Christmas Day, 2020

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

With Friday, Dec. 25 being Christmas Day, I invite you to explore this link.

Edwards virus policy shows rot of liberalism

This week, again letting politics take precedence over science, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards continued until Jan. 13 an unproductive and intrusive set of government restrictions on public behavior to address the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. To understand why he and many on the political left persist in promoting and imposing this erroneous policy, an understanding of their ideology illuminates their mistaken actions.

Because the data show they clearly are mistaken. After many months, data have accumulated about the consequences of economic and behavioral restrictions, to the point from a public policy perspective we can draw certain conclusions: (1) degree of restrictiveness doesn’t vary with deaths caused by the virus (established through quasi-experimental methods), (2) as a corollary, excess deaths not attributed to the virus rose more the more restrictions existed (3) the relative ineffectiveness of wearing face coverings makes their mandatory use effective only in environments where inside recommended physical distancing for longer lengths of time cannot be established or for high-risk medical facilities, (4) in this pandemic hospital system capacity has not been significantly more strained compared to recent influenza seasons and the last (2009 swine flu) pandemic, and (5) deaths and hospitalizations for those under age 20 are almost nonexistent and extremely few occur among adults under 65 who don’t have some underlying co-morbidity factor.

To put it in public policy terms, nearly universal restrictions reaching far that match what Edwards has promulgated have produced essentially no additional societal benefits than policies with much less restrictiveness. As a point of departure, these restrictions include a statewide mask mandate when in public indoor and some outdoor locations; restaurants, gyms, salons, casinos, malls and other nonessential businesses must limit customer numbers to 50 percent of their occupancy rate; churches are restricted to 75 percent of occupancy; and venues like outdoor sports stadiums are set at 50 percent; bars are limited to takeout, delivery and outside seating, if parishes don’t meet the low percentages of coronavirus tests returning positive required to allow indoor drinking at bars; and indoor gatherings for weddings and events are restricted to 75 people or a maximum of 25 percent occupancy, whichever is less.

Medicaid waste inflating LA budget woes

As red ink prepares to wash over Louisiana as a result of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Wuhan coronavirus restrictions, the low-hanging fruit to help ameliorate that would be reversal of Medicaid expansion, but at the very least establishment of realistic protocols to vet the waste-ridden program.

Louisiana’s taxpayers now pay (according to the latest fiscal year 2019 data) an extra $312 million annually to foot the bill for expansion, where roughly a third to half of these recipients used to pay their own way. Worse, a fair amount of it involves dollars wasted through inept government administration if not paying outright fraudulent premiums and claims.

Since 2014, nationally the improper payment rate to Medicaid clients has soared from just under 7 to nearly 22 percent. Analysis of the difference in large part attributes this to expansion, particularly in the vetting of initial applicants and periodic review. In a report, Louisiana was singled out as one of the more egregious violators in this regard.

Pandemic politics may finish off I-Bowl

After all its efforts to survive, Shreveport’s Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl may have received its death knell at the hands of a microscopic organism doing its things and the politics and vanities of the humans it lives in.

This week, game officials announced that, after a run of 44 years, the contest would not occur this year. Initially scheduled just after Christmas, the cancellation came when the Pac 12 football conference declared it “couldn’t” fulfill its obligation to produce a bowl-eligible team to face off against Army. For the next few years, the bowl follows a schedule where in alternating years where Army (if eligible) faces a Pac 12 team or independent Brigham Young University (if eligible) squares off against a Conference USA squad (that has several schools within 400 miles including Louisiana Tech just down the road).

In reality, this is one of the poorest potential sets of matchups in the existing bowl system, but despite this being the case throughout most of its history, the I-Bowl has a remarkable record of longevity. Except for the six most prominent bowls that alternate as sites for the College Football Playoff, only four other games have lasted longer.

Conservative pox on nascent LA CD2 hopefuls

Because they will determine the next Louisiana Second Congressional District representative with the resignation of Democrat Rep. Cedric Richmond, conservatives must choose carefully – if they have any real choice at all.

In that district that spans from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, demographics work against any conservative from winning, barring unusual circumstances. Those actually arose in 2008, when GOP former Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao defeated the indicted incumbent Democrat former Rep. Bill Jefferson, but the district then confined itself to the general New Orleans area. At present, its voter base is 63 percent Democrat and 61 percent black, practically meaning that a liberal black Democrat likely will emerge as the winner.

Maybe. Already two black New Orleans-based Democrat state senators, Troy Carter and Karen Peterson, have said they’ll run. Probable to jump in as well are Democrat New Orleans City Council member Helena Moreno, who’s Hispanic, and far-left black activist Gary Chambers from Baton Rouge. No Republican has indicated a willingness to throw his hat into the ring.

