Democrats force hidden roads tax onto LA

Without increasing Louisiana’s retail gasoline tax, roads and bridges will crumble! Traffic jams will form everywhere! Uh, never mind, we’ll take care of it with hiking the inflation tax instead.

Up until recently, all one heard from the Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards Administration confronting a $15 billion assumed backlog in transportation was how the gas tax had to go up to address that. In the background, the Legislature turned away multiple attempts to do so, one as recent as earlier this year.

But then, lawmakers passed a measure adjusting the flow of most vehicle sales taxes away from the general fund and towards transportation spending that over three years eventually will boost commitments roughly $400 million more a year. And then came the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act from Democrat Pres. Joe Biden and his party that runs Congress (with an assist from select Republicans like Sen. Bill Cassidy), which at the very least will provide the state over the next five years $5.8 billion will towards roads and bridges.

Panel vote puts good policy ahead of ideology

Give credit where credit is due: when Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards and his health care apparatchiks are wrong, they won’t back off no matter how unconvincing their arguments and evidence, to the detriment of Louisianans.

That became apparent through a marathon session of the House Health and Welfare Committee this week. It met in response to a proposed rule by the Department of Health that would put vaccines for the Wuhan coronavirus on the required list of immunizations for public education, an action over which the committee has veto power. Such a decision, however, the governor may overrule.

In practical terms, at present that would subject only children aged 16 and older to injection, as official federal government authorization of these vaccines applies only to that age and above. However, officials have under consideration reducing that to 5. Further, legal ambiguity exists whether such an order pertains to this particular case; as Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry has noted, the current “vaccines” act more as mostly-effective prophylactics that don’t prevent infections or transmission.

Impasse gives Edwards chance to boost Perkins

The deadlock over the Shreveport City Council appointing itself a new member underscores the fault line in city politics produced by Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins and approaching election year maneuvering.

The resignation last month of Republican James Flurry due to a residence change opened up the Council’s District E seat, to which Flurry narrowly won reelection three years ago. In a special meeting earlier this week, the six remaining members coalesced around applicants Democrat Durwood Hendricks, who grabbed votes of three Council Democrats but not of Democrat Councilor LeVette Fuller, who joined the two remaining Republicans to back Republican Matt Kay.

It wasn’t Hendricks’ first rodeo trying for appointment to an elected position. Flurry defeated him in 2014, after which Hendricks won an interim appointment to the Caddo Parish School Board in a historically Republican-voting district, which he promptly lost in the ensuing election. Kay has won elections to local and state party offices and managed media for GOP Bossier City Mayor Tommy Chandler’s winning campaign earlier this year.

Edwards wants to waste more on dubious projects

It’s not quite such an egregious pig in a poke that Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards wants to foist upon taxpayers this time, but it still likely will end up wasting tax dollars.

Last week, Edwards announced the firm Venture Global LNG would pump as much as $10 billion into a liquified natural gas facility in Cameron Parish. This actually was old news, as the company had signaled its intent months ago, so the recent reiteration just confirmed some numbers and that the state would kick in to see the thing built. Tossing about those numbers puts the state on the hook for nearly $1.5 million annually for as many as ten years through its Quality Jobs Incentive Program, plus perhaps over $100 million in construction rebates.

Expansion of natural gas export provision makes sense. Global demand for it continues to rise, especially from Asian countries where Louisiana has a competitive advantage. In fact, Venture Global’s largest customer, China, already has committed to a short-term increase in importation from Calcasieu Pass where the new facility will sit alongside others of the firm’s, as well as more extensively from another new company project in Plaquemines Parish, so the market seems there to sustain such lofty plans.

BC must reject unneeded rec center giveaway

This week the Bossier City Council will hear version 2.0 of how to waste $30 million.

It comes in the form of an idea recycled for years by the longtime free spenders of the Council, who have driven up the city’s debt, if entirely issued, to over a half billion dollars and nearly $7,000 per resident. Contrast that with the two cities in Louisiana of similar size, Kenner and Lake Charles, whose per capita debts respectively are about $1,300 and $800.

This extra $400 or so per person would go to the next iteration of what a few months ago was termed the “Bossier City Recreational Center and Senior Center.” The proposal put on the Apr. 6 agenda of the Council by Republican Councilor David Montgomery, but never heard over other councilors’ concerns about cost and need, envisioned tapping existing borrowing authority and interest earned to build over 95,000 square feet that would include a competition pool, family pool, gymnasium, elevated jogging track, and other amenities (but didn’t include about $5 million in furnishing costs).

