Politics vs Governing

Monday Governor Edwards presented a balanced state budget for next year which he is required to do by law.   TOPS along with other constituent favorites are being drastically cut because constitutional constraints protect other entities from fiscal cuts.

  

This latest draconian budget is a culmination of a systematic ploy by our Republican legislators to put politics over morality by attempting to make Edwards look as “bad” as possible so that they can win the governorship back at election time. 

Our esteemed Republican legislators, along with our past Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, were totally responsible for this fiscal mess and have had over seven months to permanently solve the fiscal boondoggle that our state faces.  Last session they enacted “kick the can down the road’ temporary taxes on businesses and citizens that balanced last year’s budget.  These all expire July 1^st.

For the entire past year our Republican legislators blamed these new taxes on the governor.  They seem to have forgotten the state constitution which specifies that any revenue generating measures must originate with the House legislators, who along with the Senate, formulate and pass such measures.  The governor’s office can propose whatever it desires, but it is both houses of the legislature which formulate the revenue bills and make them laws.  They can even pass such laws over the governor’s objection.

Last year the legislators agreed to raise the sales tax and business taxes hoping that not only would this plug the fiscal gap but have the additional benefit of associating our Democratic governor with the standard “stereotype” of a tax raising Democrat.

Apparently, their new plan is to propose no fiscal solutions and end up making the temporary taxes, permanent, which they will continue to attribute to Edwards in an attempt to further impugn the governor’s image.  All of this buffoonery is simply “blame game” politics, just like in our nation’s capital. It’s all about further polarizing and dividing our society.  It has nothing to do with finding realistic solutions to the problems at hand.

Our legislators simply don’t want to do anything that might make a Democrat governor “look good.”  God forbid they should work with our governor and produce an actual solution.

We are the ones who will suffer the most.   Remember all this the next time you go to the polls.

Who and What to Believe

I’ve been on this earth for 73 years and I never thought I’d live to see the day when we as Americans no longer know what is true news reporting and what is false.  Our president has successfully convinced most Americans that the major media outlets are not trustworthy sources of facts.  However, the president’s advocated source of the truth, his tweets, has been labeled as containing misinformation over 65% of the time.  Is that figure even factual?  Is it too high or too low?  Recently, Fox News, another source advocated by the president as truthful, was awarded the winner of the ‘Fake News Trophy’ in a poll.  Was this a factual poll or another source of misinformation?  The dilemma for deciphering factual information is out of control.  Should I become like some of my friends and just stick my head in the sand and ignore all media reporting?

The latest book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" by Michael Wolff purporting to give Americans and the world a glimpse of the governing style of President Trump, has produced even more chaos regarding  the paradigm of fact vs. fiction.  Are all of these depictions true or are they all false? Are only some true?  Do some of Trump’s closest advisors really think he is  “child-like,“ “a pillar of wide ranging ignorance,” and “mentally unstable,” or is this all made up by the author simply to sell the book?    Is it worth the risk to simply dismiss all the book’s depictions as total fiction? 

Sadly this new book is the culmination of what I term Trumpism payback.  I categorize the book as simply one big tweet filled with the glaring animosity, name calling, personal attacks and unsubstantiated innuendos that closely mirror the same characteristics of President Trump’s tweets during his run for president and his one year in office.   It’s a monster he once masterfully controlled but now has run amuck and turned on him in the form of a best seller book. 

While most Americans seem perfectly content to continue to accept this continued aberrant behavior, think about the consequences this is having on the image of respect for the U.S. worldwide.   If we as Americans no longer know what to believe about our president, just think how confused other countries must be.    This new book will further erode the respect for President Trump as the Leader of the Free World, although many don’t wish to acknowledge this, or even give a damn.

One reaps what he sows, just stay tuned to see how this all plays out.

Not in Manchac's Backyard !

If you are upset about the proposed Syrah Resources graphite product plant at Port Manchac you should be.  It is obvious the South Tangipahoa Parish Port Commission has not done their research concerning this proposal.

There is a complete lack of information regarding the effects of the production of graphite products in the US by Syrah Resources because currently their largest production plant is in the African Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.

Under an agreement with China, the Australian owned company, Syrah Resources, will provide 30,000 tons of graphite to Jixi BTR Graphite Industrial for the production of lithium ion batteries.

The South Tangipahoa Parish Port Commission needs to focus its attention on China to learn the true facts about the pollutive nature of a graphite product plant.

In October, 2016 The Washington Post did an investigative story on the pollutant effects of graphite dust on a town located near a plant that produces it.  The story entitled “In your phone, in their air” was written by Peter Whoriskey and can be easily Googled.

I have quoted some of its highlights below:

‘At night, the pollution around the village has an otherworldly, almost fairy-tale quality.  ‘The air sparkles,’ said Zhang Tuling, a farmer in a village in far northeastern China. ‘When any bit of light hits the particles, they shine.’

Beside the family home is a plot that once grew saplings, but the trees died once the factory began operating, said Zhang’s husband, Yu Yuan.
‘This is what we live with,’ Zhang said, slowly waving an arm at the stumps.

By daylight, the particles are visible as a lustrous gray dust that settles on everything. It stunts the crops it blankets, begrimes laundry hung outside to dry and leaves grit on food. The village’s well water has become undrinkable, too.

Zhang and Yu live near a factory that produces graphite, a glittery substance that, while best known for filling pencils, has become an indispensable resource in the new millennium. It is an ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.

At five towns in two provinces of China, Washington Post journalists heard the same story from villagers living near graphite companies: sparkling night air, damaged crops, homes and belongings covered in soot, polluted drinking water — and government officials inclined to look the other way to benefit a major employer.

