UPDATE: The House Republican delegation responds…

ORIGINAL: We covered the letters being fired off to elderly Medicaid patients in nursing homes Gov. John Bel Edwards is threatening to evict if he doesn’t get obeisance from the Louisiana legislature on tax increases, and we’ve heard there are more histrionics in the offing for later this week. But in the last few days, the direct mail pieces have begun to hit as the governor and his allies attempt to blame Louisiana’s Republican leges for refusing his demands for tax hikes.

Here’s one which hit last week in Rep. Blake Miguez’ district…

Constituents of Reps. Tony Bacala and Lance Harris were also the recipients of those mailers. The part on the left is a detachable postcard addressed to the legislator.

And then Rep. Alan Seabaugh’s constituents had their day yesterday…

With the same detachable postcard…

And the flip side, with about as dishonest a claim as can be made…

The House’s budget funds TOPS at 80 percent. The budget Edwards sent to the House funded TOPS at zero percent. That somehow translates to Seabaugh voting to cut TOPS.

Here, by the way, is the eviction letter the governor has demanded be sent to the elderly Medicaid patients he’s threatening to toss into the street…

The letter itself isn’t really so horrible, other than the fact it’s completely unnecessary to send out since none of the horrors the administration is claiming will take place are guaranteed or even remotely likely. There will be a resolution of the budget situation – and even if there isn’t the Louisiana Department of Health has lots of options with respect to how it might spend the $12 billion allotted to it in a House budget which balances without raising taxes.

Three years ago LDH’s budget was $9 billion and there were no nursing home evictions or closures.

This is somehow an indictment of Miguez, Seabaugh, Harris and Bacala and not evidence that John Bel Edwards is a blithering nincompoop and a dangerously irresponsible incompetent?

Louisiana’s legacy news media is reporting this rather blatant bit of demagoguery as a sign of how desperate things are with the state budget. The Advocate actually reported this insanity, complete with a dog-and-pony show put on by Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne and LDH secretary Rebekah Gee, at face value…

“I recognize the difficulty this is imposing upon recipients. We don’t want to be doing this, obviously,” Dardenne said, adding that the budget proposal approved by the Louisiana House has “eviscerated the Medicaid program.”

Gee said sending out the warning letters is “unprecedented.” She teared up as the news conference wound down, saying, “This is not where we want to be.”

Rebekah Gee should have resigned at that press conference. So should Dardenne. Both of them are unfit for duty and have proven themselves moral degenerates for playing along with this scam.

Edwards won’t resign, of course. That will be up to the voters, who’ll have to dispatch him back to the woods of Tangipahoa Parish from whence he came next year.

At this point it’s becoming a matter of life and death to do so, given the depths of political depravity this governor has shown himself willing to sink to.