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A look at Louisiana politics from Chaplain Hy McEnery and Christopher Tidmore
The Founders Show
The Founders Show
At the RNC with Dr. John Fleming & Jon Gegenheimer
19 LUG 2024 · Hy and Christopher host Louisiana State Treasurer Dr. John Fleming and Jefferson Parish Clerk of Court Jon Gegenheimer live from Milwaukee and the floor of the Republican National Convention.
Both men are delegates from Louisiana to the RNC, and they explain how emotions have changed amongst their fellow delegates after the assassination attempt over the course of the subsequent week.
They talk about Louisiana’s unique role in the 2024 convention, and how some of the Pelican State’s late night parties have actually influenced the RNC over the past week. Fleming, in particular, compares this year’s convention to RNC nominating conventions (which he has attended in the past), and he sees a distinct difference. He smells a winner in 2024 for Donald Trump.
Roger Villere At The Republican National Convention
13 LUG 2024 · This week, Hy & Christopher are joined by Roger Villere, who is in Milwaukee from the Republican National Convention!
Villere serves as national committeeman for the Louisiana Republican Party, and he played an integral role in coming up with the new party platform. He'll give insight on the change - or lack of - in its pro-life plank, as well as the dilemma facing Republican strategists - will they actually run against Joe Biden this November?
Fighting Crime In Louisiana / Celebrating Our Independence
5 LUG 2024 · Louisiana is ranked 50th in fighting crime, the lowest of the low. Much of that has been driven by homicides in New Orleans, which reached an all-time high in 2022 (though murders have fallen in the last two years).
Hy and Christopher speak to Irv Magri, President of https://www.facebook.com/CrimefightersOfLouisiana as well as the founding president of the PANO, about the rising incidents of crime and what can be done to arrest them. Magri speaks of the successes that he had as President of the LA Pardon Board, and how abandonment of the policies which he had championed have helped drive the rise in homicides. We also speak about how Crimefighters offers free counseling and legal aid to the victims of crime.
To conclude the show, in honor of independence week, Hy speaks on the legacy of Patrick Henry.
The Pro-Life/IVF Split & Whether Amy Coney Barrett’s “Textualism” Will Sink Louisiana’s 10 Commandments Law
1 LUG 2024 · One of Joe Biden’s few effective moments in the June 27th Presidential debate was his answer on abortion rights, when he made the comparison that repealing Roe v. Wade was like “turn[ing] civil rights back to the states.” This is a key policy difference that the Biden campaign is banking on to animate Democrats and Independents alike. Unlike the rest of the media, Hy and Christopher deconstruct the subtext of the comment, the impact of returning issues like IVF to the states. The Southern Baptist Convention recently condemned the practice. How will moderate suburban women vote if they believe—correctly or incorrectly—that their right to use extraordinary medical means to get pregnant might be taken away by state legislatures?
Hy and Christopher debate whether IVF could be the issue that causes the Christian and the pro-life political movement to split. The pro-life ethics of IVF collide with the desire of people to be fruitful and multiply with their own biological children. Telling a mother she cannot have a biological child of her own— and must instead go through an adoption process of someone else’s child— underpins a GOP weakness going into election day.
Then we note that the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute criminalizing the possession of firearms by individuals with domestic violence restraining orders against them. Commentators have depicted the ruling in https://chrome-extension//efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf as a “victory” for gun safety and women’s rights, even though it only retained the status quo. But the opinion is important for another reason: It signals what could be the start of a major course correction in the conservative justices’ approach to constitutional interpretation.
Justice Clarence Thomas was the only dissenting vote, due to his commitment to a judicial philosophy called “original intent”, whereas several of his conservative colleagues subscribe to “textualism”.
Originalism holds that judges are to interpret a law based on the meaning of the law’s text at the time it was enacted. In the case of provisions of the Constitution, originalism thus claims to tether judges’ interpretations to the understandings of the Founding generation (or later for the more recent amendments). Textualists, though, are not as bound by the past, and limit their views to specifically what the constitution says—snd what it does not.
Hy and Christopher note that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJUHuu2aoP4, Justice Amy Coney Barrett reiterated the point. “We have to be very, very careful in the way that we use history,” she said, adding that deploying historical evidence to advance a legal conclusion can be like “looking over a crowd and picking out your friends.”
