Recent editorials from Louisiana newspapers:
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May 5
The Daily Advertiser of Lafayette on a state bill that would forbid local governments from removing Confederate monuments from public grounds:
It’s unlikely Thomas Carmody’s House Bill 71 will emerge intact from the Louisiana’s legislative session. Nor should it.
The legislation, which cleared a House committee Wednesday, would forbid local governments from removing Confederate monuments from public grounds. It would also preclude removing, renaming or altering any military monument from any war that rests on public property. So there.
Here’s a recap of what lawmakers accomplished this week with this bill, which may be further, passionately debated but is likely ill-fated: Carmody, a Shreveport Republican, introduced the legislation, which passed 10-8 in a House committee. Cedric Glover, Sam Jenkins and Barbara Norton, all Shreveport Democrats, opposed. Two committee Democrats, Robert Billiot and Malinda White, supported it, as did Jerome Richard, an independent. A lone Republican, Joe Stagni, opposed it. Folks are all over the map.
Next up: a vote in the full House.
An amendment to HB 71 would require an election before a local government could remove military monuments. The bill is too late to halt New Orleans elected leaders from removing monuments to Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, although New Orleans’ controversy likely sparked this bill. But the law would apply everywhere.
In New Orleans, the City Council and Mayor Mitch Landrieu - freely elected, all - remain determined to move or destroy the monuments. It seems unlikely local voters there would oppose them. Who knows?
But is legislative interference in such municipal matters even appropriate? Elections are expensive, and why should someone from Shreveport tell folks in New Orleans or elsewhere what to do with their own monuments on local public land?
New Orleans leaders also came under fire April 24 for destroying, under cover of darkness, that city’s Liberty Place monument. The city looked silly in doing so. That monument lauded an 1874 White League insurrection against the sitting, Reconstruction government in Louisiana, but it also marked an event that occurred almost a decade after the Civil War’s conclusion. It would not have been protected as a military monument nor was it cause for civic pride.
Carmody’s measure, if it passes, may yet affect Lafayette, where a monument in tribute of Confederate Gen. Alfred Mouton hovers over an entrance way to downtown. The monument, erected at a time when the Lost Cause was wistfully revered, has come to represent something sinister to some local people. Other folks treasure it. But shouldn’t locals decide what happens if a dispute reappears?
Most of these monuments would be less offensive if they were presented more as historical landmarks and less as tributes to now discredited causes. The Confederacy is worth remembering for a national turning point. Remember that. Some of the Confederacy’s leading figures were sometimes noble people. Remember that, too. But let locals decide how.
Online: https://www.theadvertiser.com/
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May 5
The Advocate of Baton Rouge on oil production in the state:
Over many years in Louisiana, we’ve discussed - and cussed - those 13 thieves in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
In a bit of irony, now, it is America’s oil production that is helping to maintain a worldwide glut in crude, resulting in a significant economic downturn in large parts of our state.
U.S. production has helped fill the void left by the 13-nation cartel’s pact and has kept a lid on prices after they climbed following the cut, which was joined by major oil producer Russia and 10 other non-OPEC countries.
For the American economy more generally, low energy prices are a good thing: The Federal Reserve’s survey of economic conditions, called the Beige Book, commented happily about the restraint in costs of energy.
The Beige Book report showed that the low level of unemployment, which had hit a high of 10 percent during the last recession, is beginning to boost wages in skilled jobs, something the Fed has been hoping to see.
That’s good for Louisiana, obviously, as we are a part of the mainland, a piece of the whole. Low natural gas prices, in particular, bolster the production of the vast petrochemical complex between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
But parts of the state more dependent on oilfield services and energy production continue to suffer. The Lafayette and Houma-Thibodaux regions of Louisiana have had two years of job losses in “mining,” the federal category that includes oil and gas production.
In an earnings call with analysts in February, Todd Hornbeck, head of Covington-based Hornbeck Offshore Services, estimated that about two dozen drilling units were working in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, which was down significantly despite the recent upturn in prices.
“Even as the industry worked through a year of recovering oil prices, deepwater rig deployment declined sharply, by 33 percent,” Hornbeck said.
