ULM has chance to make trenchant social commentary

You can’t fight The Man, and in intercollegiate sports for all but the smallest schools the National Collegiate Athletic Association is The Man. Unfortunately, it’s also terribly politically correct in its assertion that schools cannot use any “hostile” or “abusive” racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, imagery or nicknames at any of the NCAA's national or regional championships.

Never mind it’s another example of people eagerly seeking victimhood and then using it to assert their own peculiar moralities on the rest of the population. Or the hypocrisy of it all – the NCAA seems to think Notre Dame University’s “Fighting Irish” is all right, even though that conjures up the stereotype of the red-nosed, heavy-drinking Irish who then get into brawls. (As part-Irish, I should object to this but, frankly, I never gave it another thought until right this minute. So there.)

Notre Dame can get away with it because it’s the only university with more officially rewarded championships in football than the University of Oklahoma and has enough muscle to negotiate its own football broadcasting rights unlike every other school. But the University of Louisiana at Monroe, having suffered through one name change just a few years ago, now finds it must change its nickname from “Indians.” It could appeal but that seems like a waste of time, or it could not send any mascot or reminder of the nickname to any NCAA championship rounds in which its teams might play. (Personally, I would have ULM’s spirit squads and the like wear black headbands with a feather attached in the back as a protest during these contests, but it’s that kind of forthrightness which keeps me as a little old college professor rather than gets me promoted to be a university president or chancellor.)

(Another thought: isn’t OU’s nickname “Sooners” also pejorative? It basically glorifies lawbreakers – Sooners were people who jumped the gun before the official time to get more and better land when the Indian Territory was opened to white settlement. But, as mentioned above in reference to ND, when the NCAA is dealing with the Alpha and Omega of college football ….)

Nevertheless, yet again to perform public service, I will suggest five candidates for new nicknames for ULM, taking into account the uniqueness of the Louisiana cultural, historical, and political experience. Starting with the obvious:

Coushattas – this tribe signaled acceptance of the current name, and the NCAA says if names that are tied to individual tribes are approved by that tribe (designed to appease big-money schools like Florida State, Utah, and Illinois) they’ll accept it, so why not give the Coushattas a little free publicity (although given ULM’s performance on the athletic fields in recent years, it may not be all that much and not even that desirable, but it’s the thought that counts). It can’t hurt, given who used to be one of the Coushattas’ lobbyists.

Governors – if it’s good enough for Austin Peay … Louisiana’s had some pretty colorful ones, so why not celebrate this part of our heritage, even though another name might be more appropriate when referring to them, or to politicians in the state in general …

Jailbirds – can you imagine the interesting situations that could develop from having this nickname; for example, uniforms could be white and black stripes, definitely distinctive and causing maximal confusion with the uniforms worn by most sports’ officials? And it also neatly sums up what far too many college ex-athletes, or even current ones, eventually turn into.

Hurricanes – yes, this may be more appropriate for some of ULM’s southern brethren which actually get flooded out by them, but why not? It would bring pride to the state to show we don’t fear these storms by embracing them, and it recognizes the unique cleansing they bring to the state in terms of a more-efficient state budget, of endangering electoral careers of politicians who are way past their primes if they ever had them, etc.

But there is one, indisputably superior choice that would represent a period in state history, adhere to the dictate (as other schools are allowed to use it), and would show the stupidity of the entire idea of political correctness run amok and hypocritically applied in college athletics:

Rebels… fight fire with fire. Maybe the NCAA can get a load of a nickname with some genuine social commentary -- against its idiocy.

Lawsuit may expose Louisiana's cosmetic electoral change

Here we go again with Louisiana trying to set a date for physical enactment of federal elections, and looks as if the state may once again discover another reason why the blanket primary election system needs to be replaced.

Almost a decade ago lawyer G. Scott Love in essence challenged the entire blanket primary system, which could have the effect of electing members of Congress prior to the national election day specified by federal law. The Supreme Court agreed with him. (Note: Louisiana’s system often incorrectly is called an “open” primary. It is not. An open primary is one where separate party primary elections are maintained although voters of any partisan affiliation or none may participate in any one party’s primary. In Louisiana, there are no separate party primaries, hence its correct name “nonpartisan blanket” primary or blanket primary for short.)

