PrairiePundit

 Newsbusters: Louisiana State Treasurer: ESG Investing Is Destructive, ‘We Should Invest In Our Own States’ What several states are doing including Texas is withdrawing pension fund investments from funds that discriminate against the oil and gas industry.  The country must have fossil fuel energy production to survive.  Wind and solar are not adequate and electric vehicles have their limits.

 Daily Mail: Now CIVILIANS are being trained to do detective work in New Orleans - as desperate police in US murder capital hire their rejects in last-ditch attempt to bulk up the dwindling force Supplementing the force with civilians is a good way to deal with the workload if the hires meet qualification standards.  The Big Easy has become too easy for criminals.

 Washington Examiner: Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is taking a risk by choosing to accommodate rather than fight President Biden’s  pause  on new oil and gas leases. "When you have to represent the entire state and 45% of the budget comes from oil and gas, and the majority pays for education, there is a lot going on to consider," said Rep. Angelica Rubio, a Democrat in the state’s House of Representatives. "New Mexicans have always been heavily reliant on this industry, regardless of what party you are," Rubio told the  Washington Examiner . Lujan Grisham, who shares Biden's priority of addressing climate change, hasn't fulfilled a promise during the 2020 presidential campaign to seek a waiver exempting New Mexico from a leasing pause. Her administration has pushed back in quieter ways, writing a letter last month warning that Biden’s orders have “resulted in on-the-ground uncertainties" that have contributed to drilling rigs in the state movi...

Washington Examiner: Texas governor orders all travelers from Louisiana to self-quarantine for two weeks I suspect there were also a lot of Texans in New Orleans for Mardi Gras too.  Other visitors to Texas were also added to the self-quarantine list .

NY Times: A Different Kind of Storm: New Orleans Facing Deadly Virus Outbreak Louisiana may be experiencing the world’s fastest growth in new cases. Medical experts said Mardi Gras might have accelerated the crisis. There is little social distancing during Mardi Gras.  The streets in New Orlean's French Quarter are usually jam-packed with people throwing beads at women who expose their breasts.  It is a boozy atmosphere of revelers from around the world.  It is as jammed as mass transportation in New York City which probably helped to spread the virus. What we are seeing is that high-density populations and events breeding grounds for the spread of the virus.  Rural counties where transportation is mostly in individual vehicles are seeing much less of the spread.

Town Hall: Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) torched House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during President Donald Trump's rally in Monroe, Louisiana on Wednesday night. According to Kennedy, Trump has made remarkable strides for Americans and Pelosi's response to the president's success is to impeach him. "In three short years, President Trump has doubled the growth in the greatest economy in all of human history," Kennedy said. "And you know what our Democratic friends have done for him? Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to impeach him." As soon as Kennedy mentioned impeachment, the crowd booed heavily. "I don't mean any disrespect but it must suck to be that dumb," he concluded to a thunderous applause. Democrats can't argue with Trump's success. Just look at his record-low unemployment rates for African Americans and Hispanics . Even Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez struggled to explain how 2020 Democrats can compete with Tr...

Guy Benson: In Louisiana's Saturday election, Republicans had a lot to cheer about. Among statewide office-holders, the incumbent GOP Lieutenant Governor (68 percent), Attorney General (66 percent), Treasurer (60 percent, and Agricultural Commissioner (58 percent) were all re-elected without the need for a run-off, under the state's 'jungle primary'-style system. It also appears that the solid Republican majorities in both state legislative chambers will remain intact -- with the GOP expanding its Senate advantage into super-majority territory by picking up a pair of Democratic seats: Nathaniel Rakich @baseballot Confirmed: With 100% of precincts reporting statewide, the GOP has gained a supermajority in the Louisiana Senate. They flipped SD-28 & SD-38. 1,108 11:25 PM - Oct 12, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 570 people are talking about this Two major statewide races are headed to run-offs, an...

Washington Post: Louisiana’s Democratic governor forced into a runoff, a boost for Republicans and President Trump Democrats in Louisiana are hard-pressed to justify the radicalism of the national party and its anti-Trump agenda. 

