Melancon backs into losing health care debate corner

It’s never a good sign when a challenger devotes most campaign rhetoric to playing defense and trying to criticize the incumbent as a rejoinder. It’s even worse when his arguments factually fall flat. At this rate, Democrat Rep. Charlie Melancon is going to have a long year-plus ahead of him.

In the brief but early campaign for the Senate seat of Republican David Vitter who intends to continue the claim on the seat, Melancon has been on the defensive from the beginning on precisely the issue where Vitter has been on the march, health insurance changes. Vitter has become a leading opponent of Democrat plans to boost regulation, vastly increase spending, and create a system to herd the populace into a government-run system.

But Vitter has shown he does not only oppose reform. Recently, he endorsed the general ideas behind a report issued by Louisiana’s Pelican Policy Institute, built upon the general recommendations of a firm headed by the visionary economist Arthur Laffer, and which largely.parallels Republican plans regarding health care. These endorse a system that, except for catastrophic, “high-risk” cases, would get government out of the health care business (the Institute report does not recommend the high risk pool) through a combination of health savings accounts while removing employer tax breaks, vouchers for the indigent instead of direct payments by government, tort liability reform, and policy portability (which already works with auto insurance). It would save money and likely would provide for better care.

Yet while Vitter has stated what he opposes and what he supports on the issue, Melancon has just claimed to be Rep. “No” – and not even convincingly at that. While he voted against one Democrat proposal in committee, for it he also voted against Republican amendments that would have steered that bill more towards the GOP’s version, and he also used a procedural vote to allow the potential for taxpayer-funded abortion in it. The strategy is that House Democrats want to find a way to pass their bill without having to call on Melancon’s affirmative vote.

However, if Melancon is supposedly against his party’s plans, what is he for? Well, nothing specific, just some general bromides about increased coverage at lower costs. He got a little more specific in criticizing Vitter’s support of the alternative, saying he was against making individuals buying their own even though statistics show they would actually pay less for health insurance this way.

So, Vitter has criticized effectively Democrat plans which are unpopular among his constituents and backed reasonable alternatives that data and research show have every chance of succeeding. Further, he has highlighted Melancon’s refusal to go along with the alternatives and his opponent’s implicit support of the Louisiana-reviled Democrat plans. Melancon, for his part, heretofore has become reduced to denying he supports specific Democrat plans, denying that he supports specific Republican plans, and spouting meaningless generalities to a public that has become agitated over the issue and wants specifics.

This latter scenario is no way to win an election, and the issue is no-win for Melancon. If, least likely, Republican reforms win, Vitter gets all the credit and Melancon none. If, more likely, Democrat changes win, Melancon gets no credit because he supported nothing but Vitter does get much because he valiantly opposed them. If, most likely, marginal changes get enacted in the Democrat direction and Melancon votes against them, the same applies, and if he votes for them, he’ll still get less political mileage out of that than Vitter’s opposition does for him.

Ironically for Melancon, his own party has made this one of the two biggest issues of the nascent campaign season and put him in a position that only can hurt his candidacy (and the other, the performance of the economy, also has set Melancon up for campaign failure). It has exposed the internal contradictions of Melancon’s national political career – supporting liberal policies representing a conservative district, now trying to get elected from a conservative state – and makes what is a difficult job for Melancon to win even harder.

Elizabeth Rickey, 1956-2009

I knew Elizabeth “Beth” Rickey before she became more widely known in the political world as a researcher into the nefarious life of David Duke, and join in the sadness of her death a few days ago.

In 1987, she started graduate studies in political science at the University of New Orleans, where I was approaching the conclusion of my degree program. Few on the faculty or among the other graduate students were conservatives or Republicans, so it was natural that we fell in with each other (regardless, I enjoyed my time with many of the department’s other graduate students, a fair number of which now teach at universities in Louisiana).

In fact, I like to argue that I was responsible for her getting elected in 1988 as the GOP State Central Committee member from which she launched her investigations into Duke. In those days, the 93rd House District extended from the lower French Quarter, where I lived, down to the eastern-most part of the Garden District where she lived. I did some minor campaigning for her and certainly voted for her, along with getting my building manager to do the same. She won by three votes, so it would have been uncomfortably close without my efforts. In fact, it was only a one vote margin before the machines were officially opened and their tallies counted so I trooped with her a few days after the election to where Orleans then kept (as I recall I hope accurately) its voting machines off the Earhart Expressway when they were opened to make sure the result held.

