LA Democrats facing long-term minority status

Louisiana Democrats will find themselves in an even deeper hole if national trends rippling down to the state and parish level continue apace.

Late last year, the U.S. Census Bureau released state population estimates. Earlier this month, it released county population estimates. For Louisiana, in an absolute sense it was mixed bag, but in a relative sense overall positive.

The state gained population to have the most since 2021, at a slower rate than most other states, but the first half-year of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s tenure certainly improved over the eight years of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards when the state lost over 100,00 folks, tempered by the fact that there was a net loss of U.S. citizens but that was offset by more non-citizens in residence, whether legally.

Now started, LA should clear quickly death row

Louisiana leaders must recognize the struggle they have invited with anti-capital punishment ideologues that wish to cancel democratically-made policy, and how to win it.

For many years, politics prevented the state from carrying out executions, by political pressure zealots put on suppliers of chemicals used for the lethal injection method, the only method allowed in recent decades until last year, and the presence of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, who for political reasons refused to admit he was one of those zealots until late in his second term and would stand in the way of legal changes to add (in the case of electrocution, add back) methods to executions.

But the elections of 2023 and principally Republican Gov. Jeff Landry capturing the office broke the logjam, and last year electrocution and nitrogen hypoxia became legal methods. After a few months to set up an entirely constitutional protocol – reaffirmed days ago – regarding hypoxia, the state announced it was back in the justice business and started to queue up executions, beginning with Jesse Hoffman who has been sitting on death row for 27 years.

Resoluteness on executions needed to save lives

Perhaps by the time you read this Louisiana will have seen through its first implementation of capital punishment in 15 years. As opposition to it finds expression through those ideologically opposed to it, through sympathetic media, as well as those caught up oversimplifying the issue, keep in mind that this opposition may not care about whether justice is served or whether it behaves ethically, as to them any means justifies the ends of stopping executions.

Waiting in death’s wings is Jesse Hoffman, Jr., whose gruesome kidnapping, rape and murder of Mary “Molly” Elliott earned him a capital sentence nearly three decades ago. He has remained on death row for so long because Louisiana law didn’t permit executions other than through lethal injection, and ideological activists had scared of companies from making available the chemicals to accomplish this, until the state added nitrogen hypoxia as a method.

The usual suspects have tried to stop or delay his Mar. 18 fate with the mask. Likely a number of them are principled opponents who don’t know or for whatever psychic reason ignore that having capital punishment, with carefully investigated cases of those who with extreme malice aforethought killed somebody, consistently applied saves lives. The problem is, they may not be driving the anti-execution train that puts justice aside to promote personal or ideological reasons.

Monroe should seek efficiencies, not tax hikes

Maybe Monroe policy-makers should think outside the box if they want to reduce the city’s operation on a fiscal knife-edge and provide pay raises for city employees without hitting up taxpayers for more dough.

At the last City Council meeting, which appended a budget hearing onto it, some councilors expressed a desire to see annual salary increases, perhaps at the 2.5 percent level, for city employees. Some also wanted more money for recreation facilities. The problem is there’s no money for any of this.

The proposed fiscal year 2026 budget showed overall about a $2 million or three percent revenue boost in the general fund that pays for most city operating activities. Raises for those functions at the desired level would gobble up more than half of that increase, as salaries, wages, and benefits comprised 69 percent of the FY 2025 budget spending. Indeed, 70 percent of that increase was going to public safety which consumes 40 percent of city spending, meaning this function would bear the brunt of any redirection of revenues at current levels.

Panic must not lead to opposing good amendment

Ludwig von Mises coined the term “useful innocents” – later transformed by others into a less -charitable term “useful idiots” – to describe those who he saw as “confused and misguided sympathizers” of communism. While that ideology isn’t in play over Amendment 2 to Louisiana’s Constitution appearing on the Mar. 29 ballot, certainly the term applies as the political left has found allies on the right to help it do it dirty work in trying to vote down the measure that would transform fundamentally for the better the state’s fiscal system.

The left has pursued a two-prong strategy to this end. One involves an attack over procedural measures surrounding the amendment’s placing on the ballot (as well as with two others). Upon inspection, its attempt is quite wanting and the judiciary unlikely will find merit in it, but as a by-product of the suit to invalidate the ballot placement as a result the ensuing publicity is designed to sow doubt in the minds of those who, upon analysis of its claims, should know better.

The other is a campaign to convince normally sober supporters of religious activity of a fantastic plot to strip from the property of religious organizations not exclusively used for religious purposes ad valorem tax exemptions, merely by the move through Amendment 2 of such exemptions from the Constitution into statute. The change is part of strategy of removing from the document things that are absolutely not necessarily part of a bedrock assessment of guiding principles behind it – in this case, that imperative being that religious activity should be supported by the state in prohibiting local governments (and, technically, the state as the Constitution empowers it to levy a statewide property tax of up to 5.75 mills, but it never has done so) from taxing property unequivocally part of a religious mission – into statute, if only to reduce the outsized and overly-specific nature of the document as it stands.

