Suchergebnisse

A whole generation goes by, and nothing changes for
Bossier Parish apparently playing fast and loose with the law when it comes to
squeezing money from the citizenry.

The Bossier
Watch transmission of Apr. 16 contained a couple of minutes of commentary
and video of a sign reading "VOTE SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024 BOSSIER PARISH
LIBRARIES" planted near a roadway. The hosts recounted they had seen some
around, although the exact location of this one was unknown. On that date is
the spring municipal runoff elections in Louisiana, where a 7.43 mils property
tax renewal to fund Bossier Parish libraries reengaging in 2026 for 10 years is
the one item that will appear on ballots parish-wide.

What follows is a reprint of a post
I made at my Louisiana-centric blog site, Between the Lines, on Dec. 30, 2010
that reviewed events of four years previous. (Keep in mind nearly 18 years ago
that the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway stopped at the southern end of the
now-Brookshire Grocery Arena). It's amazing how little things (and people
involved) change:

As 2011 approaches and observing that Bossier
Parish seems to have no difficulty, even in trying economic times, in finding
money to service road construction, as well as reviewing the past year and
digesting the renewed enthusiasm that the people have acquired courtesy of
over-reaching national government to monitor the activities of government, it
makes me think back some years ago about an object lesson concerning how
government operates. The specific example is Bossier Parish's, and the apparent
whimsy of situation might amuse save for the unsettling consequences implied
had things turned out differently.

Perhaps somebody remembers in the days leading up
to the 2006 fall elections that a sign touting an affirmative vote for Bossier
Parish raising property taxes essentially threefold, at what was then the
southern end of the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway, was moved a short distance away
only a few days before that election. Blame me for the consternation.

I first noticed the sign on Sep. 21 and became
simultaneously curious and concerned. It didn't state who sponsored it, and it
was in a spot I thought might be part of the public right-of-way, and certainly
was on public property (Bossier City's). Obviously, it was an attempt to
encourage passage of the measure which should bring pause to anyone who
believes in fairness by government: Bossier City was permitting a pro-vote
sign, supporting a Bossier Parish measure which would enrich the parish coffers
by $2 million a year, to be placed on its property, regardless of whether its
citizens supported such a measure.

According to the Unified Development Code for both
the city and parish, this is permissible under certain circumstances. Article
9 Section 10 states: "Temporary signs containing no commercial message and
related to an election or other event or matter of public interest may be
erected in any zoning district of the city or parish but not within the public
right-of-way." Note, however, that the Code does not mention placement on
government property.

After a couple of phone calls I got hold of Parish
Engineer Joe "Butch" Ford, who said a private entity had put up the
sign (and a similar one elsewhere). At least no government was using taxpayer
dollars to try to influence its citizens voting behavior. Still, apparently it
was on city property and the right-of-way question he couldn't answer, so on I
called the Bossier City engineer to find out the answer to the latter.

He took time out of his busy day to relay to me
that the public right-of-way extended to the back side of the barricade
blocking the end of the pavement (about 25 feet from the roadway). However, the
sign was located on the front side of the barricade, meaning it was in the
public right-of-way and therefore illegally placed.

I then placed another call to the Metropolitan
Planning Commission (I had placed one the day before but, like the call to
Ford, had been close to the end of the workday and, unlike the one to him, was
not answered). The employee there said they would deal with the situation, once
I informed him of it. Since this was early Friday afternoon, I didn't know
whether anything would happen before the weekend.

Early the next Monday, now five days prior to the
election, I got a call from the Bossier MPC director Sam Marsiglia, who said it
was legal to have the sign there because "it's a public sign." He alleged that
a government had put it there, and that was legal. I informed him that the
parish engineer had said otherwise and tried to explain that wouldn't look very
good if a government was using taxpayer dollars to sway their votes so a
government wouldn't do that, but he was insistent and said I should call Parish
Administrator Bill Altimus about the matter.

I had duties to attend to so it was about 20
minutes later that I dialed Altimus. He cheerfully informed me the sign would
be moved. As soon as I hung up, Marsiglia called, saying it would be moved to
the Reeves Marine property (adjacent east of the barricades) and to check back
with him if it wasn't done. (It would have been out of the right-of-way simply
by moving it behind the barricades but would have remained on city property.)

This, I might add, is simply wonderfully
neighborly behavior by the city and parish and Reeves Marine. Silly me, I
thought whenever illegal campaign signs were discovered they either were
destroyed or confiscated to a location where their owners could liberate them.
Instead, not only were the interests behind the sign being allowed to move it,
within only minutes of being informed of that necessity Reeves Marine
graciously volunteered to host the sign. What a friendly place! Future
candidates for office, now you know, if you place a sign on Bossier City
property and/or illegally, it won't be destroyed or removed, they'll let you
move it, maybe even to Reeves Marine. (If you ask nicely, maybe they'll even
move it for you!)

(Note: in a subsequent communication, even Bossier
City elected officials seemed confused over the incident. At my request, city
councilman Scott Irwin wrote to Mayor Lo Walker, whose office's reply did not
even discuss the legal issue and did not address the propriety of an
electioneering sign on city property, adding "With your concurrence I will
consider this ITEM CLOSED." Maybe not; maybe this issue of propriety is
something that ought to be addressed by the city.)

Regardless of the sign's position (or of any
others; there were several other similar ones touting the bond issue around the
parish), the proposition narrowly failed. It took one concerned citizen to make
the system work properly regarding the sign. Sep. 30, 2006, it took a majority
of concerned citizens voting to make the Bossier Parish Police Jury see the
truth that it didn't need to raise taxes to make sure the parkway was extended
expeditiously and, even with deteriorated economic conditions, then to proceed
to fulfill the other projects that had argued could be completed only with the
increased taxation.

And confirmation of this came earlier this month,
when the extension to the Parkway opened (through where the sign originally had
been) without the extra tax dollars having gone into its construction. Lesson:
watch government very closely lest it take what it does not need nor deserve
from the people.

And now to 2024 … the sign displayed on Bossier
Watch seemed awfully close to the road, meaning it's in the right-of-way, and
the Bossier UDC hasn't changed since making that placement illegal. Thus, it would
be incumbent on either the parish or whatever municipality may have such signs to
remove these.

And where are they coming from? Campaign
finance disclosure law would mandate that any political committee spending
money on electioneering at this date close to the election would had to have
filed a report about the expenditure for signs. None has, meaning either some
PAC somewhere illegally hasn't reported this or no registered PAC has done it.
That leads to a loophole in the law (R.S. 18:1501.1): any person who spends in
opposition or support of a candidate or ballot item must report that – unless
the aggregate contributions and expenses involved don't exceed $500. It is possible
that, if there are few enough of these signs, that their cost didn't exceed
that figure, and that someone or a few people got together and did that.

