SB 234 is Bad for Business By Jay Batt, Finance Chairman of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee, former New Orleans City Councilman In my life as a public servant, an active member of the Republican State Central Committee and a business owner from New Orleans, cultivating and maintaining a strong business climate and furthering economic development in our state have always been my top priorities. But I fear that some of the misguided legislation I’m seeing this session is anti-free market, pro-big government intrusion, and frankly, bad for business.

Americans have suspected, probably since the early 1980s when the last real 'just the facts' journalism existed at the national level, that there is an overriding liberal bias in national 'media.' We have now, again, had that suspicion confirmed.

As one comment on Facebook put it, “Yes, we need ambulance service, but do we need this?” And the great majority of those commenting on Facebook seemed to think not. The issue at the Police Jury meeting, Monday, April 22, 2024, was a proposal to use an automated system of speed detection and citation.

The Biden chickens are coming home to roost. Crime committed by American squatters is bad enough but due to the Biden Border Invasion we are experiencing both an illegal alien and domestic crime problem with squatting due to disarming and defunding the police, no bail and other Democrat and Biden issues.

A couple of weeks ago, Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024, the Catahoula Parish School Board met to reaffirm its commitment to irrelevance and magical thinking. In Louisiana the local school boards tend to be rubber stamps anyway, but in the rare event that they may do something important, it would be good if they rose to the occasion. And in this particular case, it would not have been a very high rise.

The centerpiece of the Police Jury meeting, Monday, April 8, 2024, was an annual appropriation of $30,000 dedicated to drug abuse abatement resulting from a major class action lawsuit settlement. The case involved pharmacies and distributors including CVS, Johnson & Johnson, Walgreens, and in the case of Louisiana, Walmart, but not Allergan or Teva as in some other states.

I was stunned this past Easter weekend to learn that President Biden had declared Easter Sunday to be 'Transgender Visibility Day.' Easter, the highest, holy day of the Christian year for millions of Americans and still billions more around the world. That’s the day President Biden thought best to endorse and highlight transgenderism.

People in Catahoula Parish know something about illegal drugs. Probably most know something about one church or another. We have a lot of churches. Many are not really very large. They tend to be what one pastor I knew called “family chapels”, their small congregations held together as much by genetics as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It may seem strange that with so many churches that we would still have so many personal tragedies connected to illegal drug use. There may be an explanation, and it isn’t necessarily due to a lack of evangelization.

After President Biden's failure last week to veto a U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a visit by an Israeli delegation scheduled to meet with Biden in D.C. to discuss the planned invasion of the Hamas-infested city of Rafah in Gaza. Biden's cowardly decision to abstain from voting allowed the resolution, backed by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and many other dangerous enemies of both the U.S. and Israel, to pass.

I had hoped the Supreme Court would hear this case, and on an expedited basis. That’s because the issues presented in the case lie at the very core of our Constitutional separation of powers.