Washington Free Beacon: A Louisiana lawyer joined a growing number of attorneys challenging the payment of mandatory membership dues to state bar associations. The lawsuits argue that mandatory dues used to fund the associations' lobbying and legislative activity violate the free speech rights of individual lawyers. Randy Boudreaux filed the lawsuit against the Louisiana State Bar Association (LSBA) on Aug. 1. The insurance defense attorney told the Washington Free Beacon that the case drew from the Supreme Court's 2018 Janus decision. The majority in the 5-4 decision said that forcing workers to pay compulsory dues or fees to public sector labor unions violated the First Amendment rights of workers. "The LSBA…uses those compelled dues to engage in political and ideological speech, including advocacy on issues of public policy," Boudreaux's lawsuit says. All 50 states require prospective attorneys to be admitted to the state bar before they are able to ...

Ralph Abraham: It’s morning in America again. After years of economic stagnation under former President Barack Obama, America is booming. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the American economy is growing above 3% annually, wages are rising across the board, and unemployment has hit its lowest point since 1969. But in my home state of Louisiana, under the leadership of liberal Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, the story is different. While the rest of the nation prospers, we’re missing out on the Trump boom. While the national economy experiences growth exceeding 3%, Louisiana's economy in lagging behind at 1%. It’s even worse when you compare us to our neighbors like Texas and Florida. Over a recent 12-month period, Louisiana actually lost jobs. As these jobs leave for other states, so do our families. In the past three years, we’ve lost over 68,000 residents to other states. Unsurprisingly, U.S. News & World Report recently ranked Louisiana as dead last in the coun...

Washington Times: Louisiana’s legislative auditor wanted to know how the state’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare was doing, so he picked 100 people who were deemed eligible under the rules. He found that 82 of them made so much money that they shouldn’t have qualified for the benefits they received. Auditor Daryl G. Purpera, who issued his findings last month to little fanfare outside of Louisiana, figured if those statistics hold true for the rest of the expanded Medicaid population in his state, then the losses to ineligible beneficiaries could be as high as $85 million. “This is huge. It really is,” he told The Washington Times. “As more and more state auditors realize what this is doing to them, it’s going to come to a point where all 50 of them are going to have to declare they can no longer say the state’s books are accurate. I really do believe that day is coming.” Louisiana may be an outlier. A federal inspector general’s report this year found 38 out of a sampl...

NY Times: Left to Louisiana’s Tides, a Village Fights for Time Climate change is threatening coastal areas across the globe. In a special report, The New York Times, in partnership with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, examines the struggles of south Louisiana, the epicenter of land loss in America. If you fly over the area where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico you can see the mud that used to deposit itself in the Louisiana coastal region flowing out to sea where it spreads as far away as the Texas coast.  In fact, if you sail out of Galveston Bay you have to go several miles to find blue water. This is caused by the levy system the Corps put in to protect areas along the Mississippi from flooding.  If the flooding of coastal Louisiana were actually caused by climate change, it would be happening in Texas too.  The outflow of mud also makes Texas beaches more brown than white.

NY Times: In Visit to Louisiana, Obama Balances Comfort and Politics President Obama, set to visit flood victims in Baton Rouge, faces a challenge: to commend the federal government’s relief efforts during a fraught political moment. While Obama was golfing and sending out insulting memos, local authorities and volunteers were working around the clock to pull people out of the flood waters and take them to shelters.   FEMA was not much of a factor during this flood.  The "Cajun Navy" is the story of this flood response.

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: From 5,000 feet up, it’s difficult to make out where Louisiana’s coastline used to be. But follow the skeletal remains of decades-old oil canals, and you get an idea. Once, these lanes sliced through thick marshland, clearing a path for pipelines or ships. Now they’re surrounded by open water, green borders still visible as the sea swallows up the shore. The canals tell a story about the industry’s ubiquity in Louisiana history, but they also signal a grave future: $100 billion of energy infrastructure threatened by rising sea levels and erosion. As the coastline recedes, tangles of pipeline are exposed to corrosive seawater; refineries, tank farms and ports are at risk. “All of the pipelines, all of the things put in place in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s were designed to be protected by marsh,” said Ted Falgout, an energy consultant and former director of Port Fourchon. Louisiana has an ambitious — and expensive — plan to protect both its backbone industry ...

Rich Lowry: Donald Trump has made his first threat to sue over the procedures for selecting delegates to the Republican convention. It surely won’t be his last. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ted Cruz may come out of Louisiana with as many as 10 more delegates than Trump, even though the mogul narrowly beat Cruz in the popular vote there. In a tweet, Trump pronounced it “unfair,” and worthy of litigation. The Louisiana delegate picture isn’t evidence of anything untoward. Trump and Cruz both won 18 delegates on election night. Marco Rubio, who has since dropped out, won five, and another five are uncommitted. The Cruz campaign has done the nitty-gritty work to see that those delegates are likely Cruz supporters. The only scandal here is that the Cruz campaign, built on grass-roots organizing muscle, knows the process and is working hard for every advantage. Trump’s plaint is a little like showing up at a Cricket match and crying foul because the opposing team knows the r...