In addition, plant managers and party officials sometimes sternly discouraged journalists from speaking with villagers. At three of the villages, the taxi carrying the Post journalists was followed.
Whatever the obstacles, the villagers who would talk offered remarkably consistent accounts of the pollution. The graphite, they typically said with disgust, makes everything mai tai, a regional expression meaning dirty.

Since the graphite factory opened in Zhang’s village about five years ago, the graphite has become more than a nuisance. The couple live near Jixi, a city less than 50 miles from the Russian border. The dust has covered their corn crop, so much so that walking by a row of cornstalks leaves their faces blackened. And it seems impossible to keep it out of the house — at the dinner table, it often leaves them chewing the particles in their teeth.

They worry, too, about the health consequences, especially of breathing it in. Inhaling particulate matter can cause an array of health troubles, according to health experts, including heart attacks and respiratory ailments.

But it’s not just the air. The graphite plant discharges pollutants into local waters, Zhang and Yu said — a nightly event that they can detect by smell: The discharges leave a chemical odor that irritates their noses and throats. Those emissions have not only made their water undrinkable, they said, but also kept the local river from freezing in winter. They also think the discharge poisoned the poplar trees they were growing for lumber outside their home, just beyond their coops for ducks and geese and chickens.

‘All the trees were fine until the graphite plant started,’ Yu said. ’It killed my trees.’
‘We want to move, but we don’t have any money,’ Zhang said.”

This is the reality of what could happen if this project is allowed to continue.  I’m sure that the company will respond that this is a situation that exists in China known for their lax enforcement of environmental safeguards and that they along with our state will ensure that this doesn’t happened here.  Do you want to trust this company and the state of Louisiana to protect you and the environment? Mr. Zhang in China did and look how that ended.

We ain't stupid

Everyone in administrative positions in Louisiana state government has a boss.   It is hard for me to conceptualize that since 2008 when Mike Edmonson was appointed head of the Louisiana State Police, by Governor Bobby Jindal, no one ever heard any rumors or complaints about Edmonson’s questionable, unethical behavior.   The powers to be want us to believe that they were so well hidden that even John Bel Edwards had no knowledge of them when he chose to let Edmonson continue his reign.  How dumb does the Baton Rouge crew think we are?

 

This entire new fiasco smacks of the same type of behavior that was permitted to occur with our former head of the Angola Prison System, Mr. Burl Cain.  Again, hard to believe that Cain’s boss, James Leblanc,  head of the Louisiana Department  of Public Safety and Corrections, had no knowledge of his questionable abuse of taxpayers’ resources.   LeBlanc still remains in his job thanks again to our present governor.

The reality for the existence of these poor excuses for public servants is that they were just part of the ‘good ole boys’ culture, an informal system of friendships and connections through which men use their positions of influence by providing favors and information to help other men.  This is simply the way it is in our state government.

It is apparent that both these public servants were “nice guys” who would do a favor for you if you asked and expected only that you reward them by staying out of the day-to-day operation of their departments.   In other words, don’t hold them accountable for the way they did things as long as they fulfilled the tangible goals expected of them.

I suspect that after all the investigations are completed, Edmonson, like Cain will be permitted to quietly draw his lucrative state sponsored pension for the remainder of his life and all this mess will just fade away.  Isn’t that how it always works in Louisiana?  After all we don’t have the national reputation as being one of the most corrupt states for nothing.  Huey Long would be proud of our Baton Rouge crew.

In a just world, both these individuals should receive a court date along with the termination of their bosses, who either knew about the improprieties and ignored them, or didn’t have a clue and should have.

TOPShas lost oringinal intent

Our legislators are once again reviewing the funding for the TOPS program.  However, the Louisiana TOPS program has indeed lost its way.  It was originally funded by Mr. Patrick F. Taylor, a Texas born oilman, to reward students who had outstanding academic performance, coupled with limited family resources, with a college education.  The original proposal was offered to the students of an intercity public school in New Orleans.

TOPS now violates both intents of the original Taylor plan.  In 1989, TOPS had an income cap of $25,000, about $47,850 in today’s dollars.  Today, thirty-seven percent of TOPS recipients come from homes with an annual income of $70,000 to $150,000.  One in five comes from a family that makes more than $150,000 a year. 

 Academically, the original standard for TOPS set by Mr. Taylor was a 3.0 GPA, a B average.  When the state took over it immediately lowered the academic requirement to 2.5, a C plus, hardly outstanding academic performance. It also added the requirement of a composite score of 20 on the ACT, a national college test taken by high school seniors.  This score falls at the 50^th percentile nationally, again simply an average, non-noteworthy score.

The most startling finding that clearly indicates just how bastardized the Louisiana TOPS program has become is the fact that if the GPA qualification for TOPS were returned to the original 3.0 and the ACT requirement was raised to 22 corresponding to the 63^rd percentile, 80% of this year’s crop of TOPS recipients would no longer qualify.

Thanks to our esteemed legislators TOPS has become nothing more than an entitlement program for average performing students from middle and upper class families in Louisiana and a cash cow for our state’s junior colleges, trade schools, and universities.  Additionally, its present implementation is an insult to the students currently receiving the program’s benefits that would have initially qualified based upon their high academic performances, higher ACT scores, and family needs.

Originally, it was a respected, prestigious honor to be selected as a TOPS candidate.  Now it’s just an expected God- given right of Louisianans.

Once you give the masses an expected financial handout, it’s almost impossible to take it away; the downside of all entitlement programs.  TOPS continues to drain our state budget and I doubt that it will ever return to its original intent, for there’s no genuine desire to do so among our legislators and a very vocal part of the public.

If in fact this is a true assessment maybe our legislators ought to put the funding for TOPS to a vote of all their constituents to determine if they would be willing to add a special tax to fund it.  Good luck with that!