Earl Long, Jimmie Davis, John McKeithen, Edwin Edwards, Dave Treen, Bubby Roemer, Mike Foster, Kathleen Blanco, Bobby Jindal, John Bel Edwards.
Each of these governors has left his or her mark on Louisiana. Some have been good, some bad, and some, for lack of a better term, indifferent.
Earl Long, for example, gave Louisiana school children hot lunches. His brother Huey gave them free text books.
Davis gave the state a civil service system that, while not perfect, was designed to protect workers from a political spoils system.
But what none has been able to do is to lift the state out of the quagmire that defines Louisiana as one of the worst places to live in terms of quality of life, income, job growth, education, and overall health.
It’ll be left up to the historians to determine if that is the fault of the governor, the legislature, or the general political climate that has been allowed to permeate the system, leaving the state’s citizens with a mass feeling of resignation to the prospect that that’s just the way it is.
If it’s the latter, then we have allowed our state to move into a downward spiral from which becomes increasingly difficult to recover. Only those with the power and resources which, when combined, produce political influence, may prosper in such a climate.
When we become so complacent and inured to low expectations and even lower achievements, only those who are unscrupulous, devious, and manipulative will see a path to riches—to the detriment of those of us who allow it to happen.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to be satisfied with the status quo where we keep electing the same political opportunists who belly up to the trough to get first shot at the goodies, leaving the scraps for the rest of us.
Those people never seem to go away and whose fault is that?
I’m beginning to have serious doubts, for example, about the state’s Restore Louisiana program created to help victims of the 2016 floods. How many homeowners have actually been helped so far as opposed to those who find endless obstacles created by bureaucratic red tape—all while employees of the program continue to collect paychecks? How much of that recovery money is being eaten away by salaries of those who are supposed to be helping flood victims?
The governor says the hurricanes that struck Texas and Puerto Rico may slow the recovery process in Louisiana.
Why is that? Hasn’t the money already been appropriated for Louisiana? Why should the recovery process be slowed by those events if the money is already in place to help?
Perhaps it’s all just a part of the overall attitude of our politics as usual which has the state ranked as the third worst state in which to live, according to 24/7 Wall Street, the service which produces some 30 news releases per day on such things as state rankings, college rankings, the economy, and other issues.
LSU football has dropped out of the top 25 rankings. Louisiana has never been in it—except perhaps in the rankings of corruption, graft and ineptitude.
It’s latest ranking, released today, shows that Louisiana 10-year population growth of 6.4 percent is the 13th lowest. Could that be because our unemployment rate of 6.3 percent, according to the service, is third highest in the nation, or that our poverty rate of 19.6 percent (that’s about one of every five people in the state) is also third highest, or that our life expectancy at birth of 75.4 years is the fourth lowest?
What have our leaders done to address these issues?
- They have fought increasing the minimum wage;
- They have rejected efforts to ensure that women are paid the same as men for performing the same work;
- They have robbed our colleges and universities of funding, forcing them to raise tuition which, in turn, is putting a college education out of reach for many;
- They have decimated our medical teaching universities by giving away our state hospitals;
They have consistently looked the other way as the bad news mounts up but have proved themselves to be most diligent in:
- Protecting the right to bear semi-automatic weapons;
- Giving away the state treasury to business and industry in the form of general tax breaks that have to be made up by the rest of us;
- Enacting tougher and tougher penalties for minor crimes that have produced a state with the highest incarceration rate in the civilized world;
- Allowing our infrastructure (including more than a billion dollars in maintenance backlogs at our colleges and universities) to crumble beneath us with no solution in sight because of a lack of funding;
- Protecting young girls by dictating a minimum age for exotic dancers while allowing the state to become a feeding ground for predators calling themselves adoption agencies that in reality, are little more than baby brokers;
- Enacting legislation for faith-based charter schools and then raising holy hell when one of those applicants turns out to be an Islamic school.
Sure, we can stick out our chests and proclaim that at least we aren’t Mississippi which has the fifth-highest unemployment rate at 5.9 percent, the highest poverty rate (22.0 percent), and the lowest life expectancy at birth (74.5 years).
But in the final analysis, that’s really grabbing at straws.
Arkansas and Alabama rank ahead of Louisiana (fourth and fifth worst states in which to live, respectively).
Arkansas’s poverty rate is fourth-highest at 19.1 percent and its life expectancy at birth is seventh-lowest at 75.8 years.
Alabama has an unemployment rate of 5.7 percent (seventh-highest), a poverty rate of 18.5 percent (fifth-highest), and the second-lowest life expectancy at birth (75.2 percent).
Well, who, you might ask, is lodged between Louisiana and Mississippi for second-worst state in which to live?
That would be West Virginia, with the fourth-highest unemployment rate (6.0 percent), the seventh-highest poverty rate (17.9 percent), and the third-lowest life expectancy at birth (75.4 years).