Later that year, she asked whether I wanted to act as a local host for a state delegation to the Republican national convention that was held in New Orleans. I consented, and drew the Indiana delegation. The key figure in it, of course, was then-Sen. Dan Quayle, whom the day after I met was named as the ticket’s vice presidential candidate and the rest was history. She got us some good seats to watch the proceedings when I wasn’t with the Indiana crowd.

I headed off to my first full-time teaching job at the beginning of 1989, right when the open seat in the 81st House District came up and she began to find out more about that creep Duke. I say that about the idiot because one of the times we talked years later she told me about this weird dynamic he established with her, like he was trying to seduce her (which she recounted in published material eventually). Years later, everything she said was confirmed to me when a former student and friend of mine (who shall remain nameless to protect his solid reputation) worked as a volunteer on the Duke gubernatorial campaign. Eventually, Duke came to trust him and told him some stories which were rather X-rated, so Beth’s vibe about the hooded one was spot on.

A couple of years ago I last heard from her. I don’t know whether she was the most important person in exposing Duke as an opportunist and not a real conservative, but she was one of them. Nor am I sure she would have been happy that many on the left used her efforts disingenuously to try to equate Republicans and conservatives with Duke. But I do know that she was a dignified, unassuming person who had a good sense of moral rights and wrongs, and, while assertive, public displays did not come naturally to her, felt compelled to act when few others were aware or seemed interested. Even if her efforts to unmask Duke had not succeeded, this aspect alone about her should merit admiration.

Clumsiness does not moot truth behind juror comments

Perhaps Bossier Parish Police Juror Wanda Bennett wished she never had opened her mouth during the Jury’s Jun. 17 meeting. But despite the criticism she has received regarding her remarks, the ensuing debate addresses a serious policy public matter that she may not have been intellectually or forensically able to articulate yet nonetheless needs attention.

The Democrat and former Bossier City Council member famously reacted negatively to an announcement by the Housing Authority of Bossier City that it would seek Neighborhood Stabilization Program Community Development Block Grant Funds, courtesy of “recovery” bills initially passed in the waning days of the Pres. George W. Bush and then as part of the spending orgy triggered by Pres. Barack Obama. Bennett said then, and tried to defend later, that the plan would attract apparently undesirable “lower socioeconomic people” to what is known as Old Bossier because they can cause the quality of life to deteriorate for the city as a whole. This sparked criticism from many who averred at best it was insensitive, at worst (because the poor disproportionately are racial minorities) racist.

Lost in all the invective and knee-jerk reactions is a thorough, dispassionate analysis of the policy in question, what is being done in Bossier Parish regarding public housing, and the merits of the move. The grant money would permit HABC to take possession of, renovate, and to rent out potentially dozens of single-family structures, many of which already are in adjudication, to very low-income families, which by law would have to be no higher than 50 percent of the existing poverty level because at least 25 percent of program funds would have to go to this purpose. It is restricted to this area, near the Louisiana Boardwalk, and would have to be a part of a consortium of public housing authorities in the state (totaling at least 100 units involved across the state) by law.

First, it is worth noting that the parish can not influence these plans in any way. HABC is governed by five appointees to staggered fixes terms by Bossier City, and receives all of its income from its own activities and in grants from the federal government. As long as matters such as zoning are met successfully, HABC can buy, renovate, and rent out to low-income families as many houses as it wants. The only way even Bossier City, if it wanted (no objections were raised by its council members at a similar presentation to them), could alter these plans and only over the long run, if at all, would be to replace gradually board members with others that would be against them.

Second, the parish never has been in the business of providing government-owned public housing. Instead, it administers a voucher program (colloquially known as “Section 8”) of federal government money that typically pays for at least half the market rate of rent for qualifying families. For this about 30 apartment complexes across the parish provide almost 1000 units, and some single-family residential houses also are enrolled in the voluntary program for landlords. By contrast, HABC owns the Riverwood/Eagle Pointe complex near the intersection of I-20 and Benton Road where a couple of hundred units are maintained as public housing units and others used for Section 8 and market-rate purposes. Thus, the proposal would be the first HABC ownership of single-family residential houses in Bossier, in a concentrated fashion.