Moe Lane: The Louisiana state GOP announced the current estimated delegate breakdown: Ted Cruz and Donald Trump both get 18, Marco Rubio gets 5. How is this possible, when Trump got more votes? Well, the popular vote count statewide was effectively a two-man race, as only Trump and Cruz got above 20%. Those at-large delegates (28 total) went 12 for Trump, 11 for Cruz, 5 unbound. But! Louisiana has 6 Congressional Districts, and each gets 3 delegates (18 total). In five of those districts the state GOP is unofficially calling it as Cruz, Rubio, and Trump all getting 1 delegate… except in LA-05, where Cruz gets 2 and Trump gets 1. Thus, the current score is 18-18, with 5 for Rubio and the other 5 officially unaffiliated*. All of this, by the way, will be the subject of much vigorous debate and discussion in Louisiana political circles over the next week, which probably means that there’s going to be a brawl at the upcoming state convention. ... Lane says that the final count is t...

KATC: Jindal demands answers about Syrian refugees arriving to Louisiana after Paris attacks ... As Governor of Louisiana, I demand information about the Syrian refugees being placed in Louisiana in hopes that the night of horror in Paris is not duplicated here. In the wake of these atrocities, I also ask for details on the below: What level of background screening was conducted prior to entry in the United States? In light of the fact that some of those responsible for last night's attacks held Syrian passports, what additional protections and screenings will be put in place? Will all Syrian refugees seeking relocation in the United States now be cleared by the Terrorist Screening Center? What degree of monitoring will be sustained after initial placement in Louisiana? As Americans, we embolden freedom and opportunity to the rest of the world, but by opening up our borders and refusing to collaborate or share information with states, you are threatening that reality. ...

Politico: The Justice Department suffered a setback Tuesday when the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in effect ruled that the feds don't have the authority to regulate Louisiana's school voucher program. In a 2-1 decision written by Judge Edith Jones, the appeals court says a district court had no jurisdiction to let DOJ collect data and monitor the voucher program. The fight between federal officials and Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal started in 2013 when then-Attorney General Eric Holder tried to halt the program out of concern that it was upsetting the racial balance of some public school districts. The case is based on a decades-old decision that said the state couldn't give money to private schools that segregate students. Holder later abandoned that effort, instead asking for data on the racial background of students participating in the program each year so federal officials could monitor the program's effect on school segregation. DOJ could then use that ...

AP/Fuel Fix: A lawsuit filed in 2013 by a Louisiana flood board that sought damages — potentially in the billions of dollars — from scores of oil, gas and pipeline companies over erosion of the state’s fragile coast was thrown out Friday evening by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Nanette Jolivette Brown dismissed the suit in a complex 49-page ruling. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East had claimed in the lawsuit that coastal drilling and dredging activities contributed to the loss of coastal wetlands that form a natural hurricane protection buffer for New Orleans. The lawsuit caused a political furor in Louisiana. The suit’s backers said it was necessary to hold energy companies accountable for decades of damage and that it was one of the state’s few hopes for funding coastal protection and restoration efforts with an estimated price tag of at least $50 billion over the coming decades. Gov. Bobby Jindal and oil industry leaders condemned it as an attack on a...

Leon Wolf: ... These stories crop up every year in Louisiana and have several features in common: 1. an observation that the state faces a budget shortfall, 2. complaining from various Republicans indicating that revenues (read: taxes) should be raised 3. anecdotal evidence that previous years’ budget cuts have wrought terrible hardships on the people of Louisiana. They always conveniently omit 1. Actual data 2. The context of previous years which indicates that this truly is another instance of same song, different verse. Allow me to rectify the first of those deficiencies with some actual data about the effect of Jindal’s budgetary approach, which has remained constant throughout virtually his entire tenure. Weak-kneed pundits (and state legislators’) favorite word for Jindal’s budgetary approach is “irresponsible,” primarily because Jindal refuses, out of hand, to consider tax increases to make up shortfalls. There is absolutely no reason given for why this is “irresponsible” o...