Last fall, the Legislature finally addressed what it saw to be a loophole in the law. Act 282 changed technical language in the Revised Statutes to declare candidates “elected” on the federal election date, even if the actual election itself occurred earlier. As a result, this time Love has sued on behalf of his daughter Julia arguing the earlier date deprived her of the right to vote as her 18th birthday in 2006 would occur in the interim between the two dates.

The crux of the matter is defined in the opinion as “a contested selection of candidates for a congressional office that is concluded as a matter of law before the federal election day, with no act in law or in fact to take place on the date chosen by Congress, clearly violates” the statute. The state claims the new law in fact satisfies the requirement that a trigger of sorts go off on the federally-defined day by stating that candidates get elected “at the close of the polls on the day of the general election” regardless that the physical enactment of the election may have occurred earlier.

The plaintiffs may have found an ingenious way to contest this. Using the state’s logic, what’s to prevent other states to from bumping their elections up as far back as they like using the same reasoning, and basically subverting the intent of the federal statute? Unless the judiciary declares that there should be a limited time in which to do this that would seem to be the end result. It could declare a limit to moving forward such as the residency requirement; that is, an election can occur no more than 60 days minus the state’s residency requirement in days prior to the date set by federal statute (60 days because that is the most at which the Supreme Court will allow a state to set its residency requirement).

If the law is declared unconstitutional, however, it should provide yet another sign that the state needs to change the system. Many such compelling reasons exist to make the switch but probably the main thing now holding it back is less-liberal Democrats probably would be seldom elected since even in an open primary system more-liberal Democrats probably would beat them. A closed primary system, where only voters affiliated with a party can vote in its primary, would reduce the electoral chances of these Democrats, a number of which haunt the Legislature, even more. Compounding that is the generally unfavorable electoral environment for incumbents but especially Democrats over the next few years will discourage them from making elections more explicitly partisan.

This new law represents merely a treatment of the symptom, not a cure of the disease. Regardless of the outcome of this case which probably will go on well past this year’s federal elections, the blanket primary needs to go.

Statistics, reality shouldn't reassure Democrat officeholders

If you take a walk with a Democrat elected to a Louisiana state office past a graveyard in the middle of the night, expect to hear a lot of vigorous whistling, if their reactions to assessing the electoral realities of the next two years are any indication.

Much can happen before statewide elections next year, but trends continue to point to Democrat electoral carnage at state-level contests, consisting of three ominous signs for them. First, Hurricane Katrina has disrupted their reliable voting base in New Orleans beyond all repairs. In fact, what might seem to be a positive thing, scarcely declining voting rolls in Orleans, provides no reassurance. As yet, displaced voters have had little reason to switch in their new locations, as they take care of more important matters first and become acclimated to their new political climate. Worse, some may wait to switch just so they can vote to punish current officeholders to exact for themselves a sense of justice, and that will work against Democrats (nobody who stays will delay switching just to vote for an incumbent)
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Because, secondly, some segment of the population will wish to visit retribution against those in power for the state’s lack of preparedness to and response after the crisis. The fact is, Democrats now hold all executive offices and still control both chambers of the Legislature so they will disproportionately suffer.

Third, let us not forget that mandated term limits will forcibly sweep some monuments, disproportionately Democrats, out of the way in the Legislature as well (slightly in the favor of the GOP in the Senate, but overwhelmingly so in the House.) Almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans cannot run again (and one such Democrat, populist and defender of the mediocre Tommy Wright, resigned effective today).

Some elected Democrats can’t bring themselves to face, or are incapable of understanding, these ramifications. At best, you’ll get out of them a “pox on all houses” response that argues any incumbent will face difficulty. There is a germ of truth to this – Republicans who are part of the good old boy ethos may well have their hands full with aggressive challengers from their own parties. But the fact is, the hurricane disasters of last fall will favor reform advocates and they disproportionately have run as Republicans as Democrats have favored the liberal/populist agenda of the past. The last real GOP populist in the state was David Duke, and we know what happened to him.

