Leftist heave to thwart fiscal reform should fail

You knew the Hail Mary pass was coming from the vested interests that want to thwart Louisiana’s attempt at fiscal reform, and here it is.

This week, a law firm in the past associated with supporting far left-wing political candidacies filed suit to try to kick off Amendment 2 from the March ballot. That came to be from Act 1 of the Third Extraordinary Session of the Louisiana Legislature, which passed unanimously in the Senate and with only a few dissenting votes from hard left Democrats in the House.

Leftist extremists oppose the amendment because it reduces taxation on investment and productive activity but raises it on consumption and enhances conditions to right-size state government. That means lower income individuals probably would be more likely to experience an overall tax increase than would higher income individuals, or would see a smaller tax decrease. It also makes more likely curtailment of discretionary transfer payments from government, whether to individuals or groupings of them such as nonprofit organizations, whether in recurring or one-time form.

The reordering squeezes the political left’s mother’s milk, wealth redistribution, and thus its political power, but it knows it can’t win in the court of public opinion with the amendment very likely to pass, so it’s to the actual courts it goes. The big payoff would be with defeat of it statutory changes already passed would remain in effect, boosting the size of government by about $200 million annually and leaving in place a less-efficient revenue collection and disbursement system through economic activity that would provide incentive for government to raise taxes, probably on middle income and higher individuals.

Thus, on behalf of at least three individuals – one of whom has a brief but unambiguous campaign donation history to far left candidates and another who in recent years has found a compliant media willing to disseminate his shilling for a left-wing agenda – the firm laid out a series of claims that, if true, should cause denial of ballot access based upon the description upon which voters will lay eyes contained in the bill.

Except that the evidence laid down is exceptionally flimsy. Hanging most of their effort’s hat on statute that says the introductory ballot language seen by voters must be “simple, unbiased, concise, and easily understood,” the suit then makes a series of claims that, in the context of jurisprudence surrounding ballot items, hold little water.

For example, it contests the “unbiased” portion by noting in the description is a vote for would trigger a permanent pay raise for teachers that supposedly is a positive selling point, but then neglects to mention presumably negative impacts, such as removing protected status to three funds within state government that have been used to pay for education delivery. And then the permanent pay raise, which the amendment imbues by having the state pay off unfunded accrued liabilities for school systems and mandating them to kick higher salaries with the savings, does double duty for the plaintiffs in claiming it doesn’t provide a permanent pay raise because it doesn’t guarantee higher pay than the current salary plus temporary state stipend.

However, what the suit does here is substitute opinion for fact. If I were asked what is a positive and negative about education spending in the amendment, I would point to the pay raise as a negative – because there’s no real relationship between base pay for teachers and student achievement – and the fund loosening as a positive – because of the greater flexibility that affords to do things what work, such as, when done correctly, performance pay for teachers. The suit erroneously assumes “positives” and “negatives” are universally agreed upon and therefore “bias” becomes detectable simply as a collection of its valued issue preferences.

As well, the argument against the alleged inaccuracy of a “permanent pay raise” is felled by the clear contradiction that the stipend is temporary and not part of permanent base pay. Shoddy argumentation like this typifies the suit’s language besides what’s seen by these examples in the many other proffered alleged defects.

It also tries to defeat the measure with two other pitches. One is that the title is unclear or inadequate except for an initial section that would be too long. But the courts surely will recognize that the comprehensiveness of the amendment requires such a length that is as “brief” a summary for a title as possible, even if extensive. The other claims the single object rule isn’t followed because not every single section of the article in question is modified, but surely courts will recognize that as most of it is addressed this constitutes “a revision of an entire Article” that creates an exception to having more than one object.

In other words, these jokers took any- and everything they possibly could think of, no matter how remotely connected to any cogent argument that could be made on this topic, and are throwing it against the wall to see if anything sticks, no doubt encouraged by the increasing nuttiness of 19^th Judicial District decisions that increasingly (see last week as an example) get overturned by the adults at the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Don’t expect this to fly when all is said and done.

The main point in all of this is the expected desperation heave has come to try to stop fiscal reform and keep the government gravy train rolling for the state’s political left, even if completion would make worse off the prospects of those who don’t subscribe to its tenets of dependency and victimhood.