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Louisiana has sixth-lowest tax rate in nation but corporate world already screaming foul over Edwards tax proposals

Posted in Economy, Exemptions, Incentives, Finances, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, Taxes on January 24, 2016| 38 Comments »

Predictably, the business community is in high dudgeon over Gov. John Bel Edwards’ initial proposals to address the fiscal mess left by his predecessor—you know, the guy who thought he was presidential timber.

Judging from the early reaction of his die-hard opponents, including the Louisiana’s Rush Limburger wannabe Jeff (so) Sadow, Edwards is already a major flop just two weeks into the job. As much as I detest Mike Foster’s love child, I gave him nearly four years before abandoning any hope that he had the slightest concern for the people of this state.

Personally, I can’t think of a single person on the face of the good earth who could come into this job and successfully turn the state around in eight years, let alone four. It’s a daunting task that no sane candidate should relish.

In coaching, no one wants to be the one to follow a legend. You want to be the one who follows the one who follows the legend. Well, no one should want to be the one to inherit a disaster. You want to be the one who follows the one who tried to right the ship so if things are looking up, you can ride the momentum and take credit for the recovery.

With that in mind, here are a few observations:

The Baton Rouge Advocate on Sunday ran an outstanding analysis of the undeniable disaster in high education funding left by Jindal. The story was especially timely in light of Edwards’ announcement of even more draconian cuts facing high ed as he tries to cope with $750 million in budget deficits for the current fiscal year and a $1.9 billion budget gap for next fiscal year—all to be covered with shrinking revenues. http://theadvocate.com/news/14621878-123/special-report-how-startling-unique-cuts-have-transformed-louisianas-universities

LSU President F. King Alexander has gone on record as saying summer school may have to be cancelled at LSU. That’s the same type of dire warning as his “financial exigency” threat last year. That worked to get legislators’ attention and warded off the threatened bankruptcy. This threat of the cancellation of summer classes is a similar wakeup call to lawmakers—if they can get their heads from the place where only their proctologists can find them.

Even Jindal’s head cheerleader Rolfe McCollister inexplicably allowed Jeremy Alford to reveal in McCollister’s Baton Rouge Business Report that Edwards learned to his surprise that Piyush had approved millions of dollars in pay raises and made almost two dozen board and commission appointments that were not announced.

As a sign that McCollister may not be paying enough attention to his publication, he also allowed an Associated Press story that said Jindal left Edwards a gaggle of economic development deal IOUs.

But when Edwards suggested a tax package to help meet the fiscal disaster head-on, you’d have though from LABI’s reaction, that he was demanding the first-born of every businessman in the state.

Never mind that the Tax Foundation released a report last week that revealed that Louisiana has the sixth-lowest tax burden in America in the 2012 fiscal year.

While the rest of the country was paying an average of one dollar for every $10 earned in state and local taxes (exclusive of federal taxes), Louisiana citizens were paying only 76 cents for every $10 earned.

The per capita state and local taxes of $2,940 paid is fourth-lowest in the country and the state’s cigarette tax is one of the lowest. Edwards is seeking to increase the 86-cent cigarette tax to $1.08, which would bring Louisiana more in line with other states.

The state’s effective property tax rate of .5 percent is third lowest but the combined state and local sales tax rate (arguably the most regressive tax) of 8.9 percent is third highest.

Edwards says the days of using budget gimmicks are over. “This administration will remove the smoke and mirrors and provide the facts about where we are,” he said, in a not-so-subtle slap at Jindal. http://theadvocate.com/news/14619324-75/gov-john-bel-edwards-outlines-budget-options

State Sen. Jack Donahue, in a rare exhibition of lucidity for a legislator, told The Advocate, “…the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and so what did we spend (state revenue) on? Motion pictures; we spent it on solar power; we spent it on enterprise zone tax credits; we spent it on new market tax credits. We spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on all those things; so obviously, they were more important than our education.” http://theadvocate.com/news/14621878-123/special-report-how-startling-unique-cuts-have-transformed-louisianas-universities

Well, Senator, you said it. And you were oh, so accurate to employ the pronoun “we.” Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20 and yours is flawless. Other than Edwards, Rep. Rogers Pope, and Sens. Ed Murray and Dan Claitor, and maybe a couple others, I can’t recall many objections to the Jindal giveaway years coming from either chamber over the past eight years.

