Louisiana Voice

Less government weighed against the desire for more control over educational curriculum, voting rights, minority rights, the courts and women’s bodies has to be one of the more delicate balancing acts in the 170-year history of the Republican party.

And they are certainly not very good in any display of consistency.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s look at just one issue that is becoming more popular with emboldened Republicans with each passing day.

Outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape, incest or endangerment to the mother, apparently was not enough for the party that professes to wanting less government intervention into the lives of Americans.

Earlier this month, Senate Republicans blocked legislation aimed at protecting women’s access to contraception.

It’s not like we were not given a heads-up. In April 2023, we learned that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was not enough; Republicans had already set their sights on birth control with the BANNING OF CONTRACEPTIVES. A year earlier, the House passed a bill that would prevent states from banning birth control but only eight Republicans in the entire chamber voted in favor.

In perhaps the most far-reaching decision of all, the Alabama Supreme Court in February of this year deemed that EMBRYOS created through in vitro fertilization are, in fact, children, prompting Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville to utter a totally baffling EXPLANATION of his take on the ruling.

But back to last week’s vote. The vote on the bill was 51-39 with 10 members not voting. That vote fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage.

Only two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of the bill.

Louisiana’s two senators? BILL CASSIDY, a physician no less, fell in line with his Republican colleagues and voted no. John Neely Kennedy conveniently took a walk and did not vote.

So, to all those who scoff at the suggestion that Republicans are taking aim on your social security and Medicaid/Medicare, I would suggest you read Sen. J.D. Vance’s DENIAL that Republicans want to limit birth control access of just last December. So, how did Vance back up his words? Like our John N. Kennedy, he went fishing and did not vote.

All of which goes to validate my credo on politics: Disregard totally what politicians say and listen for what they don’t say – because you can bet the farm the latter is what they’ll end up doing.

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Well, just call me jaded, skeptical, suspicious and downright distrustful but there should be a ton of questions about the passage of an 11^th-hour amendment of House Bill 268.

The BILL, authored by Speaker Pro Tempore Mike Johnson (R-Pineville), was originally written to keep the home phone numbers and addresses of public employees confidential and was a good thing on its surface.

But Johnson, at Landry’s request, tacked on a last-second amendment, adopted in a closed-door session that even the Hayride professes to DISDAIN, that excluded travel plans for the governor and his family out of concern for the “safety of the governor, his spouse or his child.”

Okay, sure, we all want our public servants – and their families – to be safe. But it’s an 85-day legislative session so why wait until the 80^th day slip in this amendment? It’s almost enough to make a political pragmatist like me thing some other ulterior motive might have been at play here – something so furtive as to necessitate parliamentary chicanery to sneak it through.

Ultimately, the bill, as amended, was approved in the HOUSE by an 86-12 vote, with seven representatives taking a walk. The SENATE was even more obliging, passing the amended bill by a unanimous 37-0 vote with only two abstentions.

The intent of the amendment may well have been completely benign but my suspicious nature, fed by early efforts by Landry to seize complete control of state government, leaves me less than convinced of the purity of intent here.

Take HB-767 by Rep. Julie Emerson (R-Carencro), for example. The bill, like HB 268 discussed above, was amended to prohibit any non-resident of the state from requesting public records from the governor’s office.

That little gem probably stems from a 2019 ARGUMENT by then-Attorney General Landry that an Indiana resident was not entitled to records about Landry’s dealing with the oil industry. Scarlett Martin SUED Landry over his refusal to comply with her request. That lawsuit never went to trial because ultimately, Landry’s hollow bluff CRATERED and he eventually turned over more than 6,200 pages of documents to Martin. He likewise lost in efforts to protect public records from two other in-state publications, the Baton Rouge Advocate and The Lens, a New Orleans online publication.

Those little setbacks must’ve really stuck in his craw for him to come clawing back in efforts to shut down the release of public records through the legislative process.

Not that Landry himself is not above using public records to his own advantage, like when he obtained hundreds of pages of public records from the EPA which it used to TARGET  environmental activists who claimed that permitting practices allowed petro-chemical plants to disproportionately adversely affect black citizens in Cancer Alley.

Emerson’s bill, RESTRICTING the release of public records to Louisiana residents only, passed the HOUSE by a vote of 79-18, again with seven members not voting. The SENATE was again super-compliant, approving the bill by a unanimous vote of 35-0 with four not voting.

But what would a problem be without a solution? I mean, if Landry can obtain public records to thwart efforts by citizens concerned over adverse environmental impacts to their communities, there should be a way that two could play his game.