So, the public never may know who is doing this, and
what their potential relationship is to Bossier Parish's government and libraries.
In fact, it may be quite close, given the wording of the sign which ambiguously
doesn't advocate for or against the ballot item. It merely exhorts the viewer
to vote on that day and slips in "BOSSIER PARISH LIBRARIES." By doing this, if
discovered government employees actually were involved, the parish could claim
it wasn't electioneering but merely informing the public there was an election
on Saturday, Apr. 27.

Of course, the signs' presentation implies something
critical about libraries will appear on the ballot and, further, people should vote
in whatever manner available to support libraries. After all, who is against libraries?

If anybody in Bossier Parish government knows
about this, they need to go public. At the very least, parish government must remove
any such signs on public rights-of-way; tolerance of this denotes acceptance
not only of illegal behavior but also endorsement of a political preference.
And state lawmakers would do well to clarify statute to make it expressly
illegal for any government to spend any dollars to electioneer, even if in a
manner that doesn't explicitly advocate for or against something on the ballot.
Because when it comes to gorging themselves on taxpayer dollars, government
will try any dodge available to keep other peoples' money rolling in.

As we have seen in other articles in these pages, social media has become a key driver of the widening gap in voting behavior between voters over and under 45 years of age. In this article, we look at how the media habits of old and young voters contribute to and enable this gap. Compared…

This election was business as usual in Azerbaijan with manipulation and violations, including carousel voting, ballot stuffing, and aggressive behavior toward independent observers and journalists throughout the day.

Introduction

Our new policy brief reports some initial results from a household survey of SF Bay residents regarding their perceptions of sea-level rise and floodrisks, as it relates to various types of political behavior such as voting for Measure AA. 

Issue

By this time next week, we'll know if independent Monroe
Mayor Friday Ellis was a canary in the coal
mine for Democrats or just lightning in a bottle.

In
2020, Ellis unexpectedly defeated Democrat former long-time Mayor Jamie
Mayo and other candidates to win as a white candidate in a solidly
black-majority electorate. However, that may have had more to do with Mayo, who
is black, than anything else, whose sometimes odd actions made white voters increasingly
suspicious of his leadership and black voters less enthusiastic about him.

On election day – which occurred in July rather
than March because of Wuhan coronavirus pandemic restrictions and which might
have affected turnout – Ellis won in a 63 percent black constituency. White
voter turnout appeared substantially higher than black, although overall it was
a healthy over 40 percent. Still, in precincts where blacks comprised at least
90 percent of the vote, Ellis picked up 15 percent while Mayo barely garnered
two-thirds, demonstrating greater crossover appeal for white candidates than
traditionally.

A rerun of sorts is on tap this time, with Mayo
trying to get his old job back in a city now with a 67 percent black majority,
against Ellis up for reelection and a stronger black Democrat alternative than
in 2020 in the form of Democrat city School Board Member Betty Ward Cooper.

This time, Ellis has a record and the Democrats
have tried pounding him on that, especially
when it comes to crime. For years, across a variety of measuring gauges Monroe
has been close, if not at the top, of medium-sized and above cities in violent
crime, which hasn't changed while Ellis has been in office. However, with 2022
as the latest
data available, that rate has declined 12 percent since the year Ellis took
office while statewide it has gone down just two percent.

At any rate, Ellis resoundingly
nabbed the endorsement of the Monroe Police Union. Cooper hasn't reported
any spending, which may hamper her ability to present herself as a less-controversial
black Democrat alternative to Mayo, who last month found himself accused
by a black Democrat city councilor of threatening her, as well as has a
record to defend that may still linger in the minds of a number of voters. To
her restraining order he filed one, and a judge has ordered they
both stay away from each other for two years, which might make working together
as elected city officials interesting but perhaps not amusing to voters.

This seemingly-favorable confluence of events bucks
an electorate less favorable to Ellis, in a contest which could confirm an ongoing
trend in national politics. Over the past few years, non-white
voters have shown more openness to supporting Republicans, and recent
polling confirms their slipping support for Democrats. It's possible that Ellis'
2020 triumph was that tip of the spear in Louisiana of greater black voter
comfort in voting for a white candidate, where in 2022 a white Republican in
Shreveport and white Democrat in Alexandria were elected by electorates where blacks
significantly outnumbered others.

If Ellis can do it again this weekend, it could
prove he's not a one-off, especially considering the other two cities have slightly
smaller black majorities. And it might demonstrate how white candidates, even
from the GOP, can win in jurisdictions with substantially more black voters
than any other race.

That trend could be confirmed further with a
victory in Caddo Parish in its overtime sheriff's contest. In an evenly divided
electorate by race, white Republican former Shreveport City Councilor John Nickelson stands a decent chance of triumphing
over black Democrat former city chief administrative officer Henry Whitehorn.

Change or continuity in local election voting
behavior? In Louisiana, the answer will start coming shortly.

With high-profile statewide and legislative election
on tap this fall, Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
contests have
flown somewhat under the radar, but whose outcomes will determine whether education
reforms continue to advance.

Eight of the 11 slots are up for four-year terms,
with the remaining three members chosen by the governor in coterminous fashion.
Shaping BESE for the first time is term limits of three, which started counting
beginning with the results of 2011 elections and will dispatch Republicans James
Garvey and Holly Boffy and Democrat Kira Orange Jones. Additionally, GOP rookie
member Ashley Ellis will defer. All other incumbents appear to be running for
reelection.

Republican state Rep. Lance Harris
has raised his hand to replace Ellis, with
her blessing. Harris has an extensive track record in legislating on
education issues, and very much in line with expanding school choice and accountability.
His HB 98
this past regular session would have created a money-follow-the-student system
that in large degree would replicate the open enrollment model used in Orleans
Parish schools, plus create flexibility for families to embrace nonpublic education.

Similarly, Garvey
has endorsed GOP state Rep. Paul Hollis
to succeed him. Hollis hasn't been as active as Harris in promoting an
education reform agenda, but his legislative voting behavior strongly shows he
will support that.

Jones often teamed with Garvey to support choice
and accountability measures, helping to give reform advocates typically the
six-vote minimum needed to maintain this agenda during this term. An anti-reform
bloc of Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards' appointees plus Democrat member Preston Castille routinely have
opposed such measures. She hasn't made any endorsements, and longtime educator Sharon
Latten-Clark has announced a bid to replace her. Latten-Clark's background
suggests she may be open to a reform agenda, but whoever emerges in that post
unlikely will match the support Jones often showed.

Neither has Boffy thrown her support behind a
successor, but former Lafayette Parish School Board member Republican Erick Knezek has announced his intention
to run for her spot. His record locally indicated often supporting reform.