Third, having a concentration represents a different philosophy than typically happens under the voucher strategy which has a greater potential to scatter recipient families throughout the community, and gets at the heart of the controversy. The most utterly misunderstood aspect about poverty is its origins. Many mistake the symptom for the disease when they define being in “poverty” as having a lack of income and/or assets because the “system” somehow is “biased” against them. Rather, “poverty” results from a set of attitudes within individuals that discourages the behaviors that create potential for these people to accrue wealth. That is (as history and research amply demonstrate), the large majority of the long-term poor are so not because something structurally about the economy or society prevents them from gaining wealth, it is because they adopt a present-oriented outlook that encourages, on the whole, even just a handful of actions that bring ephemeral, short-term benefits but with excessive long-term costs that could irretrievably shape their entire lives.

Thus, the concentration strategy has three detrimental effects. First, densely packing so many people together with the same inferior attitudes tends to feed on itself, intensifying the effect as well as increasing the chances the physical assets owned by the taxpayer will fall into disrepair if not be outright vandalized. Second, for those poor who have a future-orientation and the desire to move out of poverty, surrounding them with many who don’t feel the same way and therefore act in ways detrimental to themselves also then makes it more difficult on these others who do want to progress. These deviant behaviors not only are a bad influence but can be harmful to those who resist the influence. Third (and the point Bennett inelegantly tried to make), attraction of such people by government provision of inexpensive housing and their subsequent concentration makes it easer for a critical mass of these behaviors to form and spill out into the larger community that largely does not share these views, bringing social problems.

Neither, however, is a voucher strategy effective in dealing with the issue of housing provision for the poor. It has the potential to spread the problem widely out within the community, but, more to the point, both strategies rest on the mistaken notion that without government intervention, housing would not be available for the poor. Research has shown that (not for the elderly or disabled, the two other and smaller kinds of public housing clients) the private and nonprofit sectors can provide adequate, quality housing. In fact, the provision of cut-rate housing tends to bolster attitudes of entitlement and disregard of long-term planning and thrift, the very feelings that contribute to having to live in poverty.

Therefore, the optimal solution would be for Bossier City and Parish to dramatically alter its philosophy of dealing with public housing. Unfortunately, federal law provides many constraints in using grant money and is perhaps the greatest impediment to addressing the issue realistically (and is unlikely to change soon given Obama’s checkered history on this issue). But at its margins things could be made better. More along the lines of Shreveport with its Concordia Place development in the Stoner Hill area, HABC if it pursues this development should do so under the auspices of federal programs that encourage acquisition of the properties by tenants, with zero tolerance for those families that do not fulfill their end of the deal.

In the end, criticism of Bennett would be deserved only because of the clumsy way in which she delivered the message. The essential truth that she seemed unable to explicate, if understood by all policy-makers, would promote finally heading in the right direction in housing policy.

Direct democracy unworkable in almost all situations

As a means of governance, “direct” or “participatory” democracy might appear appealing at first glance, but fully investigating its implications shows it to be of limited utility as a form of government that might work only in very limited circumstances.

In this system, society’s members of appropriate voting qualifications (such as having attained the age of majority, being a citizen, not being a felon, etc.) would vote on every legislative policy that government is proposed to pursue. Any thoughtful review of this possibility should bring to mind numerous practical objections in application to national, state, or even municipal or county governance.

Including all matters such as procedural motions, Congress casts several thousand votes a year and passes hundreds of bills. This year, the Louisiana Legislature passed 560 acts (meaning a vote in each chamber), a couple of hundred resolutions and had roughly double this total number dealing with amendments and other procedural matters. Shreveport’s and Bossier City’s City Councils, and Caddo and Bossier Parish’s legislatures also pass dozens of ordinances each year and have as many of other kinds of votes. Given that it’s hard enough to get even half the voting-eligible public to show up for the occasional election, probably far fewer than one in a hundred would vote regularly on the myriad matters that concern these bodies – even if the technological difficulties could be overcome to allow regular mass participation.

