Louisiana Dem. Governor John Bel Edwards Wins Reelection

In another blow to Donald Trump's fantasy that he can invincibly mobilize his toxic base to defeat Democrats merely by tweeting and holding rallies,Democrat John Bel Edwards won reelection yesterday in Louisiana.  Among popular measures Edwards had oversee during his first term were Medicaid expansion and criminal justice reforms, plus passage of a sales tax to address the budget disaster left by his Republican predecessor, Bobby Jindal who, like GOP extremist Sam Brownback in Kansas proved GOP tax cut policies are disastrous.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Edwards' win and the erosion of governorships held by Republicans during Trump's time in office.  Here are story excerpts:

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was elected to a second term on Saturday, overcoming opposition from President Trump and an increasingly polarized state electorate to hand Democrats their second major victory in a governor’s race over the past two weeks.

Edwards, 53, was running against Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, 70, in a runoff election after neither candidate won an outright majority of votes last month.

Edwards’s victory is another setback for Trump, who traveled to Louisiana twice over the past month to campaign for Rispone and sent a series of tweets urging Republicans to vote. [Trump's] The president’s popularity in the South has failed to prop up GOP candidates in two of the three states that held gubernatorial elections this year, allowing Democrats to gain governorships for the third consecutive year.

In Kentucky, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear unseated Republican Gov. Matt Bevin this month. In January, 24 of the nation’s governors will be Democrats, up from 15 at the end 2017.

The Louisiana election caps off a grueling campaign in which Edwards, a relatively conservative Democrat, worked to prove his party could still lead a state that has continued to drift to the right in the Trump era.

[Trump] The president made another pitch for Rispone on Saturday.  “Louisiana, 3 hours left, get out and Vote for @EddieRispone for Governor,” he tweeted. “Lower taxes and much more!”

But Edwards, who was minority leader in Louisiana’s House of Representatives before being elected governor in 2015, has remained relatively popular throughout his term and was optimistic his reelection bid could withstand the head winds of national politics, including the ongoing drama in Washington over the impeachment inquiry.

“We need to keep moving forward, and we can’t take a chance of going back,” Edwards said at a campaign event in New Orleans this past week.

After he succeeded Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Edwards worked with a Republican legislature to balance the budget, imposing a sales tax increase. He also successfully fought to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which extended coverage to nearly a half-million residents. The governor also pushed to hike teacher pay while working to drive down the state’s unemployment rate to the lowest level in more than a decade.

One of Edwards’s most high-profile accomplishments has been legislation reworking the criminal justice system in a state that had one of the nation’s highest and most racially unbalanced incarceration rates. The bipartisan legislation, which reduced sentences for some drug crimes and made it easier for some inmates to seek parole, could cut the state’s prison population by 10 percent over a decade, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Democrats have made a net gain in governorships for the third consecutive year. The party picked up seven governorships last year in the 2018 midterm elections, including winning several Midwestern states that Trump carried in 2016.

Democrats also gained a governorship in 2017, when Gov. Phil Murphy (D) replaced Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey in the same year that Virginia voters elected Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to replace former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe.

Nov. 6, 2018 May Determine the Survival of Coastal Louisiana and Virginia

Virginia's Cedar Island that is disappearing.

Red depicts areas of Louisiana being lost to sea level rise.

A column in the New Orleans Times-Picayune dove tails with my earlier post about the declining or stagnating values of waterfront homes in Tidewater Virginia.  While focused on the Mississippi delta in Louisiana the same concerns apply to portions of the Atlantic coast of Virginia's Eastern Shore that are literally disappearing as well as the coastline all around the Chesapeake Bay.  After New Orleans, Norfolk is the second most threatened major US city at risk from rising sea levels.  As the column notes, elections do indeed have consequences and if a climate change denying Republican majority remains in Congress after the 2018 midterm elections, many property owners will see increasing threats to the property and rising flood insurance rates as the Trump/Pence regime continues to dismantle environmental regulations, allows increasingly polluted water and air, and does nothing to address climate change and the threat it poses to millions of Americans living in coastal regions. The thrust of the column is that it is utter crucial that individuals be elected to Congress who are living in objective reality and who not only recognize the threat but will push for legislation to address it.  One can readily substitute names like Scott Taylor, Rob Witman, David Brat and other Republican members of Virginia's Congressional delegation for those in the column because they all are supportive of the same climate change denying GOP agenda.  Here are column excerpts:

The truism that elections have consequences will never be more accurate than this Nov. 6 when residents living in the congressional districts of U.S. Reps. Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins and Garret Graves go to the polls.

This includes all or parts of Jefferson, St. Bernard, Orleans, St. Tammany, Plaquemines, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. James, Vermillion, St. Mary’s, Cameron and Calcasieu parishes. In other words, the entire sinking, crumbling, drowning Louisiana coastal zone.

A vote for any of these congressmen by anyone living in those parishes is a vote virtually guaranteeing your flood risk and insurance will be rapidly climbing, your home values will be dropping, local businesses will be relocating, new businesses will not be coming, the state’s ambitious coastal master plan will be dramatically scaled back – and your grandchildren will have to find someplace else to live.

Here’s why.

Last week the world’s authority on climate change issued a new report saying greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 40 percent in the next 10 years or the planet will be locked into some of the worst impacts of warming before the end of the century – and that includes a dramatic acceleration in sea level rise that will swamp our coast.

