Science, not religion, undergirds LA marriage definition

A pair of males who identify themselves as homosexual have sued Louisiana to be given the privilege of entering into marriage. They utterly have no case, but it is instructive to understand why because arguments in favor of this almost always are based upon purely emotional considerations without any intellectual underpinnings.

That much is evident by the language of the suit, which states, “By failing to articulate a legitimate, compelling and secular interest for the restriction on marriage, the state has necessarily established a wholly religious civil institution.” The authors of the suit clearly have not been paying attention: let them now be enlightened.

First, we must understand what is going on here. It is a federal challenge to a state constitutional statute that defines the right to marry in Louisiana exists only between one man and one woman. Further, the U.S. Constitution explicitly defines that only the states have the power to regulate in these kinds of matters. What the plaintiffs try to do to avoid this is instead to connect the Louisiana Constitution’s treatment here back to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and the interpretation that government shall neither advance nor inhibit religion, and that this part of the state’s constitution would appear to advance religion because they feel the only reason to have it worded as it is would be because some kind of religious belief undergirds then notion of marriage limited to a single man and single woman.

Unemployment law changes tactic in war against Jindal

Behind the high comedy that passes for argumentation against Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s refusal to accept all the federal largesse from the budget-busting spending bill and the attempts to overcome that legislatively lies a political struggle that has little to do with reason and everything to do with the maintenance of power and privilege.

Jindal opted out of receiving around $98 million in expanded unemployment benefit coverage because he said he feared after making the necessary legal changes to allow this it would leave the state and its businesses on the hook to continue to excise this money from the citizenry after the federal subsidies run out. As discussed elsewhere this threat is genuine but a more compelling reason not mentioned by Jindal is altering state law to allow it changes nature of what unemployment insurance is all about, pushing it more into the realm of welfare.

Two bills, HB 610 by Democrat state Rep. Cedric Richmond and HB 615 by Democrat state Rep. Sam Jones, seek to make the legal changes as a method to compel acceptance, notions Jindal has long said would suffer his veto pen. The pair whistles into the wind about how they think they have close to the 70 House votes that could override such an effort, but their bluster safely may be discounted. With not even a majority in the House, Democrats seem highly unlikely to pick up the extra 18 votes they would need from Republicans and independents to win on this, especially as probably at least a few Democrats themselves would not support an override. If nothing else, the history of Louisiana legislative-executive relations shows that when going up against a governor’s veto threat, colleagues tend to get told one thing but when crunch time comes, a significant number of legislators do what the governor wishes.

This does not stop the whining coming from some Democrats, as well as others. (It is disappointing that not only did the Louisiana Association of Non-Profit Organizations allow itself to be used as a political tool in all of this, but also that its contribution to the debate is so intellectually pathetic. One of its officials criticized Jindal’s reason for not accepting funds by liking those who do not get unemployment benefits now because they voluntarily leave employment or choose not to seek it, which these bills would permit, to the “starving” and their needing to be fed. As a public service, I won’t waste your time further explaining the obvious about this.) There are two reasons why they will keep this up.

One is that they hope that Jindal’s de-politicization of the earmark process actually gives them a crack at a two-thirds override majority. Last year, Jindal created a set of guidelines for his use of the line-item veto to be used when legislators stuffed pet projects into the budget and proved unafraid to clip out expenditures that did not meet them. Historically, governors often used political whim to make these kinds of decisions, using them as bargaining chips for legislator support on other measures. In essence, by this change Jindal has disarmed himself somewhat and there may be hope that his voluntary surrender of this tool might create fewer disincentives for legislators to go against the governor on bills like these.

The other gets to the heart of the long-term political strategy of Jindal’s legislative opponents specifically and of Democrats everywhere in general. Simply, they recognize that Jindal is a political threat to them ascendant on the national level. If they can pull off in effect a reversal of Jindal’s policy, this damages Jindal’s political standing and that is a paramount objective of Louisiana Democrats. For this reason alone, the tilting at windmills will continue on this issue.

But it is one that could backfire as it could hand Jindal an opportunity to gain political capital. These bills might actually gain majorities in the Legislature and thereby pass to the governor but if the sponsors have the math wrong in either chamber, they simply tee up the bills for Jindal to swat an easy homerun that adds to his credentials as a reformist conservative battling against big government, a sentiment that brought tens of thousands of Louisianans (although not Jindal) out last week for intense rallies against the very philosophy behind these bills. (What they may try to do if they think they have the numbers is to bring one to a vote in the House but if it doesn’t get better than 70 votes then give instructions not to schedule it in the Senate, to deprive Jindal of this ammunition.)