In addition, those microscopically-few who would regularly participate would be unlikely to be representative of the public as a whole. While representative democracy does not allow for direct participation in policy-making, it beautifully creates sufficient and diverse representation because officials must face a broad electorate and respond to it. Therefore, practically speaking policy from a representative democracy more likely will reflect society’s preferences as a whole than would that produced by a direct democracy (if it could be gotten to work). This also does a better job of protecting the political rights of minorities whose numbers by definition cannot win against a majority that may decide to be oppressive, showing the downside of translation of popular passions unfiltered into policy.

Thus, for these obvious reasons, only the smallest political jurisdictions can operate a direct democracy (such as the two Swiss cantons –states – of less than 15,000 inhabitants that still practice the Landsgemeinde) and in a limited fashion (such as in American townships by having a board of selectmen who make periodic decisions of which the most important may be subject to infrequent ratification by electors). A modified version could work, for example, in Louisiana with special districts such as fire, water, levee, etc. where (as is done currently) governing members of boards are selected by local governments, but to have some of their important decisions such as tax increases also requiring ratification by electors.

But to argue such a system could work to any larger extent shows ignorance of the concept and inability to understand the philosophical and practical aspects of the idea.

Roemer's education actions portend political promise

You’ll have to ask Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Chas Roemer whether he reads this space, but, regardless, he’s making a lot of sense that is targeting him as a politician to watch for Louisiana’s future.

In the area of education reform and improvement, Roemer has been the brightest spot statewide. He was the most prominent elected official to criticize the new state high school curriculum that threatens to produce a “dummy diploma” for too many of the state’s students. Now, not surprisingly given his former position as a charter school official, he has expressed strong public support for them.

Better, in statements made in conjunction with the Louisiana Charter School Conference, Roemer explained the political challenge to improving Louisiana’s educational system. Reiterating what has appeared in this space, Roemer said, “Charter schools are now a threat to a jobs program called public education …. It’s old-school politics and it will be a formidable opponent …. [causing reformers to battle] a system that does not work and those who want to protect it.”

Commendable about Roemer’s words is he doesn’t shy away from naming who are the opponents – teacher unions, representatives of local educational establishments, and some politicians – and their motives for opposing reforms such as charter schools, which have demonstrated in Louisiana better educational outcomes for students who often start from worse initial positions. Only by understanding who are the obstacles to better performance and their self-serving motives can the political effort be made to neutralize their influence, so Roemer bravely takes that extra needed step here for success.

In response sniffs the head apologist for the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, Stephen Monaghan, who insists union opposition to charter schools is not for ideological reasons then contradicts himself with this ideological appeal: “If Mr. Roemer’s idea is to lower the wages for educators, to deprive them of benefits, then we are definitely going to oppose those kinds of initiatives.” Note well the worldview here: to unions, education is all about jacking up wages and benefits to teachers as high as possible and has nothing to do with equipping children to contribute to their and their society’s well-being.

That’s the mindset Roemer and reformers must fight to prevail over parochial interests that damage the common good on this issue. Let’s also hope that Roemer takes the next logical step and supports efforts for greater teacher accountability such as regular subject area testing of knowledge in the areas in which a teacher is certified and teaches. No doubt Roemer is aware that this very issue was a great setback for his father as governor, so it is more than appropriate that he becomes the first state official with the foresight and guts to publicly get behind this effort.

It’s refreshing to see Roemer’s candor and willingness to speak with its attendant political risks because it’s the right thing to do. If he keeps up this style as a politician, his political career could eclipse his father’s.

Remarks show reform must address teacher competency

Perhaps the reason why little progress has been seen in educational improvement in Louisiana’s elementary and secondary schools over the past couple of years is that the area of potential positive change that now must be addressed is the quality of the teachers themselves. At least that’s what one is forced to conclude when reviewing the stubbornness and stupidity of the remarks of a union leader of Louisiana teachers.

In conjunction with a meeting of the Louisiana Charter Schools Conference, Tom Tate, lobbyist for the Louisiana Association of Educators, opined “Their success is yet to be determined,” then really stepped out on the limb by adding, “By and large they have not been successful.” Teachers unions oppose charter schools because they allow for reduced union interference in delivering education, are less likely to protect low-performing or incompetent teachers, and encourage and reward greater efficiency in delivering education.