More sensible observers from the left see reality. Even reliable Democrat shill Lanny Kellar can’t turn a blind eye to the trend, one which has sent three members of the state legislature already from the “D” to “R” column in the hopes of warding off the effects of that scarlet letter. At the statewide level, a growing awareness among the population of the bankruptcy of good old boy attitudes fueled by negative perceptions of Katrina’s aftermath could give the GOP the majority of those offices for the first time ever.

If Louisiana Democrats’ (currently lacking a permanent state party chairman) putting on a happy face is a strategy to try to change perceptions, it’s no match for reality. If it’s designed to blunt reality, Democrats are even in bigger trouble as denial will make their response to the dilemma even less effective.

New year, but same good old boy attitudes in Louisiana

It’s a new year, but too many of the same old attitudes remain in regards to those people in power in Louisiana’s government.

Less than a month ago, Secretary of State Al Ater was issuing all sorts of reasons why New Orleans should delay its elections until around the end of September – it was the federal government’s fault in not providing lists of displaced voters, and also that pre-clearance would take too long, not enough poll commissioners would be around, etc. Suddenly, he now is saying they could happen in March, even though about a week ago he thought elections in April would be a stretch.

Such a dramatic conversion in attitude likely has come from the confluence of outside forces that Ater neither hoped nor thought would occur. He probably knew all along that the federal government would be much speedier in providing clearance and information, taking away these excuses, and considerable pressure by a U.S. district court on his dilatory stance no doubt also caused an attitude adjustment. But perhaps the biggest impact came from the near-universal scorn heaped upon him and Gov. Kathleen Blanco by the public, pundits, and other politicians. Democracy works even in Louisiana, when you have a citizenry willing to inform itself and to prod its policy-makers.

But the good-old-boy attitude that would minimize the voices of the people in their own governance has infested itself strongly among the state’s political elites and, while it was not strong enough in Ater’s case for him to resist, it still has significant redoubts. One such is that of the Gromyko of the State Senate, its president Don Hines, has shown little enthusiasm for changing these ways that, frankly, is what he used to accumulate political power while simultaneously holding back the state. This manifests in his attitude that a Legislative special session is unneeded whose crux rests on levee board governance reform.

This obviously puts Hines on the wrong side of the issue that, besides delaying elections, has most galvanized the public in Louisiana since the Band-Aid special session. Hines did nothing to support meaningful reform in this area and instead focused his energies on making it easier to raid the state’s Budget Stabilization Fund to continue his strategy of shifting monies to favored constituencies rather than undertaking funding reductions which likely would endanger these interests as other needs are much more pressing.

And it should go without saying that Blanco herself remains captive to this ideology. Anybody who observes her televised remarks understands she continues to attempt to shift blame instead of taking responsibility, and at the same time comes off as hypocritical in her desire to say others try to distort her record (she claims because it’s politics, because it’s gender bias, ad naseum) when she herself in front of Congress did her level best to distort her role in the leadership breakdown after Hurricane Katrina. It’s always excuses for what continues to fail, rather than admitting mistakes and, more importantly, embracing sensible change.

It may be a new year, but nothing changes among Louisiana’s Democrat political elites – something voters need to keep in mind when many of these same characters and their ilk offer themselves for reelection next year.

Blanco doesn't get it; neither will she get reelection

The reason why Gov. Kathleen Blanco will not get reelected in 2007 is she just doesn’t get it.

Blanco seems to think that the public’s low marks given for her and her reelection chances are a function of a perception of her as weak and indecisive. To her and her handlers, the solution then seems to be an image makeover. If so, that belies a lack of reflection and understanding about a singular fact: ideas have consequences.

The fact is, Blanco is a liberal politician in a state growing more politically conservative. She expresses some conservative viewpoints (such as being pro-life) but on issues of the economy and government activism she easily fits into the mold of the national Democrats, with a dash of populism thrown in. She has shown a consistent desire to raise taxes, to expand the size of government, and to resist efforts to govern efficiently rather than primarily politically.

