Every time you think you've seen the worst Louisiana Legislature of all time...

.... along comes the worst Louisiana Legislature of all time. 

And whooo boy this has been a bad one.

On Monday night this past week, some of us tuned in to observe the latest reverberation of the session's loudest (but also emptiest) controversy thus far. Rep. Valarie Hodges brought a bill before the House that would introduce a specific requirement to the state's high school curriculum. 

Fallout from the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus’ fight with Rep. Ray Garofalo (R-Chalmette) is to blame for the tense debate on the Louisiana House floor Monday over a bill requiring that high schoolers learn about World War II and the Holocaust, Rep. Tammy Phelps (D-Shreveport) said Monday evening.

Rep. Valarie Hodges (R-Denham Springs) got HB 416 through the House to the dismay of Black lawmakers who couldn’t win support for their attempts to simply have the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education consider adjustments to the curriculum.

Hodges told the chamber that “the sacrifice our country and our forefathers made in the part of a worldwide attempt at domination of the Third Reich” are worthy of being taught in every high school.

“The Holocaust is a study in how much the future of our nation depends on its citizens to stand up to the forces that divide us and stand up to hate among us,” she said. “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

It's been a while since the leges have had this much interest in writing curriculum directives directly into state law.  That article references "fallout" over an earlier bill this session introduced by Ray Garofalo that would have barred the teaching of "divisive concepts" such as, for example, the idea that capitalism produces racist or sexist outcomes, or even that racism can be a central theme in the description of US history. 

In other words, it was a pretty bad bill and bringing it to the legislature at all is clearly a deliberate provocation on Garofalo's part.  Interestingly, though, media coverage of the "controversy" has too often elided the nature of the bill as an issue and focused instead on some words spoken by Garofalo while debating it. Take a look at how this Advocate story is framed.

Garofalo first ignited controversy last month when, during a discussion of his bill on how racism is taught in colleges, he referred to how a hypothetical case of a classroom discussion on slavery could include "the good, the bad, the ugly."

He quickly walked back his comment about the "good" in slavery, and allies contend he has been ridiculously portrayed as somehow sympathetic to slavery.

All of a sudden we're no longer talking about the bill he introduced specifically to outlaw academic questioning of white supremacy and are concerned instead with whether or not he's being treated unfairly by critics.  Even now, after his somewhat dramatic removal from his committee chairmanship, Garofalo is presented almost as a sacrificial lamb to petty Democrats. 

At one point Garofalo said, even with his measure, college classrooms were free to air discussions on controversial topics, including “the good, the bad, the ugly” of slavery.

The lawmaker quickly corrected himself on any suggestion of “good” surrounding slavery. But the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus and Gov. John Bel Edwards said he should be replaced as chairman for multiple reasons.

It's probably true that the Black Caucus did force Garofalo's demotion by threatening to hold up a key tax bill until he was punished. They should have killed the tax swap bill altogether anyway but that's for a different post, probably. Either way, the press coverage over the past few weeks has unhelpfully obscured the reason they acted in the first place.  Actually, instead of "the press" I should just say Tyler Bridges in particular because most examples of this are form his reporting.  In this passage, for example, we see that Clay Schexnayder has pretty good handle on a problem that Tyler is nonetheless intent on turning into something else.

But the alliance between the two ended after Garofalo insisted on presenting House Bill 546, which sought to address concerns of conservatives that left-wing educators are teaching “critical race theory” concepts centered on the notion that racism is systemic.

The night before, Schexnayder advised Garofalo that having his committee hear HB546 would be racially divisive.

Garofalo forged ahead. In explaining his bill, he made an offhand comment about the “good” of slavery but then immediately disavowed it.

The damage was done, however. The exchange went viral, and in the days that followed, the Black Caucus called on Schexnayder to remove him as the Education Committee chairman, while Garofalo said he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

No doubt people will think I am picking at nits here. But the way that is written, the reader is expected to conclude that a racist bill that says you can't teach about racism might have been a fine thing to pass if not for the "good of slavery" gaffe that went viral. 

