At the hands of just us folks
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