The state’s own map of this disaster (page 74 of the 2017 plan), shows most of everything below Interstate 10 from Lake Charles to Slidell under water by 2067 – about the time the next generation hopes to retire. And this happens even if the $92 billion coastal plan is funded and finished.

But Scalise, Graves and Higgins have consistently opposed climate regulations, and pledge to continue to do so.  In what amounts to a case of criminal arrogance, these politicians — none of whom has a science degree — are asking you to believe they know more about climate science than the experts.

Indeed, Scalise recently co-authored a House resolution pledging to oppose any form of carbon pricing — which even emission emitters like Exxon Mobil now support. Scalise said such regulations "would be detrimental to American families and businesses.”

He clearly wasn’t thinking about the American families and businesses in the parishes of his district, which includes all or parts of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Lafourche and Terrebonne. If you superimpose a map of Scalise’s 1st Congressional District over what Louisiana says will be left in that area without emissions, Scalise could be out of a job.

These are the parishes that are already witnessing forced migrations and plummeting real estate values, whose highways now flood not just during storms but on stiff southerly winds. These are the parishes desperately seeking funding for levees, floodwalls and elevated highways to help them cope with the disaster they know is already underway.

But Scalise, Graves and Higgins don’t want to vote for the only sure way the world knows to reduce those impacts. These politicians — heavily supported by emitters of these emissions — say it would cost some industries too much money and cost some people their jobs. But how many jobs will be left when the area is under water?

Perhaps Scalise, Higgins and Graves are just parroting the leader of their party, President Donald Trump — another politician without any science credits. He threw cold water on the report, saying he doubted the science because he believes some scientists have political agendas (unlike politicians like him.)

This is the president man who takes the word of murdering autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and China’s Xi Jinping — but calls into question the ethics of Louisiana’s coastal scientists.

So, yes, if you live on Louisiana’s coast and vote for any of these three on Nov. 6, you’re likely to have consequences — some very wet ones.

Ditto for Virginians living on the coast who vote for any Republicans on November 6, 2018. 

America Still Hasn’t Learned the Lessons of Katrina

With Hurricane Harvey still ravaging Texas, a piece in Politico looks at the continuing problem plaguing America - a failure to take proactive actions to avert damage from hurricanes and rising sea levels.  Among the obstacles?  Republicans - with a few exceptions - who refuse to admit the reality of climate change and sea level rise; a fossilized Army Corps of Engineers; a pork barrel approach to funding appropriations; and a focus on disaster response rather than averting disasters.  Here in Hampton Roads, Virginia, cities like Norfolk are trying to forge onward alone (Miami-Dade County in Florida is doing likewise as is New York City after Hurricane Sandy) and has even hired Dutch consultants to devise ways to deal with sea level rise and the flooding goes with it.  Virginia Republicans meanwhile will not use the term sea level rise and instead refer to repetitive flooding, ignore the cause of the flooding.  As the piece notes, there are some bright spots, but overall little has been learned since Hurricane Katrina a dozen years ago.  Here are highlights:

Washington’s systems for protecting communities against weather disasters haven’t gotten better since that 2005 disaster, and in many ways may be worse. The State of Louisiana wasn't supposed to shoulder the Caminada Headland project itself: Rebuilding the island was originally the job of the Army Corps of Engineers, the 215-year-old entity charged with building and maintaining our country’s ports, harbors, locks, dams, levees and ecosystem restoration projects. Today, the agency is the single most important agency in coastal America's battle against rising seas, at the center of every major water-resources project in the country, either as builder or permitter. But the state of Louisiana, exasperated by federal delays and increasingly worried that the next big storm could just wipe out the port, eventually fronted the money and pumped the sand on its own. Today, despite years and millions of federal dollars poured into studying the Caminada Headland project and neighboring islands slated for restoration, the Corps has yet to push a dime toward construction.

Graves compares his experience with the Corps to that of a “battered ex-spouse”: “I feel like I’ve been lied to, cheated, kicked in the teeth over and over and over again.”

The sclerotic Army Corps of Engineers is the most visible and frustrating symptom of what many officials have come to see as the country’s backwards approach to disaster policy. From the way Congress appropriates money to the specific rebuilding efforts that federal agencies encourage, national policies almost uniformly look backwards, to the last storm, rather than ahead to the next. And the scale of the potential damage has caused agencies to become more risk-averse in ways that can obstruct, rather than help, local communities’ attempts to protect themselves. The Army Corps, for example, requires Louisiana to rebuild a full suite of five islands before it can reclaim any of the money it spent on the one headland—and is currently insisting it will take another half-decade simply to review an innovative wetlands restoration project the state has been working on for more than a decade and views as the linchpin of its coastal efforts. Meanwhile, new design standards inspired by Katrina have made levee projects wildly unaffordable.

As the effects of climate change play out, the risks posed by storms like Katrina and Harvey only stand to get worse. A not-yet-final draft of National Climate Assessment, produced by scientists across 13 federal agencies, predicts that global sea levels will likely rise between half a foot and 1.2 feet by 2050, and between one and four feet by the end of the century. In areas like the Northeast and the Gulf of Mexico, relative sea-level rise will happen much faster, researchers say. Coastal Louisiana is currently losing a football field’s worth of wetlands every 90 minutes, making it a harbinger for the crises that coastal communities around the country are expected to face.

