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Archive for December, 2012

Separation of Powers: why does our legislature cede its power to the governor? (LouisianaVoice guest column)

Posted in Ethics, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators on December 30, 2012| 9 Comments »

By Stephen Winham ©2012

Because the lines have become so blurred recently, we often forget the reason our founding fathers created three separate branches of government in the 1787 U.S. Constitution. It was simple, really – to protect citizens from an abusive, authoritarian government by spreading and providing checks and balances on power. The separation of powers doctrine implicit in the constitution is applied, in varying measure, by both the U. S. and state governments.

While the judicial branch is responsible for preserving the law and resolving legal issues, the legislature is responsible for actually creating laws, including those making appropriations. The executive is responsible for administering these laws. Though the three branches are considered equal, the legislative branch can easily become the most powerful. If this is true, why is the governor so inordinately powerful in Louisiana?

From my perspective, the clearest example of how the doctrine of separation of powers is disregarded in Louisiana is the way the state’s budget is adopted. In many states the legislature considers budget proposals submitted by the governor (the Executive Budget), but then develops its own proposals, often including a document very much like the one submitted by the governor.

In Louisiana, the Legislature accepts the executive branch budget and the original appropriations bills (which are drafted by administration, not legislative, staff) as submitted. Any changes the legislature makes are by amendments to the bills. This should have the value of making a clear distinction between what the governor is requesting and what the legislature chooses to appropriate for state services. However, to the extent the legislature ultimately rolls over and plays dead, as it has over the last 6 years in ways unprecedented since the late 70s, it has ceded its greatest power – that of appropriation – to the executive branch.

The way the budget is handled is far from the only example of how the executive branch overextends its power via a compliant, and some would say, complicit legislature. Again, why is this so? Is it because the governor actually has extraordinary power by law? No, and remember it is the legislature that makes the law in any event.

I believe the legislature actually enjoys and benefits from being controlled by the governor. No matter what happens in Louisiana government these days, an individual legislator can excuse his/her actions to constituents by claiming s/he could not buck the governor, no matter how hard s/he tried. It’s a win-win situation for the legislature and the governor. The governor continues to wield unbridled power and enjoy positive national press while the legislature can quietly blame him for anything that goes wrong. Both the governor and, ironically, legislators are free to take full credit for anything that goes right.

The governor and members of the legislature are elected to serve the people’s interests. When the bulk of power is in the hands of one person, the value of the separation of powers doctrine is lost, including the extent to which the people’s interests are represented. This was apparently treated humorously when our four previous governors met in a recent forum, but it is no joke.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Congress, Notable Quotables, Uncategorized on December 29, 2012| 1 Comment »

“It is extremely satisfying to see a politician being made the rube by just the kind of sensationalism (in this case satiric) that they seem to adept at manufacturing these days.”

—Blogger Hudson Hongo, who latched onto Congressman John Fleming’s Facebook post, remarking on the Louisiana lawmaker’s falling for a satire story on The Onion about the opening of an $8 billion abortionplex.

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Fleming bans critical comments from his Facebook page while posting criticism of satirical story on The Onion

Posted in Congress on December 29, 2012| 7 Comments »

You couldn’t really blame Rep. John Fleming (R-Minden) if he simply canceled his Facebook account after the ridicule heaped upon him for his having fallen for a “story” on The Onion.

For those who still don’t know, The Onion is a web page that offers parodies of news stories.

Of course, Fleming, the all-in-one political reincarnation of Willie Rainach, Leander Perez and John Rarick, isn’t the only public official to fall for a satirical story published by The Onion. Only a few weeks ago the official Chinese People’s Daily English language website picked up the story in which The Onion named North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un as the “Sexiest Man Alive,” http://www.npr.org/2012/12/01/166293306/the-onion-so-funny-it-makes-us-cry running it verbatim and adding a 55-photo slideshow of Kim.

But when The Onion ran a story in May of 2011 announcing that Planned Parenthood had opened an $8 billion Abortionplex, Fleming swallowed the bait, albeit nearly a year later, giving the story new legs http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/john-fleming-onion-planned-parenthood_n_1257763.html.

The story provided details of the “sprawling abortion facility,” including more than 2,000 rooms, coffee shops, bars, dozens of restaurants, retail outlets, a three-story nightclub and a 10-screen multiplex theater—“features intended not only to help clients relax, but to foster a sense of community and make abortion more of a social event.”

Last February, Fleming jumped into the fray, posting on his Facebook page, “More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale.” http://literallyunbelievable.org/post/17153265749/how-exactly-did-you-get-elected Fleming spokesman Doug Sachteben later confirmed that the red-faced congressman had removed the post but the damage was done.