Five years on, LA learned hard pandemic lessons

And so it started five years ago today, unwise actions by Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards that, as a saving grace at least, established – at a high and unnecessary cost – a knowledge bank from which to work in the future and triggered some beneficial changes to state policies.

The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic had launched in all ways but name, becoming noticeable in several of the largest cities in the country but also in New Orleans. Credit Carnival, which had ended almost three weeks earlier, as the device that brought it hot and heavily into the state. So, on Mar. 13, 2020, Edwards issued the first of a string of proclamations under his statutory powers – then heavily favoring unilateral gubernatorial action – significantly curtailing personal and economic freedoms of individuals.

Perhaps he could be forgiven in the early, uncertain days of the pandemic for such a reaction, and the prevailing ethos was that stopping most everything for a couple of weeks would knock the virus down in its tracks. But the problem became a mutation of that ethos into creating close to attaining a zero-risk “zero Covid” environment requiring the heavy hand of the state that, even that early on, preceptive policy-makers realized was impossible and that the costs would be staggeringly high even to achieve mild and incomplete effectiveness towards that goal.

Speed camera rules in LA still need tightening

An action that increasingly has become mistaken the Shreveport City Council, with Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux’s blessing, seems set to expand, knocking on to Caddo Parish’s foray into it – begging further legislative intervention.

A few years ago, the city installed traffic control cameras around school zones where speed limits would change. The rationale given was safety, but that always is the last refuge of scoundrels when dealing with these instruments around speed limit changes and lighted intersections. Rather than setting up a whole camera infrastructure, sworn law enforcement officers can hold monitors and save a government thousands or even millions of dollars in forgone equipment, maintenance, and operating fees.

Instead, despite their bleating otherwise, it’s all about money. That’s why Shreveport has put up with plenty of controversy about defective operations and phantom offenses to continue the initiative – some two to three million bucks a year in revenue over expenses through last year. So much so now Caddo Parish will join in as the city looks to place more cameras on roads the contractor Blue Line Solutions reaping business from the city to operate the cameras claims have a high propensity for speeding on them.

Left whips up fear in attempt to scuttle revamp

Attempts to derail Amendment 2 on Louisiana’s March 29 ballot come in two types: as previously mentioned a disingenuous legal strategy, but also a more principled opposition yet which fails on the merits – where the former tries to scare the latter into agreement.

One dubious approach tries to have the entire measure thrown off the ballot for alleged infractions. Soon to be put to the test in court, those behind it as well as supporters of the effort inhabit the political left which wants to see the measure fail by any means possible as it offends their ideological sensibilities; i.e. it makes expansive government for redistributive purposes more difficult by, in the main, granting income tax relief to middle-class filers and above and makes it easier to cut out favoritism in the tax code.

However, another more thoughtful tack against focuses on the amendment’s paring of tax exceptions in the Constitution. The thinking is not only would this make for a less-unwieldy document but also create greater flexibility to change out of items that may have protection today which in the future may be determined to make less sense as exceptions and then can be altered or abandoned more easily.

Vote affirmative on consequential LA amendments

All four, including the most consequential in decades, amendments to the Louisiana Constitution on the Mar. 29 ballot deserve voter approval. Let’s see why.

#1 – would clarify disciplining of out-of-state lawyers and creation of multi-parish specialty courts. Essentially, a loophole exists that inhibits disciplining this cohort for some matters, which the change would close. Specialty courts, existing presently in areas such as drug cases, family matters, and for veterans, are confined to the 64 parishes or 42 judicial districts. Proponents say a regional approach could help in matters such as these and for potentially new kinds of courts, such as a business court seen in the majority of states. This would have the disadvantage of adding more elected judges in a state that seats a surplus of judges, but on the whole there are more plusses than minuses. YES.

#2 – would reduce the maximum rate of income tax, double income tax deductions for residents age 65 or older, slow down a governmental growth limit, merge significant constitutional funds while moving lesser ones into statute, give parishes more severance tax dollars, provide incentive to prevent state taxpayers from subsidizing local taxpayers, move some tax breaks into statute, and prompt a salary increase for teachers while paring unfunded mandates, among other items. Lengthy and complex, it serves as the linchpin to fiscal reforms enacted by the Legislature last year.

Bin unserious proposed NIL tax break bill

A bill contemplated by Republican state Rep. Dixon McMakin makes no fiscal sense and only subverts the purpose of higher education in Louisiana.

The bill in concept would exempt from state income tax earnings that college students receive from Name, Image, and Likeness deals in athletics. Individuals may negotiate these or another organization, such as a school, may do so on behalf of all its eligible students.

Dollar figures for these are generally not public, and they can be substantial. Publicized have been deals by Louisiana State University gymnast Livvy Dunne who, despite modest athletic credentials, has one of the most lucrative set of NIL deals due to her superior marketing skills, estimated in the neighborhood of at least $4 million annually. Regardless, given the state’s income tax rates, such an exemption may not even cost the state eight figures annually.