Between The Lines

Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely. This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

5.5.16

Trump nomination to impact some LA contests

The uncharted waters that the Republican Party encounters with businessman Donald Trump as its presidential nominee will have an impact on Louisiana races down the ballot.

No major party ever has nominated someone without any experience in government office. All without any elective experience, or appointive experience to the executive or judicial branches at the state or federal level, served in high-ranking military positions. Even the least politically-experienced nominee, newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, served a few months in Congress almost a quarter of a century before receiving his nomination by the Democrats.

Trump’s success largely comes from frustration that many Republican voters have from Democrats in office who, with increasing success and brazenness, have transformed the country away from the fundamental principles behind its founding, and with Republicans officeholders seemingly unwilling to stand athwart of this sellout. Seen foremost by many as a successful businessman whose blunt style and win-at-all-costs attitude, reinforced by his celebrity status, this ultimate outsider status gave him cachet as someone so alien to current officeholders who themselves seem so alienated from the many that he has the greatest capacity to disrupt a system increasingly seen as detached from the people, if not corrupt.

Cost considerations should not outlaw death penalty

Louisiana increasingly grapples with its ability to offer capital punishment and its policy-makers debate the death penalty’s efficacy, to the point that even some past supporters of it now question it. Yet the data used to argue against it discount the restorative power of the penalty, a salutary feature of it illustrated by a recent, if unfortunate, event in the state.

Over the past couple of years, executions nationwide have slowed to a turtle’s pace as ideological opponents of capital punishment have influenced makers of the drugs used in the lethal chemical injection process not to make these available to states wishing to carrying out sentences. This reduced a rate already at a crawl as over the decades increasingly aggressive appealing of sentences has grown, although that has received a boost from technological innovations, for example which make DNA testing for potential innocence more available. And that has resulted in some reversals, which makes that exercise worthwhile and less likely to happen in the future as more criminal trials access this technology from the start, leading to fewer future mistakes.

But this desirable dragging out of sentence commission produces an unfortunate side effect, now compounded by the undesirable sitzkreig strategy of ideological opponents, of making capital punishment less effective as a deterrent. Research indicates that the death penalty saves lives by deterring murders, but only when it has consistent application. The start-and-stop, uncertain nature that it has taken on in recent years diminishes this effect, and in part highlights opponents’ strategy that if they can make the concept of this punishment take on that nature, that kicks out a prop to the argument favoring its maintenance.

Intemperate LA lawmaker owes colleagues apology

No Louisiana lawmaker quite merges inarticulateness and incoherence as well as does Democrat state Rep. Barbara Norton, but she also recently managed to throw intemperance if not hypocrisy into the mix.

Known for asking the House to honor (and subjecting it to listen to) her godson’s obscene music output, and notable for her unconventional use of grammar, Norton expanded her reputation with her response to last week's rejection of HB 101 by the House’s Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice, on which she sits.

Her bill would have required movie theaters, at their own expense, to install and monitor metal detectors, which also would entail additional personnel costs. After about 10 minutes of video presentation and opening remarks by her, and a few minutes of questioning and an amending to make an exception for holders of concealed carry permits, Republican state Rep. Tony Bacala said the end product would create a false sense of security. He pointed out that theaters that voluntarily did this in other states had trained personnel, and moved to defer the bill involuntarily.

Nungesser seems primed for top spot, not lt. gov.

It seems that doing the mundane as part of his job doesn’t satisfy Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser. Whether that merely remains consistent with his political career to date and/or signifies ambitions to elevate his position by one notch remains to be seen.

To say the lieutenant governor has next to no relevant policy-making power and that performing the formal duties of the office delivers little political excitement overstates the position’s importance. In both of his runs, his previous in 2011 unsuccessful, Nungesser made clear he envisioned the post much more expansively than did statute and the Constitution.

That he would adopt such an attitude perhaps seems inevitable given his eight years at the helm of Plaquemines Parish. Elected in the wake of the hurricane disasters of 2005, one disaster after another plagued the parish through his eight years. He really rose to fame after the oil spill disaster of 2010, with a couple of bad storms mixed in, by his bombastic, shoot-from-the-hip style in pleading the parish’s case to statewide and national audiences for restorative assistance.

