Here’s something we found which didn’t surprise us in the least. It’s HB 259 by Denise Marcelle, who’s a Democrat from North Baton Rouge committed to upholding one of the lesser traditions of her party in Louisiana’s capitol.

Namely, state legislators of a certain political persuasion love to set up nonprofit “community” organizations and then hook them up to the state general budget spigot. It’s a long-running gag and it’s a hell of a good way to turn that $16,800 per year legislators get paid in salary into a six-figure income.

These “community organizations” don’t actually do anything for the community, mind you. They might pick up trash one day a year, or throw a crawfish boil, or host panel discussions about some trendy lefty topic or other which they can use as a hook to trail in grants from some Soros-y group somewhere. There’s an entire seedy ecosystem which funnels money to non-governmental organizations through networks of cultural Marxist money-pots, and it’s built to increase the power and money which black Democrat politicians like Denise Marcelle can command.

For the specific purpose of turning out inner-city black votes for the Democrat Party.

What does this have to do with HB 259? Check out how utterly naked this demand is…

Present constitution provides that no appropriation shall be made for longer than one year.

Proposed constitutional amendment provides an exception to the one year limitation. Provides that all appropriation to a nongovernmental entity that is neither a budget unit nor a political subdivision is for two years.

This is obnoxious on two levels. First, it’s obnoxious as a short-term idea, because were this to pass, it would lock in all the cash-from-helicopters NGO foolishness in John Bel Edwards’ budget for the first year of somebody else’s term (and if that isn’t Jeff Landry, it’s most likely John Schroder or Stephen Waguespack, and in any of those cases you can bet the legislator-NGO gravy train would come to something of a halt).

And as a long-term plan it would set up the NGO’s as super-citizens of the state whose funding would be essentially semi-permanent.

Let’s recognize that Louisiana’s massive $46 billion budget isn’t sustainable, and so lots of the wasteful and not-all-that-necessary spending on many of these NGO’s is going to be first up on the chopping block not just next year but for the foreseeable future. Not only is the Joe Biden federal fiat largesse going to begin drying up, but there are going to be adjustments to Louisiana’s tax code phasing out the current massive sales tax, many of the state’s business taxes and probably the state income tax as well. That’s going to mean a reorientation of the state budget away from the central spigot at the Capitol. The NGO’s will feel it first, because they’re some of the fattest pigs at the trough.

Marcelle is nakedly, shamelessly doing what she can to permanently attach them to that trough. The bill doesn’t have much chance of passage, which is a good thing, but we nonetheless wanted to make sure that she was recognized for the attempt with today’s Terrible Bill O’ The Day award.