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Rich New Yorkers aren’t coming to save us. No one is. And the fact that our governor bought a full-page ad [ [link removed] ] in the Wall Street Journal pretending otherwise tells you everything you need to know about the state of our state. That ad wasn’t written for New Yorkers. It was written for us — to keep up the same old trick that’s been played on Louisiana for decades. The same trick where politicians slash services, cut taxes for corporations and our wealthiest individuals, starve our schools and hospitals and roads, and then sell us the fantasy that if we make life sweet enough for the rich, they’ll show up and carry us into prosperity.
We’ve heard the pitch forever: lower taxes, fewer regulations, and the jobs will come. If it were ever going to work, Louisiana would be booming by now. Instead, life has gotten harder. Costs keep rising — groceries, utilities, insurance, college, healthcare, childcare, eldercare, yet the state’s minimum wage is still $7.25/hr, and has not increased in almost fifteen years. People are working more, but still falling further behind. Louisiana may look affordable to outsiders, but it’s getting harder and harder for the people who actually live here. And the jobs we do have come mostly from the same old industries that kept us stuck for generations. They don’t build a future, and they don’t keep our kids here.
Meanwhile, our Republican leaders talk about their own version of “capitalism” like it’s holy scripture, but it hasn’t delivered a single thing they promised. We didn’t get rising wages or stable insurance markets. We got an economic model that gives everything away to corporations and our wealthiest individuals and hands the bill to regular people. As Harry Truman said, “socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.” Sure, some companies build here. But the wealth doesn’t stay here. The profits are shipped out of state while we’re left with the pollution, the cancer clusters, and the insurance hikes. That’s not economic development. That’s exploitation dressed up as business-friendly policy.
And what this administration calls “innovation” is nothing but massive data centers that drain our grid and give almost nothing back. That’s not a renaissance. That’s a distraction.
The population numbers tell the same truth. Nearly all of Louisiana’s recent population growth [ [link removed] ] came from immigrants — the very people this administration demonizes. At the same time, seventeen thousand more Louisianans left the state than moved in last year. If low taxes were the magic ingredient we’ve been sold, people would be pouring in. But they’re not. They’re leaving. And the only people still coming here are the ones our leaders scapegoat the loudest.
And you know why they do it. The whole system only works if they keep us divided. It only works if people are too distracted to notice where the money is going. And they know exactly how to do it. While we were busy fighting over bathrooms, chemtrails, vaccines, and women’s sports, they quietly emptied the state treasury into the pockets of corporations and our wealthiest individuals. They’ve always needed us arguing about something — anything — other than the fact that our wages weren’t rising, our insurance was collapsing, and our kids were leaving.
When I was growing up, nobody I knew bowed down to big corporations or billionaire donors. Folks here had a lot of pride. Louisiana has always been a place full of characters, a gumbo of people who didn’t take kindly to being pushed around. Nobody believed our future depended on flattering the wealthy and punishing the vulnerable. Somehow in the last few decades, they sold working people a lie: that our survival depended on comforting the comfortable. And they used Trump’s style of politics to supercharge that lie. It bought them time — but the shine is wearing off.
People feel what’s happening. They feel it in their insurance bills, their power bills, their grocery receipts. They feel it in the long drives to find a doctor, the fear that one storm could wipe them out, the knowledge that no insurer is coming back. They feel it when their kids move to other states because they can’t build a future here. People know, deep down, that something is deeply wrong.
And now, with total political control and no one left to blame, the Republican leaders running this state have run out of ideas. That’s why they had to buy a full-page ad. If Louisiana were thriving, they wouldn’t need an ad to beg wealthy New Yorkers to notice us. Prosperity doesn’t need marketing. Prosperity attracts on its own.
Here’s the truth they don’t want to admit: we don’t need rich New Yorkers. We don’t need Silicon Valley. We don’t need a billionaire savior. And no tax cut is going to resurrect Louisiana. Real prosperity doesn’t come from gimmicks. It doesn’t come from starving the public and showering the wealthy with incentives. It doesn’t come from praying for a corporation to land here like a rescue mission.
It comes from us. From diversifying our economy. From protecting our coast. From stabilizing insurance. From investing in schools, infrastructure, and healthcare. From welcoming people instead of pushing them out. From building a state our kids want to stay in.
A con only works if you stay at the table. Louisiana’s been sitting there for decades. But we don’t have to sit here anymore. We don’t have to wait for a miracle that isn’t coming. We don’t have to keep believing a promise that’s never been delivered.
Rich New Yorkers aren’t coming to save us. No one is. But we can save ourselves — and it’s time we started.
Want to help turn Louisiana blue?
Set up a monthly contribution to the Louisiana Democratic Party here [ [link removed] ]
We have to get back to nuts and bolts of what built Democratic domination in the past. Sign up your interest to become a precinct organizer here [ [link removed] ].
Who’s running for Congress in 2026? Check out Conrad Cable [ [link removed] ] running against Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-4), Lauren Jewett [ [link removed] ] against Steve Scalise (LA-1), Tia Lebrun [ [link removed] ] against Clay Higgins (LA-3) and Larry Foy [ [link removed] ] against Julia Letlow (LA-5).

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