Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder
As we begin today’s Sound Off Louisiana post, we want to start by making a shameless plug for the next installment of The Hayride’s Truth and Consequences Tour, which will be on Wednesday night. The guest speakers will be Mary Katharine Ham, American journalist and conservative commentator; and Guy Benson, political editor of Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor. Hayride publisher Scott McKay puts in an enormous amount of time and energy to organize these tour stops (six a year), and we really enjoy them, and we believe you’ll enjoy them immensely as well.
Speaking of Scott McKay, he’s been on a tear lately casting many of the legacy media journalists (Julie O’Donohue of the Times Picayune, Tyler Bridges of The Advocate, and a few others) as “stenographers for Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.”
We’ve really taken a liking to Scott’s phrase, and that was so much so the case that Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns simply couldn’t resist utilizing it (giving appropriate credit to Scott, of course), from the 1:59 – 2:14 mark of our feature video demonstrating Rep. Kenny Havard’s (R-St. Francisville) utter hypocrisy on the sales tax measure. Well, we can only assume that Burns’ repeat of McKay’s phrase “stenographers for Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards,” touched on a nerve with either Advocate writer Elizabeth Crisp, the Advocate higher-ups, or both.
Why? Because once Crisp published this article, Burns, as he so often does, tries to provide Advocate readers who bother to peek at comments with an “alternate take” on things by making comments linking his Sound Off Louisiana feature entailing the same subject. Well, Burns’ brief comment with a link to the Havard hypocrisy article was deleted soon after he made the comment on Crisp’s linked article above. Believing that it must be some computer glitch, he posted the same identical comment about two hours later. The result? Yep! Deleted again! Hence, we can only assume that the 15-second segment of that video where McKay’s phrase was referenced kind of touched on a nerve! Oh, well.
On Monday, July 16, 2018, we were on the fourth day of our four-day coverage of the Louisiana State Police Commission LSPC hearings for the “Vegas Crew.” Nevertheless, we have a backup camera, so we entrusted retired LSP trooper Leon “Bucky” Millet, who certainly didn’t mince his words entailing how he believes the LSPC commissioners should handle the “Vegas crew” matter, to operate the backup camera while Burns snuck away to attend the Baton Rouge Press Club (BRPC) presentation by Louisiana Treasurer John Schroder.
Now, in fairness to Crisp, she likely represents the “high water mark” in terms of objectivity that The Advocate is ever going to provide its readers with. Nevertheless, we point out that it is her sitting prominently at the table when Rep. Alan Seabaugh challenged the constitutionality of HB-12, which was a bill by Rep. Walt Leger which was hijacked by Sen. J. P. Morrell to make it a mirror image of Lance Harris’ HB-27, which, in sharp contrast to Leger’s bill, dealt specifically with raising Louisiana’s sales tax. Morrell pulled the hijacking maneuver and, in the process, created a clearly-unconstitutional bill, as a precaution against Harris pulling his bill after Morrell’s committee totally overhauled Harris’ bill.
Again, Crisp appears on prominent display on the videos above. It is beyond us entailing why she, in all of her coverage of the sales tax measures, felt Advocate readers had no need to be informed of Seabaugh’s constitutionality concerns even as he was vilified by Gov. Edwards, the mainstream media, and particularly Rep. Julie Stokes, a candidate for Louisiana Secretary of State. A candidate, we may add, whom we firmly believe should be rejected out-of-hand on the simple premise that anyone who taunts a colleague in the manner she did on the linked video above, when that colleague is expressing perfectly valid and substantive concerns over a bill’s constitutionality, is NOT someone whom we believe should be serving as our next Secretary of State! Instead, we’d prefer someone with a little more concern for Louisiana’s Constitution!
Why have we gone into all this? Well, as any good preacher will do, we’ve reached the point in the sermon at which we can state, “I’ve just laid the foundation for my message to you today.” What do we mean? Well, Crisp drafted an article on Schroder’s presentation. She paints a glowing picture of Louisiana’s stabilized bond rating prospects as a result of the seven-year increase in Louisiana’s sales tax rate from 4.00% to 4.45% (no, we’re not going to dignify Gov. Edwards’ argument that there’s a tax “cut” of 0.55% because his irresponsible increase of 1.00% passed 27 months ago wasn’t fully renewed). From reading the article, at least until one gets to the very bottom of it, one would almost conclude that Treasurer John Schroder is totally on board with Gov. Edwards’ initiatives!
Well, we’re about to take off when Crisp left off (at the bottom of her article, where she does demonstrate her objectivity, albeit very briefly), and provide that “alternate take.” This time, however, neither Crisp nor The Advocate hierarchy will be able to delete the following video in which Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns quizzes Schroder on the “total collapse” of many Republican legislators’ resolve to “hold the line” on any tax increases and instead “caving” to Gov. Edwards’ demands. Let’s get Treasurer Schroder’s take, shall we?:
Treasurer John Schroder addresses Burns’ question on the collapse of Republican legislators’ resolve to “hold the line” on tax increases during the 2018 special sessions. The 20 legislators who steadfastly opposed the tax measures have been featured on our Louisiana Legislative Hall of Excellence.
We’ll let our viewers be the judge. Does it sound like he’s real thrilled with where we are with the budget? His words are pretty emphatic and, we believe, spot on! So, that’s the “alternate take” delivered to our viewers two weeks after-the-fact because we’ve been busy with LSPC matters. Heck, even as we wrap this up, we’re off to go attend a “wrongful termination” trial in Federal court for a suit filed by former ATC agent Brette Tingle. We’ll be reporting on it in coming days and, be forewarned, it is going to be “XXX-rated!!”
On a final note (a point of personal privilege, we suppose). We just want to take a moment to thank our long-time subscribers and all of our newcomers. Our viewership has been steadily increasing throughout 2018, and this month, it is on target to have an average viewership of over 1,700 minutes per day! Here’s the You Tube Analytics for the past 28 days:
We want to thank everyone for the loyal dedication, and we look forward to delivering plenty more content that simply isn’t available through the “big guys” in the news service outlets!
Again, for anyone who opts to attend Scott’s T & C tour stop in Metairie on Wednesday, we know you won’t be disappointed, and we look forward to seeing you there!
To view Treasurer Schroder’s presentation in its entirety, CLICK HERE.
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