So now, Edwards wants to roll back some those insanely, ill-advised, foolish, thoughtless corporate tax breaks, and the corporate world is already screaming rape. Hey, guys, the honeymoon is—or should be—over. It’s way past time for the middle- and low-income citizens of this state to be relieved of the heaviest tax burdens while you guys get all those tax breaks, exemptions and incentives to create minimum-wage jobs—if jobs are even created at all. I mean, does anyone really think oil and gas will leave Louisiana when the oil and gas is here? To get to it, they have to come here. Do we really need Enterprise Zone credits for Wal-Marts in St. Tammany Parish?

As Edwards said, it’s time for the governor’s office to be “not business as usual.”

He will make mistakes. He will do things I don’t agree with. I was never under the illusion that I would agree with every single action he takes. No politician, like a rooster in a henhouse, could ever please everyone all the time.

And when he does displease me, I will say so. But for now, I’m more than willing to at least let him get his feet wet. We all owe him that much.

 

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LouisianaVoice holding first ever ‘Boob of the Year’ contest

Posted in Attorney General, Boards, Broadband, Internet, Budget, Campaign Contributions, Charters, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Courts, DOA, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, Health Care, Higher Education, Lawsuits, Legislature, Legislators, Office of Group Benefits, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, PACs, Politicians, Privatization, Retirement, State Police, Taxes, Vitter, Vouchers on December 11, 2015| 61 Comments »

As we face the end of eight years of ineptitude, deceit, and whoopee cushion governance, LouisianaVoice is proud to announce our first ever election of John Martin Hays Memorial Boob of the Year.

There are no prizes, just a poll of our readership as to whom the honor should go in our debut survey.

Hays was publisher of a weekly publication called appropriately enough, the Morning Paper in Ruston until his death last year. He relished nothing more than feasting on the carcasses of bloated egos. He single-handedly exposed a major Ponzi scheme in North Louisiana, sending the operator to prison. That got him some major ink in the Atlanta Constitution and the New York Times.

The problem of course, is trying to narrow the field to make the final selection manageable.

The obvious choice for most would be Bobby Jindal, but there are so many other deserving candidates that we caution readers not to make hasty decisions. After all, we wouldn’t want to slight anyone who has worked so hard for the honor.

So, without further ado, here are the nominees, along with a brief synopsis of their accomplishments.

