forgotston.com

Bobby Jindal floor leader House Speaker Jim Tucker is sounding like a man breaking ties with the fiscally-irresponsible Jindal Administration. ( See story here.)

After carrying Jindal’s water to increase the state spending “cap” by a billion dollars in 2008 Tucker seems to have recognized the folly of that action.

Tucker blames Jindal and the state senate for the impending $2 Billion budget shortfall.

Tucker said next year’s looming $2 billion budget shortfall could have been mitigated if the Senate and Gov. Bobby Jindal had been willing to make more significant cuts in the current and previous budgets. Monroe News-Star, September 2, 2010.

Tucker apparently wants a future in Louisiana politics.  It remains to be seen how many of his lege colleagues feel the same way.

C.B.

1 CB 9:41 am

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