Why do we care? Because the ACLU is suing Gov. Jeff Landry to stop him from posting the 10 Commandments in Louisiana school classrooms, a law passed by the legislature. “Original intent”, as Hy observes, would protect the bill and allow it to come into force, but if “textualism” (i.e. following the specific written word of the constitution) The predominant philosophy, some of the‘s conservatives might side with the liberals and uphold the 1980 Supreme Court decision preventing the posting at the 10 Commandments.
Presidential Debate & Cut Tip Tax, Raise Tariffs Or Embrace A Lesson From Across the Pond
21 GIU 2024 · With the impending presidential debate, Hy and Christopher talk about how the polls have narrowed nationally but give Donald Trump a statistical lead and almost every swinging state.
We talk tax policy, including Trump’s proposals to eliminate taxes on tips and to replace the income tax with an 85% foreign tariff. What are the economic consequences? And we propose an idea from Christopher's Louisiana Weekly column this week on how Biden could match this rhetoric on taxes by stealing an idea currently dominating the conversation in the UK parliamentary elections. (More on that below.)
Then the tax conversation turns to Louisiana and a visit by state Revenue Secretary Richard Nelson to the Louisiana House Ways & Means Committee. Could Gov. Jeff Landry be signaling a deal to legislators by sending his chief tax aide last Tuesday? In other words, is the message: renew the .45% sales tax, due to expire next year, in exchange for a series of income tax cuts? What about the idea of eliminating income taxes on retirees over the next decade—which would cost about the same as making the sales tax permanent? We end with a look at Juneteenth and how it influenced former Sec. State Condoleezza Rice.
A Taxing Lesson From Across the Pond
By Christopher Tidmore, http://www.louisianaweekly.com/index.php?s=%22Christopher+Tidmore%22
Donald Trump continues to rise in the polls, in large part because he is gaining support from voters who earn less than $60,000 per year. This sector of the electorate has felt the squeeze of inflation most intensely, yet these families tend to qualify for very few government programs to ameliorate the effects of rising prices. However, an idea that the UK Reform Party has proposed in the current election – to raise the threshold of paying those income taxes – might help Joe Biden hold onto a majority of the working class voters.
Trump has already shown remarkable strength with the working class electorate. In 2020, those households making under $50,000 a year constituted 42 percent of his voter base. Polling seems to suggest that he has only improved his standing with this working class demographic, thanks – in part – to increased strength with Hispanics.
In other words, Biden may be on the tipping point of losing the working class vote in November. However, the British Reform Party (who currently challenges the ruling Conservatives as well as Labour in the upcoming July 4 election) devised a strategy to draw away working class voters from both main parties. The current untaxed income under the British tax system amounts to £12,570 GBP or $16,148.62 USD. That is already higher in real terms than the $14,600 (for single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately) which constitutes the standard deduction under the U.S. Income Tax Code. UK Reform’s electoral platform proposes to raise this minimum threshold free-from-taxation to £20,000 GBP, or $25,446.90 USD.
This change would remove seven million Brits from the tax rolls entirely, and save each family in the nation approximately £1,500 GBP. Therefore, it stands as a tax cut for all which focuses the largest tax cut on those most in need of it, and not surprisingly, it has helped draw away enough Tory voters that upstart Reform has surpassed the ruling UK Conservative Party in the most recent polling data.
President Biden will spend the next six months hammered by Republicans over his decision not to renew the 2017 Trump tax cuts (at least for higher earners). Cutting taxes at the bottom, though, inoculates him against a typical Democratic political weakness. By justifying the decision to allow the higher tax rates to return to upper income earners as a means to pay for a larger tax cut which disproportionately benefits lower income families (yet positive still affects all taxpayers), Democrats can win the tax argument. Currently, the standard deduction sits at $29,200 for married couples filing jointly and surviving spouses. If President Biden were to raise the standard deduction for individuals to nearly the same as the proposed British rate, $25,500, that would mean that no married couple making less than $51,000 would pay a dollar in U.S. income tax. Augmenting child tax credits to the level they were during the pandemic – $3,600 – would translate into no family of four earning less than $58,200 a year would have to write a check to the IRS. (If Congress were to further raise that child credit by an additional $600 per child, President Biden could argue that under $60,000, no family pays tax – if you re-elect him of course!)
The evaporation of the working class vote for Democrats constitutes a major political problem for the president’s re-election chances. If the White House refuses to take the initiative on substantive tax cuts at the lower levels, little doubt exists that Donald Trump will. After all, it’s only a small step from advocating elimination of taxes on tips to embracing the elimination of taxes for everybody who makes less than $60,000 per year.