Having as many members as possible sympathetic to reform
is important, as Boffy's and Jones' cases demonstrates. In Boffy's last term
her reform commitment seemed to waver, particularly in her persistent
championing of watering down educational quality to allow high school graduates
to receive diplomas without meeting state testing standards, if they pass an appeals
process with work qualitatively rather than quantitatively assessed. She
and Jones joined the anti-reformers to pass this. Both Harris and Hollis
have signaled opposition to that.

Electoral currents such as they are, likely a
Republican governor will assume office next year making probable that the three
appointees will join the reform agenda. That would leave just Castille among returning
board members clearly against that. Still, more votes for it are better, which
will depend upon who qualifies, their campaigning, and the voters' will this
fall.

In Democrat state Sen. Jay Luneau's world, ideology is
more important than people, to which his sponsorship of SB 81 attests.
Why a pair of Republicans would sign onto that is anybody's guess.

The bill would add the word "gender" to prohibited
classification in the setting of vehicle insurance rates in Louisiana, as is
the case in only seven others. It's all that's left from a string of demagogic bills
Luneau kept proposing in past sessions that have tried to circumscribe
rate-setting tools for insurers that, in every case, legitimately price risk,
which deservedly bit the dust.

As is typical, the argument for this particular attenuation
was intellectual mishmash. Luneau presented a single study as proof alleged discrimination
occurred against women merely for gender, but then he and Senate Insurance
Committee supporters also argued that nobody really knew what goes into
pricing – a sentiment also shared by other on the committee against it. In
regards to the fact brought out in testimony that most studies showed men
nationally paid more and so this change likely would cause the same in
Louisiana, Luneau replied that the (tepid) tort reform measures passed (over
his objections) three years ago actually saw increases in rates in years
following, implying this wouldn't happen.

In other words, if a piece of evidence fits his
worldview, it's acceptable; if not, it's questionable. A more rigorously
intellectual evaluation of the vast disparity of research conclusions on the
question is that the rate-setting calculus is very complex and difficult to do
at an individual level, so categorical comparisons very much depend upon the
parameters defining the study, such as policy limits, sample of the universe of
policies, quotes vs. actual policy issued, etc. But it is telling that the preponderance
of evidence, and typically including those most comprehensive in scope, show
nationwide men pay more than women, and this is reflected in most studies. If
women somewhere on average pay more, it's because of any of dozens of other
reasonable factors running against them override the advantage they have on
sex.

That makes perfect theoretical sense, as women
overall have fewer accidents and display less risky driving behavior as indicated
by frequency of moving violations. More specifically, younger males make up the
bulk of that, with records leveling into middle age, and then the disparity
returns at advanced ages. All other things equal, the data demonstrate that women
in the aggregate are safer drivers than men, and there's no reason insurance
companies shouldn't have the option of using this data point in their pricing.

But notice as well the absolute intellectual
poverty of Luneau's bald assertion that discrimination by sex is so powerful
and pervasive that it must drive rate differences negatively against women,
based upon his narrow choice of data to accept. Each year, the rate differential
varies, and it varies, sometimes dramatically, by state. So, given the insistence
that absolutely and powerfully prejudice against women drives rates, we are to
believe that in states where women pay more insurance companies there – firms which
perhaps write policies in other states where the opposite is true – decide to practice
selective prejudicial discrimination in those places? And in other states they
don't? And some years they do and some years they don't?

His thinking on this is a supremely incoherent
mess. He must think that where men pay higher rates as a whole they must be so incredibly
bad drivers as to overcome the alleged natural bias against women he claims
inherent to rate-setting – without a shred of proof countering the far more likely
explanation is the data reflect a claim history where women are involved in fewer
incidents causing less damage that has a significant impact on rates. And his
rejection of that bit of common sense must mean he thinks Louisiana men are the
worst of the worst.

Because using
data from the latest research, guess which state is the one where men pay
more than women than in any other? His bill would end up driving the typical
female's rate in Louisiana by at least a couple of hundred dollars while males
will catch something of a break.

And the fact that in Louisiana women pay an
average $404 less than men may be worse for all consumers if policy writers are
forced make gender irrelevant, beyond the point committee chairman GOP state
Sen. Kirk Talbot observed that writers don't care who pays what differentially just
as long as they can charge enough to afford to stay in business. Indeed, research demonstrates
that this kind of law not only causes women generally to pay higher rates (all
other factors equal) than they would otherwise, but also pushes rates higher
for everybody.

Regardless, the measure
passed but only because two Republicans stupidly voted in favor to allow it
to squeak out 5-4. One, state Sen. Louie Bernard, has a
horrible record on voting sensibly on insurance matters – so bad, in
conjunction with a few other leftist flirtations, that with his reelection
chances imperiled by these clunkers he announced he would retire after just
one term.

The other cast his favorable vote as part of an expanding
tendency to sabotage any political career he might have. Until recently very
solid in his political calculations that included consistently voting
conservatively, state Sen. Barrow
Peacock began to see the wheels come off any chance of extending his shelf
life in politics after term limitation this year when he backed, to the chagrin
of nearly every Shreveport Republican political activist, leftist Democrat
state Sen. Greg Tarver
in the city's mayoral race last year. That
completely backfired when conservative Republican Tom Arceneaux
upset Tarver.

His vote for the bill especially seemed schizophrenic
since in the recent special session he had made
a principled argument against $45 million to subsidize insurers to write
property policies in the state. Yet on this one he either abandoned principle
reasonably related to this past voting behavior or he completely erroneously
evaluated the bill's implications.

Neither commend him to continued service in
elected office. It will be interesting to see, if the bill comes to a floor
vote as expected, whether he'll take a step back from going down the path of political
self-immolation by changing his vote on it.

Elections
for half of Caddo Parish's executive offices will tell whether the dynamics
of the 2022
Shreveport mayoral election signaled something new or was just a transient blip
on the radar.

Last year, Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux
surprisingly defeated Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver for the city's top
job. Not only did the city's Democrat majority in the electorate provide enough
defections to let Arceneaux post the win, but also a significantly higher
proportion of blacks that typical did the same, a result especially unanticipated
as Arceneaux is white and Tarver black.

While the contests for clerk of court and coroner this
fall went unopposed for the incumbents, spirited battles seem ahead for sheriff
and assessor, where in both instances long-time incumbents will step down. For different
reasons, both will test, this time in a parish-wide setting (Shreveport
voters comprise about three-quarters of the parish total) propensity for
crossover voting that could benefit white Republican candidates as happened for
Arceneaux.

