H.B. 667’S FIZZLE OF DEATH
The details shared by witnesses are undisputed. State Rep. Cedric Glover's House Bill 667 perished, not with a bang but a whimper, as my favorite poet wrote it.
When Glover sat down to explain his toxic bill to the Senate Committee on Local & Municipal Affairs, the vice chairman, Sen. Jack Donahue, stomped out Glover's mainly hidden agenda.
Donahue noted that Glover's bill was not supported by Shreveport-area senators, specifically naming Barrow Peacock, Greg Tarver and Ryan Gatti. Thus, it would not be further addressed by the Louisiana Senate.
Done … kaput. Just like that, a few days of wonderful and marvelous and heretofore unthinkable grass-roots political opposition defeated a notably unsavory gonna-be state law.
As I have learned, H. B. 667 was concocted from some startlingly destructive Glover motives, including creation of a taxing authority tailored for corruption, and his personal crusade of racial bias in appointments to public bodies.
The outburst of opposition to Glover and his bill included e-mails, telephone calls, texts, innumerable social media pages, and the RealShreveport.com Web site. Targets were any legislators who might help us kill the bill.
Many legislators, one way or another, responded to our appeal, and Sen. Donahue's decision to shut Glover down traces to it. Legislators had heard all they needed to from us.
When the wild week began, Sen.
Barrow Peacock telephoned me about the legislation, which had already zipped, 14-0, through the House Committee on Municipal, Parochial & Governmental Affairs – of which Glover is a member.
The next day, the bill was passed by a vote of 71-3 in the House of Representatives, regardless that this was a Democrat's bill of taxation in a legislature controlled by Republicans.
It was no surprise to learn Rep. Glover was using every known technique of sneak.
He well knew that the days just before the Memorial Day legislative break were his friend, and facts and truth were not.
Soon, as grass-roots heat was applied, various sources began to publicly explain at least some of Glover’s rigging.
Republican Rep. Larry Bagley of Mansfield noted that one or more answers to questions he asked Glover about his bill from the House floor were not true.
Republican Thomas Carmody added that Glover had deliberately scheduled the House vote on the bill for a time after which Carmody and Republican Alan Seabaugh (and 29 other House members, as it turned out) would already be on their Memorial Day break.
Seabaugh added that Glover's bill actually had a sole purpose: future Shreveport mayors – as Glover intends to be – would thereafter be allowed to call elections and tax Shreveporters without involvement of our City Council.
Cedric Glover was acting like Cedric Glover, and many were somehow snookered.
For the record, that true purpose of Glover's bill jumped off the pages as I read and studied for my first article about it. If one knows Glover's record and method, "taxation without representation" of Shreveporters was a given.
I wrote and posted my article – notably including on RealShreveport.com – last Saturday: http://realshreveport.com/hb-667-broad-daylight-mugging-o…/ Then, all happy hell broke loose! Something gave. Our years of bleeding from public corruption and the highly abusive tax-happiness of unelected "leaders" had broken something in a lot of us.
Regardless, traditional news media remained silent throughout, except KTBS-TV.
Top Shreveport community organizations never commented on the bill. In fact, taxing us is something they virtually always support.
On the other side of the ledger, we owe a loud "Thank You!" to many.
First and foremost, this prize goes to the untold hundreds who were fed-up enough to e-mail, phone, text, socialmedia-message and otherwise irritate as necessary subject state legislators.
More specifically, I thank these:
• Sen. Peacock and Legislative Assistant Mary Ann Van Osdell.
• Brenda O'Brock, Diane Long and Rob Maness, Louisiana Power Coalition / We The People.
• Northwest Louisiana Association of Realtors, Home Builders Association of Northwest Louisiana.
• Sen. Greg Tarver, Sen. John Milkovich, Sen. Ryan Gatti, State Rep. Raymond Crews, and any and all yet unidentified legislators and their staff who helped us.
I personally thank Will Broyles and his RealShreveport.com Web site. When we crashed his server, he loved it like we had sent him a very special gift.
Elliott Stonecipher is a native and resident of Shreveport, La. A graduate of Louisiana Tech University and Louisiana State University, he is president and owner of Evets Management Services Inc. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Stonecipher has committed to pro bono work on a range of local, state and national issues, including reform of governmental and political ethics, and reform of national policies governing the U. S. Census Bureau. His work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, and he has appeared on CNN and Fox News Channel. © 2017 Elliott Stonecipher ... ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