Is The U.K. Snap Election A Cautionary Tale For American Conservatives?
14 GIU 2024 · Hy and Christopher gaze across the pond to the snap United Kingdom Parliamentary elections and wonder if the divide on the Right could prove a cautionary tale for US conservatives. Currently Nigel Farage’s UK Reform party is poised to pass the ruling Conservatives in the polls—and as a result could deny almost 200 Tories reelection, while only electing five Reform MPs. It provides an interesting “what if” had the US Republicans not embraced Donald Trump. The Tories face electoral oblivion as the vote on the Right is divided. Could the same thing ever have happened in the US? (As we point out, such a scenario did happen in Canada in 1993.)
Then, turning to local history, families define a city, so when a document is found in Europe of tremendous historical importance that explains the reason one of those families came to North America (because they aggravated the French king), it is worthy of celebration. Hy and Christopher speak to Pierre Villere, who recently purchased an important diplomatic document from the middle of the 17th century and donated it to the Historic New Orleans Collection. It tells the tale of Leonardo Villere’s departure from the French court while serving as an envoy for the Duke of Milan.
It’s an important clue, now also posted online at https://villerefamily.com The website has become a treasure trove of local historical resources, featuring documents and never before posted information covering the founding of New Orleans, the colonial period, the Revolution of 1768, the American Revolution, and the Battle of New Orleans. Pierre Villere speaks of his work to make this online resource of history available to everyone.
How Louisiana Took Over Washington, D.C. / 80th Anniversary of D-Day
8 GIU 2024 · Hy and Christopher are joined by consummate D.C. insider Curtis Robinson, to explore "How Louisiana took over Washington!" With Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise in charge, everyone looks to the Pelican State for the latest power moves on Capitol Hill.
Curtis is also the co-host (with Christopher) of Hunter Gatherers, https://www.hunter-gathererspodcast.com/gatherers. We discuss what the author of “Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72” would have thought of the ‘24 campaign, and the incredible parallels. If you'd like to hear more on that topic, https://www.hunter-gathererspodcast.com/more-podcasts
We then turn our attention to the D-Day Anniversary and the loss of a great hero of Normandy, sponsored to attend the 80th commemoration by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Robert "Al" Persichitti was 102 years old. We speak of the legacy of the war and its greatest military leader, Dwight Eisenhower.
Trump's Conviction A Debate Opening For RFK? ESA Expansion Hindered By Lack Of Letter Grades?
1 GIU 2024 · Hy and Christopher kick off the show wondering if Donald Trump‘s conviction on 34 counts will boost RFK Jr enough to make the debates. He’s already qualified at 15% in three out of four national polls, and he is about to be listed on enough state ballots to add up to 270 electoral votes. By the old rules, he would be close to qualifying for debate between Trump and Biden. Examining the Trump verdict, Christopher wonders if Trump had just simply admitted that he had sex with Stormy Daniels, he likely would’ve been acquitted? Hy calls Christopher out on this.
After the break, the conversation moves onto the new school voucher bill just passed in Baton Rouge. The devil is in the details in any piece of legislation, and the expansion of the educational savings accounts by the Louisiana Legislature has been put to the discretion of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) in Senate Bill 313. As the evaluation system outlined in the bill does not conform to BESE’s letter grade system, the body could plead poverty – and refuse to ever expand the private school scholarship program.
By a vote of 67-29, the Louisiana House last week opted not to adapt their own school voucher proposal from earlier in the legislative session, but to adopt the Senate’s proposal for Educational Savings Account implementation. The bill changed two critical elements from the House’s original proposal. Last Tuesday, May 21, legislators rejected Stonewall GOP Rep. Larry Bagley's amendment mandating that private schools who receive ESA money receive letter grades based on students’ test scores (similar to the public-school rating system using the LEAP test), which he said would help hold private schools accountable for student performance.
Grading the schools with differing testing methods was considered an unfair comparison with charter and public schools by the legislative majority, yet this decision may not sit well with BESE, who has based its entire rationale for closing failing schools on the letter grade system, earned by competitive examination. That might make BESE reticent to divert public Minimum Foundation Formula funds to expand scholarships for private and parochial school tuition, and it was its “power of the purse” that constituted the second change from the original House legislation.