Still, it is probably safe to assume that Garofalo is being punished because his fumbling presentation endangered a tax bill and not because Republicans were all that set against his trolling foray into legislative pedagogy. If it were otherwise, there would have been far less enthusiasm for Hodges's bill on Monday. Mark Ballard puts in a pretty good explanation today of how her bill and Garofalo's are really aimed at the same purpose.  

The first thing caucus chair Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, said was that tax policy, not culture wars, is the foremost interest of most House Republicans.

Still, they voted for transgender restrictions and school curricula impositions, such as requiring public schools to teach World War II and the Holocaust in greater detail as well as an emphasis on the nation’s important documents.

Not that such subjects are bad for Louisiana students to learn, but “patriotic education” is a strategy that crowds out conversations about race and its impact on American society. Louisiana educators oppose legislators dictating curriculum.

Another thing we have to point out about these "culture issue" troll bills is that they do not bubble up from the local constituents. They are dropped in from above by well funded national conservative agitators.  For example, Louisiana was one of thirty some odd states to advance bills cribbed from the national right wing grievance-cruelty template that bar transgendered kids from participating in high school sports.  Here is the House breaking out in applause over its passage.

Here it is. Over ten seconds of cruel, heartbreaking, inhumane celebration after passing a bill that would deny thousands of Louisiana children and youth the right to be part of a team, to play sports with their friends. #lalege #lagov #protecttranskids #letthemplay pic.twitter.com/zTHL6IOV4L

— Dylan Waguespack (@DylanMercury) May 28, 2021

What has made this session more frustrating than most, though, has been the ease at which bills like this have made it all the way through the process. During a session with the more weighty matters of hurricane recovery, coastal restoration, and the distribution of COVID relief funds on the agenda, why are we stopping to argue about any of this foolishness? 

The key observation is that this group of lawmakers doesn't play the game with the same um.. restraint.. that previous bodies might have exercised.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  Recall that 2019 was a wave election for reactionaries and we're seeing what happens when they get to run the whole show with little or no check aside from a Governor who is himself too hands off.  The other problem is this is yet another legislature seeing the effect of a term limits law that has weakened the overall competence of the body as members have less experience and independence and rely more on permanent $$ people to really run things. 

We've seen bills come out of committee this year with obvious problems one might have expected to get "fixed' on the full floor (or killed if they are altogether bad.) But now the customary brakes seem to be off. And, yes, of course the bar  for was very low already but my point is this bunch has managed to go even lower. 

A few examples of that: 

First, a couple weeks ago we saw the final failure to pass even a modest $28 boost to one of the country's cruelest unemployment insurance payments, in part, because House Republicans insisted (falsely) that the current $300 federal enhanced payment that expires this fall is "disincentivizing" work. 

Not willing to let facts flummox a good narrative, a murderers’ row of a half dozen self-described conservatives in the Louisiana House, one after another, pounced on Democratic Harvey Rep. Rodney Lyons’ proposal to increase Louisiana’s miserly unemployment benefit by $28 a week. The increase would move the state from the 49th lowest benefit to 48th by paying no more than $275 per week. Most would get less, and in any case the increase would start in January 2022, four months after the federal enhanced benefits expires.

When Lyons's bill was in committee, it was amended to also include a bizarre provision for one time $1,000 bonus payments to people who take a new job and end their UI benefit.  Accepting the bonus payment would then make the person ineligible for future unemployment benefits for a period after.  That amendment, questionable as it was on legal and moral grounds, was considered a political "poison pill" intended to tank the bill altogether.  However, it's also exactly the sort of thing that a previous House might have removed in time to pass a reasonable bill as clearer thinking heads prevailed.  That wasn't the case this time. 

The House failed again to listen to reason on Thursday when Barry Ivey (R- Central)  practically begged them not advance Rick Edmonds's (R- Baton Rouge)  blatant attempt to hide information about corporate tax breaks granted by the state from public view. 

House lawmakers on Thursday voted 59-38 for a bill that would change the public records law to allow the state economic development agency to hide certain corporate tax incentive records from the public. 

