No reason for LA to privilege renewable energy

The thing is, with very few exceptions journalists don’t know what they don’t know. Throw in the public policy subject least critically analyzed and most distorted in its wider presentation, and you have a recipe for a good bit of nonsense, as exemplified by a recent media story about Louisiana renewable energy policy.

Elevating the potential for disaster is that it comes from a student journalist at Louisiana State University, whose colleague made a bit of a mess with a story last month about changing amounts of voter registrant affiliations in the state. Unfortunately, although admittedly ultimately the writer’s fault for choosing such sources, in this instance the author was handicapped by the ignorance displayed by some chosen to make comments.

The article tried to put into a Louisiana context the efforts by Democrat Pres. Joe Biden to pursue an energy agenda based upon faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Biden has announced he would like to ramp up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions in America by 2030, now proclaiming a goal of around half at present as a palliative to alleged disastrous consequences. But science doesn’t support such a scenario transpiring, and even accelerating the reduction will do little to ameliorate overall temperature gains over the next 80 years. Plus, Biden and any future president stumping for the same will have to convince a skeptical Congress to pass laws and to permit regulations to enforce this.

Edwards comments deny his faith's doctrine

I guess it’s true, from his latest opining about legislation before the Louisiana Legislature: Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards does want to abandon his current post and become ambassador to the Holy See.

Some observers have speculated as such, and now we have evidence to support that. That’s because Edwards has taken a position at odds with his professed Catholic faith, bringing him into alignment with the "Sunday Catholic” who would appoint him, Democrat Pres. Joe Biden.

Earlier this week, Edwards criticized – and implied vetoes if such bills ever came to his desk – measures such as HB 542, HB 575, and SB 156 that would limit sports participation of children and young adults of one sex to competitions for that sex and that would prevent medical interventions designed to change or impede sexual development of children. He hopes “the Legislature will not seek to advance those bills” because “I am really concerned about emotionally fragile people and the idea that the weight of the state would be put behind something that to me is unnecessary and discriminatory and very hurtful for those individuals when there’s not a compelling reason to do it.”

LPSC repeats mistake that may cost ratepayers

Louisianans dodged a bullet on the Windcatcher project. They might not have such luck concerning the junior version.

Last week, Southwestern Electric Power, a subsidiary of American Electric Power which provides electricity in northwest/west/central Louisiana, announced that its Sundance project had come online. This 199 megawatt addition is the opening salvo of the North Central Wind project in Oklahoma that eventually will ramp to 1,485 MW, of which Louisiana will receive as much as 464 MW while SWEPCO and AEP customers in Oklahoma and Arkansas will divvy up the rest.

This comes as part of a SWEPCO strategy to replace coal and gas-fired generation with renewable energy. The utility plans to take several such units offline in Louisiana and Texas over the coming decade, plus a wind farm. It insists that this eventually will have the state’s customers come out ahead, with the maximal cost borne by ratepayers at $624 million but reaping $1.15 billion in savings.

"Elect" Landrieu still woke, still nonsensical

Old boss same as the new boss.

That’s the inescapable conclusion from reading a screed by Democrat former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who was woke before woke became fashionable. Since leaving office in 2018, Landrieu, incapable of winning any electoral office outside of the confines of surreal New Orleans, has drifted into obscurity, lecturing on city management with a special emphasis on race relations to anyone gullible or bored enough to pay attention.

His latest sermon appeared as a CNN opinion piece, stumping for a “truth and healing” panel in America to “examine the systems and institutions that operate at the detriment of Black Americans and other minorities.” It is a jeremiad chock full of ignorance and disingenuity, beginning with that statement.

Chandler pick risks reform agenda success

Incoming Bossier City Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler got his man. In the process, he may have let slip away his agenda’s success.

Chandler surprised political watchers by tapping Bossier Parish School Board member Republican Shane Cheatham to serve as the city’s Chief Administrative Officer when Chandler’s term commences Jul. 1. This will send the City Council’s District 1 voters back to the polls in the fall at least once, for Cheatham soundly defeated incumbent Republican Scott Irwin for that spot in last month’s elections.

Cheatham, along with incoming at-large Republican Councilor Chris Smith, would have served as an ally of Chandler’s on the seven-member body. The Council seldom deviated from initiatives springing from outgoing Republican Mayor Lo Walker over the past 16 years, nor even the previous 16 years to that when Walker served as CAO, with the large majority of its decisions made unanimously across this era of low Council turnover.

