CAO battle lost, Cheatham might still win war

This week witnessed another chapter of The Empire vs. Republican Bossier City Mayor Tommy Chandler with a minor defeat for the latter, but from that might bring a much bigger win for reform in the future.

Having originally selected Republican Shane Cheatham as his chief administrative officer, who knocked off long-time Republican incumbent City Councilor Scott Irwin this spring that also saw Chandler defeat four-time incumbent Republican Lo Walker, that nomination never even came to a vote. With Cheatham having resigned his School Board seat and turned down the council win, Council graybeards no party Jeff Darby, Republican Jeff Free, the GOP’s David Montgomery, and Democrat Bubba Williams conspired with newcomer and theirs and Walker’s ally Republican Vince Maggio to put Irwin back in temporarily. Then they didn’t provide a second to a motion by GOP newcomer Chris Smith – Chandler’s only friend on the Council so far – to appoint Cheatham.

It was a rookie/outsider mistake to give away a sure Council supporter in this fashion by Chandler asking and Cheatham accepting, and Chandler hung in with his choice for a couple of months. But he finally had to bow to the reality of the intractability of Council Pres. Williams, who publicly gave vague reasons why he wouldn’t support Cheatham, and the other graybeards plus new bootlicker Maggio, and thus nominated Amanda Nottingham for the post.

Cassidy increasingly alienated from Louisianans

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy continues to give a graphic representation of what happens when you stay in Washington too long.

It seems incredible to think that the Cassidy of a year ago running for reelection and the one on display today are the same person. Then, Cassidy was a GOP Pres. Donald Trump and Senate party loyalist, voting with Trump about 89 percent of the time (higher than predicted by a model used by one political forecasting and commentary website), rated about 83 on the American Conservative Union’s scorecard, and enthusiastically backed party positions such as the ascension of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the campaign he sounded all the right conservative themes and cruised to victory.

However, within that ACU rating should have signaled a warning to conservatives. It notes his weakest area was on budget and fiscal policy, where according to it he voted more often for liberal policies. And that became starker not long after Cassidy concluded that Trump had lost his reelection attempt and he became an early backer of an unnecessary spending bill just as his first term ended.

Landry tragedy review brings needed neutrality

Fortunately, Hurricane Ida cost only a few Louisianans their lives. Unfortunately, the circumstances behind most of these deaths leaves uncomfortable as yet unanswered questions that could lead to the Governor’s Mansion.

During the storm, six nursing home clients died in a warehouse in Independence. Seven facilities in the southeastern part of the state, operated by Baton Rouge businessman Bob Dean, in advance of Ida disgorged over 800 clients into the building also owned by Dean. That site had met with Department of Health approval; all group homes in the state (as well as individuals served in waiver programs) must have on file an approved evacuation plan. In fact, LDH reviewed and reaffirmed that plan prior to the evacuations.

However, LDH now claims the facilities didn’t follow the plan. And according to Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, employees there turned away LDH representatives wishing to survey the place – an action that prompted Landry to open an investigation of the entire operation.

Politics explains media's LA disaster coverage

Sixteen years to the day Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Hurricane Ida did the same. But over a week later, political reaction to it has been vastly different because of political agendas.

The storms differed only in strength and location. Ida was the stronger of the two and landed west of New Orleans, while Katrina made landfall to the city’s east. Potentially, this made Ida mor destructive not only because of its strength, but because a hurricane’s rotation in this part of the world makes its northeastern quadrant the most damaging.

Ida did plenty of damage, tearing through a number of communities with extensive damage or complete destruction of most structures that, at this point, looks to take months for life to get back anywhere close to normal for affected individuals. Katrina caused this on a much lesser scale, but infamously supplied s storm surge that knocked out some area levees, with most of the ensuing flooding affecting New Orleans (and Jefferson Parish) and claiming far more lives.

LA crypto mining: less methane, more wealth

Atypically, the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards has a chance to get something right, and it has to do with cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin and the many other varieties of this currency, which comes into being through computer algorithms and has no physical manifestation, slowly but surely are gaining acceptance as stores of value for commercial transactions. Their creation processes involve performing extensive calculations on computers, typically barebones setups linked by the dozens if not hundreds or even thousands.

This generates energy demands in two ways: providing the electricity to run the computers and to cool them as the process generates tremendous heat. In fact, mining a typical unit of bitcoin (trading currently around $50,000) for one rig (exclusive of cooling) takes the equivalent 53 days of power for the average US household, or at the average U.S. price per kilowatt about $200.