Well, there is.

Anyone who resides outside Louisiana who wishes to obtain public records from Landry’s office need only contact me at LouisianaVoice and I will be more than happy to make the necessary requests – and to file suit to get them should that become a necessity.

I am a lifelong resident of Louisiana and I’m certainly old enough to meet any age requirements.

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Call me jaded, but when four prisoners escaped from the Tangipahoa Parish Jail, the remedial steps taken by the Tangi Sheriff’s Office to patch up a gap under the wall might have raised a few eyebrows.

All four escapees were recaptured but it had to be something of an embarrassment to the sheriff’s office to admit that the four weren’t even missed because of an improper head count.

So, what were the remedial steps taken?

Well, the fence was repaired….by inmates.

Isn’t there an expression about letting a fox guard the henhouse?

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I’ve always felt that one’s political views are one’s own and while I may disagree with someone, I try to respect another’s viewpoint. For that reason, while I may vehemently disagree with another writer, I am loath to openly criticize another pundit’s opinions. So far, that policy has been reciprocated by fellow writers.

But when someone publishes claims that are so outlandishly misleading, even downright false as has the Hayride writers, I have to call them out.

Last Thursday, Scott McKay, who, for whatever reason, chooses to use the name MacAoidh for his byline (I suppose he thinks he’s a member of a once-powerful Scottish clan), went a little rabid over criticism of the Louisiana Department of Education’s decision to offer those silly PragerU five-minute video clips for public school civics and American history classes.

McKay, or MacAoidh, insisted on calling it Prager U (separating the letter “U” from the rest of the outfit’s name) in some king of subliminal attempt to legitimize it as a full-blown university. It’s not. It’s not even a school. It’s a content carrier. In other words, a not-so-subtle propaganda generator much the same as Fox News or the late, not-so-great Rush Limburger. Watch any PragerU video clip and you’re going to be treated to some oatmeal-for-brains-generated mishmash of “everything’s rosy in America except Democrats” claptrap.

Watching these clips, I could almost hear David Duke proclaiming that he has lots of black friends, or Florida’s Rhonda Santis extolling the virtues of Key West’s gay community in an effort to sound .

I’ll let you decide if it’s a real civics or history lesson when PragerU’s own CEO Marissa Strett said that the U.S. education system is “a left-wing propaganda machine” and that PragerU is “medicine for the mind so that we can cure and help people think clearly.”

But wait. There’s more. In one video clip that National Public Radio cited as being offered by PragerU, an animated CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS says, “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”

Really? PragerU’s clip must have overlooked a third alternative: freedom, as opposed to slavery or death.

Apparently, PragerU and by extension, McKay/MacAoidh, are just fine with one human being owning another human.

I’d have to say the PragerU teachings pretty much dovetail Florida’s new standards that require that students be taught that the experience of slavery was beneficial to African Americans because it helped them acquire skills.

But that must be okay with McKay/MacAoidh.

Here’s what McKay/MacAoidh said in praising the works of PragerU: “Prager U (sic) is a great educational asset. Prager U’s video content items are among the most digestible Cliff’s Notes versions of explainers for historical events, civics concepts and other things that would fall under the ambit of ‘social studies.’”

Then there’s Hayride writer CHUCK OWEN who felt the need to be the official apologist for Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley. Without commenting on Brumley’s qualifications, we do challenge the veracity of Owen’s claim that complaints over the PragerU controversy is “repressive tolerance,” a “tool of Cultural Marxists that seeks to silence anything that they don’t approve or understand.”

Owen wouldn’t know “cultural Marxism” if it hit him in the face. And as far as accusing anyone of seeking to silence anything they don’t approve or understand, has he taken a look at the Republicans’ “don’t say gay” nonsense or their efforts to squelch any teachings about the Civil War and slavery or women’s suffrage? Or maybe the right’s hysterical apoplexy over the content of public and school libraries? I think the proper term for that is grooming.

And finally, Hayride columnist Jeffrey Sadow, an associate professor of political science at LSU-Shreveport, offered up his own defense of PragerU with his rambling DIATRIBE.

As we did last week, we invite you to make your own decisions by clicking HERE to view some of the clips being offered by PragerU. Don’t watch just the featured video that pops up, though it’s sufficient inane to induce eye rolls. Go to the menu at the right of the page and check out a few of the others.

The late Sen. Daniel Parick Moynihan has often been cited for one of his more famous utterances: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.”

The folks at the Hayride would do well to remember that.

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