Preparing for the looming disasters will require nimbleness, innovation, a willingness to take calculated risks and, as Louisiana has learned, respect for natural processes—all qualities that have been bred out of the Army Corps, and don’t get much consideration in federal policy. The agency molded itself around the earmark system, catering to the pet projects of individual lawmakers and then drawing them out as long as possible to keep the money flowing. Congress, too, learned to treat the Corps as a pork barrel: though Washington officially did away with earmarks a decade ago, lawmakers remain focused first and foremost on their local projects, pushing legislative language that serves their narrow ends without an eye to the mountain of red tape they are adding to the system as a whole.

And although preventing damage is widely considered to be cheaper than mopping up after the fact, congressional accounting creates incentives to spend money exactly the opposite way: Disaster relief bills are generally considered emergency spending, and thus not counted towards the federal deficit, while proactive investment in planning and protection must be funded through the normal budget cycle, which makes it look like cuttable federal spending at budget time.

Hurricane Katrina provided the real wakeup call, though: Residents saw firsthand that without the wetlands to help absorb their power, winds and waves pounded their communities with ferocious strength. In the wake of the storm, the Louisiana legislature passed major reforms aimed at professionalizing the state’s levee boards and coastal protection efforts. It embraced the concept of “multiple lines of defense”—a modern understanding of interlocking coastal systems, in which barrier islands and marshes play a role along with manmade structures like levees and pumping stations to shield communities from storms.

Today, Louisiana’s approach is seen as a model for states facing looming coastal crises, and its experts regularly host visitors from around the world seeking to learn from its resiliency efforts. Indeed, Louisiana is fostering this reputation, with a $60 million new “water campus” under construction in Baton Rouge, its flagship research center, the Water Institute of the Gulf, to be housed in a sleek, glass-encased building that straddles the levee and floats out over the main channel of the Mississippi River. But all this hard-won expertise has come with a side effect: A growing realization that the federal government—whose funding and know-how have been key to all projects of this scale—was far more of an obstacle than an ally. And the biggest frustration was with the Army Corps.

Hurricane Katrina showed that severe storms could be far harsher than previously thought, so the Corps adopted new mandates for federal levees to be built significantly bigger and stronger—a change that made sense in theory but instantly multiplied the price tag on projects to the point they became effectively impossible. One project, a massive levee system designed to protect highly vulnerable bayou communities and a major oil and gas hub in Terrebonne Parish, was approved by Congress at $887 million in 2007, just weeks before the new standards came out. When the post-Katrina standards were applied to it, the price tag suddenly multiplied nearly twelvefold, to $10.3 billion. . . . . they had virtually no shot of ever seeing it built.

[T]here’s a much bigger problem that the country is facing. And in this sense, the Corps—strangled in red tape as it may be—is no more than a tool of a larger system. Across government, virtually the entire philosophy of disaster relief is to react after disaster strikes rather than help communities and residents to prepare in advance. This leaves Congress funding billions in disaster aid when an investment of millions ahead of time could have warded off the worst. And the problem is only likely to grow as a warmer climate brings more frequent and severe hurricanes, floods and droughts.

The rare Republican who acknowledges the scientific consensus around climate change, Graves does not shrink from the future projections. He knows them first-hand—and sees them as a tool for solidly conservative fiscal planning rather than fanning environmentalist fears. “Statistically, we can prove that we have increased vulnerability. We’re spending more on coastal storms, and some of these areas are being inundated with increased frequency,” he says. “So, call it what you want, there’s an adaptation issue here that needs to be addressed—and it’s more fiscally conservative to step in and be proactive on some of these investments than it is to continue to rebuild after they’ve flooded and continue to be reactive.”

Hurricane Harvey is certain to teach this lesson again, in some form. With the storm expected to wreak billions of dollars in damage, there will likely be another of round of disaster aid, perhaps some more legislation directing the Corps to investigate the problem. But until the system fundamentally changes, it will simply be a waiting game, until the next, even stronger storm hits.

KKK Issues Plea for Members to Kill Gay People

Last week in the aftermath of the Chralottesville and again last night, Der  Trumpenführer, has given license to hate-filled, far right extremists to direct violence against those who oppose their agenda - and those they simply dislike. And the forces of hatred are feeling emboldened to call for violence.  A case in point: the Louisiana chapter of the group have distributed fliers urging people to join their group and slaughter gay people in an effort to “save our land, join the Klan, white power.”  This is ultimately what "friends" who voted for Trump have supported.  One has to wonder when someone will literally be murdered as a result.  Pink News looks at the frightening mindset in Louisiana.  Here are excerpts:

The Ku Klux Klan is taking aim at the LGBT community – who they believe should be killed in order to end the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Leaders from the Louisiana chapter of the group have distributed fliers urging people to join their group and slaughter gay people in an effort to “save our land, join the Klan, white power.”

“Stop Aids: Support Gay Bashing,” one of the flyers read. “Homosexual men and their sexual acts are disgusting and inhuman.” “Our race is our nation,” reads another.

The fliers are signed “Loyal White Knights of the KKK” and include a website address and phone number to call for those interested in joining the genocide.

WSBTV reports the Newton County Sheriff Office has launched an investigation, following several complaints by residents who found the flyers placed on their driveways and lawns.

