forgotston.com

Here are some excerpts from Saturday’s Baton Rouge paper in a story ( here) about the high number of state employees in Louisiana compared to other Southern states:

[Barry Erwin, president of Council for A Better Louisiana] said Louisiana is a poor state that provides a lot of services such as a state-run charity hospital system.

“It doesn’t surprise me … I think what’s needed, though, is analysis of what that means,” Erwin said.

An analysis

Perhaps I can “splain” what that means before Barry suggests that the state hire an expensive, out-of-state, consultant to tell us the obvious.

Louisiana is not a “poor state.”  We have a lot of poor people.

The primary reason that we have a lot of poor people is because of the state’s dismal economy resulting in the lack of good-paying jobs in our state.

To fix the problem requires the repeal business taxes, state regulations and red tape that make it difficult for businesses to survive and expand in Louisiana.

The only downside to this suggestion is that state government will have to shrink a little until the state’s economy improves.  However, Barry, who is a member of State Streamlining Commission, has been opposed to the only suggestions for significantly reducing the size of state government offered by State Treasurer John Kennedy.

Downward spiral

Until we reduce the heavy burden of state government upon the backs of the taxpayers, Louisiana will continue to have an increasing number of poor people that need more government services. It is a downward spiral that will result in all of us being poor or poorer.

There is no charge for this “analysis of what it means.”

C.B.

1 CB 8:00 am

This is a true “man-bites-dog story.”

An existing Louisiana business actually got some help from the state to expand its operations.

After many broken promises by the Rhodes Scholar-in-chief and his ethically-challenged head of economic development Stephen Moret, it finally happened.

Si Brown, CEO of Bruce Foods, an 80 year old Louisiana business, appeared recently on the Moon Griffon statewide radio talk show. Brown complained that The Rhodes Scholar and Moret were underwriting, with our tax dollars, an out-of-state competitor of Bruce Foods while ignoring Brown’s efforts to build a similar processing plant. (See commentary here.)

Finally, after four appearances (latest was Thursday) on the Griffon radio show and more broken promises, Moret was forced to deliver on his promise to assist Bruce Foods with some infrastructure improvements.

On Friday, Brown received the necessary documents so that he could move forward with his plant.

There is a lesson here for all existing businesses in Louisiana that are being stonewalled by Moret; speak up!

While it should not be necessary for any Louisiana business to have to publicly pressure Jindal and Moret to do their jobs, it is the only thing that works.

Kudos to Si Brown for having the courage to step up and speak out.

C.B.

1 CB 9:48 am