  • Bobby Jindal: Mismanaged the state budget for an unprecedented eight consecutive years. At least there’s something to be said for consistency. In his eight-year reign of error (mostly spent in states other than Louisiana) he managed to cut higher education more than any other state; he robbed public education to reward for-profit charter schools and virtual schools; he gave away the state’s Charity Hospital system (he awarded a contract to the new operators—a contract with 50 blank pages which is now the subject of what is expected to be a prolonged legal battle; he appointed political donors to prestigious boards and commissions, including the LSU Board of Supervisors which, under his direction, fired two distinguished doctors, the school’s president and its legal counsel; He trumped up bogus charges against the director of the State Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) to appease mega-donor Tom Benson and to appoint the husband of his children’s pediatrician to head up the agency; he forced state offices to pay higher rent in order to again accommodate Benson by signing a costly lease agreement with Benson Towers; rather than consider alternative ideas, he simply fired, or teagued, anyone who disagreed with him on any point; he refused Medicaid expansion, thus depriving anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000 low-income citizens needed medical care; he tried unsuccessfully to ram through pension reform that would have been devastating to state employees; he insisted on handing out contract after contract to attorney Jimmy Faircloth who is still searching for his first courtroom victory after receiving well more than $1 million in legal fees; he spurned a major federal grant that would have brought high-speed broadband internet to Louisiana’s rural parishes; he stole $4 million from the developmentally disadvantaged citizens so he could give it to the owner of a $75 million Indianapolis-type race track—a family member of another major donor and one of the richest families in the state; he abandoned his duties as governor to seek the Republican presidential nomination, a quest recognized by everyone but him as a fantasy; he ran up millions of dollars in costs of State Police security in such out-of-state locations as Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and South Carolina; he had the State Police helicopter give rides to his children, and the list goes on.
  • Attorney General Buddy Caldwell: All he did was completely botch the entire CNSI contract mess which today languishes in state district court in Baton Rouge; He consistently turned a blind eye to corruption and violations of various state laws while ringing up what he thought was an impressive record of going after consumer fraud (Hey, Buddy, those credit care scam artists are still calling my phone multiple times a day!); and his concession speech on election night was one for the books—a total and unconditional embarrassment of monumental proportions.
  • Kristy Nichols: What can we say? This is the commissioner of administration who managed to delay complying to our legal public records request for three entire months but managed to comply to an identical request by a friendly legislator within 10 days; We sued her and won and she has chosen to spend more state money (your dollars, by the way) in appealing a meager $800 (plus court costs and legal fees) judgment in our favor; it was her office that came down hard on good and decent employees of the State Land Office who she thought were leaking information to LouisianaVoice (they weren’t); she first reduced premiums for state employee health coverage in order to free up money to help plug a state budget deficit all the while whittling away at a $500 million reserve fund to practically nothing which in turn produced draconian premium increases and coverage cuts for employees and retirees (and during legislative hearings on the fiasco, she ducked out to take her daughter to a boy-band concert in New Orleans where she was allowed to occupy the governor’s private Superdome suite.
  • Troy Hebert: appointed by Jindal to head up ATC which quickly turned in a mass exodus of qualified, dedicated agents; he used state funds to purchase a synthetic drug sniffing dog (hint: there is no such thing as a synthetic drug sniffing dog because synthetic ingredients constantly change; this was just another dog, albeit an expensive one); he launched a racist campaign to rid his agency of black agents; while still a legislator, he was a partner in a firm that negotiated contracts with the state for hurricane debris cleanup.
  • Mike Edmonson: Oh, where do we start? Well, of course there is that retirement pay increase bill amendment back in 2014; there is the complete breakdown of morale, particularly in Troop D; then, there was the promotion of Tommy Lewis to Troop F Commander three years after he sneaked an underage woman into a casino in Vicksburg (he was subsequently fined $600 by the Mississippi Gaming Commission but only after first identifying himself as the executive officer of Troop F and asking if something “could be worked out.”); allowing Deputy Undersecretary Jill Boudreaux to take advantage of a lucrative buyout incentive for early retirement (which, in her case, came to $46,000, plus another $13,000 of unused annual leave) only to retire for one day and return the next—at a promotion to Undersecretary. She was subsequently ordered to repay the $56,000 but thanks to friends in high places, the money has never been repaid (maybe incoming Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne would like to revisit that matter); consistent inconsistency in administering discipline to officers who stray—such as attempting unsuccessfully to fire one trooper for assaulting a suspect (even though the suspect never made such a claim) while doing practically nothing to another state trooper who twice had sex with a woman while on duty—once in the back seat of his patrol car.
  • David Vitter: what can we say? The odds-on favorite to walk into the governor’s office, he blew $10 million—and the election. His dalliance with prostitutes, his amateurish spying on a John Bel Edwards supporter, an auto accident with a campaign worker who also headed up the Super PAC that first savaged his Republican opponents in the primary, turning Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne and Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle irreversibly against him and driving their supporters to Edwards’s camp. In short, he could write the manual on blowing an election.
  • The entire State Legislature: for passing that idiotic (and most likely illegal) budget on the last day of the session but only after Grover Norquist was consulted about the acceptability of a little tax deception; for allowing Jindal to run roughshod over them on such matters as education reform, hospital privatization, pension reform and financing recurring expenses with one-time money; for being generally spineless in all matters legislative and deferring to an absentee governor with a personal agenda.

Those are our nominees but only after some serious paring down the list.

Go to our comments section to cast your vote in 25 words or less. The deadline is Friday, Dec. 18.

As much as you might like, you are allowed to vote only once.

 

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Duck Dynasty political kingmakers demanded kings’ ransom for personal appearance at St. Charles Parish Catfish Festival

Posted in Exemptions, Incentives, Finances, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Politicians, Taxes, Vitter on November 26, 2015| 12 Comments »

Those Duck Dynasty folks up in West Monroe are riding their gravy train for all it’s worth, scoring a $415,000 tax break every time one of their sappy episodes airs, lavishing the kiss of death (disguised as endorsements) on unsuspecting politicians hoping to capitalize off their name, bashing anyone who happens to think or act differently, licensing merchandise, and demanding exorbitant fees for personal appearances.

Take Vance McAllister, the notorious kissing congressman endorsed by the Duck Dynasty’s Robertson family in his initial run against State Sen. Neil Riser. He won that race but was out a year later, disgraced by that grainy video of him swapping chewing gum with a female staffer who happened not to be his wife.

Then there was the entire Robertson family making nice with Bobby Jindal during the latter’s disastrous term as part-time governor and presidential nominee wannabe.

More recently, Willie Robertson made that painful but hilarious video with U.S. Sen. Dave Vitter in which Robertson tried to convince us (a) that the two had been traipsing about in the woods together (Vitter was in a camo top but was also wearing pressed slacks and a dress belt—not really conducive to stalking wildlife but apparently suitable for a cheesy video) and (b) to be sure and vote for Vitter who Willie said had made mistakes “but who hasn’t?”

McAllister first lost his re-election bid for a full term in Congress last year and this year lost in his attempt to unseat State Sen. Mike Walsworth in the Oct. 24 primary election. Meanwhile,  Jindal and Vitter last week tanked just days apart, underscoring the value of a Duck Dynasty endorsement.