Bessemer Deputy Police Chief Mike Roper told AL.com the flyers were “very offensive”.  Another woman who asked not to be identified told the news station that she is “extremely hurt by” the fliers.  “As a member of the gay community,” she said, “I think it shows the ignorance of society still.”

The FBI said it is investigating the issue.

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Hillary if the Only Choice for President

The parade of major news papers in deep red states endorsing Hillary Clinton (some of which have almost never endorsed a Democrat) continues.   Now, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the largest paper in in Louisiana has endorsed Hillary Clinton as "the only choice for president" despite her flaws.  The other side of this coin is that no major newspaper - that is correct, none - has endorsed Donald Trump.  Here are highlights from the Times-Picayune endorsement:

The president of the United States has a sacred obligation to the people of this nation: to carry the torch for our ideals. The promise of America is that your class, race, religion or gender won't limit your opportunities. Every president should be committed first and foremost to that principle. If not, how can we claim to lead the free world?

Our next president will inherit an economy that has yet to fully recover from the 2008 recession. Jobs have grown over the past eight years, but wages for many Americans are significantly lower than they were pre-recession. More people have health care today, but the costs are rising. There is a sense for many that their lives are not on stable financial ground.

In an election that has become more about "least dangerous" than "most inspiring," which candidate is better qualified to confront the complex challenges facing us? Our choice is Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton has a long record of public service. She proved her dedication to equality when she traveled to south Alabama as a law student in 1972 to uncover government-sanctioned racial discrimination at private schools.

When her husband Bill Clinton was president of the United States, she worked to get Congress to provide health care services for millions of poor children. As a U.S. senator representing New York, she helped secure $21 billion from the federal government to help New York rebuild after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Louisianians certainly can understand how important that was to her constituents.

As secretary of state for President Barack Obama, she negotiated a ceasefire in Gaza and got China, Russia and the European Union to agree to sanctions against Iran. She also made women's rights across the world a priority.

Mrs. Clinton is a seriously flawed candidate. Many voters don't trust her, and with good reason. . . . . But Mrs. Clinton's failings can't compare, in scale or in number, to Republican nominee Donald Trump's.

Mr. Trump has proved himself wholly unsuited to be president. He has spent this campaign denigrating women, Muslims, Mexicans, refugees, disabled people, the parents of a soldier who died in Iraq and essentially anyone who questioned him. He has suggested that an African-American protester at one of his rallies should be "roughed up," made gross generalizations suggesting that all black people live in poor, violent neighborhoods, expressed support for racial profiling by police. And he threatened in the last debate to jail his political rival if elected.

Mr. Trump's go-to move is the insult. His combative style would be disastrous on the world stage, where poorly chosen words can incite violence and cost lives. His affection for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and use of Russian propaganda to attack Mrs. Clinton are a frightening signal of what his approach to foreign policy would be.

The recording that surfaced Oct. 8 of Mr. Trump bragging about forcing himself on women and grabbing them between the legs is abhorrent. His characterization of the episode as mere "locker room talk" bespoke a pathological inability to acknowledge, and repair, his mistakes.

Also troubling is Mr. Trump's refusal to release his tax returns, which is unprecedented in recent political history. What is he hiding?

Although he routinely attacks Mrs. Clinton as a "Washington insider," her experience in and around government is clearly an asset. She is a policy wonk with a detailed vision of what she wants to do and a unique understanding – as a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state – of how to achieve it. 

As for which candidate is better for Louisiana, there is no contest. Mrs. Clinton is committed to investments in infrastructure, including ports, that would benefit our state. She also wants to offer preschool to every 4-year-old, something that fits Louisiana's goal of expanding and improving the quality of early childhood education.

But for New Orleanians, perhaps the most compelling contrast between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton is his intolerance and her inclusiveness. New Orleans has diversity in its DNA. A president who routinely degrades African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and women could not, and would not, represent us.

We don't believe Hillary Clinton is everything America needs in a president. But we have no doubt that she is the best choice on the 2016 ballot to move the country forward.

Louisiana Floods, Trump and GOP Climate Change Denial

Trump on his photo-op mission with hate merchant Tony Perkins

At the moment the far right nose machine is busy maligning President Obama had not visited areas of Louisiana struck by flooding last week and contrasting Obama's supposed indifference with Donald Trumps photo-op inspired mission of mercy to Louisiana.  Never mind that the governor of Louisiana asked BOTH men to stay away so as to avoid interfering with relief efforts or draining off manpower for security details.  Obama honored the governor's request and waited until this week to visit.  Trump, being always all about himself, ignore the request to stay away.  A column in the New York Times looks at both Trump's self-centered conduct, but also the larger issue of GOP climate change denial that will make floods such as the one in Louisiana ever more common.  Here are column highlights:

A disaster area is no place for political theater. The governor of flood-ravaged Louisiana asked President Obama to postpone a personal visit while relief efforts were still underway. (Meanwhile, by all accounts, the substantive federal response has been infinitely superior to the Bush administration’s response to Katrina.) He made the same request to Donald Trump, declaring, reasonably, that while aid would be welcome, a visit for the sake of a photo op would not.

Sure enough, the G.O.P. candidate flew in, shook some hands, signed some autographs, and was filmed taking boxes of Play-Doh out of a truck. If he wrote a check, neither his campaign nor anyone else has mentioned it. Heckuva job, Donnie!