The Senate bill does not set the grant amounts or any timeline to expand its scope beyond the current recipients of vouchers – the poorest students in failing school districts. Rather, SB313 charges BESE to determine how much tuition money to give parents and at what point, if ever, to make higher-income families eligible.
“We can implement it faster or slower as needed, as appropriated funds allow,” the House co-author of the bill, GOP Rep. Julie Emerson of Carencro, explained. However, while she undoubtedly meant that the changes enable the Legislature to adjust the program based on available funds, BESE has been rendered the real power in SB313.
The state's school board could direct funds however its members wished, and that is the rub. It could change many of the standards of qualification or not expand the program at all, especially if future budgets do not increase the base funding. BESE has long maintained a greater skepticism to ESA impact on the overall school funding formula than legislators, after all.
The Legislature’s fiscal office said the earlier version of the ESA bill would have cost about $258 million in fall 2027, and as much as $500 million when all families will eventually be eligible for tuition grants. Gov. Landry has pledged to reach that ubiquitous threshold, yet under SB313, his power will be limited. Short of discovering a vast pool of uncommitted revenue, such as the .45 sales tax expiring next year, the Landry administration may just give BESE the power to kill ESA expansion – at least for the near future.
Graves Endorsed For Unwinnable Seat? Trump Won't Debate RFK Jr.? And: Fly Your Flag!
25 MAG 2024 · Hy and Christopher first welcome Republican National Committee Member and former LAGOP Chair Roger Villere, who discusses the party’s endorsement of all of the current Louisiana GOP Congressmen in their current districts. This includes Garrett Graves, who would have to run in a newly redesigned African-American majority seat which voted for Biden with 56% of the vote Graves boasts of over $4 million in his campaign bank account, but will he run for a congressional district that almost no Republican can win? Villere thinks he might, and, as the incumbent, that he could emerge victorious.
This weekend also has marked the 2024 Libertarian National Convention, where Robert F Kennedy, Jr. has challenged Donald Trump to debate him. While both are speaking to the assemble delegates, no debate has been accepted. The first presidential debate is scheduled for June 27, but RFK Jr. has not been invited to participate. We discuss with Villere just who is keeping RFK Jr. out of these major debates We also talk about the fact that while a Louisiana Constitutional Convention does not look like it’s happening by this coming August, a special session to “clean up” the state constitution might.
Finally, Hy and Christopher talk about honoring Memorial Day with Villere, and about his efforts to provide flowers to the gravesites of veterans. We then welcome retired Alabama state Sen. Hank Erwin who is leading a national campaign to convince Americans to “fly their flags” on the front of their homes on Memorial Day. We also ask about Erwin’s sons, who are the producers of some of the most successful patriotic and religious Hollywood films to grace theaters in years.
Possible Unintended Consequences Of A Constitutional Convention
17 MAG 2024 · Hy and Christopher take on the possible unintended consequences of a constitutional convention this coming August. For example: there is a move afoot to get rid of the state income tax. Foster Campbell has a tax-swap idea that the powerful Louisiana Chemical Association would hate! However, an alternative is higher property taxes—which the voters would hate! (More on this below.)
Big political donors could give even more under a bill that is sailing through the state Legislature, but will it matter? House 906 by Rep. Mark Wright would raise contribution limits from $5,000 to $12,000 per donor for candidates running for statewide office and in the four biggest parishes, from $2,500 to $6,000 for candidates running for the state Legislature and in smaller parishes and from $1,000 to $2,000 for many local elections. Due to the fact that SuperPACs can receive, unlimited contributions, Hy and Christopher speculate whether contribution limit should go up even further to $100,000– BUT equally that disclosure requirements should be almost instantaneous and online. The big flaw in the bill is that it retains the current reporting system, which takes weeks until you know who gave what money to whom.
President Biden and Donald Trump will meet for two debates on June 27 and Sept. 10, and they went around the Commission on Presidential Debates. Is that because RFK Jr. might have qualified if the debates were in the fall?
Senate Bill 237, sponsored Sen. Thomas Pressly (R-Shreveport), would make it illegal to manufacture or sell products that contain any amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in Louisiana unless they are licensed medical marijuana products. The measure would wipe out what some consider an established industry in Louisiana. Is this ban the right move? Christopher’s father had a better quality of life in his last months before his death on June 25 of last year because of THC, and the effort by the Louisiana legislature to outlaw it negatively affect many medical patients in their final years.