The blog Literally Unbelievable, which posts Facebook statuses from users who believe Onion articles, pounced on Fleming’s status before it was removed and re-posted it, prompting a few interesting comments:

• “…The Republican Party has become the party of the rich, the paranoid and the simple-minded.”

• “How can he really believe something so patently stupid?”

• “How much of a moron can you be and not be declared unfit for public office?”

• “Since Fleming is clearly brain-dead, can we unplug him now?”

So, not only was the good congressman from Minden gullible, he was also way behind the curve in being so.

Gullible and slow: not a good combination for a member of Congress, but welcomed by The Onion’s editor, Joe Randazzo.

“We’re delighted to hear that Rep. Fleming is a regular reader of America’s finest news source and doesn’t bother himself with the New York Times, Washington Post, the mediums of television and radio, or any other lesser journalism outlets,” he said.

Of course, Fleming loves to post onto his Facebook page, with many of his messages containing vitriolic criticism of political opponents.

He even goes so far as to block comments on his Facebook page from anyone who disagrees with him—a practice that should raise eyebrows considering the fact that he ostensibly represents all citizens in his Fourth Congressional District.

“Fleming threatened to ban/block me from his FB page for a comment I made that was not bad; it just pointed out his hypocrisy,” one of his constituents wrote.

Another, a retired federal employee, said he was accepted as a “friend” on Fleming’s Facebook page. “I had no problem viewing and commenting on anything that was posted,” he said. “At that time, I was often appalled at how demeaning Congressman Fleming or his staff was to some of the people who seemed to present a different point of view.

“If comments were supportive or “atta-boy” comments, he would praise the person and be very complimentary. But if they were contradictory, he would be very critical or condescending of the person,” he said.

After posting occasional comments that took issue with Fleming positions, the federal retiree sometime in early 2012 suddenly found that he could read Fleming’s posts but no longer could submit comments.

“I spent 16 years of my career working with congressional members relative to budget, so I am experienced at protocol, respecting and communicating with representatives and senators,” he said. “When I posted a comment, it might be supportive, neutral or contradictory, but the comment was always professionally worded and backed up with facts.

“As best I could tell, I had been flagged or was not allowed to post comments on anything posted on Congressman Fleming’s Facebook page.

“Hence, as a person who lives within his district, I am not allowed to express a concern or an opinion on his Facebook posts,” he said.

As a footnote to an earlier post, perhaps LouisianaVoice was a bit unfair to Fleming in portraying him as being interested in advancing only the interests of the wealthy by opposing any tax increase on those making more than $1 million per year.

We may have inadvertently made him appear greedy in showing how he obtained his riches first as a physician and then by branching out into other areas such as Subway sandwich shops and UPS franchises.

We may even have been unfair in pointing out the discrepancies in his numbers when he said he only has $600,000 left over after his businesses brought in $6.3 million in 2010 and the remaining $5.7 million had to go to paying 500 employees, equipment purchase and leasing and the purchase of food for his restaurants.

After all, it almost certainly was a misstatement on his part to imply that he was paying his 500 employees at a wage below the national poverty level. ($5.7 million divided by 500 employees comes to $11,400 per year, the approximate national poverty level in 2010.)

Surely, it was unfair to imply that Fleming does not care for the working poor when a search of corporations run by him reveals that he represents Fleming Payday Loans, an enterprise that offers short-term loans to those who need quick cash to tide them over from payday to payday.

Never mind that the annualized interest rate of a two-week loan may be as high as 390 percent.

He’s helping the poor, right?

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Poor Congressman Fleming; he simply cannot afford to pay additional taxes on meager income of $6.3 million per year

Posted in Congress, Taxes on December 25, 2012| 19 Comments »

When Louisiana Congressman John Fleming said he is not in favor of increasing the tax rate for those making $1 million and more per year, you need to probe a little deeper to understand that his real motive in opposing higher taxes might be just a tad self-serving.

Interviewed right after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, withdrew his “Plan B” fiscal cliff bill which would have extended the Bush-era tax cuts to all households making less than $1 million per year, Fleming made his position crystal clear.

“Raising taxes on any American to me is not the right message, he told CBS reporter Nancy Cordes. “The right message is cutting spending.”

But to fully understand what Fleming, a Minden Republican, is really saying, we have to go back more than a year to Sept. 19, 2011, and review his MSNBC interview with Chris Jansing, giving particular attention to the numbers being bandied around in that interview.

Jansing reminded Fleming that his businesses (Subway sandwich and UPS franchises) earned $6.3 million in 2010.

Fleming said that while his businesses made $6.3 million, “Income flows to my personal tax return. My net income is a mere fraction of $6 million since my net income is more like $600,000. By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over.”