LA shouldn't duplicate laudable TX law

It was brilliant construction and strategy, but there’s no reason for the Louisiana Legislature to rush to special session, or even wait and do it during the 2022 regular session, to implement a potentially life-saving law like the Texas Heartbeat Act.

The law prevents, except for cases of medical emergency, abortion of a fetus with a detectable heartbeat, often in as few as six weeks after gestation. However, state officials can’t enforce it. Instead, in state court any private citizen may engage in a civil action against an offending abortion provider, with damages of at least $10,000 an incident plus fees against those aiding and abetting in the act, but not against the female undergoing termination of the human life inside her.

Passage of the law basically set a trap for anti-life special interests. Because the matter goes to state court, it allows for a much broader assignment of standing. And as it doesn’t involve the state, no government officials may be enjoined in executing the law. Essentially, it makes abortion mills police themselves. And when the law took effect Sep. 1, that’s what those in Texas did by turning away clients.

Shape policy for endemic, not pandemic, virus

To understand the uselessness of the virtue signaling made by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards by the extension of his face covering mandate now in effect, it is necessary to comprehend his entirely mistaken conception, widely shared on the political left, of the course run by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

At an instrumental level, policy studies tell us mask mandates do little to slow the spread of this virus relative to their absence (and much evidence suggests these overall hurt children, who have a greater chance of dying through a lightning strike sometime in their lives than from a virus in their childhood that has an infection fatality rate for the population hardly higher than seasonal influenza). The only thing that does work to a significant degree are economic and social lockdowns, which Edwards is unwilling to do because of the severe public reaction that inevitably would occur.

And the reason this reaction would happen is because, unlike Edwards and many of his leftist friends in power, the public has grasped or is willing to admit the reality why at the theoretical level such policies do more harm to society and the polity than good. This is because such draconian policies misalign with the realities of the present situation.

Politics impedes B.R. refund on Sterling case

Hammered by Hurricane Ida, Baton Rouge government sure could use the millions of dollars it designated for, among others, an indicted child rapist. At least that’s what the federal government’s handling of the Capitol Police fatal shooting of an unarmed protester would indicate.

In 2016, former Metro officer Blane Salamoni shot to death Alton Sterling while the latter struggled against an attempted arrest by the former and another officer. Sterling possessed drugs, had ingested some, and appeared to be reaching for a concealed handgun, which triggered the decision to fire.

Numerous reviews, inside and outside of public safety agencies, determined that while Salamoni deployed tactics questionably that likely served to escalate rather than defuse the situation, his action to fire was reasonable. Nonetheless, the department pressured him successfully to resign, and Sterling relatives sued Baton Rouge for wrongful death, claiming improper training of the officers involved and too much racism tolerated in the department – the officers involved were white and Sterling was black – lead to that outcome.

Ida shows N.O. stuck on stupid with energy

Fortunately, Hurricane Ida largely spared New Orleans from destructiveness of life and property. Unfortunately, New Orleans didn’t save itself from its own politicians’ stupidity in the aftermath.

The entire city plunged into the dark after the storm made landfall, with the only power coming from generators. This included Sewerage and Water Board pumps needed to keep flooding at bay. While power likely will become available within the next few days for the majority of the city, some areas, mostly outside the parish, could take much longer.

The southeastern area of the state, through which Ida ripped, saw about a million customers lose power. Transmission line failure caused this, with Orleans comprising the plurality of people affected. Yet Orleans is exceptionally vulnerable to this because of deliberate policy decisions made by politicians chasing an unnecessary and expensive goal.

Latest LA tragedy exploited to back nonsense

Hurricane Ida has struck Louisiana, plowing inland. Hopefully no deaths or injuries will occur, but property damage will be great. And insult added to injury when catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hucksters try to use the event to popularize their unscientific, destructive agenda.

These acolytes started the drumbeat prior to landfall, and undoubtedly will continue it for the indeterminate future. The hot air they project goes something like this: greenhouse gas emission will hike temperatures, all in the air, land, and oceans, to provide increased fuel for more hurricanes to form, to allow these to strengthen more, and to make them endure longer.

The only problem with this line of reasoning is the scientific evidence doesn’t back it up. Were the above scenarios to play out, this means hurricane data could serve as indicators that increased emissions create CAGW. Setting aside that gas increases seem to show little relationship to temperature changes (and more to other natural phenomena, such as solar activity), the hurricane hypotheses rest upon measurable and significant temperature increases exclusive and unaltered by other natural phenomena, as well as records of storm frequency and intensity.