By my count, that puts the Duck commanders at 0-3, which pretty much tracks Phil Robertson’s career as the Louisiana Tech quarterback back in the late ‘60s. I know. I was sports editor of the Ruston Daily Leader at the time and had the unenviable task of trying to write something positive about that Shreveport Thanksgiving Day game in 1966 when Phil completed more passes to Southern Mississippi defensive backs than to Tech receivers.

But now it’s been learned—if it wasn’t known already—that the Duck boys are mercenary money grubbers on top of everything else.

Recently, I accompanied my grandson to Louisiana Tech to tour the campus where he intends to enroll next year. We were paired with a couple from St. Charles Parish whose daughter also plans on joining the computer engineering program there. Her dad and I struck up a conversation during the tour and the talk soon turned to sports and politics as it generally does with men. An executive in the offshore oil industry, he made it clear he was a fan of neither Jindal nor Vitter.

When I mentioned the common affiliation the two had with the Robertsons, he grunted and related a story about how he was charged with obtaining a celebrity guest for the St. Charles Parish Catfish Festival a couple of years ago.

With the Robertsons riding the crest of their popularity, the choice was a natural one. He called them to obtain the particulars of booking one or more Robertson family members for the event.

“They wanted $100,000 as their fee, plus luxury hotel accommodations and luxury transportation to the Monroe airport and from Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans to the festival,” he said, adding, “We don’t even have a luxury hotel in St. Charles.”

I opined that the fee they were demanding told me one of two things: They are either full of themselves or they just didn’t want to participate.

“I think they were full of themselves,” he replied, “but if they didn’t want to do it, they sure got their way. I fell out with Phil Robertson right then and there.”

Apparently a tax break of up to $415,000 per show even as state colleges took repeated budget cuts just isn’t enough. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-04/-duck-dynasty-keeps-tax-break-as-jindal-cuts-louisiana-colleges

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Jindal’s tax plan appeals to the 1 percent even as he polls 1 percent in Iowa; coincidence? anyone see a parallel here?

Posted in Budget, Economy, Elections, Governor's Office, Taxes on October 11, 2015| 19 Comments »

JINDAL OPINION ON ASSIMILATION(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

There is an interesting parallel to be drawn from Bobby Jindal’s less than earth shaking tax plan in which he advocates raising taxes on the poor (in apparent violation of his Grover Norquist no-tax pledge) while granting even further tax cuts for the wealthy (in harmonious accord with Norquist). https://www.bobbyjindal.com/tax/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100915_MS_TaxPlan%20(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=23715672&spUserID=MTI1NzExOTg5NzE1S0&spJobID=660993528&spReportId=NjYwOTkzNTI4S0

For this comparison, we have Earthmother to thank for pointing this out to us:

  • Jindal’s tax plan is an overt appeal to the infamous 1 percent, the upper crust of society who have the resources to hire the best tax lawyers and CPAs in order to find as many tax loopholes as humanly possible to fine even more tax breaks.
  • Jindal continues to poll around 1 percent in Iowa despite his desperate, often comical, always absurd attempts to draw attention to himself in his ludicrous effort to gain traction.
  • Ergo, Jindal’s tax plan is obviously designed to appeal to the 1 percent in Iowa who favor his candidacy.

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/08/bobby_jindal_surges_in_the_hating_poor_people_primary_the_regressive_tax_plan_thats_propelling_him_to_the_top/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

News flash, Bobby: 1 percent’s not going to cut it any more than your giving away state hospitals is going to solve the state’s health care problems.

One percent’s not going to get you elected any more than your repetitive cuts to higher education are going to help students struggling to pay higher tuition.

Bobby, you are on a fool’s errand and you’re either too stubborn to admit you don’t have a chance, or you’re blinded by unbridled ambition, delusional….or just stupid.

Your propensity to have—and worse, your willingness to offer to the world—your opinion on every subject, trivial or important, with or without basis (mostly without), long ago grew insipidly thin.

And still you persist.

You persist in saying that there should be no hyphenated Americans and you persist in saying immigration without assimilation is invasion and that those entering this country should learn our language and go to work.

I guess that shows that nothing has changed much over the past 523 years.

Today (Monday, October 12) is Columbus Day, so let’s examine what his arrival meant to the natives of North America. When Columbus landed on the island of San Salvador in 1492, he wrote to the king and queen of Spain that he found natives who “love their neighbors as themselves” whose manners were “decorous and praiseworthy.”