But boorish, self-centered behavior is the least of it. By far the bigger issue is that even as Mr. Trump made a ham-handed (and cheapskate) effort to exploit Louisiana’s latest disaster for political gain, he continued to stake out a policy position that will make such disasters increasingly frequent.

In case you haven’t been keeping track, lately we’ve been setting global temperature records every month. Remember when climate deniers used to point to a temporary cooling after an unusually warm year in 1998 as “proof” that global warming had stopped? It was always a foolish, dishonest argument, but in any case we’ve now blown right through all past records.

And one consequence of a warmer planet is more evaporation, more moisture in the air, and hence more disastrous floods. As always, you can’t say that climate change caused any particular disaster. What you can say is that warming makes extreme weather events more likely, so that, for example, what used to be 500-year floods are now happening on an almost routine basis.

So a proliferation of disasters like the one in Louisiana is exactly what climate scientists have been warning us about.

[W]e face a clear and present danger, but we have the means and the knowledge to deal with that danger. The problem is politics — which brings us back to Mr. Trump and his party.

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that when it comes to climate change, as with so many issues, Mr. Trump has gone deep down the rabbit hole, asserting not just that global warming is a hoax, but that it’s a hoax concocted by the Chinese to make America less competitive.

But when it comes to denial of climate change and the deployment of bizarre conspiracy theories to explain away the evidence, Mr. Trump is squarely in the Republican mainstream. He may be talking nonsense, but anyone his party was likely to nominate would have been talking pretty much the same nonsense.

It’s interesting to ask why climate denial has become not just acceptable but essentially required within the G.O.P. Yes, the fossil-fuel sector is a big donor to the party. But the vehemence of the hostility to climate science seems disproportionate even so; bear in mind that, for example, at this point there are fewer than 60,000 coal miners, that is, less than 0.05 percent of the work force. What’s happening, I suspect, is that climate denial has become a sort of badge of right-wing identity, above and beyond the still-operative motive of rewarding donors.

In any case, this election is likely to be decisive for the climate, one way or another.  President Obama has made some serious moves to address global warming, and there’s every reason to believe that Hillary Clinton would continue this push — using executive action if she faced a hostile Congress. Given the technological breakthroughs of the last few years, this push might just be enough to avert disaster. Donald Trump, on the other hand, would do everything in his power to trash the planet, with the enthusiastic support of his party. So which will it be? 

GOP Policies Cause Louisiana to Falls into Budget Crisis

The blog has looked at the economic disaster that the implementation of "true conservative" policies under Gov. Brownback and Republicans brought to Kansas.  Less mentioned is what similar policies under Bobby Jindal brought to Louisiana.  What is particularly frightening is that the failed policies implemented in Kansas and Louisiana are almost virtually the same as those being espoused by every one of the Republican presidential candidates save Donald Trump who has yet to lay out in any detail what he would seek to do.  Stated another way, the GOP presidential candidates want to bring economic and budget disasters nationwide as they once again espouse voodoo economics and trickle down economics that have twice devastated the U.S. economy and budget deficit. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had to undo the budget wreckage wrought by Reagan and Chimperator George W. Bush.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the Louisiana disaster which ought to send off alarm bells for anyone contemplating voting Republican in November.  Here are highlights:

Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers, including those devoted to foster family recruitment, and young abuse victims for the first time were spending nights at government offices.

And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come..

Edwards, in a prime-time address on Feb. 11, said he’d learned of “devastating facts” about the extent of the state’s budget shortfall and said that Louisiana was plunging into a “historic fiscal crisis.” Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion — almost $650 per person — just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. Edwards  gave the state’s lawmakers three weeks to figure out a solution,

Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities and certain programs for the needy. A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go un-investigated.

But even if Louisiana’s Republican-dominated legislature approves certain tax increases, as most expect, the state still would grapple with problems. The taxes — which could include hikes on everything from groceries to salaries — would dig into the pockets of citizens in a state where 18 percent live in poverty and where the median income is 20 percent below the national average. 

Many of the state’s economic analysts say a structural budget deficit emerged and then grew under former governor Bobby Jindal, who, during his eight years in office, reduced the state’s revenue by offering tax breaks to the middle class and wealthy. He also created new subsidies aimed at luring and keeping businesses. Those policies, state data show, didn’t deliver the desired economic growth. This year, Louisiana has doled out $210 million more to corporations in the form of credits and subsidies than it has collected from them in taxes.

The math is daunting: For the fiscal year that ends June 30, Louisiana is facing a $940 million deficit, roughly one-eighth of what the state typically doles out from its general fund in a year. For 2016-2017, which begins July 1, the gap is $2 billion.

On Jindal’s watch, nearly every agency in Louisiana shed employees, and state lawmakers say some teetered because of the losses. The Department of Children and Family Services shrank to 3,400 employees, from 5,000 in 2008, and social workers began carrying caseloads larger than national standards. The state also cut funding for youth services and mental health treatment.

In recent days, lawmakers have zeroed in on a plan that would somewhat narrow the deficit for the rest of this fiscal year but barely make a dent in the $2 billion gap for next year. Lawmakers would raise sales and cigarette taxes while dipping further into a rainy-day fund. They would also use settlement funds from BP, the company responsible for a 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Still, massive cuts would still be required for hospitals and universities.

