Since its announced cut back in newspaper service in favor of the news on line, the Times Picayune has become a poor source of quality news in this writers judgement. Two articles that appeared in the Times Picayune of Sunday 5/17 by staff writer Bruce Alpert is an example. Alperts article on page one was concerning U.S. Senator David Vitter and his second article was about the republicans in congress and their funding problems for a transportation bill.
The first article takes up approximately 3/4 of a full page and talks about Vitter's provocative style to both republican and democrats with various amendments and opposition to health care subsidies and how he ruffles feathers. The only accomplishments the long winded article gives to Vitter is his vote for passage of a major water resource bill. Alpert touches on a couple of other measures he has joined with democrats to support.
That is not a lot of accomplishments for the man who wants to be Louisiana's next governor and has been a U.S. Senator for many years. Of course, anyone who follows the political process knows Vitter's record of accomplishments are pretty thin. The article ends up quoting Louisiana's Bill Cassidy as saying, Facing an administration hostile to our energy economy David has won fights with President Obama to keep our energy industry moving forward.
Alpert does not mention that oil production in the United States has increased 70% since 2008. That does not describe an industry that has been treated hostile by the President. Cassidy never described what fights Vitter won with the President .
The second article talks about the problems the House republicans are having to put together a long over due transportation bill to repair the nations roads, bridges and etc. Funding is their problem and the republicans can not agree on the source of funding. Raising the tax on gasoline is not favored by them in the article. Alpert reports there are 13,000 deficient bridges in Louisiana alone and that Louisiana has a $12.3 billion backlog in needed highway and bridge upgrades.
But the article was silent on reporting that the democratic controlled Senate passed a transportation bill over two years ago with enough republican support in that chamber that was fully funded with out increasing the federal deficit. The republican controlled House just sat on that bill, never even debated the bill or put it up for a vote. It just died there. .
The CBO noted that the Senate passed bill would have created over 1,000,000 new jobs in its first year. And now two plus years later the republicans still can't get their act together to fund an important bill that would help move the country and its people forward.
Vitter, with so few accomplishments on the federal level should give Louisiana's voters reasons to doubt that a Vitter administration in Louisiana would do any better that Jindal and his administration.
This commentary written by Joe Lorio.
