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Story Archives: There's more going on than hurricanes, football


There's more going on than hurricanes, football
by Sam Hanna, Jr. - posted Thursday, September 18th, 2008 @ 8:28 amE-mail Story E-mail Story | Print Story Print Story 
The cooler weather that filtered into northeast Louisiana earlier this week served as a wake-up call. Fall is just around the corner.

That usually means the harvest is in full swing. Thanks to Hurricane Gustav, though, we have witnessed a promising crop fall apart for the most part, while farmers hold out hope the government will come to their rescue. Disaster payments are desperately needed, or northeast Louisiana's economy will take a huge hit in spite of at least one opinion to the contrary.

The cooler weather also would indicate we're in the midst of another season. That, of course, would be the college football season where our beloved LSU Tigers are off to a 2-0 start in defense of their Southeastern Conference and National Champion titles. Something tells us LSU's quarterback play must improve dramatically if the Tigers have any intention of returning to the SEC title game in Atlanta in December. We'll have a better grasp on how good the Tigers are after this Saturday's bout with Auburn at Auburn, a hole in the earth near the Georgia border.

Dissecting the pros and cons of our LSU Tigers would be an ideal topic for discussion if this column was published on a sports page. But it isn't.

Instead, the cooler weather we encountered Monday morning reminded us, too, that there exist a couple of important elections on the November ballot, including the U.S. Senate race between Mary Landrieu, the Democratic incumbent, and John Kennedy, a Republican who currently serves as Louisiana's treasurer.

At first blush, one would think Landrieu should be in the driver seat and en route to securing a third, six-year term in the Senate. She has raised far more money than Kennedy, and though she is not the most popular statewide elected official in Louisiana, she isn't necessarily hated either.

Besides, Landrieu has done a fairly good job in projecting a moderate image on the home front, while doing what she must do in Washington to remain in good standing with her liberal colleagues in the Senate. After all, what the people don't know, won't hurt him.

That line of thinking, or rationalizing, used to work for elected officials who felt they could act, or vote, one way, while telling the people who matter the most, the voters, something entirely different. It won't work any longer because the people are better informed about the ways and means in Washington -- no pun intended -- than they were not too many years ago thanks to modern day campaigning via the internet.

Yes, the Web has evolved into a useful tool to raise money to fuel campaigns, and it has become a very effective weapon in distributing information -- true and false -- about candidates for public office.

Both Kennedy and Landrieu can vouch for the latter point. They can vouch for it because their campaigns are guilty of funneling information about one another to the people and the media that's not entirely accurate.

While it is true Landrieu voted in favor of legislation that could provide Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants, the Kennedy camp failed to disclose that the provision which makes available Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants is about as clear cut as the U.S. tax code. Furthermore, the provision in question makes it almost impossible for an illegal immigrant to secure Social Security benefits.

In other words, the legislation Landrieu voted for represented one of those votes in Congress in which a member must accept some stomach-churning language to secure a greater good for the people. It occurs quite often in the Congress as well as in every legislative body in every state in America. It's called compromise, and compromise, my friends, is not a dirty word.

Though Landrieu has been wrongly accused of supporting the disbursement of Social Security checks for illegal immigrants, her efforts to pass energy reform legislation prior to the November election is nothing more than political grandstanding at its worse. Worse, the legislation would do little to help wean America from its dependence on foreign oil. Landrieu knows it, too.

If she doesn't know it, she doesn't deserve another term in the most powerful legislative body in the world.
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