LA looks better off with coming abortion ruling

Which of the four directions the U.S. Supreme Court takes on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will determine what abortion law will look like in Louisiana, with the odds heavily favoring a coming change.

The Court heard this case earlier this week, concerning a Mississippi law that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks from conception. This runs counter to court precedents Roe v. Wade that continued into Planned Parenthood v. Casey that set a limit of 24 weeks. The Court likely will announce a decision prior to the end of Jun., 2022.

The least likely outcome would be to follow the Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling that the precedents definitively discovered a “right to privacy” in the Constitution that creates a right to abortion prior to “viability” of the preborn, and that the dividing line resides at 24 weeks. This logic roundly has drawn criticism for its utter disregard for what the Constitution says and how its defenders have to torture the document to get there. The composition of the Court at present suggests a majority willing to set aside decisions bereft of constitutional anchoring.

Data show LA can stop drain by cutting taxes

Now that most Louisianans will get a tax cut, it’s time to cut them further and across the board, the data show if the state wants to minimize its outmigration.

Last month, voters passed a constitutional amendment that will cap income taxes and excise a deduction for federal income taxes paid, triggering legislation that reduces rates and total payments for most filers. It resulted in a small net tax decrease. Corporate rates also declined marginally.

But according to data crunched by the National Taxpayers Union, the higher the effective rate paid in state and local taxes, the greater net outmigration in raw numbers by taxpayers over the last two years for which there are data, 2018-19. And Louisiana keeps very bad company in the rankings, where in terms just of raw numbers outflows exceeded inflows by nearly 10,000, the tenth-worst among the states. The numbers are worse still when comparing the percentage change for all filers; here, its negative gap of 0.59 percent of all filers is fifth-worst.

LSU football hire risks problem redux

The drama that surrounded the Louisiana State University head football coach search underscores its vigorous commitment to athletic success that has created both academic and ethical problems that continue to reverberate.

Its hiring of Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly sent an aftershock through the college football world. Kelly’s move, who essentially made three national championship playoff rounds in his decade-plus there, followed that of another name to which LSU was connected, Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley, whose teams made three such appearances in the past five years and who has the winningest record ever for a coach through his first five years as head man. Only a day earlier, Riley had decamped the Sooners for Southern California.

Attention-grabbing was two typically rare events in 24 hours: a coach leaving a “destination school.” Two qualities distinguish this handful of schools from the rest of the college football world: historically, these (1) have coaches with long employment runs because they have over the decades few seasons where they don’t compete for conference and national championships late into a season, and so (2) these hardly ever need to fire the boss. Further, destination school coaches leave only by poaching from another destination school (as in the case of Riley), a move to the National Football League, or they retire.

Nixing new rule good policy, helps LA GOP

Maybe Louisiana’s Republican legislative majority finally has figured out opposing Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ zero COVID fantasy wins both morally and politically.

Earlier this fall, Edwards’ Department of Health served notice that it would add to the Office of Public Health’s immunization schedules vaccination for the Wuhan coronavirus, both for those delivering education through high school and beyond. This has drawn scrutiny from the GOP-run Legislature, who vowed to hold hearings on the matter next month and to search for ways blunt this move.

At present, since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given full approval for vaccines just for people aged 16 and older, it wouldn’t have much impact. Further, in schools below higher education, families can opt out for any reason, further diluting the impact.

Edwards shouldn't hold breath on Biden swap

One conservative commentator thinks national Democrats should throw a lifeline to Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ political career, as unlikely and ineffective as it might be.

Edwards is playing out the string as the state’s chief executive, reduced to reacting against progress when the Republican-controlled Legislature gets up the gumption to force an issue, and unable to forward successfully anything but the most marginal agenda items or purely symbolic gestures such as promoting policies based on climate alarmism. The rest of the time he tries to behave as a one-man Chamber of Commerce to beg the private sector to boost the state’s economic development that has performed dismally under his watch.

While he already has demurred from attempting any future elective office, he has not discouraged speculation about appointive positions. Given the current milieu generated by national Democrats, however, and particularly with his third-rail violation of not opposing measures that have the effect of reducing abortion on demand, he’s found the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden Administration disinterested in his services, even where that background or his prior military service might deliver at least a symbolic advantage for his assuming this kind of post.