Higgins: Feds have 'boot on the throat' of energy industry

Looking for the cause of south Louisiana’s economic problems? Look no farther than Washington, U.S. House candidate Clay Higgins said Monday during a campaign swing through St. Mary Parish.

Higgins, who gained national attention as “the Cajun John Wayne” when he was the face of St. Landry Parish Crime Stoppers videos, is competing with a host of fellow conservatives who hope to succeed U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, as the congressman in the 3rd Congressional District.

Boustany is running for the U.S. Senate after what will have been six two-year terms in the House. St. Mary is the easternmost parish in the district, which stretches west across southern Louisiana to the Texas border.

Despite recent increases in oil prices, the dip from $100 a barrel in 2014 to less than $40 earlier this year continues to weigh heavily on south Louisiana’s economy. In St. Mary alone, where total nonfarm employment peaked at more than 27,000 late in 2013, about 1,900 jobs had been lost by the end of 2015, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Of those lost jobs, 675 were in natural resources and mining, the category that includes most oilfield jobs and which once accounted for one of each nine jobs here. As of last winter, the figure was about one job in 11.

“Many of the policies of the current administration out of Washington manifested itself as a boot on the throat of the oil industry, especially when you talk about restricting exploration and federal leases that are denied,” Higgins said Monday, standing on the steps of Morgan City Hall.

Higgins said the federal government has restricted exploration, pipelines and leases while imposing new mandates on small businesses.

“When the entire economy suffers from policies that come out of DC … then the guy who gets laid off from an oil industry job -- and maybe this has happened to him before, and he knows there are four or five places he can go get a job until he gets hired back on -- those jobs are not there,” Higgins said.

“Or they’ve been restricted down to under 36 hours because the small company that would have let the man work 40 hours with some overtime, now they’ve got to work 36 hours or less because they can’t afford the federally mandated services and privileges through the company that’s called for by the new Washington laws.

“It just don’t make no sense,” Higgins said.

The result, he said, is that the 4.7 percent national unemployment rate is a phony figure because it doesn't include people from the workforce if they’ve been unemployed over the long term. He said he believes that 100 million in the United States are unemployed.

That number can be hard to pin down. It showed up in conservative media and blogs in 2014 and was characterized as evidence that the Obama administration’s economic policies had failed. Politifact, the Tampa Tribune’s Pulitzer-winning fact-checking blog, found that the figure, based on the total U.S. population 16 or over, is actually closer to 90 million and is inflated because it includes about 70 million people who are of an age to be retired, in high school, or in two-year or four-year postsecondary schools.

That leaves about 20 million people, not 90 million or 100 million. Even so, it shows that the population is growing faster than jobs are being created, Politifact said.

Higgins is running against a field that includes Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle of St. Martin Parish; Lafayette businessmen Erick Knezek, Gus Rantz and Greg Ellison; former ambassador Grover Rees; and former state Brett Geymann of Lake Charles.

Higgins gets a name recognition boost from his Crime Stoppers videos for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. He drew national attention for viral videos in which he mixed tough talk with a moral or religious message.

The videos may not be an unadulterated blessing. One video called out members of the Gremlins gang by describing them as “heathens” and “thugs.” The American Civil Liberties Union took offense, and in the ensuing controversy, Higgins resigned from the sheriff’s office.

“In the one year I was public information officer of the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office, a sheriff (Bobby Guidroz) I still respect and love and admire by the way, I had 19 felons, 18 men and 1 woman, turn themselves in within hours or days of their crime being featured on Crime Stoppers, or their fugitive status,” Higgins said.

“We ran a consistent 70 to 80 percent solve rate. Unheard of numbers. Very successful. And I always spoke of the redemption or the potential redemption of the suspect who committed the crime. If you’re looking for baggage, knock yourself out, because I don’t see any.”

During his appearance, Higgins wore a wrist band bearing the word “redemption.”

“By the way, this is what our country needs,” Higgins said, holding up the wrist band for a video camera, “financially, spiritually, morally, ethically, compassionately.”