Since the 2007-08 school year, Louisiana has cut funding for higher education by 44 percent, the sharpest pullback in the nation; Southern has seen its funding cut 49 percent. During that time, the burden of supporting education has flipped: Whereas the state once provided 70 percent of the money its schools spent, now the students support the bulk of the costs — in the form of higher tuition.

A popular “TOPS” scholarship fund — available to anybody in the state with a 20 ACT score and a 2.5 GPA — is depleted. Some students will lose their scholarships, and for a future batch of high schoolers, the fund will be unavailable. Belton said that many students were taking out new loans to deal with the rising tuition or stressing about how they would remain enrolled.

“We’re trying to provide for a middle class in America,” he said. “And to compromise that mission compromises the promise for the state.”

Republicans, despite lip service to the contrary, do not give a damn about America's middle class or average workers.  Rather, corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy are the only real agenda.  Take a good look at Kansas and Louisiana - this could be all of America if the GOP wins the White House and retains control of Congress.

Prostitute Loving Vitter Loses Louisiana Governor's Race

With so many Republicans falling into the thoroughly despicable category nowadays, it is sometimes difficult to estimate which ones are the most despicable.  By any measure, prostitute loving, gay hating Senator David Vitter (R-La) has to rank near the top in terms of both utter hypocrisy and sleaze factor.  Vitter for years ridiculously used the excuse that he had repented from his erroneous ways to get himself reelected by simpletons and godly folk in Louisiana.  Last night Louisiana voters seemingly finally got their heads out of their asses and Vitter went down to Democrat John Bel Edwards who garnered 56% of the vote.  While the results suggest that Republicans in Louisiana may be belatedly coming to their senses, the same unfortunately doesn't hold true elsewhere.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at Vitter's delicious loss.  Here are highlights:

[I]t is nice to see the political career of David Vitter - someone we've been following closely at TPM for almost a decade - go down in flames tonight. But there's an additional part of the story, an additional piece of good news. As Catherine Thompson explained here, Vitter devoted the last week of his campaign to demagoguing the Syrian refugee issue in a desperate effort to save himself. He even went beyond the standard scare talk and hyperbole to trying to whip hysteria against a specific Syrian refugee who Vitter falsely claimed had mysteriously disappeared and was now at large in the state. (The man in question had, all through official channels and with appropriate notifications, been relocated to the Washington, DC region where he had relatives.)

[T]he race had become a potential bellwether for Syrian refugee hysteria and politics. Perhaps even the fear of terrorism or hatred for the desperate and forlorn was not enough to overcome the state's building revulsion for the man-child senator.  

Not only did Vitter not make a comeback. The final election results (almost a 10 point win) suggest the last minute immigrant-terror bashing had no effect at all. 

We're still seeing how this all plays out. I don't mean to tell you that Syrian refugee hysteria politics is nothing. But in this case it wasn't enough. Indeed, it does not appear to have helped Vitter at all - not even to partially close the gap. And that is worth noting.

5th Circuit Slams Hold Outs on Gay Marriage

Christofacists and their self-prostituting allies in the Republican Party in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana have been dragging their feet and making excuses to not commence issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.  Yesterday, the 5th Circuit reaffirmed the binding nature of the Supreme Court's marriage ruling last week and made it clear that those who continue to hold out are doing so at their own legal risk.  It was but one more defeat for Christofascists who want the special right to ignore court ruling and laws that they don't like.  The Houston Chronicle looks at the 5th Circuit's ruling.  Here are story highlights:

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, a final procedural move that closes the book on a long legal battle over Texas' ban on gay unions.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday legalized gay marriage nationwide, but a separate legal challenge filed against Texas' ban still was pending in a federal appeals court. While most county clerks in Texas already were issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, there was a small chance state officials could have chosen to exploit the case to shield the last few hold-outs refusing to comply.

In a June 30 brief to the court, however, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller said in light of the Supreme Court ruling it should uphold a lower court's ruling striking down Texas' gay marriage ban.

On Wednesday, the court acknowledged the high court's ruling and told the district court judge to formally rule in favor of the four plaintiffs, a lesbian couple and a gay couple who had challenged Texas' ban on same-sex unions.

Attorney General Ken Paxton on Sunday issued guidance to clerks saying some could refuse to issue licenses to same-sex couples if they believe their religion prohibits them from doing so. County attorneys and civil rights groups blasted that advice, saying it would be illegal for state employees required by law to issue licenses to discriminate based on sexual orientation, and have said it represents a need to remain vigilant in the fight for gay rights.

One can only hope contempt of court orders (and threats of jail time) will be issued against Clerk's refusing to perform their legal duties. 

ACLU Sues Bobby Jindal For Pro-Christofascist Executive Order

Seemingly desperate to court Christofascist voters n the coming Republican caucuses and primaries, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal - whose approval ratings in hid home state are in the toilet - signed an executive order to allegedly fight "discrimination against Christian individuals and businesses" and grant them a license to discriminate against LGBT individuals.  Never mind that the special rights demanded by the "godly folk" were so extreme that they could not win passage in the ultra-reactionary Louisiana legislature.   And never mind that it was Jindal who after the 2012 presidential election debacle said that the GOP needed to stop being "the party of stupid."  Obviously, Jindal is not taking his own advice, and now he is being sued by the ACLU for good measure.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at Jindal's shameless self prostitution and the ACLU lawsuit.  Here are excerpts:

Back in May, Bobby Jindal's dream of adding to Louisiana law a religious freedom bill that would "protect" Christians from LGBT people and gay marriage failed so miserably it didn't even pass out of committee – despite him personally advocating for and demanding the legislature pass it.