Do you find it interesting that these same five states are always clustered at the bottom of all the rankings?
Know what else is interesting?
They’re all red states.
Isn’t it time we changed the mentality in Louisiana?
Isn’t it long past the time when we should be breaking out of the pack?
Shouldn’t we be asking really hard questions of our elected officials—from governor all the way down to the courthouse?
And the really soul-searching question:
Shouldn’t we turn off Dancing with the Stars and football and become involved in the recovery of a rotting state?
Louisiana Voice 
Yes we should. However, …
58% of Louisiana’s voters voted for Donald Trump. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t lost much ground here since. I don’t think one has to look much further to explain why people don’t rise up and quote William Holden’s Howard Beale (Network, 1976) to wit, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Plenty are happy to shout, “Drain the swamp” and are also happy to quote John Neely Kennedy and others that, “We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.” How many people in this state talk about things they wish were true, but do nothing to make them so? How many don’t care enough to even do that?
I rest my case.
You make such a good case that I hate to correct you but it was Peter Finch who played Howard Beale, not William Holden. Holden played the character Max Schumacher.
Right you are. Thanks!!
Corruption, cronyism, and graft have consumed Louisiana politics all my 54-year life. I can remember as early as eight grade when then-Gov. Edwards was being asked to explain a $10,000 payment from Tong Sun Park, a South Korean businessman. He started grasping at straws, and he finally resorted to stating the payment was made to his wife, Elaine. The Advocate (back when newspapers held elected officials accountable) then published a meme depicting Gov. Edwards pulling a skeleton out of a closet, and it was labeled, “Elaine.” The meme read, “Look what I found!”
About the only thing that has changed is that average every-day people like Tom, me, and other bloggers are now able to constantly harass them about the practice and/or file complaints with law enforcement agencies in the hope they will take action.
Fortunately, with the advent of the internet, YouTube, and blogging, we’re able to do that much more quickly, authoritatively, and feasibly, with our message spreading faster than could have ever even remotely been comprehended 40+ years ago when Edwards first had to explain the above incident. Thank God for that fact because, as Tom has pointed out, the MSM is, for the most part (there are certainly exceptions as I believe Jim Mustain at The Advocate is doing a fantastic job) asleep at the wheel at holding folk accountable. Just consider how fast Tom could “spring into action” on the T. J. Doss / Monica Manzella Louisiana State Police Commission matter. I mean, literally within two hours, he had a full-blown news story out to literally thousands of readers complete with damning photos and short video clips (with a little help on the video clips from yours truly). The best part is that it cost him basically nothing to be able to distribute that feature so widely. What was even more stunning was the fast results (two resignations within a few days of the story being published).
Similarly, I was being fed information concerning Larry Bankston and the IEM contract situation and his actions to steer that contract to the third-place bidder, which was employing his son. Not only did it permit me, as a video blogger, to have a great feature up on it within hours, but I was also able to ask Congressman Graves about the whole incident and merge a prior video segment directly into his response to reinforce the question. As such, we’re literally able to become our own little small video newscasters as was done with that Graves segment (see third segment of video):
http://www.soundoffla.com/?p=996
The segment also contains the contrasting assessments of DOTD efficiency as stated by then-Senator David Vitter vs. Rev. Secretary Kimberly Robinson, with Graves provided an opportunity to assess who may be more accurate (which he did). Meanwhile, Commissioner Dardenne is exposed as admitting to flat-out not knowing what the number is (which I find totally astounding considering the position he holds).
So, the corruption in state government today is likely little, if any, lower than was the case 40+ years ago, but at least now we can humiliate those who perpetrate it much more so than was the case back then. For that fact, I am thrilled, and I KNOW for Saturday’s election, the Sound Off Louisiana feature on the Times Picayune’ s amnesia concerning the “Edmonson Amendment” in its Riser endorsement has influenced a ton of votes away Riser and to Schroder. As low as turnout is projected to be in eight days, we small-time bloggers can have more of an impact than even some of the biggest politicians imagined only a few short years ago. Tom is dedicated to flexing that muscle, and so too am I.
Re: Schroder. When I see this on his website:
Too much like (exactly like – same words?) John Kennedy.
What exactly as Treasurer would he do about this spending problem?
What’s the matter? You read the article in the Advocate where the do-anything-for-scouts, nice guy Ranger at the boy scout camp in Clinton got gunned down in front of his home at the camp…one of several apparent road killings in the area. I am an LSU graduate, along with my son and daughter in law LSU graduates writing from Houston where they live. My LSU eco graduate and Tulane master w excellence friend hearing I was on way to Houston pointed out the city of Houston alone has over 200 companies worth over a billion. LA has less than a hand full and just 1 of the Houston companies is worth more than all the LA combined. Its a lifetime past time to fix LA.