forgotston.com

According to news accounts of Friday’s Heh, Heh, Heh, Ethics Board meeting, the board as well as those who passed them are having a problem understanding the new “gold standard” of ethics pushed by Bobby Jindal.

Board chairman Frank Simoneaux, lawyer and former lawmaker, in response to questions about the new law said it was a “real quagmire.”

One of the questions to which Simoneaux referred was from the Clerk of House of Representatives on behalf of the lawyer members of the House.

If an astute, veteran, lawyer like Simoneaux can’t understand the law, how are us mullets supposed to?

If the leges had been doing their job, they’d have asked Jindal what was in the law before they passed it. Instead, the leges abdicated their responsibility as a separate and equal branch of government and blindly followed Jindal.

It’s time the leges starting acting like leges and stop being lapdogs to Jindal.

Aristotle said: “Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government.”

How can the ethics laws be obeyed (or enforced) if the people who made them don’t even know what they mean?

C.B.

1 CB 3:16 pm

Telling the truth is not supposed to be noteworthy. It is assumed and should be the norm. However, that it is not the case when it comes to LA politicians.

No, they don’t all lie all the time.   Some seem to be inflicted with spontaneous temporary memory loss (until confronted with the facts).  Others suffer from cloudy thinking that causes obfuscation of the truth when the truth reflects badly on them or their colleagues.

Thus, it is most noteworthy that a state lege exposes the truth about himself and his colleagues.

In Sunday’s Baton Rouge paper, Michelle Millhollon, has a story ( see here) exploring the myth about the leges’ collective hands being tied in the appropriation of funds because of “dedications.”

Most of the “dedications” are merely statutory. That means that the leges can dip into them whenever they choose. Doing so would significantly redudce the drastic cuts to higher education and healthcare which we are told are the only places than can be cut when there is a rare shortfall of revenues.

In response to being confronted with the facts about these so-called “dedicated funds”, State Senator Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte says to use the funds would take “lots of political will that we don’t have.”

In other words, the problem with the leges hands being tied is that they don’t have the will to untie their own hands.

Kudos to Michelle for exposing a lege myth.

C.B.

1 CB 7:18 am

Louisiana Congressman “Joseph” Cao can rest easy. The LA Recall Law does not apply to Congressmen.

Article X, Section 26 of the Louisiana Constitution authorizes the lege to provide for the recall of only state and local officials except for judges of court of record.

The statutes setting up the LA recall process adheres to the constitutional authority. See LA R.S. 18:1300.1.

End of story or is it?

Thursday, Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, a lawyer, (via his spokesman) opined that Congressman Joseph Cao could be recalled under state law.  (To which I, respectfully, dissented.)

Friday, according to the Associated Press, Dardenne is asking the State Attorney General, a lawyer, whether state law allows a recall.

Did the law changed overnight?

What if the Attorney General’s opinion disagrees with Dardenne’s opinion?  Do Dardenne and the A.G. flip a coin?

C.B.

1 CB 6:56 am