He also wrote, according to Dee Brown in his book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee that the indigenous people should be “made to work, sow and do all that is necessary and to adopt our ways.” Columbus even kidnapped 10 of the friendly San Salvador native Taino tribesmen and carted them off to Spain so they could be introduced to the white man’s ways.

One of them died soon after arriving in Spain but not before he was baptized, sending the Spaniards into a state of religious euphoria in the knowledge that they had made it possible for the first Indian to enter heaven.

As a diplomatic expression of their willingness to assimilate, other European explorers who followed Columbus looted and burned villages. They kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children and sold them into slavery. In a generation, the Europeans had ravaged the island, killed the vegetation and its inhabitants—natives, animals, birds and fish—and turned San Salvador into a wasteland…and then they abandoned it.

How’s that for assimilation, Bobby?

The most outrageous utterance in a long string of outrageous utterances, however, was his unsolicited opinion concerning the recent mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/louisiana-gov-bobby-jindal-defends-comments-blaming-oregon/story?id=34403499

“The killer’s father is now lecturing us on the need for gun control and he says he has no idea how or where his son got the guns,” Jindal wrote in yet another of his inane op-eds. “Of course he doesn’t know. You know why he doesn’t know? Because he is not, and has never been in his son’s life. He is a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public. He’s the problem here.”

Well, Bobby, let’s examine your record, particularly your last term. You have not and have never been in our lives. You have spent the entirety of your last four years in Iowa. When you weren’t there physically, you were there in spirit, there in your far-fetched, ambitious, implausible dreams.

You have been a complete failure as a governor, a leader, and an inspiration to 4.6 million citizens of Louisiana. When you were elected, you carried the hopes and dreams of a better Louisiana into the governor’s office. You promptly discarded those hopes and dreams in favor of an unrealistic pursuit of your own impossible hopes and dreams.

You should be embarrassed to even show your face in public in Louisiana, much less choose to build your post-political home in Baton Rouge.

In short, you’re the problem here.

But hey, don’t sweat it, Bobby. You still have an unshakable lock on your 1 percent.

 

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We haven’t gone anywhere; work on our book on Jindal’s administration is time consuming but should be worth it

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Book Review, Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Guest Columnist, Health Care, Higher Education, Privatization, Taxes, Transparency on June 23, 2015| 23 Comments »

PLEASE MOVE TO THE END OF THE LINE(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

On the eve of Bobby Jindal’s anticipated earth shaking announcement that he is squeezing himself into the clown car of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, I thought we should let our readers know that I am still on the job, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

As we wait with collective bated breath for word that Bobby is not only available but more than willing to do for the nation what he has done for Louisiana (God help us all, Tiny Tim), I remain cloistered in my cluttered home office, working diligently on my book, as yet untitled, in which I intend to fully document precisely what he has done for to Louisiana.

Among the topics to be covered are public education, higher education, health care, the state budget, campaign contributions, political appointments, ethics, privatization, his ALEC connections, the explosion in corporate tax breaks during his two terms, the lack of progress as reflected in myriad state rankings and surveys throughout his eight years as our largely absentee governor, the lack of transparency, his thinly veiled use of foundations and non-profit organizations to advance his political career, his intolerance for dissent (teaguing), his actual performance as compared to campaign promises as candidate Bobby, and his general incompetence.

I was asked on a local radio show if I could be fair to Jindal, given my personal feelings about his abilities as reflected in more than a thousand posts on this site. The short answer is: probably not. The long answer is I can—and will—be as fair to him as he has been to the state I love and call home. Because I do not claim to be objective (as opposed to the paid media who cling to that word as if it were some kind of Holy Grail), I am not bound by any rules that place limits on the expression of my opinions. I see what he has done, I understand the adverse effect his actions have had on this state, and I will offer my take on them for the reader to either accept or reject. If that is not fair, then so be it.

I have written about 60,000 words of an anticipated 100,000-word manuscript thus far. A couple of other writers have volunteered to contribute chapters, which should add another 20,000 words. I have a self-imposed deadline of July 1—give or take a few days—in which to have the rough draft completed. I also have several very capable editors poring over the chapters as they are completed. Their corrections, deletions, additions and suggestions will be incorporated into the final manuscript which is to be submitted to the publisher by late August.

The publisher originally gave me a publication target date of next Spring but recently moved the anticipated publication date up to January, with an e-book to be released possibly as early as this Fall.

That would coincide nicely with Jindal’s second ghost-written book, scheduled out in September.

There will be one major difference in our books: Mine will be based on his record while the source of his claims of balanced budgets and other wild, unsubstantiated assertions are certain to remain a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (with apologies to Winston Churchill).

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