LA should vote aye on three crucial amendments

Had Louisiana’s fall elections remained at their original dates, early voting for the general election would be in the offing. That has been kicked back over a month because of the change necessitated by Hurricane Ida, but mail-in voting has been open for about a month, so now’s as good as any time to review the four constitutional amendments on the ballot now scheduled for Nov. 13. Regardless of when, these offer some easy decisions.

Amendment #1 – creates a commission consolidating two existing overseers of the state’s highly decentralized sales tax collection system that would permit centralized filing of sales taxes then distributed to state and local entities, after implementing legislation passes. This would ease greatly business compliance costs, both in administrative submissions and in dealing with multiple taxing agency jurisdictions, such as with audits. It’s a slam dunk. Yes.

Amendment #2 – sets the stage to engineer a tax swap of lower income taxes for inability to deduct federal income taxes from those. The amendment itself sets the individual rate ceiling at 4.75 percent, down from 6, and jettisons required deductibility, but a whole raft of companion legislation triggers on its passage. Under this legislation, the statutory deductibility disappears; individual rate brackets go from 6 to 4.25, 4 to 3.5, and 2 to 1.85 and could go lower the higher the growth rate of state revenues; excess itemized deductions for them disappear except for medical expenses; corporate rate brackets go from five to three by eliminating the highest ones and the rest diminish by a half point; and the corporate franchise tax goes away for the majority of filers and for those remaining still paying can go down further depending upon future state revenue growth.

Enlightened MS choice makes LA seem like joke

The punchline often quoted, out of relief, by Louisianans about Mississippi has gone flat as far as higher education goes.

Conscious of their place as one of the least economically and socially backwards among the states, Louisianans traditionally have reverted to gallows humor to commemorate that distinction. The joke takes a variety of forms, but it always invokes Mississippi as a foil as to a worse place to be. For example, it might take the form of “We might be among the nation’s leaders in unemployment, poverty, and overall health, but at least we’re not Mississippi where they’re just now getting indoor plumbing.”

But recently the Board of Trustees for the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning decided the state’s eight public universities can’t mandate a Wuhan coronavirus vaccine for enrollment or employment at these institutions. It actually stipulated the policy in August, but some confusion over the motion to do so and the language of the measure in its minutes prompted a restatement. It allows an exception for health care-related employees and students.

Cassidy pleads to let him evade responsibility

When Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy voices concern over his party’s messaging for the 2024 elections, he really is delivering his relying on misdirection to promote a 2026 reelection attempt.

Since voting for conviction on impeachment of GOP former Pres. Donald Trump earlier this year, amplified recently by his acceptance of a demonstrably bad spending bill, Cassidy has won Strange New Respect from America’s leftist mainstream media, opening the doors for television appearances from networks in need of a pet conservative who will debase the principles he supposedly holds dear on air when needed. Such an opportunity arose for Cassidy this week on controversy about the fidelity of the 2020 election.

That came up on NBC’s Meet the Press, in the context of Ohio Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez’s retirement in the face of a difficult intraparty battle to retain his seat. As did Cassidy, Gonzalez essentially voted to remove Trump from office – after, of course, Trump already had left office – in voting to send forward the impeachment.

CAGW hysteria advantages LA comparatively

And here’s another trend Louisiana can take advantage of regarding the climate alarmism sweeping the Luddites of the world.

Highlighted recently, Louisiana enjoys an economic comparative advantage in mining cryptocurrency. This opportunity magnified recently when red China, perturbed that the process used so much energy, essentially kicked miners out of the country.

Now another opportunity to reap economic and quality-of-life benefits continues to grow, courtesy of a related development. Elite- and media-driven hype over the most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report – built upon confirmation bias – has ratcheted up fear and panic among the overwhelmingly uninformed public or those of it in denial about the actual science behind climate study. So much among some, in fact, that they despair their current living situations as they envision fires, floods, gales, and possibly hordes of insects as part of their futures promised by their faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

Stuck on stupid woke NO causing own problems

If there’s a textbook example of Louisiana elected officials stuck on stupid, look no further than Democrat New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and her lapdog City Council whose mistakes point to the city’s bleak future.

Cantrell has caught more heat than usual in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida’s blustery attack. The storm plunged the city into darkness for days, an aftermath which itself serves as an indicator of Cantrell’s idiocy because she and the all-Democrat Council have steered deliberately away from provision of reliable power by their fixation on renewable energy.

Yet as this problem became slowly and haltingly resolved, another began to pile up. Trash, and lots of it, some from the storm but also the normal output from households and businesses began accumulating because the city wouldn’t pick it up. Worse, the problem began days prior to Ida’s landfall.