TRUMP GUTS LOUISIANA ON OIL INCOME!

Thursday, May 25th, 2017

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

TRUMP GUTS LOUISIANA ON OIL INCOME!

The new proposed budget just released by the Trump Administration guts past federal assurances that Louisiana will share in the billions of tax dollars that are derived from offshore oil development.  The state was anticipating the receipt of some $140 million in oil revenue this fiscal year. But if Trump’s proposal is accepted by Congress, efforts to stop coastal erosion will take a major setback. And the states’ already fragile budget will take a major hit.

Louisiana has more natural wealth than the other southern states put together. But a major political blunder 70 years ago has cost this state many billions of dollars. We will spend the next several decades trying to make up for the money that was lost in the past. And with a little common sense, it all could have been avoided.

Louisiana’s single biggest missed opportunity was the financial debacle that took place in the early 1950s when Earl Long was the state’s governor and Judge Leander Perez ran Plaquemines Parish with an iron fist. For years, the state and the feds had bickered and fought over where the Louisiana borders ended and federal jurisdiction began. At stake were not millions, but literally billions of future dollars in oil and gas reserves.

Senator Ellender and Long struck with what would have been a heck of deal with then President Harry Truman. Louisiana would get all of the royalty income for the first three miles off our coast, and then split everything else over the next ten miles 50-50 with the feds. Earl Long was ready to sign on when Judge Perez stepped in. “To hell with the Feds. We are not going to give them 50%. We want the whole thing!”

Earl Long wasn’t willing to take on the Judge, and besides, it was election year on the national level. Truman wasn’t running, and if the Judge got behind Eisenhower, a much better deal might be struck.

Eisenhower won the election, and carried 93% of the vote in Plaquemines Parish, the highest percentage of any parish or county in the nation. But the new President, according to Perez and the two Louisiana senators, reneged on pre-election commitments and only let the state have possession of land within three miles of the shoreline. The Judge had expected 10 1⁄2 miles southward with a baseline that would be drawn to include all of Louisiana’s many coastal indentations.

Perez opposed the final offer by the feds as his “vested interest” made him greedy, and Louisiana ended up receiving not one penny after a protracted battle all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The failure to take this settlement has cost Louisiana, by several studies, more than $500 billion (that’s billon with a “b”) in lost revenue.

Here’s a simple way to figure it. If Perez had not stopped the original proposition offered by Eisenhower, here’s what would be happening today. There would be no Louisiana income taxes, no sales taxes, no property taxes and few other taxes. In addition, like Alaska, every man, woman and child in Louisiana could possibly expect to receive a substantial yearly check in excess of $3,000 that would continue for the rest of their lives. Simply put, it was the single biggest missed opportunity of any state in the history of our country.

The Trump budget proposals are not a done deal, and will certainly be opposed by the Louisiana congressional delegation.  But the history of dealing with the federal government over what should be a major revenue source for the state continues to be an uphill fight.  And the Louisiana coast continues to erode and drop off into the Gulf.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.  You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9:00 am till 11:00 am Central Time on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

LOUISIANA CATCHING UP TO THE 21st CENTURY?

Thursday, My 18th, 2017

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 LOUISIANA CATCHING UP TO THE 21st CENTURY?

With tax dollars scarce in Louisiana, this should be the time to discuss streamlining on the state and local levels. Just how many boards, commissions, water districts, sewer districts, parish auditors, law enforcement offices, and other special districts are spread throughout Louisiana? Some estimates are as high as 7,000. No one really seems to know. Would you believe that no agency, public or private, can list all the public bodies that exist in Louisiana today? And if no one knows that number, then it goes without saying that no one can even begin to know the overlapping costs.

Start with the sixty-four parishes. In the rural farming economy of the early 20^th century, each parish served as the synergy of daily life in Louisiana.  There was a need for local road and water districts to take care of rural needs. Government, by nature, was local.  Police jurors and sheriffs ran their respective local districts like fiefdoms.  Rural voters elected local candidates who directly touched their lives.

The sheriff was not there just to keep you safe, but to offer you a ride to town for groceries or to take you to the doctor.  The local police juror kept the ditches from overflowing and could see to it that a little gravel was spread on the dirt road leading to your farmhouse.  Baton Rouge was often a two-day ride on horseback or an all-day trip by car over muddy dirt roads.  What happened or did not happen at the local courthouse had a direct bearing on the daily lives of a majority of Louisianans.