The sheriff's race features an interesting field.
Black Democrat Henry Whitehorn, who has a long career in law enforcement
including some high-profile offices but who most recently was chief administrative
officer for Democrat former Mayor Adrian Perkins, is considered solidly in
position to make the general election runoff. The other big favorite is white
Republican former Shreveport Councilor John
Nickelson, who doesn't have a law enforcement background.

That lacking will be a negative for him. There's
much more to the job than just law enforcement, such as serving as the parish
tax collector, but the vast bulk of employees and visible activity of the office
is that. Many voters instinctively will assess that kind of background in
vetting candidates.

Recent past history in parish-wide races also suggests
Nickelson will be at a disadvantage because of this. In the last contest that
Republican incumbent Steve Prator won easily, former constable Eric Hatfield, a
white Democrat, and lawyer black Democrat Hersy Jones ran well behind him. Both
are running again, although Hatfield switched his affiliation this time to
Republican.

Jones was the only black Democrat in the field,
and Hatfield the only white Democrat. Jones has no law enforcement experience
while Hatfield was an elected constable, but in performing
the duties of that office so controversially – eventually prompting the
state Legislature to pass a law reining in his aggrandizement of the office –
he lost reelection. Yet in 2019 Hatfield drew nearly twice the vote, 21 percent
to 11 percent, that Jones did, even given Jones was the only black running in an
electorate composed nearly halfway with black registrants. In other words,
voters not wanting to vote for a white Republican were so impressed with Hatfield's
background (likely many not knowing of the controversy he stirred while in office
that led to his losing reelection) that this overrode race for some voters even
as they had another candidate of their race available for selection.

The other indicator indicating Whitehorn to be
favored over Nickelson is the 2015 election for First Judicial District Attorney.
In 2015, black Democrat James Stewart won over a white Republican by 10
percentage points, even though then
whites held a three-point advantage in voter registration. This fall, it's
just over a percentage point.

Almost certainly Whitehorn and Nickelson will make
the runoff. Hatfield's and Jones' proportions will fall precipitously, and
Stewart's 2020 opponent Democrat lawyer Pat Gilley, who is even farther to the left
on crime issues than Stewart and more
controversial than Hatfield, will receive a pittance. The only candidate
with the potential to make a run is the other entrant, Republican Shayne Gibson,
a veteran law enforcement officer now police chief of Greenwood, but he would
need a lot of donations fast. But in a runoff, unless the dynamics of 2022 in
Shreveport persist and parish-wide, Whitehorn remains the favorite.

Whatever trend emerges or recedes also will find
confirmation in the assessor's race. There, two top deputies of retiring Democrat
Assessor Charles Henington vie with two others to succeed him. One is white
Democrat Kristin Gonzalez and the other is white Republican Brett Frazier.
Making the internecine battle even more interesting, two black Democrats also
joined the fray, accountant and previous House candidate Reginald Johnson and
Southern University Shreveport professor Regina Webb.

As this is such a low-information contest, the
interplay of party and race should be fascinating to watch as these largely will
determine voting behavior. White Republicans comprise 26 percent of the electorate,
white Democrats under 9 percent, and black Democrats 36 percent.

Normally, this suggests that Frazier and one of
Johnson or Webb would make the runoff. But assessor office experience will
matter somewhat, and it's interesting to see whether that would peel off enough
votes to get Gonzalez into the runoff, which she would win. If not, along the
lines of the dynamics in the sheriff's race, a black Democrat would be expected
to win the runoff, but Frazier's assessor experience might allow him to abscond
with a greater proportion of the black vote than such a candidate typically
receives and enough for hm to win.

Thus, these two Caddo executive contests could
provide fresh details on whether voter dynamics are shifting even slightly away
from their past heavy emphasis on race.

From Blog BROADSTREET

By Jeffery A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart IIIhttps://broadstreet.blog/2023/01/05/back-to-the-future-day-3/#comment-2202

(…) what other options might be available? Two options have
been floated in the Twittersphere today that we have previously written about.The first is to vote by secret ballot, which was the practice in House officer elections until 1838, when it was abandoned in favor of voice voting. The secret ballot was especially helpful in bridging the regional divide – think slavery – because party members could rally behind a candidate who would best deliver on party matters, even if that candidate was from the wrong region. Abolitionists figured this out and agitated for voice voting, to smoke out the northerners who were supporting the election of southerners. This was first proposed in 1835 and not adopted until three years later.We have opinions about secret ballot for Speaker in this case, but most of the talk has been about the second option, electing the Speaker by plurality vote. This happened twice in the past. The long, hard-fought speakership elections of 1849 (31st Congress) and 1855-56 (34th Congress) were both settled only after a plurality-rule was adopted.In each case, the House adopted a motion (in fact, a resolution) that established the candidate who received the most votes would in fact win the speakership election. Both times, a majority of the House passed this plurality rule in the following form: three more regular (majority-rule) ballots would be had, and if a candidate didn't receive a majority, a fourth ballot would be held and the largest vote-getter would be elected. ("Largest" is the word they used.)Now, a plurality rule is a risky endeavor. In both 1849 and 1856, the two parties were closely divided, and on a final, plurality ballot, party leaders couldn't be completely sure how dissenters would break. Indeed, in 1855, the Democratic Party was the minority, but became convinced they could put together enough votes to elect a Speaker under plurality. In the end, however, they were outflanked and lost.Today, we think the plurality calculus is also tricky. Hakeem Jeffries (NY), the Democratic nominee, has won every plurality election to this point. Plurality seems a no-brainer for Democrats. On the other hand, plurality lowers the target that McCarthy has to hit, since no Republican is going to vote for Jeffries. With Jeffries stuck at 212 votes, all McCarthy needs is 213, which is roughly half the dissident faction he's been dealing with.That said, it's hard to see why McCarthy would consider a plurality rule to be a Godsend. McCarthy has seen 20 stalwart defectors, only five of which are "Never Kevin" Republicans, led by Matt Gaetz (FL). It is these five who keep McCarthy from getting a majority. Still, for McCarthy to win under a plurality rule, he needs most of the other fifteen, who very well may not support him either. A plurality rule would simply move his job from lifting a two-ton boulder to lifting a one-ton boulder.Another thing that hasn't been factored into plurality voting among the plurality-curious is the behavior of dissident members once the rule has been adopted. Some have said that a plurality rule would force House members to vote for one of the two front-runners, as a type of Duverger's Law for Speaker contests. However, that wasn't the pattern in either 1849 or 1856, when 20 and 11 members, respectively, threw away their final votes for Speaker.Some Democrats may be salivating at the thought of Jeffries becoming Speaker under a close plurality vote, but it's not clear how that would be a benefit to the party. A Jeffries speakership would free up the entire Republican caucus, both Never and Only Kevins, to obstruct. They have a majority of the chamber, after all. The Speaker isn't given a magic wand.In both 1849 and 1856, it took the House weeks to get to the point of throwing in the towel and approving plurality voting. We're a long way from that. At present, the most likely outcome is still a Republican Speaker elected by majority vote, but history also tells us that time is running out for Kevin McCarthy.MY COMMENTThat's very interesting.The discussion about secret or public voting recalls the
intellectual debate at about the same time between the English utilitarian
Jeremy Bentham and his heterodox disciple John Stuart Mill: Bentham was in
favor of secret balloting to prevent harassment of voters, while Mill, more
optimistic about human nature, supported public voting to make people reveal
their sincere preferences. Your story of the House in the 1830s seems to have
favored sincere vote with a secret ballot, so perhaps leaning on Bentham's side.It's also interesting the procedure of three rounds by
majority and if no candidate gets it, then by plurality. It's what the Conclave
to elect the Pope of the Catholic Church adopted twenty-some years ago, by John
Paul II's decree, to prevent unending lockdowns of the cardinals voting again
and again without a result. It worked. Ratzinger (the just deceased Benedict
XVI) was elected on the second day after a big dispersion of votes on the first
day, when the cardinals anticipated that he would win anyway by plurality and
better to leave the lockdown earlier than later. Josep ColomerGeorgetown UniversityEditor of Handbook of Electoral System Choice (Palgrave-Macmillan)