While one can hope that oil will rebound soon, our nation’s own oil industry is boosted by shale oil and “fracking,” tapped by innovative horizontal drilling techniques.
After averaging about 8.9 million barrels per day in 2016, U.S. crude oil production is forecast to average 9.2 million barrels in 2017 and 9.9 million barrels in 2018, the federal Energy Information Administration reported.
There are no artificial constraints, a la OPEC, to prevent the American oil glut from contributing to the drop in business and employment in the Louisiana oil patch.
OPEC may extend its production cuts at a May 25 meeting in Vienna, but so long as the USA continues to be a contributor to the market’s sea of oil, Louisiana will have to wait for an upturn in the oil patch.
Online: https://www.theadvocate.com/
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May 7
NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune on domestic violence:
At least nine Louisiana statutes include dating partners under their provisions, including the Domestic Abuse Assistance Act and laws governing bail, probation and temporary restraining orders.
Domestic abuse battery is not one of them. Under current law, a victim has to be a family member or an opposite sex household member living together as spouses, whether married or not. So, a victim who is beaten by a boyfriend isn’t covered.
That omission allows some abusers to escape the stronger penalties of domestic abuse battery, including a 26-week Domestic Abuse Intervention Program and loss of their firearms.
Rep. Helena Moreno, a New Orleans Democrat, is trying to close that loophole. Her House Bill 223 includes dating partners under domestic abuse battery, domestic abuse aggravated assault and other laws covering abuse.
The bill easily passed the House criminal justice committee. But as it moves to the House floor, the National Rifle Association is trying to convince lawmakers that the term dating partners is overly broad.
It isn’t. The definition of dating partners has been well established in Louisiana law for more than a decade. The state Supreme Court recognized it in a 2008 ruling on which court had jurisdiction over family and dating violence.
The court repeated the definition from state law: A “dating partner” was defined as any person who is or has been in a social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the victim and where the existence of such a relationship shall be determined based on a consideration of the following factors:
(1)The length of the relationship.
(2)The type of relationship.
(3)The frequency of interaction between the persons involved in the relationship.
“The plain language of the statute makes clear the intent of the legislature to provide ’dating partners’ with the same relief it had previously made available to ’household members’ and ’family members,’ ” the court said.
That is the same language Rep. Moreno’s bill uses to define dating partner.
The NRA surely is worried about how many people might lose access to their guns under HB 223. But lawmakers’ concern should be keeping victims as safe as possible.
Louisiana ranks second nationally for domestic violence homicides. In Louisiana, more than 70 percent of domestic homicides involve a dating partner and more than 60 percent of victims served by the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence are dating partners, according to advocates for abuse victims.
Robyn Hale, the mother of three young children, was shot to death in January when she answered her door in Baton Rouge. Her ex-boyfriend was booked with principal to second degree murder. A court had ordered a temporary restraining order against him after Ms. Hale told a judge in December that he kicked and choked her, but it had lapsed.
In November, a pregnant woman and her parents were shot and stabbed to death at their Old Jefferson home by the woman’s former boyfriend, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office investigators said. He then set the home on fire, they said.
A Houma woman’s ex-boyfriend followed her to her mother’s house in October and shot to death her 17-year-old brother and wounded her and her mother, police said.
Rep. Moreno tried in 2015 to get her colleagues to add dating partners to the domestic abuse battery statute. Opponents then, including the NRA, also argued that the phrase was too broad. The provision was stripped out.
Lawmakers shouldn’t let that happen again. This time, they have one of their own former members as an example.
Then-Sen. Troy Brown punched his longtime “side friend” after the Bayou Classic in November 2015 and months later bit his wife during an argument. But he ended up charged with two misdemeanors because the first incident did not fall under the domestic abuse battery statute. If it had, he would have faced a felony when he bit his wife.
Mr. Brown’s lawyer tried to use that to keep him in the Legislature, arguing that he shouldn’t be expelled for misdemeanors. He ultimately resigned to avoid a vote to remove him.
His former colleagues should be able to see that both his girlfriend and his wife were victims of his abuse.
Online: https://www.nola.com/
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