But that was in days gone by. Times have changed, and the state has assumed the vast majority of public duties including the funding and administration of highway construction, flood protection, healthcare, and an array of other public needs.  Yet the local governing structure, with thousands of commissions, districts, and boards, hasn’t really changed in the past 75 years.

Do we need sixty-four parishes?  Or would forty-five work more efficiently and save millions?  Do cities that take up the bulk of the parish like New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport really need both a sheriff and a police chief? Some of the small, rural parishes have as few as nine thousand people per district judge.  The average is more like 20,000 per judge.  Should consolidation be undertaken?  Why does every parish elect a coroner?  Back in the 70s in my home parish of Concordia, a local logger held the job.  Couldn’t professionals run this job on a regional basis?

As demographer Elliot Stonecipher has pointed out in a recent study, Louisiana’s population is about the same today as it was in 1985.  Yet, instead of a reduction in local and state governmental units, the numbers have been substantially increased. Over the past century, little has changed in Louisiana in how local government operates, and the system in place today is run by the same archaic institutions that were put in place before the invention of the telephone, light bulb, automobile, and, of course, the computer.

The same overlap exists on the state level. Do we need four boards to govern higher education?  How come states like California and North Carolina, where colleges rank at the top of national lists function quite well with just one board?  And how about the slew of state boards and commissions that appear to make up ways to regulate where none is needed? If I go to my local grocery store and buy a dozen roses for my wife, do I really need a licensed florist, who has to be tested and certified through a floral board, to wrap them for me?  Do I need a board to oversee someone I hire to help decorate my office or home?

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw discussed the problem and the opportunity:  “Every state and every region of the country is stuck with some form of anachronistic and expensive local government structure that dates to the horse-drawn wagons, family farms and small-town convenience.  It’s time to reorganize our state and local government structures for today’s realities rather than cling to the sensibilities of the twentieth century.”

Streamlining state government should be a major concern of both the governor and the legislature. Louisiana needs major change. President John Kennedy said it well.  “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

MONUMENTS, THE PRESIDENT AND THE CIVIL WAR!

Thursday, May 11th, 2017

New Orleans, Louisiana

MONUMENTS, THE PRESIDENT AND THE CIVIL WAR!

As the battle over taking down Civil War monuments in New Orleans rages, President Trump has jumped into the debate by questioning why the conflict was even necessary. In a recent interview, Trump asked:  Why was there a Civil War?  Why could that one not have worked out?

Could Lincoln have done more to stop the fighting? Was there a middle ground to buy time for ongoing discussions?  It was not like the South’s eventual leaders, from Jefferson Davis to Robert E. Lee, were from a foreign land.  Davis was a U.S. Senator, and Lincoln asked Lee to take over command of the entire U.S. Military.  They were colleagues in government. Couldn’t Lincoln have been more persuasive?

Imagine the public reaction today if either George Bush or Barack Obama stood by and let some six million Americans kill one another in battle. That’s the number of deaths based on today’s comparative population. There would be open revolt and an immediate cry for new leadership.  Did Lincoln fail the test then?  Oh, he did take action.  Lincoln suspended parts of the constitution including habeas corpus, arrested numerous political opponents, and shut down several hundred newspapers.

Was Lincoln obsessed with freeing the slaves?  Here are his words in a letter written to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

So was it a total commitment to keep the union intact?  Not if you believe Lincoln’s words a few years before the Civil War began. “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable—a most sacred right— a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.”

Professor David Goldfield has written a recent book called “America Aflame, How the Civil War Created a Nation.”  He’s a past guest on my syndicated radio show. Goldfield computes the total monetary cost of the war to around $6.7 billion in 1860s currency.  He asserts that if “the government had purchased the freedom of four million slaves and granted a 40 acre farm to each slave family, the total cost would have been $3.1 billion, leaving $3.6 billion for reparations to make up for a century of lost wages.  And not a single life would have been lost.”