Louisiana's state senators need to emulate their
House counterparts and give voters the chance to declare constitutionally that
the state's elections aren't for sale, and in timely fashion.

HB 311 by
Republican state Rep. Blake Miguez
would amend the Constitution to prohibit foreign governments or nongovernmental
sources to fund elections. Somewhat
vaguely the prohibition exists in statute, but doesn't apply to local
elections, so passage of this by voters this fall would put it beyond statute's
reach and cover all elections.

The political left opposes such matters because
its forces have had success in putting the thumb on the scale by outsourcing
elections. Hundreds of millions of dollars from private sources, overwhelmingly
funded by big-money donors who support leftist causes, problematically either
disproportionately were directed towards election units that disproportionately
vote for Democrats and/or funded outreach efforts of lower ballot security that
invited unscrupulous behavior.

It and its media
lapdogs disingenuously allege those bucks had no impact on electoral
outcomes by observing states with greater Republican control received more money
collectively. Of course, this ignores that the money didn't go to states but to
local governments and that when making
comparisons at this level those jurisdictions saw substantially more money
per voter go to those that voted for Democrats for president over the past two
cycles, had substantially higher voter turnout in Democrat-held areas compared
to 2016, and saw a vote swing towards Democrats compared to basically no movement
in two-party vote for those that didn't receive such funds.

In the past two years bills similar to this
clarifying the matter in statute went far in the legislative process. One made it to
Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards' desk, but predictably he vetoed it, and it wasn't called up
during the veto session even though original passage put it just a vote shy
from a successful override in the House and it had enough in the Senate. Last year, it fell
one senator short to obtain a supermajority for late consideration after Sen.
Pres. Page Cortez slow-walked
the bill through the chamber. While a two-thirds vote is required both for
legislators to propose an amendment and to override vetoes, placing the matter
in the Constitution both makes it more secure and is appropriate as it
addresses a matter fundamental to an unbiased electoral system.

But what a difference an election year makes. This
year, the matter garnered a House
supermajority, even with three Republicans not voting who had favored the
two earlier versions. That's because four past Democrats – two of whom have
switched to the GOP since – currently Democrat state Reps. Robby Carter
and Mack Cormier
and Republican state Reps. Jeremy LaCombe
and Malinda
White after voting against or conveniently absenting themselves from votes
on the previous two versions suddenly took to voting in favor of the present
version. Three want to run for reelection and White wants to pursue another political
office.

The bill now lies with the Senate and Governmental
Affairs Committee, and once again the clock is ticking. Last year, in the crush
of last-day business a couple of GOP senators were absent, presumably working
on other last-minute pieces of legislation, that allowed for the vote outcome bottling
it up. Additionally, as a constitutional amendment, the bill may have to make another
committee stop if the panel makes changes. Let's hope chamber leaders don't act
dilatorily to sidetrack again a bill with strong majorities and demonstrated need
to keep elections free and fair, joining nearly half of all other states by doing
so.

Summer is my favorite time of year in the Gallatin valley, perhaps because it is so fleeting (which makes it ever-so precious). I hike, bike, and run about town in the wonderful sunlight, surrounded by blue skies and hot, dry heat.  Of course, this weekend, my beloved Bozeman has been choked with smoke from a wildfire out in Three Forks. One of the costs of living in Montana, and the West more generally, is the fire season which is so essential to life and renewal here. Of course, that fire season has been getting worse and longer, which makes it harder on me when I exercise outside due to my asthma, a condition I've learned to manage throughout my life.


Over the weekend, I had time to reflect on forest fires and how sound public policy might help bring them under some control. I revisited Senator Daines' recent op-ed
in the Billings Gazette
discussing wildfire and forest reform, which I read with interest. First, Daines hits the nail on the head concerning a critical
challenge facing the US Forest Service and other federal agencies responsible
for managing healthy forests: money. The US Forest Service's budget is burdened
with ever-increasing fire-fighting costs, which drain its ability to spend on
other important activities such as trail, campground, and facility maintenance.
Daines' solution to this problem is his Wildfire Disaster Funding Act "which
ensures large forest fires are treated and funded as the true natural disasters
they are, similar to hurricanes or tornadoes." I hope the bill—which Daines is
co-sponsoring along with Senator Tester—finds a solid reception among critical
allies of both parties, particularly those senators representing East Coast
states hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. (Montanans also should hope that they don't
hold then-Congressman Steve Daines' very first roll calls against him, given
that he voted against a
bill funding Sandy relief efforts.)

But what troubled me profoundly was the blame the senator placed
for the "deteriorating conditions" that are responsible for increased wildfire
risk. Senator Daines notes that we are at risk due to beetle kill in our
forests "being left untreated"—a risk that he says is compounded by "years of
inadequate forest management practices, spurred by obstructionist litigation
from fringe groups and excessive regulations."

Really? Well, I guess it's time for me to whip out some
"fancy" social science and give a little lesson in the funnel of causality. This
is a theory developed by Campbell et al in their path-breaking work The American Voter, published in 1960.
Essentially, Campbell et al argue that while the proximate decision influencing
how someone votes is a person's issue position, those issue positions are the
product of a person's party identification, which itself (often?) is a function
of how the person was socialized into politics by his or her parents.

In other words, there's a causal chain one needs to follow
to understand the best and most powerful predictor of voting behavior, and that
predictor is partisan identification—a bundle of attitudes and beliefs that is
not immediately proximate to the voting decision. Issue positions don't really
matter—it's the partisanship behind those positions that do.