Expect these bills to be given much publicity by their backers. They may even get out of committee to much fanfare. And then they’ll fade away as part of a tactical adjustment by Democrats in their never-ending war against one of the most dangerous politicians to their power and privilege in America.

Maintain benefits choice to increase education quality

The empire strikes back with HB 156 by state Rep. Harold Ritchie, a bill that would force teachers working in charter schools to be members of the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana, in an effort to hold onto to its slipping power.

The charge is led by one of the faithful props of the current collectivist public education system in the state, teacher unions. These organizations have opposed bitterly the charter concept from the start because it gives them less control over education in the state and create a more competitive environment that better prices the quality of education delivered to actual performance, interfering with their strategy of ensuring the biggest transfer of taxpayer dollars for the least amount of work from their members.

Union mandarins claim that when charter schools were established (over their objections), there was some kind of understanding that their teachers, who are technically government employees as a charter school is in essence a public school with greater management latitude, would have to be members of the TRSL. Instead, 17 of the 66 current charter schools have had the audacity not to opt in to the system, flexibility this bill would deny.

Advocates of choice on this issue argue the inherent nature of a charter school is the greater freedom in management, of which this decision comprises one part, allowing it to produce superior education. Opponents claim, as one of their leading dunderheads opined, the current arrangement “find[s] ways to undermine teacher benefits or workplace rights.”

The mentality behind such a statement is fascinating and telling. Essentially, the complaint in part is that without enough warm bodies being forced into the system with their wages garnished into it, perhaps (we don’t actually know given market performance or demographics of the future) either benefits will not be as high as they could be, or current contributions will have to rise leading to less take-home pay. Worse, it could actually encourage teachers to want to leave the monopolistic environment that unions can influence for others not so restrictive. Thus, the jackboot of government must come down on those charter schools that offer greater freedom and those teachers wanting to make the uncoerced choice to work in them.

And what “workplace rights” are being violated? The right to be forced to pay into a system you may not wish to be in? Since when did a pension become a “right?” (Ironically, the whole concept of retirement and health benefits offered by employers came about because of another instance of government intervention into markets, wage controls during World War II.) Workers “rights” are advanced most when they can choose among competing employers where one point of differentiation may be whether they must be forced to contribute to a retirement system.

In the end, such a policy decision must be driven by the paramount consideration of educational quality. Charter schools exist because they deliver better on this account than otherwise, and part of their ability to do so comes from the greater decentralization in their governance that this bill would disallow. As always, it’s better to put the imperative of better education ahead of the needs of unions and the rest of the education establishment, which means defeat of this bill.

Ending test requirement steps backwards, results show

Louisiana is evolving into a locus of education achievement that hopefully will not be prematurely ended by legislative action.

The Education Trust, a nonprofit organization which seeks to improve educational quality in America and specifically in closing achievement gaps among different demographic groups, recently released a report showing that Louisiana was the only state to show a significant improvement from 1998 to 2007 in black primary and secondary students’ scores relative to white students at both 4th (English) and 8th (math) grade levels (in part, because white students’ achievement did not increase much meaning only minimal absolute progress over all races occurred). In other words, the performance gap decreased substantially between blacks and whites.

Some doubters emerged concerning these encouraging results. One argument was the 2005 hurricane disaster diasporas scattered the lowest-performing black students, presumably from the lowest-income households, away from the state and also from being concentrated, the theory being a mass of low achievers reinforces the tendency to do poorly in learning. But the fact is other states with similar demographics did not see such success, the gains appeared persistently over the period, not discontinuously after 2005, displacement only affected a portion of black students, and substantial gains also were made in the gap between students from higher- and lower-income families (significantly in the case of 8th grade math).

Much more plausibly, it has been Louisiana’s accountability system, more rigorous than just about anywhere else that has worked with its emphasis on high-stakes testing that in part determines pupil progression and institution of remedial actions concerning schools that do not show sufficient achievement or progress towards it. If schools know they have to get achievement up, and students know they have to learn enough to pass the test to move on, the motivation is there for both to work harder to succeed. Black students, having been lower performers in aggregate, had much more potential growth to be tapped by these measures, and that happened.

Yet, at least on the surface, strangely a couple of legislators – black ones, no less – want to get rid of the use of standardized tests for the purposes of pupil progression. HB 179 by state Rep. Charmaine Stiaes and HB 440 by state Rep. Regina Barrow would cancel this key tool that has helped no doubt many of these legislators’ constituents. Coming to grips with mindsets like theirs explains this apparent counterintuitive action.