To conclude, we wax eloquent on the 40th anniversary of the Louisiana World’s Exposition, yet we posed the question why doesn’t Louisiana stage something that big again? Why has not the United States held a World’s Fair since 1984? And does Louisiana need to plan for another to reap the tourist benefits for four decades? (New Orleans gained 25,000 hotel rooms and the Warehouse District out of the last one.) Olympic Committee for New Orleans 2084 anyone?
Now, more on that tax swap idea.....
Oil Processing - Income Tax Swap?
By Christopher Tidmore
Unintended consequences of LA constitutional convention could give rise to unorthodox policy ideas
Approval of a potential Louisiana constitutional convention appeared logjammed in the LA House and dead-on-arrival in the State Senate until Gov. Jeff Landry relented on his insistence that it convene in May— and instead occur in August. That concession allowed House Bill 800 to pass the state House with 75 votes, but it also underpinned the unpredictability of what could occur if a convention ultimately is convened.
The delegates to the 1974 State constitutional convention far exceeded their original legislative mandate. What Gov. Edwin Edwards first envisioned as a simple “cleanup” of the existing document ended up as a massive rewrite. That truism that ‘no Governor, however powerful, can control a constitutional convention completely’ could prove equally true this year. It might even provide a way to eliminate the state income tax in a fashion which would make Gov. Jeff Landry’s allies in the Louisiana Chemical Association howl. Or at least, that is the populist proposal which LA Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell proposes, tax oil processing in order to end income taxes.
The idea underscores the law of unintended consequences if the governor is granted his wish for a constitutional convention. Landry has argued that the gathering would restrict itself to merely “cleaning-up” the fiscal provisions added by amendment over the last 50 years, which has rendered Articles VII and VIII almost as long as the original document. The governor has also pledged to protect the $75,000 homestead exemption and the Minimum Foundation Formula for K-12 education. Moreover, by appointing 27 of the 171 delegates to the convention, Landry hopes to maintain an added measure of control. (The remainder are the members of the state House and Senate.)
However, his proposed delegates are former speakers, senior statesmen, and distinguished Louisiana leaders, who might try to establish the legacy of a document that will affect voters for at least another 50 years. They could easily exceed their original mandate, and the governor would possess no veto power over their work. The final document would go straight to the voters, and the need for the electorate to pass the document is what Foster Campbell has predicated his proposal.
The Democrat from Bossier City announced his “challenge” to the looming convention (and the GOP governor) on Jim Engster’s “Talk Louisiana” radio program as well as issuing a news release to that same effect later in the day. Engster noted Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, another Republican, recently endorsed Campbell’s “Foreign Oil Tax” proposal, which would require changes to the Louisiana Constitution.
Under the current state constitution, oil and gas stands only subject to severance taxes, which are levied on natural resources drilled or mined within Louisiana’s borders. In addition, Campbell suggests the August constitutional convention create a tax on all foreign and offshore oil processed or refined in Louisiana and use the revenue to offset an elimination of the state income tax.
“The oil companies damaged our coast,” Campbell explained. “It’s time for them to pay their fair share in taxes.”
Campbell is an expert in attracting bipartisan support for populist policies in the regulation of utilities companies, pipelines, and energy infrastructure. As a Democrat, Campbell won a fourth term on the Public Service Commission in 2020 in a North Louisiana district that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump on the same ballot. He contends that “Everyone except the petrochemical industry” would support the tax swap and the governor would gain political support as a result.
“Gov. Landry can use the revenue to eliminate the state income tax,” he said. “He’ll be remembered forever if he does this.”
Well-entrenched oil and gas lobbyists repeatedly have beaten back this proposal in the past, yet Campbell said the timing is ripe for such an idea given Landry’s desire to hold a constitutional convention. No limits exist for the delegates. Moreover, since at least a third of the delegates will not face the voters for reelection, and therefore never need the campaign contributions of the lobbyist class, unorthodox proposals which might work well at the ballot box might have a chance. After all, the current proposal being floated—to eliminate the income tax by raising property taxes to make up the revenue difference—hardly enjoys much public support.
The processing tax may or may not succeed, yet it is hardly the last revolutionary proposal that the constitutional convention will review— and it will be hard for Landry to stop all of them from making it into the text of the final constitutional draft.
A look at Louisiana politics from Chaplain Hy McEnery and Christopher Tidmore
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