Now let's apply the funnel of causality to Daines' argument
on wildfires: According to his op-ed piece, the proximate causes for the risk
we face, which are the tired trope of "government mismanagement" and "fringe
environmentalists," are the real problem Montanans face and the ones that
require attention and redress.

But one must ask: Why is there more beetle kill in the first
place? And why has the size
of wildfires been on the rise in the United States, Canada, and
globally—both as the charts below indicate and a recent
study demonstrated? Oh, right: Because the warmer winters associated with global
warming mean fewer Pine Bark beetles are dying off, enabling them to leave behind
more dead trees strewn about waiting to burn up. All of this is well-documented
Andrew Nikiforuk's Empire of the Beetle. And, again, a recent study demonstrates that increasing temperatures lead to more wildfire
activity globally.



Total Hectares Burned by Wildfires in Canada, 1970-2013. Source: Canadian National Forestry Database




Total Acres Burned in the US (in millions of Acres), 1960-2014. Source: CRS Report, "Federal Funding for Wildfire Control and Management," July 5, 2011 and National Interagency Fire Center.



Daines is giving far too much credit to proximate
causes: lawsuits and mismanagement. The root problem
is global warming. We need to address that if we really want to get a handle on
our wildfire risk. And to address that we, as global citizens, need to come to
grips with our role in global warming via our insatiable appetite for carbon
emissions.

Unfortunately, Senator Daines voted against an amendment
earlier this year during the Keystone XL debate acknowledging the human role in
climate change and, when running for the House, indicated in an interview a few years ago that
the "jury
is still out" on the role of CO-2 emissions in our ever-warming world.


The jury is not out. Ninety-seven
percent of studies unambiguously endorse the notion that rising carbon
dioxide levels, the result of human activity, are an important and substantial
contributor to global warming. Check out the information yourself at NASA.
 

How many of you, when running a business or a household,
place your bets on the 3 percent versus the 97 percent? If Senator Daines did
this during his business career, I assure you, his career would have been much
shorter and far less successful than it was. If I said it is only a "theory" that how people vote is a product largely of their partisanship, I'd be drummed out of the profession with good cause. The problem is that it is very hard for people to accept information that conflicts with their priors. Humans don't like cognitive dissonance, so instead, we reject information when it doesn't fit our beliefs. Worse, we search for justifications to confirm why that information is wrong and why what we believe is right. It is hard to overcome cognitive dissonance, but we--and those whom we elect to serve us--must.


The senator is a bright, articulate public servant. He is a
graduate of Montana State, and has a degree in engineering. One would think
that he would, as a man of science, make public policy on science and not
advanced smoke-and-mirrors arguments about a very real threat our forests face
from wildfire. How we fund fire fighting absolutely must change: Daines is
right on that. But if we are really going to make our forests safer today and
for future generations, we need to stop blaming red herrings and, instead, face
the facts staring us straight in the face with regards to climate change.

Tradition would have it that on November 8 there will be many votes against Joe Biden, but there could also be many against Donald Trump, although neither of them is a candidate in these elections. In the United States, it is usual in mid-term congressional elections for the president's party to lose votes, seats, and the majority in Congress. Many citizens vote against the party in the White House rather than for the opposition. In the past, their negative votes were interpreted as voters expressing their fear of too much concentration of power in one party and suggesting that the two parties should cooperate. However, for the past thirty years, the vote against the president's party has expressed growing dissatisfaction with the results of the government's performance. The most common result of divided government in recent times has not been bipartisan cooperation but gridlock between the White House and Capitol Hill and consequent legislative paralysis, government shutdowns for failure to pass the budget, and attempts to impeach presidents. Recent experience shows that in the absence of an anchor of national unity in the face of an external enemy, such as that that existed during the Cold War, the separation of powers between the legislative Congress and the executive Presidency with only two political parties is the perfect recipe for confrontation.The philosopher Isaiah Berlin spoke of "negative liberty", centered on the protection of rights, versus "positive liberty" associated with participation and access to public benefits. By analogy, we can say that in the United States there is a "negative democracy" in which two parties leveraged in separate institutions block each other at the expense of potential positive decisions for citizens.The novelty tomorrow would be that many would be inclined to block Trump's party and Trump-supported candidates, mostly out of fear that they would again break basic democratic norms. It would not be a vote in favor of the president's party, but a vote against the opposition, a double negative vote.To facilitate this electoral behavior, Biden has participated very little in the campaigns of the candidates for representatives and senators, while most of them have avoided publicly associating with him and have emphasized the danger of the Republican candidates. The former orange president is increasingly desperate because of the judicial processes that beset him and his probable indictment. His foolish hope is to try for immunity through a congressional majority. But as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell observed, it may not be easy for his party to win Congress because of the low "quality of candidates." One Trumpist candidate confused the Gestapo with gazpacho; another proposes to solve climate change by sending "bad air" to China; a TV doctor became famous for selling diet pills; yet another woman assures that rape does not generate pregnancy because the coupling "is not organic". Et cetera.As is often the case, the United States is the biggest show in the world that preludes and magnifies similar processes in other countries. In Europe, too, there has recently been much dissatisfaction, negative partisanship, and voting against the party in government, as in the American tradition. For several decades, the governing parties won elections two to three times in a row on average. But since the Great Recession and the pandemic, only one-fourth of governments have been re-elected. In recent weeks, there have been victories for the "negative" vote in countries such as Italy and Sweden. Many voters, dissatisfied with government performance, are voting for the devil unknown rather than the devil known. There is also beginning to be double negative voting, the most striking example of which has been France, where many voters chose to block Le Pen's opposition.With some governing parties in crisis, new parties have emerged, there is more political fragmentation and it is more difficult to build a parliamentary majority. In Spain, there were four elections in four years before a government was formed. But the record has already been broken several times. In Israel, there have been five elections in three and a half years with a lot of double negative votes against Netanyahu. In Bulgaria, there have been four elections in a year and a half, and still no government.In the United States, the hypothesis of many votes against Trumpists may be disproved if dissatisfied voters are guided more by bad inflation and violent crime rates than by threats to democracy or the quality of candidates.If the traditional "negative" vote against the president's party still dominates and the Republicans gain a majority in any house of Congress, legislative paralysis and government shutdowns will return, as in the last two years of Trump, as well as some parody of impeachment of Joe Biden. In other words, traditional negative democracy with citizen frustration and anger, inoperative institutions, opportunities for ignorant adventurers, and the orange's media re-emergence. Whatever the outcome, in January new candidates will begin to appear in both parties for the 2024 presidential primaries. One can bet that, in a spiral of rejection and negativity, thereafter, calls to vote against, negative and double negative votes will abound even more.

