If real, LA crime drop unlikely policy related

Presidential candidates clash over who will do best to reduce rising crime, Louisiana’s governor joined with the Legislature to make a raft of changes to combat this, while local leaders as in New Orleans preen over a measured drop in it as well as those in Shreveport. This begs the question: as some indicators show crime rates falling nationally with most jurisdictions reflecting that, can politicians in Louisiana or elsewhere take credit for that – if it even exists?

Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released final statistics through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program that showed nationally violent crime declined an estimated 3 percent in 2023 from the year before, while murders and non-negligent manslaughter dropped nearly 12 percent. The overall rate now stands just above the 2019 level prior to the spike observed during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and is close to returning to reflecting the long-term secular decline in violent crime over the past three decades, although it basically has been flat since 2012. Perhaps better, preliminary numbers for 2024 show a continued decline.

While good news, it may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, beginning with that the FBI’s system (which underwent a major change as the pandemic took hold) is a measure of crime reported or discovered by law enforcement, while different measures tell the opposite story. The Bureau of Justice Statistics compiles the National Crime Victimization Survey which measures crime not reported to law enforcement as well, with the exception of homicides and manslaughter because the dead tell no tales although these generally comprise about a percentage point of total violent crime. NCVS numbers typically differ, sometimes significantly, from the UCR, and it reported a small proportional increase for 2023 after double-digit spikes in 2021 and 2022 but a big dip in 2020. In fact, for these years the absolute differences were for the NCVS starting in 2020 29.31 percentage points lower, 20.18 higher, 24.81 higher, and 7.63 higher.

Landry tax reform clears fence, if not bases

All in all, the fiscal reform package Republican Gov. Jeff Landry will present to the Louisiana Legislature, at least in its broad outline, charts an improved course towards economic development but falls short in restraining big government.

This week, Landry announced that he would call a special session around election day in November that could last until just before Thanksgiving Day to commit fiscal reform. The worldview behind it shifts revenue from income to sales taxation. It essentially wouldn’t levy any individual income tax to single filers below $12,500 and joint filers below $25,000, and above those levels impose a flat three percent rate, with the possibility of additional deductions. Plus, senior citizens receive double that level. But in exchange, it would keep the 0.45 percent sales tax hike from 2018 and would expand that to potentially many of the 223 sales tax exemptions currently in law – but not to the constitutional provision that exempts unprepared food, drugs, and utilities. A separate sales tax exemption on business utilities also would be retained, although perhaps not entirely.

Additionally, corporate income tax rates would be made a flat rate and the franchise tax eliminated, which overall likely would end up as a net tax decrease for most. The three percent rate would reduce one of the highest in the country at its top level, and of the few states that have a franchise tax, Louisiana’s is the highest.

Nothing compels LA tax bucks for CCUS research

Nice try, apologists for using taxpayer dollars to bankroll needless, if not pie-in-the-sky, carbon capture use and sequestration (CCUS) research that already has taken $25 million and more indirectly out of the hide of Louisianans.

Almost as if triggered by a recent post that critiqued this consortium of public and private interests overseen by the Greater New Orleans Development Foundation from sopping up more taxpayer largesse, H2theFuture made a case in a media article as part of a story about its CCUS efforts that would justify such reception. To date it has received part of that state allocation plus $50 million from the federal government designed to attack the nonexistent problem of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

CCUS is considered the middle way between CAGW craziness. that demands near-immediate decarbonization no matter what the cost, and climate realism, backed by research, that human activities have a minor impact on climate and any such spillover that could increase global temperatures can be mitigated at relatively low cost and in a way that actually improves overall global wealth. As CAGW calls for a dramatic reduction, if not total elimination, of fossil fuel extraction and consumption, CCUS argues this approach could be scaled back dramatically if in extracting and processing fossil fuels and in some instances their use an apparatus could extract carbon from that. Once removed, the carbon can be stored or used for other purposes; indeed, for decades carbon has been employed in stretching oil recovery.

Speaking truth to power on Edwards virus policy

Louisiana Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham spoke truth to power, and the mouthpieces of Louisiana’s political left were unhappy with him.

Last week, a state House select committee held hearings on the state’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, pursuing a comprehensive overview of the mechanics of the response as well as policies enacted. Against a backdrop of admittedly maladroit administration by the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness – then under Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards – perhaps the headline revelation was a federal inquiry has been launched into the use of the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Convention Center as an overflow facility for hospitals in the early days of the pandemic. Rumors of sweetheart deals in its operations and supplies that could involve city and state officials have circulated for years, with it hardly being used at costs running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

But having a potentially higher human cost was the lockdown policy promulgated by Edwards under statutes granting the governor nearly unimpeachable emergency powers – fortunately with more checks added since – which lasted nearly two years although the most restrictive period was in the first 14 months. At its worst, all but the smallest indoor gatherings were banned and outdoor ones were restricted in size, face coverings were mandatory except in many but not all outdoor settings, vaccinations (really prophylactics) were required for a number of workplaces, and social distancing was enforced in certain situations and suggested in others.

Oath-violating BC councilors' tactic in peril

The new club that has formed as a subset of the Bossier City Council, the Oathbreakers, have kept true to their subversive and taxpayer-unfriendly strategy in the hopes for a political payoff – which may be thwarted because what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (not just in Springfield, OH but everywhere).

The Oathbreakers – or Councilors Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio and Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby – resemble the namesake character of the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons who break their sacred oaths to pursue some dark ambition, in this instance to satisfy their cravings for power for them and for their allies by violating the city Charter in refusing on multiple occasions to resolve to put on the ballot language from a certified petition as required by the Charter, with the latest example coming last week. If voters approve the measure prior to 2025 city election qualification, this would amend the Charter to impose retroactively limits of three terms on councilors and the mayor that would disqualify all but Maggio from running for reelection.

Getting to this point has been long and convoluted, starting with a petition to accomplish this amending last year eventually invalidated over a legal technicality strictly interpreted but which prompted the first votes to subvert the Charter. That attack in all likelihood represented a chunk of over $480,000 spent on outside legal consulting from Jul. 1, 2023 to Jul. 31, 2024, which in 2024 was budgeted for only $10,000 within an entire Legal Department budget of about $536,000.