As with most candidates for governor last year, the winner Republican Gov. Jeff Landry disappointed on the issue of Louisiana’s Motion Picture Investors tax credit, but maybe he’s hit on a less-direct way to skin a cat over the issue of expanding capital punishment options.
The film tax credit is notorious for its waste of taxpayer dollars, costing the state typically hundreds of millions of dollars annually with only a fraction returning to the treasury in the form of income taxes on those employed in production, sales taxes for good related to filming, and the like. It functions as a form of corporate welfare, which largely goes into the pockets of out-of-state interests, that no other industry in the state enjoys to that degree. The latest, most optimistic statistics available show it returns 23 cents on the dollar while costing $13,300 for each job, mostly part-time, “created.”
Gubernatorial candidates, if anything, with the exception of GOP ex-state Rep. Richard Nelson, campaigned in favor of the giveaway. That included Landry, even though his ally now Speaker of the House Republican Phillip DeVillier had tried to amend the legislation last year to extend the program to gradually wean the state off it.
But perhaps Landry and his legislative allies have found another way to stop the hemorrhaging even if the law stays intact. The Legislature has launched a special session on justice matters, and included in that call and reflected by HB 6 by GOP state Rep. Nick Muscarello is a measure to increase the number of death penalty options the state may apply and to safeguard information relevant to executions that special interests have used to try to pressure states from being unable to carry out capital punishment.
This has come to the attention of the trendy, if typically clueless, Hollywood crowd. Over 100 of them, and including a few in the industry based in Louisiana, signed a letter admonishing the idea, sent to DeVillier. In it, they imply that their quarrel is with the two additional methods – electrocution and nitrogen gas – and if the law passes they will abandon Louisiana as a destination for their work product.
Of course, their indirect acquiescence to the only method now legal, lethal injection, is entirely cynical. A guerilla war campaign by special interests to pressure companies that manufacture the chemicals that can be used to concoct a lethal injection has brought executions to a halt in many states like Louisiana and made it difficult elsewhere, with the last domestic firm opting out in 2016. If that situation were to change and a ready supply became available, the real reason for the protest would become apparent: ideological opposition to it.
And while the research is somewhat dated on its impact, even as more recent data are less reliable because of the success of the guerilla warfare that has produced a decline to low levels of the number of executions nationwide, the results tend very much in the direction that capital punishment, when consistently applied, deters homicides. Less certain is whether it saves money compared to life imprisonment, as the guerilla warfare also intends to drive up execution costs to tip the economic balance in favor of abolishing the death penalty.
So how should Louisianans respond to the blowhards’ letter? By calling for the Legislature to pass the bill and then put all the signers on their list for Christmas cards, if not finding every available piece of contact information for them and bombarding them with pleas to follow through. Passing the bill not only will save lives but thus also will save the state money – not necessarily from the costs of keeping condemned prisoners on death row indefinitely, but from not handing over fistfuls of state dollars to a bunch of people almost all from outside its borders who sell fantasy (and the occasional documentary, if slanted) for a living, and who film here only because they can line their pockets at taxpayer expense.
The guerilla warfare against capital punishment is a way to stop it without outlawing it. With the aid of dim bulbs in the film industry, maybe Louisianans can employ the same trick: stop bleeding tax dollars while the law permitting that stays on the books. To the signing idiots, thank you, and please carry on.
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