That’s right, folks, Congressman John Fleming, that man of the people whose only concern is the welfare of good, hard-working Americans, can barely make ends meet on $600,000 per year. And that doesn’t even include his $174,000 per year congressional salary, free mail (franking) privileges, district office, furniture and staff.

The average household income in the U.S. in 2010 was just under $50,000, down 2.3 percent from 2009.

“Class warfare has never created a job,” he said in that interview. “Most people feel owning a business is a virtue, not a vice.”

That, folks, is called spin.

That $6.3 million is “before you pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay (for) equipment and food,” he protested, almost to the point of whining.

But his numbers just don’t add up so let’s break them down and then you can decide for yourself just who is promoting class warfare.

Let’s begin with that $6.3 million. By his own admission, he receives $600,000 of that, which leaves a trifling $5.7 million with which he claims he pays 500 employees, pays rent, purchases or leases equipment and buys food for his Subway restaurants.

For the time being, let’s discard all the expenses for rent, equipment and food and say, for the sake of argument, that the entire $5.7 million goes for salaries of those 500 employees.

That works out to $11,400 per employee—UPS drivers, sandwich makers, and supervisory personnel.

The poverty level for a one-person household in America in 2010 was $11,344.

Assuming that his UPS drivers and management personnel were making substantially more than that $11,400 average, reason dictates that the remainder of his workers were among America’s working poor.

Fleming told Jansing President Obama’s deficit reduction plan was a terrible idea which kills jobs provided by wealthy “job creators.”

Whether or not one agrees with Obama, Fleming’s position is a little difficult to square up against the numbers he threw out to Jansing.

Of course Fleming was either grossly exaggerating the number of employees or grossly understating the income from his business enterprises which also include numerous other investments.

Or his employee turnover rate is such that he really did go through 500 workers during 2010 as personnel came and went after unusually brief tenures which would translate into far fewer people on the payroll at any given time.

Not that Fleming is a poor businessman. He already had the good sense to set his businesses up in such a way as to minimize his corporate taxes.

Under the federal tax system, the income of corporations is taxed twice—once at the corporate level through the payment of the corporate income tax and again at the individual rate when corporate profits are distributed. Sole proprietorships, partnerships, S corporations and limited liability companies (LLC) are taxed only at the individual owner level.

According to his congressional financial statement, his companies are all set up as LLCs and partnerships which would explain his statement that the $6.3 million flowed through his personal income taxes.

Congressional financial statements are vague at best, thanks to the requirement that income and liabilities are generally listed within a spacious range between the low and high ends.
For example, here are Fleming’s 2011 income ranges from the following sources:

• Park City Health Services (Fleming also is a physician)—$1 million to $5 million;

• JCF Properties Limited Partnership—$100,000 to $1 million;

• Fleming Franchise Development—$100,000 to $1 million;

• Fleming Subway Restaurants—Over $5 million;

It’s not that we mean to come down too hard on the good congressmen. After all, he went through some tough financial times from 2007, the year before he was first elected, to 2010, the latest year for which figures are available from OpenSecrets.org, as reported by the Washington Post.

His net worth plummeted from $24 million in 2007 to a paltry $6.5 million in 2008 before eventually climbing back to $10.2 million in 2010.

That included $3.8 million in real estate, $3.6 million from his private companies and $3.2 million from unspecified sources.

He did pretty well, too, in attracting big ticket campaign contributions in 2011-2012.

Of the $1,229,259 in total campaign contributions, $1,202,416 (77 percent) was classified as large individual contributions while a mere $26,843 (2 percent) came from small individual contributors.

Another $321,363 (21 percent) came from political action committees, including, among others, Northrop Grumman’s PAC ($15,000), The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and Every Republican is Crucial PACs ($10,000 each), National Association of Realtors (8,010), the Shaw Group ($8,000) and the National Beer Wholesalers Association ($7,500).

Other contributors included:

• Atco Investments: $29,000;

• Gamble Guest Care: $15,100;

• Kinsey Interests: $12,300;

• Builders Supply Co.: $12,100;

• Willis Knighten Hospital: $7,200;

• Louisiana State University: $11,850.

We can only hope things pick up for Congressman Fleming in 2013 so that he can feed his family a little better and bring the pay scale of his employees up to the national poverty level and perhaps even endure a tax increase for him and his poor millionaire friends.

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On mental health, assault weapons and remembering the 20 precious angels and 6 brave guardians on Christmas morning

Posted in Health Care on December 20, 2012| 18 Comments »

Anything to be said at this point about the heartbreaking massacre in Newtown, Conn. last Friday has most likely already been said.