What has made America an exceptional country that has contributed more to the world’s peace and prosperity than any other in history is no society has placed so much emphasis on meritocracy. Nowhere else does government interfere less in or promote more the translation of achievement into reward, a dynamic that leads to improved life prospects for all in society. But that historic benefit recently has come under attack from Washington with Democrat liberal elites trying to change policy to reflect the discredited notion that “errors” in society and in the economic system somehow “rig” the system in the favor of some that government must “even out” (“share the wealth”) – in other words, “achievement” is illusory and only tangentially related to reward.

True believers in this nonsense see certain groups such as blacks being “unfairly” held back, and this becomes something reflected in things like test scores. Therefore, in their thinking, rather than demand more rigor through a test that is race-neutral that will spur achievement, schools should ease up on “disadvantaged” groups precisely because present society and institutions make them “disadvantaged” in order to compensate.

In reality, the only thing holding anybody back is acceptance of the notion that achievement is unimportant because other things, such as government programs, will still provide benefits. A culture that stresses achievement only can grow and produce success if maintained. It means more and harder work for students and educators, but all concerned will be better off for it. That is the lesson of this report, and bills to undo the process that helps attain higher achievement in learning decidedly represent backwards steps.

Policy changes increasing stakes for PSC membership

As the new tone in Washington puts ideology before science and pushes anti-intellectual policy preferences, it’s heartening that in the environmental debate that a majority of Louisiana’s new Public Service Commission has the temperament to try to protect the state from this, setting up a potential clash with the federal government.

Commissioners Eric Skrmetta, Jimmy Field, and Commissioner-elect Clyde Holloway are to be commended for their open-mindedness and sense of reasoned inquiry in their statements that their policy will be guided without reliance on the alarmist, unsubstantiated hypothesis of man-made climate warming around which there is no convincing proof nor scientific consensus about it (despite the assertions by a spokesman of the heavily politicized, leftist Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization that once championed a nuclear freeze that would have lost the Cold War). By contrast, it is disappointing that Commissioners Lambert Bossiere III and Foster Campbell seem unwilling to educate themselves on the debate (it is shocking for even a politician to be so ignorant as to base his beliefs on this on a media product legally declared propaganda).

However, federal government power may challenge the PSC’s current sensible consensus. Last week the Environmental Protection Agency issued a ruling saying it had the ability to regulate carbon emissions as a dangerous substance (which legally it did not have to do), inviting both a constitutional and political challenge. Regarding the latter, it pertains insofar as to what regulations do emerge which may be more radical (if possible) than present legislation Congress is set to begin debating this week, based squarely upon the man-made climate change myth. In effect, this puts more pressure on the further politicization of the issue with disastrous public policy consequences in terms of economics and liberty.

New regulation regardless of source will put strains on the state that, assuming the PSC majority’s attitude is the consensus beyond just it, would result in a policy tug-of-war on this issue between Louisiana and an increasingly radicalized federal government. Essentially, environmental policy is a matter of the federal government dictating standards to be implemented by states, and if it likes the direction they take to allow decentralization of enforcement to them. Typically, that has produced a principal-agent relationship that has focused on regulating by-products of production of presumed harmful substances (such as mileage standards, levels of emission, etc.) rather than the processes of their production (what mixture of processes can or cannot be done). It does shift the terrain of regulation to include not just state environmental regulatory agencies, but potentially entities such as the PSC.

This means that jurisprudence would hold that, should the irrational tide continue, at best institutions such as the PSC could engage in a protective rear guard action until such time sanity returns in this issue area. Which creates another reason for closer scrutiny of candidates for these jobs and careful weighing of their merits when elections for these positions come around, with an emphasis on candidates who favor objective analysis over fad.

Distance from protests indicates calculated Jindal gamble

epublican governors from Texas and South Carolina attended tea party rallies in their states but all Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal did was send out an e-mail message alerting supporters of the locations of some around the state, given that he would be travelling much of the day to fundraising events on the East Coast. Even so, this didn’t entirely preclude Jindal from attending such parties, and his obligations were of the type that could have been scheduled at different times. Why the pass?