Like most liberals, she remains captive to one or both of two fictions: either that liberalism resonates among the public (or perhaps doesn’t because of mean, illegal, subversive efforts of Republicans and conservatives that continually fool the poor saps that comprise the mass public that are so intellectually inferior to her and her kind – if this were true, wouldn’t we have passed into a dictatorship long ago instead of having the world’s greatest democracy and economy?) or that liberalism does not but that her kind needs power because the poor saps that comprise the mass public that are so intellectually inferior to her and her kind can’t be trusted to do the right thing, so it’s necessary to fool them into her “helping” them.

Obviously, that mindset is the undoing of both her and other liberals. It’s not the image or style that turns people off about Blanco’s tenure; it’s the policies, stupid. Just to name perhaps the most recent of many examples, running after the levee reform horse after the public opinion barn door has closed is a perfect example of how Blanco can’t see past her ideology and understand its inherent flaws and the need to embrace conservatism not only to become in greater touch with the peoples’ policy preferences, but to provide better governance.

Unless Blanco begins to do things like dramatic paring of fairly unneeded government functions thus causing a big drop in government spending, rescinding tax hikes and even cutting taxes more, using her power to insist on efficient operations rather than patronage and electoral spoils, etc., she will not be doing the things necessary to govern effectively in Louisiana’s time of post-disaster need, nor convince enough people who eyes have seen laid bare by the disasters her suboptimal ideological predispositions to give her another term.

Bad jurisprudence marks election suit decision

It’s not often that you get poor jurisprudence from all three parties – plaintiff, defendant, and judge – in the disposition of a lawsuit, but when you throw in a dash of judicial activism, that’s to be expected, and is what happened in the disposition of a federal lawsuit against the state to force it to hold New Orleans city elections according to the law.

U.S. District Judge and Clinton-appointee Ivan Lemelle essentially put the suit on hold, wisely to let the political process in this matter unfold, meaning he preferred to see the majoritarian branches of government work out the matter. Legislating from the bench betrays the Constitution and subverts democracy, and had Lemelle left it at that there wouldn’t be much to write about on this issue other than to applaud his use of good sense and reason.

But Lemelle also threatened that he might step in sometime in the (near, given the compressed timeline) future. This treads dangerous waters, because the only time judicial intervention ever is permissible is when a clearly articulated right is breached or law is indisputably broken, and, despite their questionably partisan motives, neither Gov. Kathleen Blanco nor Secretary of State Al Ater appear to have acted illegally. The enabling statute seems to have been followed, and a lot of interpretation would have to be inserted into the executive order to argue the delay contains any illegality.

While he remained on steadier ground when observing an equal protection violation could exist by not having elections in New Orleans when others were occurring in other Hurricane Katrina-affected parishes (and, he could have added, still others impacted as badly or worse than Orleans by Hurricane Rita), he really started going off the rails when censuring the Federal Emergency Management Agency for not turning over data about displaced persons to Ater. Neither federal no state law mandates any such requirement that the state without solicitation by the individual send information about voting and elections, using this as justification for a decision, if it comes to that, constitutes the exercise of raw political power within the judiciary and should be challenged.

It has not come to this because Ater now appears satisfied at the information given to him by FEMA. Translation: (1) Ater was getting beaten up in the court of public opinion and now is looking for a way to claim victory in his dubious pursuit, and (2) the threat of the judiciary ruling against the elections delay has gotten to him. He seems bent on wasting taxpayers’ money on this task that he is not required to perform. If anything, this matter ought to become the subject of a lawsuit by any Louisiana taxpayer as an equal protection violation – why was not such additional aid rendered to past voters who would be out of their parishes on election day? Is this not discrimination in voting rights?

In part, Lemelle probably was guided by some inferior reasoning by both the plaintiffs and defendant (the state). Inexplicably, the plaintiffs seem to have bought this manufactured notion that the state must notify displaced voters and argued outside of court the state had not done enough in this regard. How that line of reasoning should compel the court to force elections to be held on time is beyond me. In addition, the plaintiffs did not appear to offer substantial proof of any irregularities in the process that would make this a juridical, rather than political, matter.

