Louisiana’s finest swamp-scented commentator Hosshead Jacques is back with a review of the 2025 Session of the Louisiana Legislature:
Folks, I’m a-tremblin’ all over. Only a born fool would be disappointed in what we’ve gotten from our august lawmakers this season.
Firstly, I’m as proud as a possum that I can personally contribute to the strengthening of Looziana’s economy just by breathing. The carbon dioxide that I exhale will help fuel the rising industry of carbon capture and sequestration that the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee made sure would face no hurdles a’tall. In fact, as I reenact the killing of the bills against our lovely carbon capture scam, I mean scheme (pardon me, folks, slip o’ the tongue!), by those Committee members, I can almost see the dollar bills floatin’ down from the heavens above like manna and coverin’ our beloved Bayou State:
- HB 4 to allow parishes to vote to allow carbon capture and storage: NO!
- HB 353 to require safety measures are followed for carbon capture projects: NO!
- HB 522 to impose a temporary moratorium on carbon capture projects: NO!
What a thrill y’all! And that’s just a fraction of what I can recount whenever I want to pump some more money-makin’ CO2 into the atmosphere. The best part of it is that you all can join me in this ritual, too! So get to breathin’ folks, and do it with a smile, knowin’ that it makes a ginormous difference for the income of our State.
But folks, but folks! We got to be real careful, now. With all this new money flowin’ into the State like the Mighty Mississipp, we got to watch how we spend it. We can’t afford to waste it on any unproven programs. That’s why we’re so proud of Senate President Cameron Henry for slashing the funding for Looziana’s school choice program:
- ‘While the House kept Landry’s originally proposed $93 million budget for the program intact, Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, has said that he plans only to fund $50 million. Even with a budget of $93 million, only one-third of voucher applicants would secure a scholarship.
- ‘Critics point out that by not funding those students through LA GATOR, they will have to be funded by their public schools.
- ‘Further, “dropping down to $50 million means only current voucher students will qualify,” Daniel Erspamer of the Pelican Institute told The Center Square. “Some voucher students are about to graduate, and this would mean no new students entering kindergarten, which would have happened” in the Louisiana Scholarship Program.’
Pfff! Erspamer, what’s he know? He runs one of them think tanks, like those big metal contraptions driving around on their treads can think a thought.
Who knows how bad things would go in this State if parents had more control over their chilren’s larnin’ than those pretty little bureaucrats settin’ in Baton Rouge?
We seen how well our intrepid desk-riders have managed the insurance problems we’ve all been facin’. Let’s count them blessins:
- ‘In both Homeowners and Auto insurance (especially in Commercial Auto) insurance companies are losing money because of higher claims costs compared to other states. . . . In 2022, for each dollar they collected from policyholders, commercial auto carriers paid out $1.16. And that was their best year out of the previous 5!
- ‘[Home insurers] never recovered all the money they paid out in Katrina. They were still over 2 Billion dollars “in the red” when our state was hammered by the historic storm seasons of 2020 and 2021. Total annual Louisiana Homeowners premiums are $20 Billion. Louisiana Homeowners insurers lost $13 Billion between 2005-2021.
- ‘Louisiana citizens are 12 times more likely to sue their Homeowners insurance company than policyholders in other states. . . . Louisiana [auto] policyholders file claims for injuries after a wreck almost twice as often as the national average. The average amount paid per injury claim is 59% higher in Louisiana than the national average. Louisianians are more than twice as likely to sue for injury damages after an accident than the national average.’
Hit’s a good thing that The People’s Champion, Governor Jeff Landry, is doing what he can to stop those extremist maniacs in the Legislature who want to monkey with our excellent system:
- ‘It’s bad enough that Gov. Jeff Landry is hindering some fair-minded bills to rein in lawsuit abuse and, collaterally, help bring down insurance rates. What’s worse is his full-court press to hinder the insurance free market altogether.
- ‘For chimeric short-term advantages, the long-term result likely would be far worse, meaning higher prices and less choice for Louisiana insurance consumers.
- ‘Landry is pushing a concentration of power that is counterproductive for the economy and unwise for the political system, along with offering a tempting opportunity for corruption. Namely, Landry seeks to give the insurance commissioner unilateral authority to “set” insurance rates, as if a single official is wiser than the laws of supply and demand.’
We’ve got lots more important things to be debatin’ about than this ol’ insurance business anyhow:
‘In an article from WAFB, the new bill looks to reduce the minimum light transmission for window tinting on front windows from 40% to 25%. This will make a difference in the amount of light entering the vehicle, as will also make things slightly more difficult for law enforcement to see in. The bill was proposed by Representative Daryl Deshotel on Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 and subsequently passed through the Senate with a 38-0 vote.’
See now? Wif my darker windows I won’t have to buy sunglasses no more, ever. And neither will y’all. Think of all the money we’ll save. Between that and our carbon capture cash, we’ll all have us a nice little retirement nest aigg to carry us through our latter days. What a paradise we’ve got here!