A couple of considerations may have driven Jindal’s response. First, social networking of this kind on the right tends to be sporadic and unsustained, precisely because of the philosophical divide between conservatives and liberals. Typically, conservatives are too busy earning for their own interests and in the process contributing to society to band together to make demands, while liberals focus on organizing and trying to use collective power to rig the system in favor of their interests instead of eschewing such means to concentrate on individual initiative that can benefit all. In short, ordinarily conservatives tend to forgo intentional joined efforts to wield power whereas liberals see that as part of the struggle inherent in a political system they see there to be utilized to serve their desires, and for Jindal this dependence on activism from the right might be an unstable base on which to position himself as a conservative leader.

Second, Jindal may have estimated that his political future would be negatively affected by indirect association with these events because the mainstream media would do its best to portray them as extremist. No doubt this happened, and if Jindal fancies himself to have a national political career where he calculates winning the political center that haphazardly pays limited attention to politics and mainly through the mainstream media is the eventual key to victory, he may have believed in the tactical necessity of a distant approach.

Time will tell whether Jindal’s hands-off strategy produces results, but he well may have miscalculated if that was his intent. These may not be ordinary times for conservatives which may spur movement politics seen only occasionally on the right. History shows that while the left maintains a constant, simmering rage against American society based on individual autonomy and its economic order founded on free enterprise that it sees as unfair to its wants which facilitates movement politics, the right can be shaken out of its devotion to individual achievement when the basic values supporting that are threatened.

Threats to liberty produced the Reagan Revolution three decades ago, and a counter revolution against Democrats 15 years ago that brought Republicans to power on platforms congruent with the sentiments expressed as tea parties yesterday. Conservative anger that translates into mass political action is difficult to evoke, but when triggered typically produces more substantial and longer-lasting results than the constant liberal whining.

If this discontent is sustained which will take a continued willingness by conservatives to organize and act collectively, as in and around 1980 and 1994, only a few leaders will be able authentically to use political capital from these movements to galvanize and lead them with salutary results for their own political careers. By his inactions, Jindal seems to have disqualified himself from this resource should it grow and develop.

More than ever, LA must align resources to health needs

Part of the belt-tightening of Louisiana government in response to revenue decreases coupled with a semi-inflexible fiscal structure involves cutting reimbursement rates to medical providers by seven percent. This blow can be made easier by reconfiguring state priorities and potentially increasing service delivery with reduced costs.

The typical person probably did not shed too many tears when these rate reductions clipped revenues going to the likes of physicians and nursing homes. In the case of the former, it’s easy to fall back onto the stereotype (sometimes true, sometimes not) that they can afford a reduction in rates (which, to some degree, can get passed along to the private sector and its insurers), and the same is true of nursing homes in Louisiana, where policy for decades has favored over-capacity that puts some people better served at home or in the community into this more-expensive situation (which also can do some cost shifting to help compensate these reductions).

But another segment suffering these cuts has little buffer against them. Direct care agencies are the mainstay of health care waiver programs that focus on community- and home-based care that often is more appropriate to the needs of the infirm or developmentally disabled at reduced cost to the state. Typically, they hire low-wage individuals to perform basic care tasks (although in some situations these tasks in fact can involve some skills beyond basics), and currently as the state expands its provision of these services, in part because of the low wage rates, these providers are having difficulty in finding enough quality employees to meet the demand. And in response to the cuts, with their workers’ salaries at or near minimum wage, they cannot reduce these to save money and with salaries the vast bulk of their expenses, there’s little room to carve out savings in other expenses which these other providers can do, nor can costs be shifted to the private sector since in most cases close to all if not the entirety of these agencies’ business are government contracts.

If the cut proves too great in impact, fewer clients will gain access to a waiver program simply because of too little capacity. This not only is a tragedy for those genuinely needing service and for taxpayers that continue to bear the brunt of the institutional bias in state policy, but after a certain point also is not an option because of legal settlements the state has entered into. However, a solution is at hand – one that will not please certain interests, but one necessitated by budget constraints and the dicta that both clients and taxpayers be most appropriately served.

Last year, for one waiver program, the state began a novel intake system where severity of need got first priority. This philosophy may be extended in terms of reimbursement. Regulations may be changed so that a client authorized through Medicaid is designated having a certain level of care required, mandating placement in the lowest possible arena of care. This would mean, for example, for clients without a high degree of medical necessity in care Medicaid would reimburse only in a home- or community-based setting. This would more appropriately align resources to need and in a limited fashion already is being discussed in reference to state-run nursing homes. The real advantage of all this is as taxpayer dollars get more efficiently used, even as a greater proportion of them would go to lower-intensity care solutions, that efficiency would create more of them to raise reimbursement rates for all providers which especially would relieve the worker shortage endemic in direct care agencies. It also probably could expand coverage for those on waiver waiting lists.

