Disingenuous Cassidy completes his disgrace

His explanation, and he, were bogus all along.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy drew an avalanche of criticism concerning his vote to proceed with the Senate trial attendant to (another dubious) impeachment of GOP former Pres. Donald Trump, Cassidy took to social media to attempt a defense of it. He had the raw material to do a credible job; while the case that trying a former officer of the U.S. has merit through a reading of the Constitution and past argumentation during impeachment trials, the case against is stronger. Still, he could have offered a principled defense of his decision that he used reasoned judgment to make the call.

Instead, he mostly rehashed his initial explanation. He said the Democrats who comprised the majority in the House of Representatives managing the trial – the prosecutors, in essence – spoke to an learned case for permissibility of late impeachment, although briefly adding that the sources for this came from Constitutional scholars, including some allied with the Federalist Society which is an organization that promotes interpreting the Constitution through original source materials supplemented by learned extrapolation, often favored by conservatives. By contrast, he said the defense lawyers provided little of the same, which clinched his affirmative vote.

Another failure to justify LA gas tax hike

When somebody starts disgorging any and every argument to buttress his position, you know he’s losing the debate. Recently, Republican state Rep. Jack McFarland exemplified that concerning his putative bill to jack up the gasoline tax at the pump.

Speaking to the media earlier this week, McFarland outlined his conception of the as-yet unfiled bill for the Louisiana Legislature’s 2021 regular session, which would increase the gas tax by 10 cents, then add 2 cents a year until the increase reaches 22 cents. Besides the usual litany that the state has a huge road maintenance backlog – he said $15 billion – and a wish list for new capacity on top of that – he said $13 billion – he tossed in a new wrinkle: that relieving drivers and consumers of this additional money would help the state recover from the negative economic effects of commercial restrictions laid down by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

That statement only goes to show how McFarland misunderstands the nature of this man-caused crisis. When Democrat former Gov. Huey Long suggested something similar, spending more for a massive increase in roads improvement and building that would increase the state’s transportation capacity, and eventually to dovetail under his successor with New Deal demand-stimulative policy pursued by the federal government, that came in response came from a perceived liquidity trap holding back the economy. That is, with an undersupply of investment resources due to adverse equity declines, an oversupply of labor from economic contraction, and low confidence in future business success, the private sector had reduced incentive to engage in capital-intensive economic activities. People preferred to hold onto cash rather than invest because they saw perceived future returns as too close to zero, so they don’t invest in enterprises that create jobs.

Cassidy derelict in thoughtless trial vote

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy isn’t unthoughtful about his view concerning the constitutionality of GOP former Pres. Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. The problem is he is so thoughtless about it.

This week, on a pivotal Senate vote on a motion to scrap this second, and equally as idiotic, impeachment of Trump, along with five other GOP senators Cassidy joined in opposing the move, which contested whether impeachment could occur against a former officer of the United States. The Democrat-led House of Representatives had impeached Trump just prior to his departing office, but the constitutional question remained of whether the Senate could try him after he became a private citizen.

Jurisprudence and legal thinking on the issue produce a mixed picture. Good arguments exist for and against, although the latter has more validity. Proponents have argued that even if removal has disappeared as a rationale for trial, disqualification from future office remains as a means of deterrence for bad behavior in office. However, the Framers of the Constitution gave no indication that the two punishments existed independently of each other, through the record of their debate nor in a reading of The Federalist.

PAR reforms: right ideas, wrong path to these

The best way to sum up (yet) another effort by the interest group Public Affairs Research Council to improve Louisiana’s governance is right ideas, wrong way to get there.

PAR has a long-time obsession with constitutional reform which, as its latest installment demonstrates, isn’t unreasonable. About every decade it cranks out arguments about how this should happen and why that would benefit Louisiana, even as it has varied in approach (such as the utility of a convention or whether a limited one legally may exist and should be pursued). The latest effort, its most extensive ever, started in 2019 with a report on general principles that should guide a constitution in the process of which asserting that Louisiana’s needs more fiscal flexibility, and at the beginning of this month issued the latest that mainly deals with restructure of constitutional funds to acquire that freedom to match better funding with priorities.

Insofar as its basic argument that few of the present 28 dedicated funds protected in the Constitution should stay unchanged, a few more should stay but with proceeds more widely distributable, and the remainder downgraded into statute or thrown into the dumpster, there’s little reason to dissent. However, more interestingly this second part delves into the question of how constitutional change should occur, which expands upon cursory remarks PAR made on the subject almost two decades ago.

LA needs to initiate emergency legal revisions

The Louisiana Legislature needs to take a cue from its counterparts in several states to improve its emergency policy-making.

As the sciences, both of the hard and social kind, continue to confirm that heavy-handed responses to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic don’t do much to limit transmission while foisting burdensome costs to life and liberty, a number of governors before, during, and after revelation of this information didn’t follow the knowledge base. In many cases, states vested insufficient checks on gubernatorial power in use of these emergency powers that led to poor policy-making choices.

