Another LA blackout, another renewable own goal

The advice Dr. Zaius gave to Taylor at the end of Planet of the Apes applies very well to the likes of hard left politicians on the Louisiana Public Service Commission and the New Orleans City Council, in reference to the blackout that hit the New Orleans area some days ago which brings both lessons and warnings.

Parts of four parishes, including Orleans, were hit by what power companies euphemistically call a “load shed” last weekend. Over half were in New Orleans, and nearly 100,000 total customers had lights out for several hours because, with one of Entergy’s nuclear reactors down, another shut down unexpectedly presumably over concerns that if left unaddressed could have blacked out even more ratepayers and for longer.

This echoed two similar events in northern Louisiana in April. Affecting about a third of customers compared to the one in south Louisiana, as part of its meeting the Public Service Commission held a gripe session earlier this month about those incidents, where both the utility involved, Southwestern Electric Power Company, and the regional transmission organization Southwest Power Pool tried either to blame the other or shrugged them off as acts of the Deity.

Ignore naysayers, pass Medicaid integrity bill

It’s a bill that would improve matters tepidly, but you would think it heralded the end of the world from the rhetoric emanating courtesy of the far left that favors government as a redistribution machine.

SB 130 by Republican state Sen. Heather Cloud would increase moderately the oversight that the Louisiana Department of Health maintains over Medicaid eligibility: all of regular, expanded, children’s, and waiver provision of the program. It requires LDH to verify independently eligibility information, prohibits relying solely on automatic renewals (and for future waiver program operation prohibits these entirely), prohibits sole use of self-attestation to verify income and assets and mandates verification of residency, and mandates data matching use from a variety of sources on quarterly, semiannual, and annual bases.

Unfortunately, until the last couple of years since Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards had entered office, LDH didn’t often utilize these efforts listed in the bill. Vast swaths of verification occurred through self-attestation and what data-based verification did occur usually came in perfunctory form, asking for very little and skipping the finer points of eligibility requirements.

Bills would shield LA from bad energy policy

Bills moving in the Louisiana Legislature not only look to forestall potentially bad policy decisions elsewhere emanating from faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, but actually to reverse the chances of these inflicting harm.

For years, Europe has demonstrated the costs, both in price and reliability, of government-subsidized or -mandated moves into increasing the proportion supplied of nondispatchable energy – the considered “green” forms primarily wind and solar power – as part of an overall portfolio of energy provision. Permanent spikes upwards in average pricing along with man-made crises of late demonstrate the problem, both economic and political, of state-sponsored favoring of less reliable, if not more expensive, renewable energy forms.

Fortunately, the federal government appears to be exiting that inferior policy option, but some states in their policy agendas continue to cling to the mythical, evidence-free view that fossil fuels cause significantly negative climate change. This religious faith often manifests in official renewable portfolio standards, where about half have some mandatory standard to be met sometime in the future (some as early as five years from now) specifying the proportion of renewable energy sources behind powering that state’s homes and businesses.

Memorial Day, 2025

This column publishes every Sunday through Thursday 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 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 Easter Sunday, Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.

With Monday, May 26 being Memorial Day, I invite you to explore this link.  

Bonus bucks should restore, pay down; nothing new

The relief some hoped would materialize did this week for Louisiana, but the bonus must be spent wisely in a manner that eventually shrinks government.

The state’s Revenue Estimating Conference this week determined that the state would have $130 million more for this, fiscal year 2024-25, and $139 million more predicted for next year, FY 2026. Policy-makers around the capitol had hoped to hear that the previous December projections had undershot what would be actual and forecast performance, but until now faced uncertainty with a raft of tax code changes kicking in at the start of this calendar year.

As these numbers didn’t apply to previous fiscal years (the other REC meetings throughout the year often take a look back into the just-completed fiscal year) which would be declaration of a surplus, the REC had the option to declare the additional revenues as recurring for this current period and obviously for the next, which it did. That means anything goes as far as expenditures, if even spent, as opposed to tagging these as nonrecurring where only specified, essentially one-time, expenditures could occur.

Rent seekers run faulty sob stories by BC Council

Sob stories echoed throughout the Bossier City Council chambers at its last meeting, as rent-seekers bookended the gathering intent on maintaining at least some their grifts on the citizenry or apologizing without taking responsibility for corporate mistakes.

First up during the invited public comment phase of the meeting were several representatives of apartment complex owners in Bossier City, encompassing a few thousand units. They were outraged because the close-to-free ride the city had been giving them on its sanitation fee ended early this year.

