Friday, February 24, 2006
"Kathleen Blanco is just flat delusional"
ADVOCATE EDITORIAL
(excerpt)
We’re all for being upbeat, but let’s face it. Gov. Kathleen Blanco is just flat delusional if she believes that the special session of the Legislature was a success.
Again and again, measures for progress were defeated or watered down.
The administration was almost helpless, with dozens of its floor leaders and committee chairmen voting against Blanco’s key recommendations.
We remember the early days of Blanco’s term. A committee chairman, Rep. Troy Hebert of Jeanerette, cast a vote against a tax bill backed by Blanco. As it turned out, the specific tax he voted against passed the House but was defeated in the Senate and never became law. But he suffered the legislative death penalty, being sacked from his chairmanship by Speaker Joe Salter and Blanco.
What happens this year?
Open rebellion, with no apparent consequences. In purely political terms, it’s ironic.
Blanco’s wishes aren’t the be-all and end-all of legislation, obviously, but she at least formally recommended significant measures to the Legislature. When there was any serious political pushback, her recommendations failed.
The governor compromised a lot, perhaps too much.
But at the end of the session, she was lauding its result as though it were a gold medal in the Olympics.
Perhaps it’s in the governor’s political interest to appear to be winning.
We long for the governor to come out before the people and ignore her politics.
She ought to be willing to say how disappointed she is in the Legislature’s blindness to the new realities of Louisiana. That the Legislature in the special session did about 10 percent of what it needs to do. That Louisiana has to change in ways that nobody’s going to like politically and that require sacrifice across the board.
LPNS COMMENTARY: KUDOS TO THE ADVOCATE FOR TELLING IT LIKE IT IS. THE SESSION WAS TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL. WHY? LACK OF LEADERSHIP FROM THE GOVERNOR. THIS GOVERNOR, (REMEMBER, "TOP 3 WORST GOVERNOR'S" IN AMERICA, REMEMBER 19% RE-ELECT) NEEDS TO RESIGN BEFORE SHE CAN DO ANYMORE HARM!