Emergency policy-making should be centralized in the executive, for more efficiency and the greater holistic view of the state. At the same time, these full-time executives are distant from the population over which they may have near dictatorial emergency powers, and face greater temptations to make these decisions on political bases, as reactions to the pandemic have illuminated.

Bad times mutate bad bill into better option

The unusual nature of the times may make a bill that should be unacceptable to the Louisiana Legislature in more ordinary days now agreeable.

Such is the case with SB 1 by Republicans state Sen. Barrow Peacock. The bill would divert, starting in fiscal year 2023 and for the following two, respectively four-ninths, seven-ninths, and all of the avails from the 2018 sales tax hike renewal of 0.45 percent to infrastructure spending, directly on projects equally among the state’s nine transportation districts.

We’ve seen this before. After the 2018 increase, in the 2019 and 2020 regular sessions Peacock made basically the same proposal, except portioned over five and four years, respectively. There’s a defensible logic to this: government should treat a temporary tax, no less one propping up government larger than necessary, as a windfall and spend it accordingly on nonrecurring items, with paring an extensive transportation backlog a great place to employ this strategy.

LA needs regular local option gaming votes

Three years later, it’s déjà vu all over again as the now-closed DiamondJacks Casino currently interred in Bossier City looks to bust a move south, which should open debate on Louisiana’s legal approach to gaming.

Back then, its owner wanted to move the sick man of Louisiana’s floating casinos to the banks of the mighty Amite River in Tangipahoa Parish. In 1996, local option elections in 17 parishes assented to riverboat gambling, although the law already restricted the siting of such vessels to venues with existing boats plus a few others. Although Tangipahoa Parish (barely) assented to riverboat presence, the law hadn’t included the Amite. That initial hurdle the Legislature didn’t cross in 2018, and the uprooting withered.

Now it’s back. With DiamondJacks having closed it doors last year, the owner now wants to head to Slidell. The whole idea previously had been having a boat in that neck of the woods would suck in crowds that presently head to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its multiple options, even though the journey would be no shorter for many out to the boondocks. Its current manifestation plays to that capture of gamblers and likely would have greater success, locating the boat more centrally to the gambling population in an area with greater infrastructure.

Bad choices propel NO to more lawlessness

Only one Louisiana city, New Orleans, faced any citizen unrest in 2020. Regrettably, the policy response to that and the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic created self-inflicted wounds that significantly increased the amount of homicides in the city, and have set the stage for more of the same in the future.

While a report for the Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice didn’t include New Orleans data, analyses of these from many other larger American cities noted that “homicides, aggravated assaults, and gun assaults rose significantly beginning in late May and June of 2020.” Observing that homicides surged by 42 percent during the summer and 34 percent during the fall, as well aggravated assaults went up by 15 percent in the summer and 13 percent in the fall of 2020, while gun assaults increased by 15 percent and 16 percent.

Even as warmer months with their longer days often produce more crime, the surge in 2020 was particularly notable in that it spiked in the late spring. As researchers noted, in part this could have come from lockdown policies that discouraged provision of social services and conflict resolution attempts, but these largely had been lifted before the spike.

Biden-Edwards energy agenda destructive to LA

There are governors who see the stupidity and destructiveness in executive orders about energy promulgated by Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and act to mitigate their ill-effects. Then there’s Louisiana Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

In his first week in office, Biden halted energy leasing activity for 60 days on federal lands, both onshore and offshore, calling for review of policy. He could hardly have made it last longer; federal law requires quarterly lease sales. But getting permits to drill is another thing, and although stockpiled permits will permit exploration to continue on federal lands for some time, deliberate slow-walking of that process such as bans like this can hinder production.

About a quarter of all fossil fuel energy production, which grew substantially under Republican former Pres. Donald Trump and thereby allowed the U.S. to become energy-independent for the first time in decades, occurs on federal land. And another Biden executive order dumbs down the process of justifying new regulations, which for decades have required comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, that could expedite regulations on energy production based more on subjective whimsy than objective economic factors. There’s even talk that the Biden Administration would try through regulatory action make the ban permanent, although that remains dubious legally.

Taliaferro challenge shows Perkins weakness

The announcement by Republican Caddo Parish Commissioner Jim Taliaferro that he has thrown his hat into Shreveport’s mayoral ring speaks both to a strategy and the weakness of Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins.

Incumbents don’t need to worry much when a political unknown announces a bid against them even when just under two years out. But it’s another matter entirely, and a bad sign, when an experienced politician declares his intention with the election so far away. Regarding Taliaferro, the seriousness of his challenge comes not so much from his elected position – he’s been on the Commission just over a year, the sum total of his experience in elective office – but that he ran for mayor in 2018 and finished third with over a fifth of the vote.

Taliaferro acted quickly because of the growing perception that Perkins, politically speaking, is a walking corpse. Unknown and unvetted in 2018, he could become a blank slate for the gullible to read into him whatever they wanted. With that illusion gone and his leftist credentials on full display, he has no hope of reconstructing the fusionist coalition that not only powered him to office with a nontrivial portion of Republican votes, but whose presence in his column denied Taliaferro the chance to advance to the runoff.