Good bill limits critical race theory primacy

This regular legislative session provides an opportunity to prevent a Trojan Horse of racism from insinuating itself into Louisiana education. Legislators, with slight modification, have the instrument in hand to achieve this.

HB 564 by Republican state Rep. Ray Garofalo would prohibit the primary use of “divisive concepts” in student education or staff training in education from kindergarten through graduate school, for any institution that receives any state dollars. It responds to the viral infection of “critical race theory” as it attempts to make a leap from the labs of faddish higher education to the general public.

Critical race theory posits that racism – defined as emanating only from whites against people of all other races (including Hispanics and those of Middle Eastern descent, who technically biologically don’t come from a separate category) – is inseparable from all American institutions that whites have shaped and control. Indeed, according to it the consensus methods of combatting racism such as neutrality in treating individuals as individuals rather as people ineluctably defined by their racial background are racist features of these systems.

Bill could make rogue agency accountable

Republican state Rep. Dodie Horton put her money where her mouth with HB 630 that could result in a severe clipping of the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District’s wings.

Over the past year, the growing notoriety of this special district incorporating the reservoir in its name has prompted state policy-makers to intervene in its controversies. Having run into budgetary difficulties as a result of past bad decisions – which it recently passed on to most Bossier Parish taxpayers by raising their property tax rates, the only parish agency with that power to do so in the latest quadrennial reassessment – the highhanded nature of its board, whose members aren’t elected but selected by various local governments, and board member/Executive Director Robert Berry have continued to flummox citizens.

Berry has come under fire from Republican Atty. Gen Jeff Landry, who launched an ongoing suit to have Berry removed from an office with the claim under law Berry can’t fill these two offices simultaneously. The grievances that Horton – whose district takes in some of the property under the jurisdiction of the District and many parcels where residents get taxed by it – relayed on behalf of constituents fueled Landry’s move.

Speech highlights Edwards' declining relevance

This year’s state of the state address by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards illustrates his continued slide towards irrelevancy, both in the reach of his policy agenda and its messaging and in its increasing distance from reality.

The agenda is unambitious. His disinterest in tossing red meat to the political left while simultaneously pretending real problems don’t exist was best exemplified by not even mentioning, after his humiliation on tort reform for individual vehicle insurance last year, a bill by one his allies designed for show on that account that actually likely would create a less efficient insurance market on the agenda he didn’t mention. Yet his address also didn’t mention other genuine vehicular tort reform issues, such as the growing crisis with commercial insurance.

Leaving out this and other things like sales tax administration reform, protection of children from faddishness, and a bare mention on income tax reform, much of what does appears on it piggybacks onto largely non-controversial items and even the recurring liberal wish list items of dealing with illusory pay inequity between sexes and increasing the minimum wage seem almost perfunctory in their presences. Edwards treated these as such by mentioning them only in passing.

Demand equal treatment as GA; save tax bucks

Quick, before they change their minds! It didn’t seem to work out over laws promoting increased pro-life protections. But maybe this time Hollywood will be serious and take Louisiana taxpayers off the hook … and you can help!

In 2019, Louisiana and other states passed such laws, although not all survived Supreme Court scrutiny of the recent past. Hollywood grumbled about boycotting such states, with Georgia and Louisiana being the two most generous in passing out subsidies to film and television producers, but nothing really came of it.

Almost two years have passed and the same threats have reappeared, this time over Georgia’s changes to strengthen ballot integrity. A handful of industry movers and shakers said they didn’t plan on producing there, but now one who actually had planned on doing so has pulled the plug, citing the new law.

Cost metrics demand pause on justice changes

Contrary to what the state’s public may think, the day of reckoning for Louisiana’s criminal justice policy changes of four years ago is drawing nigh: sold as a way to reduce costs without damaging public safety, those costs sooner rather than later actually look to increase.

These changes, such as reducing sentences, different sentencing, and increased eligibility for release on a periodic (for work release) or permanent basis, adherents such as main sponsor Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards claimed would save money that could be used to pad the state’s budget but mainly for “reinvestment” into strategies that supposedly would reduce the crime rate. While the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic postponed last year’s report on the changes, until then the state estimated cost reductions of $30 million.

However, these early optimistic monetary returns distracted from a looming reality. Unlike all but one other state, Louisiana houses a significant portion of state prisoners in local jails, historically hovering around the 50 percent level. With this a persistent feature of the state’s criminal justice system, parish sheriffs got into the business in a big way, often ambitiously expanding capacity.