No matter where, pork shouldn't prevail

It depends on which side of the Red River you live whether it’s legal. But, regardless of whether a river runs through it, it’s unethical.

Tomorrow, the Shreveport City Council will try to find a way to evade the city’s charter. Prompted by Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins – no stranger to trying to sidestep the law in various ways such as spending city tax dollars on his inauguration, double-billing on his automobile usage, and city appointments – the Council had budgeted in 2021 to give each of its seven members authority to direct $250,000 for road work in their districts. Sec. 4.32 flat out prohibits this, which begs the question whether the Perkins Administration or councilors and staff even bothered to read the charter.

With plenty of winks and nods, Republican Councilor James Flurry will try to salvage the deal by shuttling funds to the city’s Office of Community Development – which has authority over workforce development, business development, affordable housing and improvements, homelessness, public services, public facilities, and program funding for federal grants but not roads – and have him and his colleagues “pick up the phone and [ask] ‘Say can you do this? Can you help us on this? I have a need.’ And they come up with the funds. But this time we'll have our own funds there.”

Lawmaker ignorance subverts good care policy

If you’re going to make bad policy, at least know what you’re talking about, a lesson that Republican state Rep. Larry Bagley needs to learn.

This week, the Louisiana Legislature’s Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee had one of its occasional meetings to review matters of interest. One concerned a rule change that would shovel over $5 million more to nursing homes that would convert more rooms to single occupancy even though it would appear this would not reduce the overgenerous compensation these providers receive,  nor discourage payment for excess licensed beds in a system that disproportionately sends Medicaid clients to nursing homes instead of almost-always less expensive home- and community-based care.

The counter-intuitiveness of the change hasn’t fazed key legislators who could trigger a review and its potential veto, leading them to scramble in justifying it. This includes Bagley, who has attempted to fend off criticism of it, which equates to criticism of him, for as chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee he could have called his committee to meet by the end of the week to vet the change.

LA finally gets rural broadband right -- for now

This is how you do rural broadband right – if you can keep it.

After over a decade of false starts, it appears over the next decade Louisiana will start filling in the rural broadband gaps. Award notices from the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund went out, with Louisiana picking up over $342 million worth of services intended to reach over 175,000 addresses in areas currently unserved by broadband.

Twice the state has attempted to obtain federal dollars to expand the provision, off of initiatives from the Democrat former Pres. Barack Obama Administration. Twice it wisely abandoned the efforts because of the strangulation of red tape and concentration on achieving political objectives at the expense of service provision.

New name doesn't change need to sell BC arena

The first step is to rename Bossier City’s CenturyLink Center Drive and the city’s CenturyLink Center Arena Special Revenue Fund. The next is to sell the renamed Brookshire Grocery Arena.

Under whatever name, the two-decades-old arena near the foot of the Jimmie Davis Bridge consistently has lost money. Its siting in open space closer to residential areas than any commercial activity, much less the kind that could leverage off the facility such as entertainment establishments, with somewhat constricted road access came for political, not economic, reasons that might otherwise have caused its building around the Interstate 20/220 intersection by Louisiana Downs.

Emergence of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic illuminated even more brightly its white elephant status. With essentially no activity occurring in the arena for most of the year and perhaps several months into 2021, its deficit grew so large that the city last month the City Council swiped $500,000 – nearly the entire ending 2019 Disaster Relief Fund balance – to pay off 2020 property taxes on the structure and the first two months of 2021 (non)operating expenses. (Whether the legal restrictions that came with the grant of that money would permit such use is another matter.)

Edwards, legislators squander Medicaid dollars

It’s bad enough that both Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and Louisiana’s Republican legislative leaders have adopted as their main fiscal strategy pennies from heaven. It’s unconscionable that they have to make matters worse for taxpayers and the infirm on top of that.

Rather than start the long overdue paring of state government, imperative more than ever with revenue shortfalls courtesy of Edwards mandates in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, Edwards and GOP leaders just cross their fingers and hope money rains down on the state from federal taxpayers to stave off a huge budget deficit, looming perhaps as soon as early next year. The last thing they need to do in this environment is to aggravate matters with extra needless, if not counterproductive, spending.

But that’s exactly what they seem poised to do. This fall, the Department of Health issued a rule revision that would shovel more money to nursing homes paid through Medicaid. The latest data indicate that Medicaid covers about four-fifths of state nursing home residents, which means, since typically other payment sources are charged higher rates, that around three-quarters of industry revenues come from taxpayers. All in all, state taxpayers funnel around $1.2 billion yearly into nursing home operators’ pockets.