Colorado's Supreme Court kicks Trump off the ballot (WSJ). I wrote earlier forecasting constitutional crisis with  next election. Legal chaos is starting right on schedule. Summary: Both sides are casting their opponents as illegitimate. That justifies profound norm-breaking behavior.  Political battles are being fought in the courts, so control of the courts and the judicial system now becomes vital to political success. When you can't afford to lose an election you do anything to win. Scorched earth rules the day. This affair offers a catch-22 to the Supreme Court. As a partisan chess move, you can't help but admire it. The case is weak, as even the judges voting for it admit. The election is coming up fast. There are many pending state cases to keep Trump off the ballot. The Supreme Court surely does not want to see elections more and more decided by courts. This will likely force the Court to act.Letting the ruling stand, and having Trump off the ballot in several states, will inflame Trump supporters, and bolster their view that the justice system is hijacked by Democrats.  If it is overturned, Democrats will quickly cast it as a  "pro-Trump" partisan move, and use it to inflame their campaign to de-legitimize the court. Among other consequences, that will embolden the increasing habit of simply ignoring Supreme Court decisions.  The brouhaha may also scare the court over the many election cases that are headed its way like an avalanche in the next year.  It is  devilishly clever. If it were not so utterly destructive. The WSJ on these points. The ruling ... placed the Supreme Court in a position it likely would have preferred to avoid: having to resolve unprecedented legal issues that also ignite strong political passions among the nation's electorate. ...  A central legal question:  One point of deep disagreement was whether removing Trump from the ballot violated his due process rights, given that he hasn't been convicted of a crime and the pending criminal charges against him aren't for insurrection.... One dissenting justice was particularly vehement in opposition, saying it violated bedrock American principles to remove Trump from the ballot in this fashion. "Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past—dare I say, engaged in insurrection—there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office," Justice Carlos Samour Jr. wrote."I could see the Supreme Court worrying about that and saying if you're going to disqualify someone you need to give them more of an opportunity to make their case because that's such a momentous deprivation of liberty and rights," said [David] Orentlicher, an elected Democrat...Hypocrisy is hardly new in politics. But it is noteworthy that the party bleating most loudly about "threats to democracy" is so distrustful of democracy that it is waging legal battles to keep Mr. Trump from being democratically elected.  If it's so self-evident that Trump violated the Constitution and his oath of office, the correct remedy is to simply let voters not vote for him on that basis. The party supposedly of the little person does not trust that little person to make the most basic decisions.  Pushing political battles into the judicial system really is a threat to democracy. In a lot of semi-autocratic countries, when someone loses an election, the winners  go after them on vague charges, impoverish them, family, and supporters, and often put them in jail if not worse. In response, people do everything in their power not to lose elections, no matter how many law and norms get broken along the way. The more political battles end up in court, the closer we come to that state. I repeat the warning from my last post. This is the tip of the iceberg. We have not just the 92 (is that the latest number?) charges against Trump. Redistricting will be a battleground. Campaign finance charges will be levied. Republicans are gearing up Hunter Biden charges. Every smudged postmark, every extended deadline will end up in court. The Supreme Court may end up making crucial decisions again. The losers will claim illegitimacy of both the winner and the process, and will spend the following 4 years in resistance. Stop now while you can. (I am moving to Substack. I will cross-post everything in both places until the bugs are worked out.) Update:Thanks all for the thoughtful and mostly polite comments, on such a sensitive topic. I now think the Supreme Court should leave it alone. Let the election come, let Coloradans ponder their Supreme Court banning the candidate of one of our two parties from the ballot, and let Coloradan voters do something about it if they don't like that outcome. I come to this view from reading Nellie Bowles always fantastic and humorous commentary over at the Free Press: The only way to protect democracy is to end democracy: The Colorado Supreme Court decided this week that Trump is disqualified from holding the presidency and so cannot appear on the Republican primary ballot in the state. Meanwhile, California's lieutenant governor ordered the state Supreme Court to "explore every legal option" to remove Trump from the ballot. In doing so, she said that the rules for the presidency are simple: "The constitution is clear: You must be 40 years old and not an insurrectionist." Yet even there she is wrong: you only have to be 35. Anyway, for a long time the standard liberal take has been that Democracy Is Under Threat from Republicans. And Trump certainly tried schemes in Georgia and whatnot, like, the man gave it a shot. But I would say that banning the opposition party's leading candidate. . . is pretty much the biggest threat to democracy you can do. It's a classic one, really. Timeless. Oldie but Goodie. The American left was so committed to protecting democracy that they had to ban voting. All I'll say is that once you ban the opposition party's top candidate, you can no longer, in fact, say you're for democracy at all. You can say you like other things: power, control, the end of voting, choosing the president you want, rule by technocratic elites chosen by SAT score, all of which I personally agree with. But you can't say you like democracy per se.So Colorado, listen, I dream every day of being a dictator. I would seize the local golf course and turn it into a park on day one; day two, expand Austin breakfast taco territory to the whole country; day three, invade Canada. Day four, we ban zoos. My fellow fascists, we're on the same page. Let's just drop the democracy stuff and call it what it is. But until courts pick candidates for Colorado Supreme Court, the voters of Colorado can choose if they want democracy. 

As if Bossier City hasn't invited enough legal
repercussions by its continuing
refusal to follow its charter concerning a petition to vote to amend this
basic law, its long-standing regulations on public discourse at City Council
meetings threatens even more of these.

Required by law, the Council must allow
adequate citizen input in discussion of its actions during a meeting. It began
the practice of informing the public of its rights at its Aug,
18, 2020 meeting as a result of acts passed that year
by the Louisiana Legislature. Previous statute
noted that a "governing body may adopt reasonable rules and restrictions
regarding such comment period." This had been accomplished lastly at the Jan.
21, 2020 meeting.

However, through the Aug. 1, 2023 meeting, the announcing
that had commenced nearly three years earlier included only part of that
Resolution #5 of 2020, under the "Decorum" section, part of the subsection "Members
of the Public Addressing the Council," which reads:

Any Person desiring to address the Council shall
first receive the permission of the Meeting Chair and will be limited to the current
agenda item up for consideration. Each Add-on request, will also allow public comment prior
comment prior to being added on to the current agenda. Any person wishing to speak must step up
to the podium microphone and state their [sic] name and address for the record. They shall
address the Council in an audible tone of voice for the record, and unless further time is granted by
the Council, shall limit their address to three (3) minutes. A maximum of forty-five minutes will be
set aside for addressing the Council and no more than 4 speakers per side of the argument
discussion per Agenda item. All remarks shall be addressed to the Council as a body and not to any
member thereof. No person, other than the Council or at Council request, City Attorney, and
the person having the floor shall address the Council without the permission of the President
Pro-tem. No question shall be asked a Councilperson or the Mayor except through the
Meeting Chair.

