louisiana – Page 2

Mitch McConnell shivs the right back. …Like, frankly, a boss.

Via my RedState colleague Joe Cunningham comes this heartwarming tale of the right boot applied to the right backside at just the right moment:

Republicans have promised Bill Cassidy a seat on the Senate’s energy committee if he defeats Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana’s runoff election next month, potentially undercutting one of her main arguments for re-election.

Landrieu has repeatedly touted the importance of her seat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in her campaign for a fourth term representing a state with a robust oil and gas industry.

While she will no longer serve as the committee’s chair in the GOP-led Senate in the next Congress, Landrieu has campaigned hard on her place as the committee’s senior Democrat — and Cassidy’s inability to get a seat on the panel as a freshman senator.

Joe’s impressed, as am I: Mary Landrieu has just crossed Mitch McConnell off of her Christmas card list. As I noted on Twitter (and Joe was kind enough to link to), this is the sort of thing that you can do when you have a couple of seats’ worth of margin: if Senate control hinged on this McConnell would be actually less likely to make this offer, because it would be seen as being desperate shenanigans. As it is, it’s just shenanigans, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in the Senate and will thus pass without much notice. Plus, it’s a pretty strong suggestion that McConnell likes our chances for flipping the seat (as do I).

More of this, please, Senator McConnell.

Mary Landrieu is losing, but it’s not DOOM.

Sean Trende goes over why I think Mary Landrieu is going to lose, but haven’t called DOOM yet:

It happens like clockwork. Every six years, observers start the cycle predicting the demise of Louisiana’s Sen. Mary Landrieu. Every six years, they are proven wrong, as she somehow pulls off an improbable victory.

But this year might really be different. For the first time, Landrieu trails badly as we approach the November primary. Her saving grace in 2008 – historically high black turnout – seems unlikely to materialize this cycle, while her saving grace in 2002 – a runoff coalition that favored her – seems impossible to re-create.

You see, I’m pretty sure that she’s going to lose. If I bet on politics* I’d put five bucks on Landrieu losing. But it’s not a gimme by any means at this point.

Moe Lane

*I DO NOT BET ON POLITICS. For largely the same reason that Pete Rose shouldn’t have bet on baseball games, although admittedly I have much, much, much less in the way of influence over elections than Rose did on baseball games.

Senator Mary Landrieu (D, Louisiana) flew high on the hog – with YOUR tax money.

I’d love to know what an independent investigation found. Because if Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu’s internal investigation found this…

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu on Friday released the findings of an internal investigation into her travel that found more than $33,700 in campaign flights were charged to her Senate account.

The report found 136 campaign functions were conducted during 43 trips paid for by the Senate office dating back to 2002.

…imagine what total somebody who wasn’t hired by the Senator might have come up with. Note, by the way: I am explicitly not giving Mary Landrieu the benefit of the doubt over whether she has come up with a full list of all the times her campaign embezzled money for travel… excuse me: ‘engaged in sloppy book-keeping.’ In fact, I will explicitly say this: I expect that she has not, not least because her investigation was truncated: Continue reading Senator Mary Landrieu (D, Louisiana) flew high on the hog – with YOUR tax money.

The Washington Post: Mary Landrieu ‘lives’ with her parents.

Well, as is typical for that paper, the Washington Post saved the really bad-for-Democrats quote for close to the end of the article:

“A U.S. senator shouldn’t be living with their parents,” [Louisiana Senate Republican candidate* Rob] Maness said. “She’s got plenty of good pay, she’s employed, but she says she’s living with her parents? . . . It’s time for one of us from the state of Louisiana to go fill this seat.”

It’s the usual: Mary Landrieu – who has lived in DC for almost twenty years now – doesn’t actually have her own house in Louisiana. She instead uses her parents’ New Orleans house as her ‘home’ address for those pesky residency requirements and instead lives in a built-from-scratch dream mini-mansion on East Capitol Street. It’s worth about $2.5 million, but you simply need multiple bedrooms and bathrooms when you’re hobnobbing with the rest of the rich and the powerful on behalf of the People. Continue reading The Washington Post: Mary Landrieu ‘lives’ with her parents.

Bobby Jindal’s privatized hospital gamble seems to have paid off.

This is an example of something that we call ‘competence.’

Louisiana spent $52 million less than was budgeted for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s privatization deals for the LSU hospitals that provide care to the uninsured in the recently ended fiscal year, according to data provided by the state health department.

Jindal’s health secretary, Kathy Kliebert, said the hospital’s new managers are improving care while also running more efficient operations.