Until recently, the city charged $12 a month per multifamily dwelling water meter – whether a small strip or an entire complex of apartments, often water service isn’t apportioned by unit but the cost of which is included in rent, as it comes to all through one single intake for a set of units. But at the start of the year, it changed that to $12 per unit (the typical residence now pays $36) as part of a financial rejiggering designed to erase growing deficit spending bringing to the brink of red ink this year the city enterprise fund that collects and pays out for solid waste pickup, street cleaning, median mowing, beautification, and animal control.

Edwards out, Landry in, public sees better things

More evidence of the Landry effect – or, if you will, absence of the Edwards effect – surfaced with the release of Louisiana State University’s 2025 Louisiana Survey, which also may shed light upon the policy agenda of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry.

For many years now the survey has asked similar questions of participants, and this year’s results revealed a growing optimism not seen in several years. After hitting record levels, in the neighborhood of two-thirds, over the past three years of state residents saying the state was headed in the wrong direction, this March/April’s survey saw that number drop to parity with those opining the state was headed in the right direction. Internal numbers show the turnaround occurred because more numerous Republicans to a larger degree changed their minds (extrapolated; it’s not a panel construct but in statistical terms the aggregate results from different samples each year have a high likelihood of representativeness), even as Democrats to a somewhat lesser degree became more negative, plus respondents unaffiliated with either major party also turned more positive.

Largely the same dynamic was replicated in confidence in state government to address concerns. After hitting a high in Republican former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s first term, this slowly eroded, levelled off in the first term of Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards, then cratered during his second term before rebounding a bit in 2024 after Landry assumed office and shooting higher in 2025. Republicans’ views drove it up, while Democrats’ basically didn’t change.

Tate departure offer opportunity for LSU, system

The Louisiana State University System rests on the precipice of a potentially exciting new era now that Pres. William Tate IV will fly the coop, if some basic issues can be resolved.

Tate took the Rutgers University system job, which is in a bigger state, has more money and students, and caters more to his leftist sentiments. In the scheme of things, it is a step up from the LSU gig, and an inevitable move by him.

Understand that there’s only a limited amount of destination jobs in higher education. Perhaps maybe three dozen prominent private schools and a dozen or so state systems qualify, and those who aim for that churn as quickly as they can through the ranks of all other schools and systems. Anybody who stays in one place for more than a few years has some kind of attachment to the school and area, which if a quality administrator is a blessing for that institution.

Monroe council majority throwing too many bombs

At some point, the nicknamed “Brown Bombers” on Monroe’s City Council need to stop throwing bombs and to start trying to govern more responsibly.

Almost a year ago two new councilors, Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad, joined the panel after city elections. With another Democrat who won reelection, Juanita Woods, since then the three have made it a point to inject an adversarial relationship as much as possible into their dealings with independent Mayor Friday Ellis. Accordingly, they have picked up the appellation from supporters in their districts that comprise southern Monroe, which have majority black electorates and they themselves are black.

The latest Council meeting provided two more instances where it seemed the body’s majority acted primarily to oppose for opposition’s sake Ellis’ governance. One involved unspecified but hinted activities in the Fire Department where the majority initiated the process to invoke an investigation. Section 2-07 of the city charter allows it to call one where it may subpoena witnesses, administer oaths, take testimony and require the production of evidence. However, that takes a final vote of four of five councilors, and neither member of the Council minority, Republicans Gretchen Ezernack and Doug Harvey, indicated through their opposition to the introduction, seems willing to go along.

Simien win challenges GOP mayor race success

Earlier this month, the election of independent Marshall Simien, Jr. to the Lake Charles mayoralty marked a curious outlier to recent success that Republicans and white candidates generally have had in Louisiana’s largest cities, and may flash a warning signal to them.

Simien defeated two-term incumbent Republican Nic Hunter in the May 3 runoff. While Hunter’s proportion of the vote barely increased from what he gathered in the Mar. 29 general election, Simien’s essentially corralled support from all others, making up more than an 18-percentage point gap. Hunter is white while Simien, who among other elected and appointed positions in government served a couple of terms on the City Council prior to a previous mayoral run in 2017, is black.

Until May, Republicans had hit their high-water mark in executive control of the ten most populated cities (in a trio of cases, consolidated with the parish) in the state. While New Orleans had a Democrat as mayor, all of Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Lafayette, St. George (newly a city with an elected mayor as of March), Lake Charles, Kenner and Bossier City – second through eighth in population – had Republican chief executives. Monroe had an independent and Alexandria a Democrat.