Democrat session overreactions serve their agenda

The special session on pushing 2026 election dates back a month was done and dusted this past week after just a few days. But it seemed to last forever because of caterwauling by Democrats seeking to distort and obfuscate the issue, using false alarmism to shore up their deteriorating political position.

For the supermajority Republicans in the Legislature and GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, it was all pro forma: as the U.S. Supreme Court looks extraordinarily likely to declare invalid the current congressional map – one that Landry prodded the Legislature to accept in a way that favored Democrats because of a court declaration (then still in dispute and not close to being resolved) that the previous version was unconstitutional – the majority wanted to buy more time to draw a new and constitutional map. That’s all it did.

But legislative Democrats disingenuously tried to equate new election dates with something beyond the state merely giving itself the best chance to be in constitutional compliance, in asserting changing dates meant that the Republican majority was trying to bring representational matters back to the point they had been prior to the current map – having gone from one of six districts being majority-minority to two, that this would be junked in reversion to a map with just one M/M district or even zero. This cynically conflated the issue of constitutional compliance with reapportionment politics: the former stands independently of the latter, even if the latter depends upon the presence of the former.

Like herpes, BC water scare stories reappear

Like herpes, celebrity scare artist Erin Brockovich is back to plague Bossier City with her money-generating brand of alarmism for alarmism’s sake.

Seven years ago, Brockovich – who launched a career in environmentalist quackery when she helped to con a huge lawsuit settlement payout from a California utility using faulty scientific conclusions and reasoning that brought her a hit movie deal – drummed up negativity about Bossier City’s water system in the wake of the discovery that naegleria fowleri, popularly known as the brain-eating amoeba, had infiltrated a line outside the city system but connected to it. The city commenced with a lengthy chlorine flush to negate that, but in the interim Brockovich and a colleague moaned about the allegedly dangerousness and ineffectiveness of it all, even though scientific evidence said otherwise.

Now she’s back, griping again about chlorine flushes after somehow spotting word that city water customers were complaining about the smell. That odor is a byproduct of when pure chlorine, rather than its related chloramine, comes into contact with organic compounds and produced byproducts of trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids.

N.O. takes pass on chance to adopt sane policy

At the start of this week, Republican Treasurer John Fleming had no idea that his schedule would fill up so suddenly – only to watch it empty out quickly because New Orleans elected officials can’t face disempowerment caused by their past policy sins.

Fleming as treasurer sits on the somewhat-known State Bond Commission, as chairman. It meets regularly to approve of requests by state and local governments to authorize and sell bonds and to schedule ballot propositions. But it received an unusual request earlier this week.

New Orleans came to it asking to sell $125 million in short-term revenue bonds, in response to a “surprise” $160 million deficit. The SBC agreed to meet on the matter, but it became clear that its members weren’t at all jacked about the idea, pointing to lax fiscal administration by the city.

Emerson likely closes quality GOP Senate field

Likely the field of competitive candidates for the U.S. Senate, all Republicans, now is set with the entrance to the contest of GOP state Rep. Julie Emerson.

With Democrats flailing for finding an even remotely credible candidate, Emerson joins a field of potential winners Treas. John Fleming, state Sen. Blake Miguez, Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, and incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy. In fact, of the five Cassidy may have the longest shot of winning, as with the reborn party closed primary election for a nomination into the general election for 2026 in place Cassidy remains behind the eight ball for his questionable, to conservatives, policy votes early in his second term and hostility towards GOP Pres. Donald Trump by voting to impeach and convict him for no good reason.

But as Cassidy now claims to have over $10 million in his campaign kitty, any competitive candidate will have to raise at least a couple of million. Fleming (mostly his own) and Miguez (mostly from others) have done that, while Skrmetta, who entered the race in September, still hasn’t reported his campaign finances.

Disregard meaningless closed primary poll

Don’t believe the propaganda campaign designed to prevent greater conservative governance that will come in Louisiana and from its members of Congress through its modestly modified electoral system.

A special interest group representing leftist and Beltway Republicans commissioned a poll trying to discourage the institution of semi-closed primary elections. This kind of election nominates candidates to run in a general election, almost always with a runoff provision, by allowing only voters who affiliate with a major party or not with the other major party to participate in one major party’s primary. Currently for all offices, Louisiana uses a blanket primary system, which isn’t really a primary but a general election (with a runoff provision), as any voter regardless of affiliation may vote for a candidate of any or no party who all run together.

But last year the state changed the method for congressional, Public Service Commission, Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Supreme Court contests from blanket to semi-closed. This creates a purer expression of partisan will for general election candidates because it prevents the other major party affiliates from trying to influence which candidate members of a party prefer.