Starting with the Aug. 15 meeting, Council Clerk
Phyllis McGraw's reading at the start of meetings of policy concerning comments
included additional material. This is a transcription of the statement, with
the post-8/1 added language in italics:

In accordance with
Louisiana open meetings law and the adopted Bossier City Council meeting rules
resolution, the City Council asks for order and decorum at our meetings ….
Anyone wishing to address the Council on any agenda item may approach the Council
and state their [sic] name and address for the record and shall be permitted three
minutes to make their comments on the particular item that is up for discussion
with up to four speakers per side. Any person making personal, impertinent,
or slanderous remarks or who shall become boisterous while addressing the
Council shall be forthwith by the president pro tem barred from further
audience with the Council unless permission to continue shall be granted by a
majority vote of the Council. All remarks shall be addressed to the Council as
a body and not to any member thereof. No question shall be asked a council
person or the mayor except through the meeting chair.



The new read statement includes material from the "By
Persons" subsection, which reads:

Any person making personal, impertinent or
slanderous remarks or who shall become boisterous while addressing the Council
shall be forthwith, by the President Pro-tem, barred from further audience
before the Council, unless permission to continue by granted by a majority vote
of the Council.

Thus, the additional phrases weren't a new
development that required Council approval, but rather verbal elaboration of existing
resolution. Which amplified a potentially serious legal problem with that resolution.

Undoubtedly extending the remarks came as a result
of the increasingly sharp criticism that certain speakers have levied about
city councilor actions, turbocharged by the controversy surrounding adoption of
term limits. Some councilors, particularly Republican David Montgomery who by the
tone of his voice becomes livid, seem offended when a citizen speaker
challenges the notion that everything the Council has backed over the years has
been hunky-dory or that ulterior motives may exist behind certain actions, such
as the commission-for-petition swap in the works to try to forestall, if not
prevent, the electorate voting on whether to impose a three term lifetime and
retroactive limit on elected officials.

The problem is the new language is constitutionally
suspect, according to Scott Sternberg of the law firm Sternberg, Naccari, and White.
Sternberg is consulted and contracted widely by Louisiana media outlets concerning
government regulation of information transparency and free expression.

Sternberg notes the application of the language,
given its vagueness (for example, what is a "slanderous" comment) could lead to
content regulation of expression, a practice clearly prohibited by First
Amendment jurisprudence ("niceness"
policies generally are suspect), exacerbated by the apparent ability of the
Council to extend what could be lifetime bans on expression. Anything but
careful usage of those rules likely would draw legal action against the city, added
Sternberg, and the new language concerning banning individuals even opens to
city to facial legal challenges to the new policy's constitutionality in light
of a past attorney
general opinion that states a public body should exhaust other legal remedies
levied against an individual before taking the drastic step preventing
attendance at its meetings regardless of the justifications impeding attendance.Statute does provide for barring from a meeting because
of disruptive behavior, but this would occur on a case-by-case basis, not as a
blanket ban. Given the Louisiana Constitution's guaranteed right of direct participation
in public body deliberation, this could extend to a right to address public
bodies unless disqualified by a particular restricted act during discussion – allowing only for
a temporary disqualification on a discrete item for violating decorum – or universally but only if other legal remedies for regulated behaviors have been implemented.

Thus, the city is vulnerable to a legal challenge
merely by having the permanent ban stipulation in place, and begs for a
challenge if it were to enforce its rule citing remarks "personal, impertinent,
or slanderous" or "boisterous" speakers in anything more than the most delicate
way. This almost goes as far as the very facially constitutionally suspect
rules proposed
earlier this year by the Caddo Parish Commission which not only would have
banned targeted individuals from addressing the Commission, but from their
attending its meetings.

The Council would be wise to revisit this issue to
remove at the very least the power to ban permanently addressing it, and better
still it would refine the language of what it considers impermissible expression
and behavior to far greater precision.

 1.  My last post observed that in 1970, people with higher incomes were less likely to say that people who are successful get ahead because of luck, but that in 2016 no relationship was visible.  How about education?  In 1970, there was no relationship between education and opinions after you controlled for income.  In 2016, there was:                        LuckNot HS grad     19%HS only            16%Some college    10%College grad     14%Grad educ         16%That is, the middle levels of education were least likely to say that luck was what mattered.  This supports my general point about people at the top becoming less likely to assert their superiority (also see this post).2.  In January, I tried to understand the persistence of Republican support for Donald Trump by comparing it to views of Watergate.  Views on whether Watergate was a "very serious matter" or "just politics" shifted towards "a very serious matter" during the earlier part of the Watergate investigation, but then stabilized.  They were pretty evenly divided in the summer of 1974 (not long before Nixon resigned) and in several later surveys that asked people to look back.  In that post, I said "Of course, Nixon was ineligible to run for President,  but no one said he should remain a major voice in the party and no one sought his endorsement when running for office."  I later found some questions from 1979 that were prefaced "there has been some talk of President Nixon getting back into active political life" and then asked what they thought about several possible ways.  (I don't remember whether there actually was such talk or whether the people doing the survey just thought it was an interesting question).  The percent saying it would be a good idea for him to:                                                              Republicans      Independents     DemocratsRun for office                                          18%                   14%                     7%Be appointed to high post                       14%                   10%                    5%Speak out on issues                                 55%                    33%                   27%Take active role in party                         31%                     19%                   14%About 8 or 9 percent said they weren't sure--that was pretty constant across all the party/question combinations.  So a substantial number of Republicans supported the idea of Nixon taking "an active role in the workings of the Republican party," and some even thought he should run for office.    After Trump's loss, Republican elites seemed to expect their voters to spontaneously turn against him, and then be surprised that he retained substantial popular support (or interpreted it as evidence that he had a unique personal appeal).  This example shows that they shouldn't have been surprised:  Nixon had significant support from Republican voters even after he had acknowledged wrongdoing, resigned, and kept a low profile for several years.  Why was elite behavior different in the two cases?  The most apparent factor is that in the 1970s there was a stronger core of leadership that could speak for the majority of the party in Congress.  But I think that there's also another:  there's now a stronger sense of "team spirit" among both politicians and opinion leaders.  That is, Republicans were reluctant to make common cause with Democrats.  As a result, even those who aren't Trump supporters have promoted the idea that he's being unfairly treated, that Democrats have done similar things in the past or are trying to do them now--e. g. Ross Douthat's indignation about efforts to remove Trump from the ballot ("antidemocratic and incompetent at once, signifying ... a general elite fear of the voting public").  That makes it easier for ordinary Republicans to conclude that it's all "just politics."[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]