For its part, the state offered an incredibly lame excuse to explain away its equal protection problem in allowing some parishes to proceed with elections while delaying them in New Orleans. It argued the law compelled Blanco to set election dates in Acadia, Jefferson, and St. Bernard Parishes, Yeah, because she didn’t issue the requisite executive order as she did in the case of New Orleans, so this argument entirely misses the point as to why parishes with small proportions of racial minorities living there prior to September were allowed to have elections set on time, while a place with a majority of racial minorities got delayed. This does, as suggested by the plaintiffs, smack of racism.

The real questions here are the matters of the state creating out of thin air an extra burden on itself (notification) and then using that as a justification to delay elections, as well as its differential impact on certain classes of citizens (racial minorities and previous absentee voters) from an equal protection standpoint. It’s not the general presumption that Blanco’s and Ater’s reasons for delaying elections weren’t “good enough.” Even if he used bad jurisprudence Lemelle blundered his way to the proper decision about letting the process play out. If Ater finds a way to miss the Apr. 29 general election deadline and/or Ater uses state money to fund his quest for notification, then a suit based on the proper objection can be filed.

Government serves best by staying out of rebuilding New Orleans

In the U.S., and even in Louisiana to a great extent, there seems to be a great sentiment to allow “democracy” to prevail in governing. Keeping that concept in mind and expanding beyond the parochial thinking and agendas currently articulated will serve the rebuilding efforts of New Orleans well.

As the focus of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina shifts from cleaning up to recovery, the plans the myriad of commissions (after all, this is Louisiana and where would be without a lot of duplicative, inefficient government) dealing with the idea of how New Orleans will rebuild fall into three major camps. First, there are those that argue for highly-controlled planning by government; second are those that allow for some free-market input (such as the suggestion that anything be allowed to be rebuilt in certain areas for a year or more, see what happens, and then plan accordingly); and third are pure market solutions, letting building and use occur wherever properly zoned.

Strict planning argues that government should prevent private sector building in certain areas of the city, so not only that people stay out of potential harm’s way from future storms, but, with now somewhat of a blank slate, that the city can structure itself geographically and demographically to encourage economic growth. It argues that to let the individual make too many decisions in rebuilding would create alternating islands of activity and blight where the latter kind would prevent the former from prospering and raise the cost of services to government.

But this view ignores the central, salient fact that advocates of government planning never properly grasp, that, just as government cannot tax its way to economic prosperity, neither can it plan its way to the same end. Simply, the aggregate of individuals, separately making decisions, produce superior collective decisions than any group which attempts to do the same (F.A. Hayek’s “catallaxy”). This is because no institution is privileged to all of the information and to the valuations to individuals of the various scenarios involved.

Thus, optimally the pure market solution is the best for New Orleans’ rebuilding. Inevitably, coercive planning will produce suboptimal decisions and the city will not live up to its potential. This does not mean that government’s role must be absolutely minimalist (along the lines of Robert Nozick’s “nightwatchman” state) but rather can offer a few infrastructural incentives to encourage individuals to decide in a certain manner (such as the building of a light rail system in the hopes that development will occur around certain areas). However, this would preclude schemes such as venture capitalist operations funded by tax dollars to attract certain interests (disasters of small kinds presently unfolding in both Shreveport and Bossier City).

Rebuilding New Orleans presents a unique opportunity. The most rapid economic development and most dynamic rebuilding will come not by heavy government involvement in its decision-making, but by precisely the opposite. The new New Orleans could become a showcase for how not to involve government by the creation of a catallactic order. Ironically, a “favorable” confluence of events – widespread destruction of the old order, available federal dollars, desperation for optimal solutions – has put the city and state on the cusp of something truly (and, in some ways sadly given the obvious nature of the solution) revolutionary.

Those involved in this enterprise in government must resist calls for all but the most minimal government participation in land-use choices. If individuals choose in some areas to rebuild and few others do, presently they will see their decisions as sub-optimal and will abandon the area. Local government can hasten that by reminding them of the risk and that, given the area’s sparse population, they should not expect much in the way of services. If worst comes to worst, New Orleans simply could de-annex those areas.

