Dr Jeff Sadow: The Politics of Reopening Louisiana

Political analyst Dr. Jeff Sadow talks with 101.7 / 710 KEEL's Robert J Wright about the reopening of the Louisiana economy and wonders if politics played a role in the Governor's reticence to lift sanctions earlier.

Sadow, in a recent article at thehayride.com made the point that, in his opinion, the lifting of the stay-at-home order by Governor John Bel Edwards was a move that was political, not driven by the available data.

Sadow tells KEEL listeners that the information available to Edwards, the data that he (Edwards) says he used in making his decision to move to Phase I of reopening the state's economy, was largely unchanged from two weeks before, when the Governor surprised most by extending the COVID 19 quarantine for another two weeks.

"You look at the last time we were at a decision point," says Sadow, "Whether to move forward with reopening. I went back and looked at the data and couldn't understand why the conclusions that were drawn were drawn."

Sadow adds that "it's not beyond the realm of possibility" that Democrat governor's around the country had been pressured by national party leaders to extend their respective shutdowns in an attempt to damage President Trump.

The LSUS prof also talks about the possibility of a second federal Coronavirus bailout legislation passing through the Senate. A $3 trillion bill recently made it through the Democrat controlled House of Representatives and now moves on to the Senate.

"Senate leaders have said it's not going to happen," he says, "The President has said he's not going to sign anything like that. So I don't think anything's going to come of it."

Sadow adds that compromise legislation may be coming. "If we're talking about a bill that would just make up the lost revenue of the states, it would be a lot lessprobably between a half or a whole of a trillion dollars."