So the Republican Louisiana Governor, having chastised President Barack Obama for lawful use of executive orders to determine which undocumented immigrants would not be deported, based on their family ties in the U.S., signed an executive order designed to, as he wrote an op-ed, fight "discrimination against Christian individuals and businesses." Not, say, "people of faith," or, "those with deeply held religious beliefs," but "Christian individuals and businesses."

On Monday, after the Supreme Court found same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, Gov. Jindal had his legal counsel draft a memo explaining to all branches of government that his executive order shields government employees from having to, say, issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, or officiate a same-sex couple's wedding.

Today, the ACLU Foundation of Louisiana, Forum for Equality Foundation, and six individuals filed suit against Gov. Bobby Jindal's "Marriage and Conscience Order," stating "it goes beyond his constitutional authority as governor."

In a press release, the ACLU notes their lawsuit "asserts that the 'Marriage and Conscience Order' creates a class of persons who are protected over others due to their belief that same-sex couples should be denied marriage equality."

Under the Louisiana Constitution, the governor is not authorized to create a substantive right by executive order. The "Marriage and Conscience Order" creates substantive rights in favor of those who oppose marriage equality, and therefore is invalid.

“Governor Jindal has violated the Louisiana Constitution by setting up special protections for those who share his belief system," ACLU of Louisiana’s Executive Director Marjorie Esman said. "In our country no one is above the law, including the Governor. He swore to uphold the laws of Louisiana. This lawsuit seeks to hold him to that oath."

Jindal is an embarrassment and I suspect many Hindus are shaking their heads in disbelief over his lunacy and shameless self-prostitution to religious extremists, most of who are racists as well.

Bobby Jindal: A Case Study of a Political Prostitute

Jindal prostituting himself at Liberty University

Bobby Jindal seemingly still sees himself as a would be presidential candidate.  His main problem?  He's of Indian/Hindu descent, something that doesn't play well with the white supremacists and Christofascists of today's GOP base.  In an apparent attempt to win over these voters who are highly unlikely to ever vote for a non-white candidate, Jindal has given new meaning to the term political whore.  There seems to be no limit to how low Jindal will stoop or what level of insane batshitery he will embrace in order to sell his soul to the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  A piece in Salon looks at Jindal's shameless self-prostitution and his descent into crazy land.  Here are highlights:

Bobby Jindal was the great hope of the Republican Party. He was a fresh voice, the man most able to save the GOP from the dolts destroying it. But then something happened: Jindal decided that intellectual integrity was a political liability. He abandoned any pretense of serious governance, and began appealing to the basest elements of his party. He has since become a caricature of himself, a pandering hack with no moral compass and even less political intuition. So what happened? How did the man who decried his party for being too stupid become the dumbest of them all?

Jindal’s descent began in 2008. A young and promising governor, he attracted national attention, and for good reason. He was smart, competent and full of earnest ambition. Despite his bumbling response to Obama’s State of the Union speech, he became a rising star in the Republican Party.  And that’s when things began to change.

From 2009 on, Jindal has steadily debased himself for right-wing votes. He’s run Louisiana into the ground and spent most of his time fellating conservatives across the country with gaseous stump speeches and childish Op-Ed pieces. Since becoming the GOP’s golden boy, he has thought of nothing beyond his national conservative brand. Instead of reforming the stupid party, he’s encouraged it.

As governor of Louisiana, Jindal has attached himself to every regressive, anti-intellectual cause imaginable, and for purely political reasons. The man is an Ivy-educated biology major. He was even accepted into Harvard Medical School at one point. And yet he signed and supported the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows science teachers to teach creationism in public schools. Jindal knows creationism is a farce, and he knows it’s a tremendous stain on Louisiana’s reputation to allow it to be taught in science classes. But he doesn’t give a damn. He wasn’t concerned with Louisiana’s future; he was signaling his conservative credentials to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire; appearing smart to stupid people was a strategic decision on his part.

Jindal reached peak stupid in January 2015, when he staged a massive prayerapooloza in Louisiana. Modeled after Rick Perry’s 2011 prayer rally, it was a pathetic attempt to gin up support for his presidential campaign. The event itself was an orgy of bigotry and religious demagoguery. Here’s a passage drawn directly from the rally materials:

“We have watched sin escalate to a proportion the nation has never seen before. We live in the first generation in which…homosexuality has been embraced…While the United States still claims to be a nation ‘under God’ it is obvious that we have greatly strayed from our foundations in Christianity. This year we have seen a dramatic increase in tornadoes that have taken the lives of many…and let us not forget that we are only six years from the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina…”

You read that correctly: Gay people are responsible for a “dramatic increase in tornadoes” and other naturally occurring phenomena. That’s how low Jindal sunk; that’s how far he was willing to go. He embraced hate speech in order to appease bigoted fundamentalists, and he refused to distance himself from the fatuous assertion that gay people are the cause of bad weather.