House Bill 456, sponsored by Rep. Rick Edmonds (R-Baton Rouge), proposes to make an exception to Louisiana’s public records law for certain records under the Louisiana Economic Development (LED) tax incentive programs, including the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, Louisiana Quality Jobs Program and Louisiana Enterprise Zone Program. 

“It is imperative, members, that we do not let this instrument go across to the other side (to the Senate),” Rep. Barry Ivey (R-Central) said during floor debate Thursday. He said HB 456 is one of the most problematic bills he has seen.

What the bill would do is make it impossible for anyone to gauge whether or not recipients of the various "incentive" are actually hitting their targets in terms of workers hired and wages paid instead of  just hoarding all the money in the form of executive compensation, for example. In years past, there would still be a good chance the Senate might "fix" this later on.  But maybe not this year. 

If anything, it looks like they're "fixing" things in the wrong direction. Take for example this teacher pay raise that seemed to shrink overnight without explanation. 

The Senate Finance Committee on Monday approved its version of the state's nearly $37 billion operating budget, including $800 pay raises for teachers and other certificated personnel and $400 pay boosts for support workers, including cafeteria employees and school bus drivers.

The action marked a turnaround from April 28, when Senate Education Committee Chairman Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, said House and Senate leaders were getting behind raises of $1,000 per year, more than double Gov. John Bel Edwards proposal to boost pay by $400 annually.

Nobody says why the money was taken back out.  Louisiana Federation of Teachers' lobbyist Cynthia Posey does point out that the state spends over $9 billion a year on the kind of tax credits and exemptions that Edmonds's bill will shield from scrutiny.

Anyway it's not like there isn't enough money to go around.  This is the first "fiscal session" in quite a while that hasn't played out int he shadow of some massive budget shortfall or impending "fiscal cliff."  Between the federal COVID rescue plan and just better than expected revenues in general, lawmakers have plenty to play with while formulating a budget. 

The Senate Finance Committee on Monday released their mark-up of the state's multibillion-dollar spending plan for the budget year beginning July 1 with spending bumps for higher education, juvenile justice and dozens of other favored pets projects. 

Lawmakers in the upper chamber had the rare opportunity to divvy up hundreds of millions of dollars in better-than-expected tax revenues after the state last week forecasted $355 million in excess funds for the current fiscal year and $320 million in additional collections for the next fiscal year.

Too bad for the teachers, though.  Guess they had to wait in line behind -- this stuff. 

Senators also added dozens of earmarks for favored projects in their districts, including $12 million in road projects in Lafayette, the city where Cortez lives, and $2 million to the athletics foundation in White's hometown of Central. Other dollars would go to recreational facilities in Jefferson Parish, a skate park in Ruston, fire departments in Ascension Parish, the River Road African American Museum and the National World War II Museum

LOL, yes, there again is the big money pit of special tax credits, sweetheart bank deals, and public-private partnering we all know as the National World War II Museum.  According to the budget bill as currently written, they're getting $7.5 million in general funds for something called an "FP&C Management Plus Liberation Pavilion." Here is what will go on there. 

Following their immersive journey through the war, visitors to The National WWII Museum will enter the Liberation Pavilion. Three building levels will explore the closing months of the war and immediate postwar years, concluding with an explanation of links to our lives today. The first floor, Liberation, will provide visitors with opportunities to contemplate the joys, costs, and meaning of liberation and freedom. The second and third levels will focus on what the war means today, with exhibits developed through the lens of democracy and freedom.

The second floor of the Liberation Pavilion will present richly layered, interactive experiences that explore the postwar years: how the world—and America's place in it—changed after World War II. Dramatic and thought-provoking exhibits will explore selected themes from the postwar era, ranging from the readjustments faced by returning military service members to international tribunals seeking justice for war crimes. We will trace the war's lasting legacies at home and around the world, as America's elevated role as a world power and freedoms secured by Allied forces are continually tested—even to the present day.

One wonders if Valarie Hodges is aware of this appropriation.

See also:  Couldn't really fit it into the narrative here but go ahead and read this Bayou Brief feature on Hodges and the attendant controversies to her bill.  Among other things, it's a good reminder to check your spelling.