“We feel really comfortable that they are managing their budgets, that their new cost structures that they’re setting in place are working, and at the same time we’re getting really good quality care,” Kliebert said in an interview.

I mention it because, after five and a half years of the current administration, people might have difficulty remembering what that sort of thing looks like. God knows that nobody working for Barack Obama these days would recognize competence if it owed them money – but I digress. More from the Hayride, including the detail that Bobby Jindal took a little bit of a gamble, here: and one that paid off. Continue reading Bobby Jindal’s privatized hospital gamble seems to have paid off.

Apostate Louisiana singled out for EPA’s punishment.

The last sentence in the excerpt from this article (‘Despite low coal use, La. must reduce CO2 by 40%’) is inaccurate.

When the Obama administration announced its new plan to cut carbon dioxide from power plants to combat climate change, Louisiana found itself on the hook for a 40 percent reduction over the next 15 years or so — one of the bigger decreases demanded in the state-by-state goals.

The size of the proposed cut surprised many because Louisiana doesn’t rely heavily on coal, which generates more carbon dioxide than most other fuels.

Neither state regulators nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can provide a clear reason for why Louisiana’s reduction is so large.

It is more accurate to say that neither wants to provide said clear reason. But we’re all adults here, right? Louisiana got hit by this because of three things. Continue reading Apostate Louisiana singled out for EPA’s punishment.

Mary Landrieu (D) and Barack Obama (D) must denounce Lindel Toups’ (D) blatant racism.

This going to be an epic NAME! THAT! PARTY!!!!!:

It’s important for this to be understood, because Louisiana is going to take a PR hit thanks to the reptilian/[expletive deleted]-for-brains remark [Lindel Toups] was credited with making in a piece appearing Wednesday in the Tri-Parish Times about tomorrow’s referendum in Lafourche Parish about redirecting library funds toward a new parish jail…

[snip]

But he’s a Democrat. And he’s a white guy. You will not hear that Lindel Toups is a Democrat from any other media source covering his “Let that son of a b[*]tch go back to Mexico” remarks – not the Los Angeles Times, not the Lafayette Independent, not United Press International, not Fox 8 TV in New Orleans, not Esquire Magazine.

And, in point of fact, Lindel Toups is a Democrat – but you knew that already, right? After all, when a politician starts screaming about the perfidy of Mexicans learning English and hippies on food stamps and nobody mentions the political affiliation… well. The “Name That Party” meme exists for a reason. Continue reading Mary Landrieu (D) and Barack Obama (D) must denounce Lindel Toups’ (D) blatant racism.

Eric Holder goes to judicial war over school choice using documents that he… can’t find now.

I am going to break a rule and simply reproduce this entire post from the Louisiana Governor’s office. If Bobby Jindal has a problem with that – and I don’t think that the Governor will – I am sure that he will tell me so fairly quickly. It really cannot be excerpted; the idiocy of the federal government here is too stunning to do anything except appreciate in all of its, ah, glory.

Prepare to marvel at the l33t legal skills of Eric Holder’s Justice Department:

Continue reading Eric Holder goes to judicial war over school choice using documents that he… can’t find now.

Department of Justice fighting… to keep poor kids in bad Louisiana schools.

The specter of Woodrow Wilson* looms over this administration, and it will not be denied.

Of course they are.

The U.S. Justice Department is suing Louisiana in New Orleans federal court to block 2014-15 vouchers for students in public school systems that are under federal desegregation orders. The first year of private school vouchers “impeded the desegregation process,” the federal government says.

Thirty-four school systems could be affected, including those of Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. John the Baptist and St. Tammany parishes. Under the lawsuit, the state would be barred from assigning students in those systems to private schools unless a federal judge agreed to it. A court hearing is tentatively set for Sept. 19.

The statewide voucher program, officially called the Louisiana Scholarship Program, lets low-income students in public schools graded C, D or F attend private schools at taxpayer expense. This year, 22 of the 34 systems under desegregation orders are sending some students to private schools on vouchers.

Continue reading Department of Justice fighting… to keep poor kids in bad Louisiana schools.

Wait. Hurricane Katrina was BAD for the GOP, right?

Because as near as I can tell, the most lasting long-term consequence of it was that Louisiana went from being a largely Democratic state to an unquestionably Republican one. It’s almost as if, the closer you get to New Orleans, the more disgusted that people got with the Democratic party of Louisiana…

Moe Lane Continue reading Wait. Hurricane Katrina was *BAD* for the GOP, right?