Sawing off the limb is accomplished upon referencing a Stanford University study of Louisiana charter schools that revealed charter school students, after four years and beyond, showed gains in math and reading compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools. The study also said black students who attend charter schools, as well as students classified as living in poverty, did significantly better in math and reading than did their counterparts in traditional public schools.

You would think this would be enough for an opponent to concede on the issue, but apparently not. Additionally, it must be kept in mind that schools made into charters represented the worst performers. Therefore, when comparing charter results to those of regular schools, they are two distinct populations so gains in the black sub-population of charter students are even more impressive because they likely have socioeconomic characteristics that create more roadblocks for success than the students from other public schools.

This makes a lie of the frequent teacher union excuse that there’s little teachers can do with underperforming students given what they have to work with. Statistics continue to show that charter schools simply do a better job, likely because they attract better teachers given personnel policies that aren’t afraid to award merit and discourage the slackers or incompetent – despite (or perhaps because) not many of them are unionized – and they provide a better administrative structure for the purposes of educating.

Continued obstinacy in the face of these facts proves teachers’ union would rather sacrifice quality education in favor of excising the greatest amount of resources from taxpayers for the least amount of quality work. It also lays bare that their representatives can’t think critically well about education issues. This and the fact they have opposed consistently the idea of regular subject area merit testing of teachers leads one to believe that shielding intellectually incompetent teachers from termination has become the main impact that unions have on the quality of education.

Real health reform more than shedding charity hospitals

Perhaps its members have been reading this space regularly, or maybe they actually derived it independently, but Louisiana’s Commission on Streamlining Government looks set to recommend that there be a radical overhaul of indigent health care delivery that will encourage and challenge both the Gov. Bobby Jindal Administration and the Pres. Barack Obama Administration. But whether it’s enough to constitute true reform is another matter.

At the end of last year Jindal said plans were being made to fundamentally remake the indigent care system by removing government from the provider of care to managing that provision. Testimony in front of the committee reaffirmed that directional change, which would broaden Medicaid eligibility to families at 130 percent of poverty, essentially insuring everybody who wished to be in the state, and giving them their choice of what hospital to attend. It is believed that market forces then would push existing charity hospitals out of business.

Apparently unmentioned, however, was the exact funding mechanism of the insurance provision. The testimony sounded like it was a simple expansion of Medicaid coverage. If so, this is a mistake and represents backing away from the idea of instead of employing the current fee-for-service arrangement rather that funds dedicated to indigent care be given as vouchers to eligible recipients that then may be used to purchase health care insurance in the open market (similar to Republican plans at the national level). The present arrangement is what contributes to the leakage of money from it, so nothing would be done to improve efficiency by only an expansion. Further, because government sets Medicaid reimbursement rates but cannot compel providers to accept them, there’s no guarantee there would be enough quality provision, whereas insurers can negotiate better rates (because of their greater efficiency) with providers to ensure enough of it.

It’s possible that the greater privatization part quietly has been dropped as a bow to national politics where Democrats seem determined to ram through legislation that does not reform but merely expands in coverage and in costs the present inefficient system with increased regulation. Such a structuring makes it almost impossible for the federal government to deny the state the request essentially to fund the expansion, since it so closely tracks the goals of Democrats.

While this may look politically good for Jindal – provision of more of a good by government to more people without any extra direct cost to the Louisiana taxpayer – it is not true reform and is not a real solution to spiraling costs paid by government and thereby must be avoided like the plague. However, given the current hostile climate in Washington to genuine health care reform, whether the Obama Administration would fund what would be changeover costs (because much would be saved within a few years) to a plan ideologically opposed to his in a tough state budget environment is another matter.

Regardless, either would threaten the existing charity system which brings other challenges to Jindal. Political opponents who invest political careers, power, and privilege in the billion-dollar system will fight anything that threatens these. Also, Jindal himself has backed the building of a large new charity hospital in New Orleans that, while more realistic in size than its initial conceptualization prior to his taking office, still is too big for its intended purpose. And if it becomes primarily a teaching hospital rather than having its main mission as providing care as a result of this new direction, it becomes more outsized than ever and provides better argumentation for the opposing replacement plan to Jindal’s, rebuilding the existing facility damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – something duly noted here and by the Commission.