Of course, this could lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth for institutional interests which would see fewer beds utilized and thereby less revenue, even as their rates increased. Even though they actually might be better off in an operating income sense because their variable expenses may go down more than the revenue decrease, some, believing the state gravy train would go on forever, overbuilt and would have to pay off increased excess capacity.

Regardless, policy-makers should resist the entreaties of these powerful interests to maintain what exists because what exists unnecessarily threatens both health care provision and other state services that are beggared by this inefficient use of the people’s resources. In these tough budget times, political courage to make these changes no longer should be optional.

Questions remain about McPherson surrender motives

Democratic state Sen. Joe McPherson halted his exit attempt from his term-limited position by withdrawing from the District 4 Public Service Commission general election runoff, conceding the contest to Republican former Member of Congress Clyde Holloway. But the manner of his departure and his statements concerning it don’t add up.

Often, candidates do have some idea about how to cut their losses even if they make a runoff. Before the primary election even takes place, they will have certain vote targets for themselves and their opponents in mind, and also may include benchmarks for performance in certain key parishes or precincts. Thus, when the results do roll in, within a short period of time they know whether they should opt out of what they perceive to be a decidedly uphill struggle; a quick decision is necessary either to stop wasting time on the campaign or not to waste time dithering and to get on with it.

Which makes McPherson’s passing up the chance very odd in how it happened. Over a week lapsed before he announced his would not continue, eating up over a quarter of the time before the runoff would have happened. It’s difficult to believe that McPherson, who was been in a state elective position for most of around a quarter century, would have not worked out scenarios well in advance of the primary date and then decided quickly.

Ringing even more strangely are his articulated reasons for getting out. He stated “full-time campaigning” would detract too much from other activities in his life, especially in interfering with the beginning of the legislative session which begins five days before the runoff would have happened. He also argued that the dynamics of this election, which would be the only one on the ballot almost everywhere, did not favor him with the expected low turnout.

Oddly, here McPherson seems to imply that he was doing something other than “full-time campaigning” prior to the primary, because we must assume logically that his level of campaigning did not appear to be a problem prior to it, otherwise he would not have entered the race at all. In reality, his campaign seemed pretty serious and consuming so it’s difficult to see that a short runoff campaign would add significantly to his time constraints compared to his previous efforts. Further, the remark about the Legislature rings hollow – in the first week of its meeting, which is the only time of overlap with the campaign, little gets done because of all the initial start-up procedures. At most, he might miss a committee meeting or two and some floor sessions that will do little substantively. Many others have campaigned for much longer during far busier times without such an apparent attack of conscience.

Finally, while Holloway would have been the favorite going into the contest, McPherson’s chances of winning were not close to hopeless, given the dynamics evident in the primary. And the comment about turnout being low was especially curious – because low also was the turnout for the primary where for many precincts it was the only thing on the ballot. In large population centers, in Lake Charles with its municipal elections and in Rapides Parish there was tax item on the ballot these likely spurred primary turnout some. But at worst, turnout in the runoff should have dropped only marginally from its already low level.

One thing could explain this delayed reaction: perhaps McPherson did some polling right after the primary and found that the vast bulk of the other defeated candidate in the contest’s primary voters indicated willingness to vote for Holloway in the general election runoff. Otherwise, the story doesn’t ring genuinely. If so, whatever the real reasons may be are irrelevant to the fact he opted out, but nonetheless might be fascinating to know.

LA saves significantly only by changing poverty policy

Admirably, the Baton Rouge Advocate is running a series on poverty policy in Louisiana with an eye towards providing information and perspective on how to better address this issue. However, additionally needed is proper understanding of the issue itself if improved performance, even if marginal, by government can manifest.

The single largest error made in this kind of analysis – often by ignorance but for some deliberately a misrepresentation of reality to further a political agenda – is thinking that poverty comes from error within a free market economic system that can be corrected (with the agent of such usually conceptualized as government). This stems from a misunderstanding about basic economics that does not recognize that, in a free market, resources accrue to individuals in proportion to which they contribute to the overall wealth of society. In other words, people who earn more wealth do so because their activities bring greater benefits to society as a whole. Bill Gates may be worth tens of billions of dollars, but that’s because his genius and inspiration created such incredibly useful products which brought far more wealth to the world as whole than he’ll ever collect personally.