Together, others will decide through the democracy of the marketplace rather than by artificial, less-informed decisions of government, how the reborn New Orleans will look. Government planning will not reconstruct New Orleans well; it just needs to create the conditions by which they can make these choices, then to stay out of the way.

Bossier Parish's best government in northwest Louisiana

Despite sitting on a pile of money, despite having made bad economic development decisions, despite alternative ways of dealing with the problem of using gambling revenues besides jacking up fees on Bossier City residents, its City Council voted to do precisely that for 2006.

Irony abounded in it all. You had a Republican mayor, Lo Walker, recommending this course of action and almost all Republicans on the council – David Montgomery, Tim Larkin, and Scott Irwin – going along with taking more money out of the peoples’ pockets (more predictably Democrats Don Williams and James Rogers would). Yet two of the less likely individuals to be the ones to vote against it, independent Jeff Darby (perhaps because his constituents, who have a higher percentage of lower-income indivudals among them, would get hardest hit) and Republican David Jones (less likely because of his consistent pro-big government spending record), did not vote for it. But two voices for sanity were not enough to carry the day.

But along with this money grab, in a bizarre effort to show that the city somehow was fiscally responsible, the Council also decided not to fund 14 new hires, many in public safety. So it comes back to this, still again: the city will give away parking garages worth over $21 million with little or fiscal no return from it, yet won’t pony up $485,000 for these positions which would improve public safety. (And, don’t forget, the $56.5 million CenturyTel Center lost a little less than that amount this year.)

Still, whatever follies have been committed by Bossier City are overshadowed by those occurring next door. So maybe Bossier City spent $78 million on “economic development” schemes which return basically nothing and haven’t produced any development, but at least it wasn’t twice that amount, didn’t add onto a mountain of debt to do so, and, on the aggregate, probably won’t lose much money.

This dishonorable situation of course goes to Shreveport’s Mayor Keith Hightower and the Democrats on its City Council in their decisions to build a convention center and (in this instance totally on their own) a publicly-owned hotel to go along with it. And although Bossier City’s budget over the past several years has shown mild growth past the rate of inflation, Shreveport’s rate of increase has left it in the dust.

As work begins on Shreveport’s 2006 budget, it looks to weigh in at $339 million – a 134 percent increase since Hightower took office while the Consumer Price Index rose just 22 percent over the same period. Unless you own certain meter-reading companies, owe money for revitalized real estate, or are middlemen in waste-handling deals, it’s impossible to argue that in the past seven years that the city has provided a double-and-a-third more services to you and/or performed these services that much better. But, it is going to make Shreveport residents and consumers pay for it anyway.

Perhaps Bossier City should have saved its $78 million to reduce its absconding of people’s money. But this is nothing compared to Shreveport with almost a billion dollars in debt and a backlog of infrastructural improvements in the hundreds of millions. Even if Bossier City just jacked up sewerage rates by a third, Shreveport is readying to finally jack up its water rates by about 50 percent, on top of its mountain of debt and infrastructure needs.

However, lest Bossier City residents feel too much better by this “grass-isn’t-greener” comparison, here’s one that will bring them back to earth: not only is Bossier Parish not taking more from its citizens, in 2006 it will give out salary raises and actually cut its budget by 24 percent! Of course, most of this is as a result of dramatically lower capital expenditures since major projects such as the parish courthouse addition and new jail will be finished and it will forgo budgeting with the approximately $2 million it could expect from the state. While this would delay some projects it would create little inconvenience and, if the state does come through with the usual funds, these projects could be tackled immediately. Most importantly, there are no fee hikes involved here.

It’s refreshing to see at least one area government that doesn’t go out building monuments to itself in the mistaken belief that government, not the private sector, creates economic development, or, as in the case of Caddo Parish, would rather refuse changing its spending priorities in order to squeeze more from the taxpayers (in this case, for juvenile justice operations). For these reasons, just as in 2004, Bossier Parish’s government is 2005’s best area government.

Landrieu aside, Democrats deny Louisiana restoration funds

Louisiana’s Christmas stocking arrived just half-full when the U.S. Senate played Scrooge because of 7,000 square miles of desolate wasteland permanently inhabited almost exclusively by insects the lack of development of which causes gas prices to go higher.

