“The Louisiana Way” is back, if it ever left. The term was famously used by federal prosecutors in the 2000 riverboat racketeering trial of former Gov. Edwin Edwards to describe the corrupt system of bribery, inside dealing and influence peddling by which state politics had operated for decades. The theme was reprised in the convictions of former Congressman William Jefferson and relatives and associates involved in a family criminal enterprise.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s election and his immediate focus on ethics reform was supposed to change that, so that corporations considering doing business here would not fear being shaken down by some crooked state or local politician. Resulting disclosure and conflict-of-interest laws dramatically increased the state’s national rankings in those areas and improved its image of good government. Which is good because that might distract outsiders from noticing the wave of criminal prosecutions and investigations of many local and some state officials in the past year. Louisiana politicians are keeping the FBI and U.S. attorneys as busy as ever of late, in what seems a competition among the Eastern, Western and Middle districts to expose the most official corruption in a range of complexity, variety and irony. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
