grabs.