In order to get relief for the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the Senate was forced to kowtow to the whims of mostly Democrats and remove language that would permit oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling would cause no real environmental problems and could reduce somewhat America’s need to import energy.

Sen. Mary Landrieu appropriately stepped up to the plate with three other Democrats to buck he party leadership on this, but two Republican defectors doomed chances of cloture of a filibuster to stop the relief provision with the ANWR provision. After some caucusing, as they typically have done even in the majority Republicans blinked and removed the item to gain passage.

But that also meant they had to remove $6 billion of revenues that would have gone to Louisiana that would have come from ANWR exploration to fight coastal erosion. This demonstrates the lack of seriousness that Democrats have concerning the environment – they’d rather delay efforts to environmentally improve millions of square miles with thousands of inhabitants than to allow environmentally-safe activities on a small patch of unpopulated land in the middle of nowhere.

To understand such bizarre behavior, we must note that Democrats really do not care about the environment (although neither is it indicated by supporting the prohibiting ANWR activities) but use it only as a stalking horse for anti-free enterprise sentiments. By arguing with next to no real proof that man’s economic activities meaningfully despoil the environment, they seek to halt or have government regulate highly those activities. It’s a way to diminish the liberating power of markets, the greatest guarantors of human rights and progress, and instead to try to capture that power to use to control the lives of others.

As Louisiana’s coastlines recede, its citizens need to remember this during elections about candidates who call themselves Democrats, that it is Democrats’ pursuit of an obnoxious liberalism which is preventing the stopping of this erosion – but also that this is one facet of their destructive ideology that Landrieu does not appear to share.

Ater keeps proving he's not serious about timely elections

Secretary of State Al Ater has given Louisiana yet another demonstration that he remains unserious about trying to follow the letter and spirit of the law in performing his electoral duties.

Having made largely spurious excuses for not holding New Orleans city elections on time, he’s now falling back on an old one, blaming the Federal Emergency Management Agency for not providing enough information about displaced electors. Ater now wants to file a lawsuit against the federal government to get the information.

But what federal law has been violated here? Such an action would be totally frivolous and masks Ater’s real reason, his insistence that a holdup to having the elections is an inability to contact displaced voters. By continuing to assert this is an issue, he can continue to try to justify putting off the election as long as possible. Since he is rumored to be the next head of the state’s Democrats, Ater possibly wants to delay elections as long as possible because Democrats disproportionately fled New Orleans and the longer elections are put off, the more of them can trickle back in (of those who do return) to the benefit of future Democrat candidates.

By dogmatically sticking to this position, Ater demonstrates that he doesn’t even know how to perform his own job. Nothing in the Louisiana Constitution or its statutes mandates that he must contact voters out of their parishes of residences. RS 18:401.2 clearly says all the state is obligated to do is to notify voters of changed polling places by placing notice at the previous polling place. RS 18:1308A(2)(c) says the secretary of state “shall take all actions reasonably necessary to allow persons residing outside the continental boundaries … to vote … during a period of declared emergency,” but obviously does not make what Ater is contemplating required. RS 18:1306 goes into great detail about how to prepare and deliver early/absentee ballots, but does not mandate that they be solicited as Ater plans.

Surely Ater also knows that the U.S. Department of Justice is not going to consider any lack of information sent out to displaced voters as a voting rights violation. After all, Louisiana never has sent out any information before to voters outside their parishes for absentee/early voting and it never has been considered a violation, so this argument also lacks credibility.

Hopefully, Attorney General Charles Foti (even if connected by marriage to powerful Democrats the Landrieus) will not waste the taxpayers’ dollars with this naked attempt to obstruct elections. As well, hopefully Ater will realize that the people aren’t buying this stuff and that he drops it (or maybe decisions in any of the three lawsuits filed against him for his obstructionism may force this). If not for Louisianans, at least for the federal government’s sake; even an ex-Secretary of State, ex-jailbird realizes that the only voting rights denial the federal government will perceive is Ater’s thwarting the integrity of elections by thumbing his nose at the concept of following election law.