A story by Julie O’Donoghue in the Louisiana Illuminator last Tuesday caught my eye.
Actually, it was her opening paragraph, or as we call it in the trade, the lede, that got my attention – which is, after all, the purpose of a lede: to grab the reader’s attention.
“Louisiana lawmakers,” O’Donoghue wrote, “are quickly moving legislation that would dramatically expand the types of gifts elected officials and government employees could receive while doing their jobs.”
Boiling it down even further, it was the phrase “quickly moving” that sent up the red flags and set off bells and whistles. That’s “quickly moving,” as in too quickly. Those bills that legislators push so strongly and seek quick passage for are generally what are referred to as “snakes,” as in something to be killed.
The sneak amendment that Sen. Neil Riser pushed through on the very last day of the 2014 legislative session that would’ve given then-State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson a generous bump in his retirement of something on the level of an additional $23,000 or $43,000 per year (depending on whom you asked) comes to mind. That amendment passed but was later thrown out when then-Sen. DAN CLAITOR of Baton Rouge filed suit to rescind the increase.
Actually, there are two such bills that address much the same issue: ethics.
Both bills were submitted by Republicans and if you haven’t noticed, it’s the Republicans who pretend to claim the high moral ground: family values, responsible spending and ethics. Yet, it seems to be Republicans who most often get caught committing sexual hanky-panky (of course, there are Democrats who stray as well, but the scales tip decidedly to the right), who increase the federal deficit and who seem to be constantly trying to weaken the state’s ethics and campaign finance laws (see Govs. Bobby Jindal and Jeff Landry).
There are HOUSE BILL 596 by Rep. Mark Wright (R-Covington) which generally eliminates campaign reporting laws, and HB 674 by Rep. Beau Beaullieu (R-New Iberia), which pretty much guts ethics laws.
So you can make your own determination as to what they say, here are the actual copies of HB 596 and HB 674 in their entirety. The full House was SUFFICIENTLY SATISFIED to pass the bill by a UNANIMOUS 96-0 VOTE with eight members not voting. It now goes to the Senate for consideration.
Now throw in HB 160 by Rep. Kellee Dickerson (R-Denham Springs), and you have the perfect Republican ethics trifecta.
Wright’s bill was originally scheduled to be heard by the House and Governmental Affairs Committee last Wednesday but was not brought up for consideration. HB 674 is pending before that same committee.
Dickerson did present her bill to the H&GA Committee – if you want to call it that. You’ll need to scroll to the 16-MINUTE MARK of the nearly three-hour committee meeting to see for yourself.
For a former TV news personality, she was terribly ill-at-ease, fumbling with her notes far too much at the outset. She eventually got around to calling HB 160 a “strong bill to make a strong difference,” but made her pitch in an embarrassingly weak manner, filled with vague, unsubstantiated claims. It’s no wonder the committee never even voted on her bill.
Basically, what HB 160 would do would be to prohibit anonymous complaints to the State Ethics Board, instead allowing the accused to face his or her accuser. It would not only require that a complaint be made in writing, but that the complainant would be required to file the complaint “in person with the Board at the offices of the ethics administration.” There would be monetary penalties in the form of legal fees for any complainant who “knowingly and willfully files a false ethics complaint.”
Okay, no problem with assessing attorney fees against someone who files a trivial complaint for the wrong reasons, but to require face-to-face confrontation when an employee may wish to file a complaint against a supervisor whom he believes to be in violation of ethics laws only invites retribution. Moreover, requiring a complainant in say, Shreveport, to journey all the way to Baton Rouge is a bit burdensome.
Now, compare red state Louisiana’s 17-year trend toward weakened ethics laws (dating to the onset of Bobby Jindal’s first term as governor in 2008) with that of blue state Maryland (seven of its last nine governors were/are Democrats) which has just enacted TOUGH NEW ETHICS LAWS in response to the ethical lapses of former Gov. Larry Hogan, a (ahem) Republican.
It’s almost as though there’s this big mural being painted to illustrate more precisely just which party is only pretending to represent morality and virtue.
Louisiana Voice 
Ethics was just a string of letters to the right even before selling out to MAGA fascism. Bobby Jindal had the “gold standard of ethics” as long as it exempted him and his appointees from scrutiny. George W. Bush’s ethics was to start a war over non-existent WMDs in Iraq. The ethics of Mitch McConnell: “We can’t have confirmation hearings. There’s an election in ten months.” Also the ethics of Mitch McConnell: “We need to have confirmation hearings. There’s an election in two weeks.” Then finally out of the rot of Republican integrity sprouts Trump, a man who is the living antithesis of “ethics.” Now the right is littered with Jeff Landry types, Trump wannabes freed from the pretense of principles or ethics. Of course, that’s not to say the left isn’t infected with a lack of ethics, also. But as in every comparison of left to right, it’s the scale. Lack of ethics on the left is a glass of water compared to the Lake Superior of ethical bankruptcy on the right. Nor is it worth arguing that point with anyone who thinks Trump should be president. That thought alone is a rejection of the entire concept of “ethics.”