The Advocate column, May 1, 2016

Democrats change tune on contract limits
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/15629388-65/jeff-sadow-democrats-change-tune-on-contract-limits

Links:
http://laleglog.blogspot.com/2016/04/committee-action-apr-25-hb-454-hb-174.html
http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Video/WM/2014/Apr_2014/0415_14_AP.asx
http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Video/VideoArchivePlayer.aspx?v=house/2016/apr/0425_16_AP
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=970997
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=997209
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=910049
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=849362
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=801837
http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=755943

28.4.16

Session change bills serve LA legislators, not people

As Louisiana struggles through another tough budget balancing exercise, proposals that could ease difficulties related to that also include undesirable side effects that disqualify these from changing the state’s Constitution.

Two bills, SB 25 by state Sen. JP Morrell and HB 1139 by state Rep. Dee Richard, seek to amend Louisiana’s Constitution to remove the present distinction between regular sessions in odd- and even-numbered years. Presently, during even-numbered years the Legislature cannot consider tax matters plus its members face filing limits on bills (but not on prefiling) in a regular session also shorter than these sessions in odd-numbered years, those which having no such restrictions.

The bills do not differ much. Both would make session lengths identical to the even-numbered standard of a maximum of 45 days meeting in no more than 60 and have no material restrictions on legislation. Morrell’s would keep the earlier start date of the longer odd-numbered sessions, while Richard’s would continue session commencement at the later even-numbered time.

Edwards expansion assumptions highly questionable

More questions have surfaced over the mysterious and increasingly extravagant claims made by the Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration over alleged savings from Medicaid expansion, claims that threaten to introduce budgetary chaos in the upcoming fiscal year.

It’s not just that the Department of Health and Hospitals continues to hike the “savings” number for fiscal year 2017, currently up to $184 million, while refusing to make public the details of its analysis despite data from other states’ experiences continuing to show steep underestimations in the costs involved. For example, commonly the numbers of people coming onto to Medicaid as a result of expansion include not just new enrollees at the expanded, designed-to-addict-states lower rate, but also others at the higher standard rate, many of whom abandon private plans voluntarily or otherwise. So while DHH may have forecast 300,000 new enrollees, it acknowledges this could go as high as 450,000 in the first year – a figure much more in line with a 2013 previous analysis by DHH under former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

But now a pair of the hospital partners operating designated state charity hospitals have expressed doubt over another component comprising the reputed savings – reductions in state payments for uncompensated care costs. The state sees a reduction of these because, theoretically, the more people insured through Medicaid, the fewer UCC dollars needed. The partners think the state’s estimates too rosy, requiring at least 70 percent of the uninsured enrolling in the first year.

Edwards' order keeps encouraging dependency

It makes for great politics, but the executive order Gov. John Bel Edwards issued regarding receipt of food aid to single, able-bodied individuals changes next to nothing.

Towards the end of his term, former Gov. Bobby Jindal wisely passed on extending the waiver the state accepted for recipients aged 18-49 for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This meant that, to receive typically $194 a month in vouchers to buy staple food items, qualifiers did not have to show they had worked, or participated in a training program, or volunteered at least 20 hours a week, no later than three months preceding SNAP utilization.

With a measure in place to allow states with a certain level of unemployment of opt out of imposing the requirements, recently an increasing number of states have gone this route of refusing the waiver with success in employment stimulation, volunteerism, and citizens going without hunger. But when Edwards took control of the state’s executive branch he made the implementation short-lived as he immediately reversed that decision.

LA must avoid endorsing surrogacy by its regulation

In the years since former Gov. Bobby Jindal vetoed bills that would allow the state to enforce surrogacy contracts, the case against them still remains in the current incarnation of the notion.

HB 1102 by state Rep. Stuart Bishop largely tracks the language of the 2014 bill vetoed by Jindal. It would give state backing to the contracts, justiciable in state courts. The practice goes on legally in Louisiana, but if one party alleges breach no judicial remedy currently exists.

The bill provides one, but the merit of that framework does not obviate its disqualification as meritorious public policy. Rather, its basic concept makes it unsuitable for that produces two deleterious impacts on society.