That said, there appears to be growing sentiment in favor of restricting or the outright banning of ownership of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

One reader made two points about automatic weapons: first, they are made for one specific purpose, killing people, and second, if you can’t hit your target in two or three shots, you don’t need a weapon that will fire off 40 rounds in a few seconds.

Of course, the NRA types will fall back on their tired reasoning that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. That trite expression no longer holds water. It may be people who want to kill people, but the weapon is the enabler, the tool that makes killing faster and more efficient.

But the roots of the Newtown tragedy go far deeper than the mere debate over weapons.

Clearly, something must be done to restrict the availability of automatic weapons but this country, this state, and we as a society must also address the lack of availability of care for the mentally ill among us.

To leave these people with nowhere to turn, to leave them wandering the streets wrestling with their personal demons, is nothing short of criminal.

The fact that we may have never encountered someone suffering from mental disorders does not imply that they’re not just around the next corner. In fact, if we are perfectly honest with ourselves, there probably have been times when each of us has struggled through periods of depression, insecurity and uncertainty.

In August of 2009, it was announced that the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital (NOAH), the only public hospital in the city with a dedicated mental health ward, would be closed on Sept. 1.

Gov. Piyush Jindal, through his then-secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals Alan Levine, said the facility would be integrated with Southeast Louisiana Hospital 40 miles away in Mandeville on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in a move to save $14 million.

“You don’t prevent people from committing crimes by building more jails,” Levine said. “Similarly, you don’t prevent people from having mental problems by building more beds; all it is doing is cycling people in and out of beds.”

A mere three years after the closure of NOAH, Piyush announced the closure of Southeast Louisiana Hospital, leaving residents of southeast Louisiana, the most heavily-populated area of the state, without a state mental health facility.

Jindal said Southeast patients would be transferred to East Louisiana Hospital in Jackson and Central Louisiana Hospital in Pineville.

Where, one must wonder, will they go when Jindal closes those hospitals?

When a facility is shut down, many patients refuse to move to a new location and they often cease taking their medication, which only exacerbates an already serious problem.

Take the 2008 case of Bernell Johnson. Described by relatives as paranoid schizophrenic, and recently released from a mental facility, Johnson was approached on a New Orleans street by police officer Nicola Cotton because she thought he fit the description of a wanted rape suspect.

Suddenly agitated, he turned on the 24-year-old officer who was two months pregnant. During a struggle, he grabbed her weapon and emptied it on her. Once it was over, a calmer remained by her lifeless body until other officers arrived. Should he have been released when he was? Probably not but the point is, he was wandering the streets, untreated and unmedicated.

This is not to bestow pity on those who for reasons known only to their own twisted logic, decide to go on a killing rampage. It’s difficult to get past the anger and heartache to the root cause of the carnage. That’s human nature.

But not everyone suffering from mental issues is a killer. I once saw an elderly black man walking along the side of the U.S. 190 in Denham Springs and stopped and offered him a ride. When he was in my car, I asked where he was going and he told me he was trying to get back to his halfway house in Baton Rouge.

The only problem was, we were traveling away from, not toward Baton Rouge. As I drove, I tried to get more information from the obviously confused old gentleman. During the course of his ramblings, he happened to mention that had not heard the voices in his head for several days now. For the first time, the idea that I may have made a serious mistake entered my mind.

When I reached my road, I turned off the highway and suggested he proceed back toward Baton Rouge. Instead, as I drove away, I noticed he was walking in the same direction as I so when I reached my home, I called the police and suggested they pick him up and try to get him back to where he belonged.

They told me they’d already picked him up because a nervous resident called when she spotted him wandering in her neighborhood. He was harmless, but completely disoriented and he instilled fear in certain others.

Mental illness is very real and it affects many who cannot afford treatment. Accordingly, it is incumbent upon the state and society to ensure that treatment is readily available to those who so desperately need it.

Tragically, the lack of access to mental treatment and the easy access to deadly weapons converged in Newtown last week. As horrific as it was, it could have been even more catastrophic had the killer’s rampage continued.

We can only hope that sanity will prevail on the federal and state levels and both these problems—gun control and mental treatment availability—will be addressed without the accompanying political posturing that goes with so many debates these days.

Common sense must be the new order of the day. We can accept nothing less.

And finally, next Tuesday morning, when you are watching your children squealing and laughing in the mountain of Christmas presents and wrapping paper that surround them next to the tree, take a little time to remember those 20 little angels and their six protectors who never got a chance to celebrate with their families. Take a moment to remember the anguish their parents and family members must be suffering at that very moment, knowing that presents, already bought and wrapped, will never be opened by the intended recipients.

And then take a very long moment to hold your own children just a little longer and a little tighter. And don’t forget to tell them you love them, over and over.

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