Of course, the Commission must approve of this recommendation followed by the Legislature, so there’s a long ways to go. Still, since a budget crisis is upon the state, Jindal never will have a better opportunity to make fundamental, not just marginal, reform. He needs to go for the homer – his original idea of vouchers – rather than let it get washed away by Democrats whose power far exceeds their legitimacy within the public at present. As doctors are instructed, first do no harm, and to make bigger the existing system without real reform will do more harm than by doing nothing at all.

LA must find will to follow through with privatization

Louisiana’s temporary Commission on Streamlining Government has fomented some good ideas about privatization of state government functions. The next step is to make sure that political considerations do not sabotage the savings that could result.

In its most recent meeting, state departments offered to it assessments about areas in which privatization may save money. At least several million dollars a year were identified, and a more vigorous effort might reveal much more. Encouraging also was the stated realization that the reform did not apply universally as a panacea to bloated state expenditures, that some areas simply could or would not produce savings by its application.

But the state must avoid the political problem of using privatization as a substitute for creating priorities and funding on the basis of necessity of function. Institution of privatization cannot occur then followed by a declaration that the process of saving had run its course. This only makes government operation more efficient; it doesn’t eliminate expenditures tied to activities that government really has no need to be performing in the first place. The latter must be dealt with in addition to the former.

Also critical, the state must not let anti-privatization bias short-circuit this effort. Often within government there arises a prejudice against privatization because it is assumed that only government can perform a certain task because it may have been the first entity to do so and/or it has been doing it for a long time. Government well may be the first to do something because, at the time, the activity cost more than it would produce in benefits and/or it required large start-up costs the private sector was unwilling to absorb.

However, times change and as the economy has a whole continues to differentiate and technology advances, what functions in the past seemed like money-losers and/or too costly to get off the ground today attract competition within the private sector. Thus, the Commission must review every function of government and simply not assume that just because government does it and/or has been doing it for a long time, it doesn’t mean it can’t be done more efficiently by the private sector.

Another political challenge comes from an approach which often is a red herring, assertion that the mission-critical nature of an activity means that only government can do it to ensure that it gets done in a quality way. Certainly, there are some functions in government where this is true, such as in the more intense activities of public safety. However, most of what government does simply is not so critical that the search for profits by a private contractor would interfere in making sure the job got done right, but instead would add efficiency to make the function be performed better. For example, does anybody seriously think that if the contract-letting and monitoring functions of Shreveport’s Department of Community Development had themselves been contracted out that a private concern, knowing slackness would expose it to losing the contract and criminal charges, would have been so lax as to allow the corruption rife in that agency to have existed?

Finally, politicians who believe government is there primarily to redistribute wealth and parasitical organizations that agree with this, such as labor unions, will resist it. It means lesser amounts of money can be taken from the people for redistribution from the perspective of the politicians, and from the union view less money transferred to workers because the rate of unionization is much higher in government than in the private sector. For the latter, privatization eliminates unionized jobs and replaces them with fewer non-unionized positions, weakening unions power. Overcoming the resistance of these parochial interests that have no desire to save money for all at their particular expenses might prove problematic.

Nevertheless, it is quite refreshing to see privatization taken more seriously than it ever has been by state leaders. Yet that’s the easy part; the difficult part will be to overcome special interest objections and whether the political will exists too see it all through will be the ultimate test of the seriousness of state government on this issue

History, dynamics confirm Vitter's favored position

Befitting its name, this space seeks to go beyond what the media reports to give readers additional insights, clarifications, and corrections into what is reported as news. A recent article about the burgeoning U.S. Senate race in Louisiana provides grist for the mill of purpose on this account.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune published a piece in which the author asserts Republican incumbent Sen. David Vitter has a good advantage in his reelection bid over Democrat Rep. Charlie Melancon in part because 2010 will not feature a presidential election and historically the party that held the White House would lose seats in midterm elections. While this particularly is true in the House (violated only 3 times since the beginning of the Civil War although twice in the last decade of midterm elections), it is not particularly the case with Senate seats where in the post-World War II period it has been little more than a crapshoot barely favoring the out-party (for a simple discussion of the theory behind it all, see here). So this factor only slightly favors Vitter, if at all.

