We didn’t do anything on this last week mostly because I didn’t feel like I had time to give it the full attention it needed, but if you haven’t paid attention to the controversy over selecting a new superintendent of schools in East Baton Rouge Parish what you missed was a perfect exposition of the mentality of the people who currently run the place.

Our regular readers will understand the concept of Weaponized Governmental Failure, in which Democrats in charge of cities intentionally trash the governance of those places so as to chase out middle-class voters who might otherwise band together and throw them out of power. The middle class will often vote Republican, of course, but they can’t do that in a city from the suburbs. So when you purposefully steal their tax dollars and misappropriate them for purposes contrary to those stated, and the services those monies are supposed to provide consequently degrade to nothing, what results isn’t accountability for bad leadership but instead outmigration and a captive electorate that will never vote the machine out of power.

Democrats in Baton Rouge have been perfecting the Weaponized Governmental Failure game for the entirety of this century. And earlier this month when the parish’s school system was looking for a new superintendent, you saw a key element of that game.

Its goal, in fact. Which is power for power’s sake. Put another way, that the people engaging in Weaponized Governmental Failure know that what they’re doing is creating a ruin, but they’re perfectly happy to do so as long as they get to rule over it.

We are speaking here of LaMont Cole, the outgoing Metro Council member and incoming school superintendent.

You probably know Cole as one of the, if not the chief, plaintiffs in the suit to stop the incorporation of St. George. That suit wasted several years of potential progress in infrastructure, economic development and other areas of public policy which could have been had if the people of the new city had been able to carry out the incorporation; instead, the city-parish was able – so far, at least – to abscond with more than $100 million in tax receipts which would have gone into St. George’s coffers.

It turns out that the St. George suit was only one of Cole’s WGF actions.

The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board built a list earlier this summer of candidates to fill the open position of superintendent, and in so doing they rejected the acting superintendent, a low-candlepower functionary named Adam Smith who had taken over after the previous superintendent, Sito Narcisse, left.

And the most predictable thing in the world happened next.

Which was that the Democrats on the School Board systematically torpedoed all of the qualified candidates on the list, letting them know they’d be miserable in that job so that they all removed their names from consideration.

And when Smith was the only one left, all of a sudden Cole was parachuted in as the new superintendent to make the status quo regime palatable.

Cole isn’t a schools superintendent. He’s been a principal at a couple of middle schools in Baton Rouge.

The whole thing disqualifies East Baton Rouge’s school district as a viable system. With this kind of Byzantine politics and literally putting a partisan Democrat hack politician in charge of the system, it’s impossible to move Baton Rouge’s schools forward.

And yes, the teachers’ unions are all over this move.

Soon, St. George will put together its own school district, and that will be one of the best in the state along with the schools in Central and Zachary. As for the East Baton Rouge Parish schools?

Just watch what happens to them. But when you do, realize that all of this isn’t incompetence, and it isn’t bad luck. The bad morale, the low standard, the money flying out of the windows…it’s all being done on purpose.

They don’t want good schools. Good schools mean kids capable of social mobility, and they mean middle-class voters who don’t put up with Weaponized Governmental Failure.

Can’t have that.

Memo to state education superintendent Cade Brumley and the members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education: don’t wait too long before you step in, because you’ve got fair warning of the disaster to come in Baton Rouge.