forgotston.com

In a fit of boredom this morning and not having seen the information as I skimmed the various media around the state, here is an analysis of the voter participation in Saturday’s party primaries for Congress and the U.S. Senate.

The overall turnout for Saturday’s was 10.4%.

In the Democratic Primary (Where Other and No Party registrants were allowed to vote.) the turnout was approximately 5.1%.

In the Republican Primary (Only registered Republicans were allowed to vote.) the turnout was 12.8%.

In the Libertarian Primary assuming only Libertarians voted (Other and No Party registrants were allowed to vote.) the turnout was approximately 70.8%.*

*Note: The total number of votes cast in the Libertarian Primary was only 2,479.  Even if some Other and No Party voters participated in the primary it would have a negligible impact on the Democratic Primary turnout results.

Good riddance!

More people tailgate and attend college football games on a Saturday in Louisiana than went to vote yesterday.

In conclusion, from a participation standpoint the experiment with “closed primaries” has been a colossal failure.  Additionally, it is a huge waste of the taxpayers’ money at a time when we can least afford for our money to be wasted.

C.B.

1 CB 11:47 am

Apparently, the LA media missed this bit of good news about our state as I haven’t see it reported anywhere.

Yesterday, our “Roads Scholar” governor stated:  “[O]ur economic development department now reports that Louisiana’s business tax structure no longer is an obstacle to attracting new business investment and jobs to our state.” (Emphasis mine)

Very interesting, but that seems like his focus is on the tree and not the forest.

Since 85% to 95% of our state’s economic growth will come not from new businesses, but from EXISTING BUSINESS surviving and prospering, it begs the question:  What does our economic development department have to say about the current tax structure on the survival of EXISTING businesses?

C.B.

1 CB 8:44 am

In a story in Saturday’s Baton Rouge paper ( see here) about the latest D.C. bailout for the states is found these statements from the Jindal Administration:

“We will not support any proposal to spend these dollars in a way that will make next year’s budget problem even worse.

“We know we face considerable challenges next year and we cannot afford to simply kick those tough decisions down the road,….”

Either the “Roads Scholar’s” fiscal policy is extremely flexible or the above comments represent a policy about-face.

“The Scholar” just spent over $2 BILLION in non-recurring (won’t be there next year), Federal bailout funds on recurring expenses for the current fiscal year ending.  That decision only serves one purpose; to kick those tough decisions down the road.

Does anyone pay attention to what “The Scholar” does versus what he says?

C.B.

1 CB 8:00 am