A colleague of mine also joins the consensus surrounding the likelihood of Vitter’s reelection, but adds a disclaimer that working against Vitter was that, historically, the Louisiana electorate has favored “conservative” Democrats for the Senate and Republicans for the presidency. That statement might have been true a decade ago, but it was Vitter himself with his 2004 election that broke the mold and has signaled that era likely is finished.

Perhaps more historically relevant is that Louisiana has a penchant for reelecting its incumbent senators who want another term. The last time is did not happen was in Huey Long’s election in 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression. Finally, it is doubtful whether Melancon can be called “conservative.” Certainly his American Conservative Union voting scorecard does not support that label: at an average of 46.22 (where 100 means a perfect conservative voting record) for his lifetime, and 12 for 2008, means at best he can call himself moderate or, more accurately, leaning liberal. Therefore, this factor works decisively in the favor of Vitter.

The only way Melancon has a chance to win by his own doing is by conning enough voters into thinking he leans more to the right than he does, that he shows some independence from the liberal Democrat leadership, and he is more trustworthy than Vitter. But he largely already has disarmed himself in trying to make himself appear more conservative than he really is. At present, the two biggest issues of the upcoming contest nationwide are government spending and health care. On the former, Melancon already has sunk himself with slavish support for any request made by Democrats – even as he claims to be a fiscal conservative. On the latter, Melancon to date has tried to walk a tightrope, so far voting in the main against current Democrat proposals – but even there left himself exposed by casting a procedural vote that allowed a Democrat proposal that would in effect publicly fund abortion to advance. If Vitter hammers home these actions, Melancon has no defense.

Nor does Melancon have a convincing argument concerning putative independence. Since 2008, he has voted with Democrat House leaders about 90 percent of the time, and with Democrat Pres. Barack Obama 84 percent of the time. And, given the actions listed above, reminding voters of them can effectively counteract any of the few deviations Melancon could try to cherry-pick as examples of his presumed “independence.”

In fact Melancon essentially surrendered the trust issue as well. He will try to capitalize on references to Vitter’s involvement in a prostitution ring almost a decade ago, although Vitter never has been charged with or proven to have committed any improprieties, nor did any of that have any connection to doing his job as an elected official. However, Vitter can point out Melancon cannot be trusted on something that does relate to his job, that he says one thing (that he’s a fiscal conservative) but does another (votes for the biggest budget-busting, most redistributive supplemental spending bill in the country’s history, among other things) – plus that the Democrat plays fast and loose with taxpayer dollars by taking junkets. Simply, there’s no opening for Melancon to make any inroads given the dynamics of this contest.

With over a year to go, plenty can happen that could produce situations for Melancon to exploit and thus make the election closer – or conversely that Vitter could use to really blow it open. Unless something unusual happens, or unless Vitter draws a competitive opponent for the Republican nomination who campaigns with reckless abandon (not likely), it is still Vitter’s race to lose.

Study shows why megafund needs no replenishment

Louisiana has allowed itself to be fooled again and again over acquiescence to industrial policy, and taxpayers may be asked again to throw away more good money after bad on corporate welfare that costs more than the benefits it brings the state as a whole.

In the past few years under previous gubernatorial administrations, funds were created to bribe companies to locate operations in Louisiana. These funds, instead of tackling the diseases that discourage capital formation, entrepreneurship, and commerce in the state such as higher taxation, over-regulation, unwillingness to do what is needed to enhance improvement of education, etc., masking the diseases as a form of compensation to firms to deal with these shortcomings.

Tax credits for movie making marked the first substantial foray into this dangerous territory but now unfortunately the state has bought whole hog into this ideology which is the outstanding weakness of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s tenure by his failure to prevent it. This past year saw major expenditures to salve several concerns entering the state. Combining those expenditures from film tax credits, the Rapid Response Fund, and the Mega-Project Development Fund (which was altered this year to make it easier for petitioners to qualify for it to justify its existence) are likely to go over $400 million of the people’s money for this past fiscal year, transferred to a small group of mostly large corporations.