Jindal’s desperation was on full display last week, when he announced his plan to issue an executive order to enforce the “religious freedom” bill. The legislation is nakedly discriminatory against gay people, and has very little support in Louisiana. Jindal backed this bill and threatened to unilaterally impose it on the state after the Legislature rejected it – a perfectly ironic thing to do for a small government conservative.

There was no sensible reason for Jindal to take this position, apart from his monomaniacal desire to impress religious conservatives in primary states. He even penned a puerile Op-Ed for the New York Times in order to take a courageous stand against civil rights for gay Americans. This is not the kind of leadership you’d expect from a guy hoping to distinguish himself from stupid people.

It’s worth asking what Jindal’s decline says about him personally and about the GOP more generally. As for Jindal, it’s fairly obvious: His ambition eclipsed his sense of duty. He exchanged his integrity for votes, and he did it in the most cynical fashion possible; Louisianans have suffered immensely because of it.

Jindal’s strategy also says something about the electoral base of the Republican Party. It’s increasingly evident that the most extreme elements of the right have become too influential.

Jindal’s asininity is a manifestation of this problem; he knows he’s appealing to a significant subset of Republican voters. He won’t win their votes, but someone else will, and they’ll have to pretend to be stupid in order to do it. This powerful minority within the GOP is the real problem; if the Republicans don’t do something about it, they will remain what they’ve become: the stupid party.

I have a great many Indian clients who, unlike Jindal, have remained Hindu.  Given Jindal's self-prostitution to the Christofascists - who hate non-Christians almost as much as gays - I find it hard to believe that Jindal will get any support from this demographic which has increasingly voted as the GOP has become the party of Christian dominionists.

 

Bobby Jindal’s Troubles at Home in Louisiana

Jindal at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University

Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, Hindu by descent and panderer to Christofascist is on the road for a 2016 presidential run telling a one sided version of his track record in his home state.  Indeed, the man is little better than a snake oil merchant when one looks at the whole story in Louisiana which in some ways mirrors the conservative disaster in Kansas under the misrule of Sam Brownback and a GOP dominated legislature.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at the fiasco Jindal's reign has been for Louisiana.  America truly does NOT need Jindal's toxic, voodoo economics at the national level.  Here are article excerpts:

Gov. Bobby Jindal has a plan: Do for the country what he’s done for Louisiana. Cut taxes and cut the government workforce and the economy will bloom, he promises. It’s a message he’s peddling as he lays the groundwork for a presidential run. Indeed, as Jindal is quick to say, private-sector job growth and the economy in Louisiana have outpaced the national average during his tenure as governor. “I’m a fiscal conservative,” he told the influential Conservative Political Action Conference last year, in explaining these successes.

But here’s what Jindal doesn’t say: Louisiana’s budget is hemorrhaging red ink, and it’s getting worse. He inherited a $900 million surplus when he became governor seven years ago, and his administration’s own budget documents now show the state is facing deficits of more than $1 billion for as far as the eye can see. There are no easy solutions today because Jindal has increasingly balanced the budget by resorting to one-time fixes, depleting the state’s reserve funds and taking money meant for other purposes.

“There are all kinds of tricks in the budget,” said Greg Albrecht, the state legislature’s chief economist, a nonpartisan position. Meanwhile, the state’s unemployment rate has risen from 3.8 percent when Jindal took office, a point below the national average then, to 6.7 percent today—nearly a full point higher than today’s national average. Jindal omits these inconvenient facts when he bashes President Barack Obama and Washington for “bankrupting” the federal government and mismanaging the national economy.

[O]ne topic thus far has garnered little national attention: His economic record in the Bayou State.  

Democrats in the state are quick to point to the budget problems. But what’s striking are the harsh critiques from fellow Republicans, who say Jindal’s presidential ambitions and frequent campaign trips outside of Louisiana have taken precedence over managing his home state’s economic affairs. “I’m hoping he will multitask and spend some of his time with us,” said state Treasurer John Kennedy, a Republican. “I’m a numbers guy. We have serious, serious problems with our budget. For seven years, we have spent more than we’ve taken in.”

Republican state legislators are particularly scathing in saying Jindal no longer exercises leadership, but they don’t want to go on the record for fear of losing their choice committee assignments or having the governor kill their pet projects. 

Jindal blamed the state’s budget woes on factors beyond his control. “The oil price drop has been good for consumers, but it’s had a big impact on our revenue,” Jindal told me.

But that’s not how Republican elected officials and independent budget experts see it. They say that the plunge in oil prices and the subsequent loss of revenue for the state treasury has exacerbated—but did not create—the budget issues. The real cause, according to these sources: Jindal’s aversion to tackling politically tough issues and his tendency to resort to ploys to paper over the problems. And then, of course, there is The Pledge.

In 2003, as a private citizen running for governor (he narrowly lost), Jindal promised to “oppose and veto all efforts to increase taxes.” This was part of the bargain he agreed to when he took the pledge—the shorthand description of the Tax Protection Pledge hawked by Americans for Tax Reform, the group headed by anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist. As governor, he has taken the “no tax” commitment to such lengths that in 2011 he vetoed legislation supported by dozens of Republicans that sought renewal of a 4-cent portion of the state’s 36-cent-per-pack cigarette tax, the country’s third lowest.