What about the morality of a President declaring unbridled warfare on his own citizens? One can well argue that saving human lives would have been far more important than keeping the Union together. How can a President responsible for so much bloodshed be thought of as the greatest President in US history? I understand that Lincoln wanted to avoid the Civil War. However, was preserving the Union worth the cost of spilling so much blood on both ends of the battlefield?

Lincoln went on to lead the country in reconstruction and offered exemplary leadership as the nation healed its all too deep wounds.  Maybe it was because he was brand new at the job as the war began.  But it seems clear that when real leadership was called for in an effort to save hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens, Abraham Lincoln blinked. 

The country is, after these 150 years, still reeling from this national tragedy.  President Trump was right on in asking why the war was necessary in the first place.

******

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

~Abraham Lincoln

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.  You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9:00 am till 11:00 am Central Time on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

THE CHALLENGES AND CHARMS OF GETTING OLDER!

Thursday, May 4th, 2017

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

THE CHALLENGES AND CHARMS OF GETTING OLDER!

I woke up earlier this week, followed my normal routine of walking the dogs, picking up the morning papers, pouring my large glass of orange juice half filled with water to dilute the sugar, checked my emails, walked out on the patio to glance over the news … and then it dawned on me – I’ve turned 77.

Seventy-seven?  How did that happen? Not too long ago, I would have said that 77 is really old.  And to many, I suppose it is.  I don’t think I look 77.  Oh, I do look in the mirror from time to time, and see reflections of my father.  I remember him well in his 70s.  He had suffered his first heart attack by then, and though he did not look real old, still, he had aged a good bit.  I look away from the mirror, and he is a vision of a much younger man.  But when I look back, there he is. 

How do I feel?  My doctor, whose first name is “Bubba” (you check out closely a doctor named “Bubba”) says I look a heck of a lot better on the outside than I do on the inside.  I have my share of aches and pains.  A knee and a hip that was replaced, some recurring arthritis, too much hay fever and a sore back. But hey, I had all that 20 years ago.  So I guess I’m doin’ OK.

I still listen to the 50s music on the radio and remember well, dancing in high school to Jerry Lee Lewis — Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.  In the 60s, I was a Ferriday lawyer representing the likes of Jerry Lee and his cousin Jimmy Swaggart.  Three daughters and country living dominated the 70s, and politics took over my life in the 80s and 90s. The Feds were an irritant in the early new century, but I survived and have branched out in a number of new directions. Our visit each week through this column and on the radio is one more reflection of living life to the fullest. Six grandchildren in the past decade is the icing on the cake.

I’ve tried to flush out an occasional creative vibe. Painting with a granddaughter, who, at eleven years old, is much better than me. Refreshing my banjo skills. Would you believe that in my twenties, I helped pay my way through law school by strumin’ the banjo at Your Father’s Mustache on Bourbon Street in New Orleans? Even a stint as an actor in the Three Penny Opera and The Fantasticks at several local theatres in the French Quarter. It took a while, but I finally figured out that I shouldn’t worry about being all that skilled at many things. It was better to delight in the pursuit, and find clarity by enjoying the undertaking itself, regardless of my limited talent.

Yes, seventy-seven is a milestone.  But I won’t consider myself old — just a bit older.  Ninety is probably old, but I have many years of lively living before I have to consider that next line in the sand.  In the meantime, I will continue to be the happy go lucky, meddling, opinionated, bullheaded, talkaholic, health conscious, lovable (from my perspective) fellow that I have always been.  I won’t hesitate to give plenty of advice to my children.  They may be middle aged, but they are still my kids, and even though they think they don’t need my advice, I know they really do.

So why make a big deal of being 77? I mean, it’s just a number isn’t it?  Like a bunch of other numbers in your life.  Dates, addresses, sums, amounts, and then, in the mix, is age.  But maybe it’s more than that.  I can make a case that it could be an important milestone.  My seventy-seven years, by any measures, have been full and hard living, with ups and downs too numerous to mention.  If there is a yin and a yang, the before and the after, what has happened, and what is yet to be, then maybe seventy-seven is a special waypost for me.  Hey, I could be at the top and ready for the long and relaxing ride back down.

As for the rest of all you youngsters below the age of seventy-seven, I have just this one thought.  It’s nice to be on this side of troubled waters.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.  You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9:00 am till 11:00 am Central Time on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.