Therefore, poverty is a natural condition of free markets, although “poverty” itself is contextually and politically defined. Wherever that defining line is set that separates the poor from non-poor, the fact is that whoever are the poor are there because they do not contribute enough to society to rise above that line. Three reasons can cause this failure to contribute sufficiently.

Odd but tatically astute for Jindal to skip PSC endorsement

Now that Gov. Bobby Jindal has broken his maiden as far as endorsements for state offices go – and backed the wrong horse – a new sport around these parts is trying to figure out when he endorses and doesn’t. Unlike his foray into the recent District 16 Senate contest, his motives in the Public Service Commission general election runoff initially seem much clearer, even if seemingly as strange.

In that previous contest, without warning only a few days before the primary he suddenly proclaimed support for candidate Lee Domingue. It made little sense for him to endorse in a contest with all Republicans running with little to be gained by backing one from all sympathetic candidates compatible with his views and so much to lose if his pick did not win, possibly cooling the ardor of the winner about Jindal’s agenda. Domingue made the runoff but lost to Dan Claitor there.

While some suggested that Domingue and apparently his family donating nearly $20,000 to Jindal election efforts, and also nearly $100,000 to political organizations sympathetic to Jindal’s agenda, had something to do with the choice, that didn’t really compute since many other candidates for state offices have donated to Jindal over several years and none of them ever bagged an endorsement from him, as he had promised not to involve himself in endorsing candidates for the November, 2007 round of state elections. In retrospect, the most plausible reason emerged that the Domingue campaign persuaded Jindal, a long-time friend of the candidate, to make the last-minute gesture as they realized their candidate was in electoral trouble and thought the governor’s nod would bail out Domingue.

With the next big contest up, that for Public Service Commission District 4’s open seat, Jindal has remained silent even though one could argue in this one the political returns are greater and the risks lesser than with the Senate contest. Former Member of Congress Republican Clyde Holloway narrowly led term-limited state Sen. Democrat Joe McPherson out of the primary, with former state Rep. Gil Pinac far behind. Holloway is a tried-and-true conservative who, had not David Duke pulled the sheet over so many conservative eyes in 1991, might have gotten himself elected governor, while McPherson personifies populist politics at its worst, railing against fictitious enemies of the people while using the system to advantage interests to which he is connected.

The election will be close. While Pinac ran as a Republican this time after a career in the state House, and a failed state Senate bid in 2007, as a Democrat, there’s no guarantee his short stint in the GOP will disproportionately send votes Holloway’s way. Electoral patterns from the primary suggest that his votes probably will split fairly evenly (assuming there is no disproportionate roll-off in turnout for any primary candidate in the general election runoff).

Here, a Jindal endorsement could make a significant difference in fellow Republican Holloway’s favor. Adding more incentive is that a Jindal winner would regain for him some of the political capital lost on the blown Senate endorsement. Even better, the costs are next to none going against McPherson, who loathes Jindal but even if he wins the PSC as a whole has little influence over the governor’s policy-making agenda. So, unlike the Senate contest, here the potential gains exceed the potential losses which leads one to wonder why, if he were willing to gamble on a high-risk, low-return contest, that Jindal will not make a much safer bet on a higher-return, lower-risk race.

Two factors explain Jindal’s reticence. One is that he did recently get burned and even with the much better risk/return ratio, his depleted political capital with a tough session upcoming and the relative uncertainty of the contest’s outcome means he needs more security of the capital and the overall return on this, even if relatively good considering the risk, in an absolute sense is too low to be astute at this time. The other is that the PSC has little to do with his agenda and so that not only would a friendly face there be able to give him little assistance with it, but also that a hostile one there will be able to harm it little.

Especially when that enemy occupies presently a position where he can do some harm. Not very much as one of 39 state senators and somewhat marginalized under the current regime, but the fact is even the little harm McPherson can do to Jindal’s agenda now is more than the zero harm he can do to it on the PSC later. Even if small, the gains Jindal may get from having McPherson out of the Senate (and better, in his place likely a more sympathetic legislator, perhaps even a Republican) probably exceed any symbolic benefit from a Holloway election – which actually becomes a cost itself should Holloway not win with a Jindal endorsement, a cost not risked absent a Holloway endorsement.

So with the sum of the fate of his agenda and use of his political capital (a fact Holloway appears to realize), Jindal rationally does better with silence. It leads to the odd occurrence where despite Jindal endorsing one Republican against two others he fails to push a Republican against a Democrat, but tactically it is understandable.