Tag: Louisiana

Experts Debate Impact of Sports Wagering Proposal on Ohio

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by Todd DeFeo   Legalizing sports wagering in Ohio could generate $7 million in tax revenue for the state in the first year, a number that could increase to $9 million in the second year. That is on top of $1.3 million in license fees in the first year of operations, and between $300,000 and $500,000 in license fees in subsequent years, according to an estimate from the Legislative Budget Office. House Bill 194 would grant the Ohio Lottery Commission the authority to allow sports gaming in Ohio and effectively bring into the open an existing industry. The move has attracted some of the biggest names in the industry – including Penn National Gaming and MGM Resorts International – to push legislators to proceed with the initiative. “Illegal sports wagering has continued to flourish across all mediums – in person, over the Internet, and most recently through sophisticated mobile applications,” Ayesha Molino, senior vice president of federal government affairs for MGM Resorts International, said in testimony to the House Finance Committee. “Ohio residents currently have convenient access to illegal, unregulated mobile sports wagering sites,” Molino said. “But they lack a legal, properly regulated alternative. And restricting a legal mobile market will not compel people…

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Kavanaugh Joins Liberals to Protect Pro-Planned Parenthood Ruling

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by Kevin Daley   The Supreme Court declined to review three cases relating to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood at the state level Monday, over a vigorous dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas. The dissent was significant because it indicates that Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the high court’s liberal wing to deny review of a lower court decision that favored the nation’s largest abortion provider. “So what explains the Court’s refusal to do its job here?,” Thomas wrote. “I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’” “Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty,” Thomas added. “If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background.” [Read Justice Thomas’ dissent] Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined the Thomas dissent, meaning there were three votes in favor of taking the case. Since four votes are needed for the Supreme Court to take up a case, the opinion indicates that Chief Justice John Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the four liberals to deny review. This move could indicate that Roberts and Kavanaugh are…

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Living in the Forest and Risking Their Lives: The Extreme Measures Enviros Will Take to Stop a Crude Oil Pipeline

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by Jason Hopkins   ST. MARTINVILLE, La. — Deep in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, the largest swamp in the United States, a group of protesters has seemingly stopped at nothing to scuttle completion of a legal pipeline. The construction project in question, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, is an 163-mile crude oil pipeline that extends across southern Louisiana. The pipeline will carry up to 480,000 barrels off crude oil a day when completed — taking a lot of oil off more hazardous means of transportation, such as road and train lines. Despite the pipeline being overwhelmingly welcomed by locals and Louisiana politicians across the partisan spectrum, construction efforts have attracted an inordinate amount of pushback from national environmental groups. Organizations such as Sierra Club, EarthJustice, Waterkeeper Alliance and others have continually tried to torpedo the pipeline with lawsuits. However, it’s the opposition happening outside the courtroom that is attracting some of the most extreme elements against Bayou Bridge. Groups such as Louisiana Bucket Brigade and 350 New Orleans have assembled protests at construction sites, temporarily  preventing employees from working. The most active group on the ground is L’eau Est La Vie (French for “water is life”), a traveling camp within the Atchafalaya Basin that…

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TV and Film Producers Who Cheat Tennessee Taxpayers Might Go to Jail

Chris Butler
tv film production

A federal appeals court just ruled that states that hand out TV and film credits — as Tennessee does — can prosecute people who lie or mislead to get those corporate welfare benefits. Tennessee gave out millions of dollars in incentives to the fictionalized TV drama “Nashville” and more than $300,000 in incentives to the Robin Williams film “Boulevard.” That movie, filmed in Nashville in 2013, was about a man who starts a relationship with a male prostitute. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled film and TV tax credits are property and thus subject to federal mail and wire fraud laws. That means states can better monitor fraud involving TV and film tax credits. The case, United States vs. Hoffman, involved film and TV tax credits in Louisiana. The court ruled “the fraudulent issuance of those credits would deplete the state treasury, meaning Louisiana had a property interest in the tax credits and could prosecute for fraud in relation thereto,” according to Bloomberg. Members of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a Nashville-based free market think tank, have spoken out against those tax credits for years. Beacon spokesman Mark Cunningham told The Tennessee Star…

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Confederate ‘Cleansing:’ Louisiana’s East Feliciana Parish Could Be the Next Place to Remove Its Civil War Monuments

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Confederate monument

The statue of the unnamed Confederate soldier has stood since 1909 in front of the courthouse in Louisiana’s East Feliciana Parish, hands resting on his rifle looking down on the flow of lawyers, jurors and defendants going into the white columned building. Ronnie Anderson, an African-American man charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, illegal possession of a stolen firearm, and speeding, was one such defendant and the statue gave him cause for concern. “It’s just intimidating to walk into a courthouse that’s supposed to be a place of equality, fair justice and to see this monument that made me feel like … I don’t stand a chance,” Anderson said. Anderson wants his case to be moved to another parish without such a memorial; his motion to change venue argues he can’t get a fair trial in the same place where a “symbol of oppression and racial intolerance” stands. Confederate flags and monuments – long a part of the Southern landscape – have come under renewed scrutiny following the 2015 shooting by Dylann Roof of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina and the 2017 deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Supporters say the statues are a…

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Louisiana’s Democratic Governor Used An ‘Unprecedented’ Scare Tactic To Push For Tax Hikes – It Completely Backfired

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by Will Racke   Louisiana’s ongoing budget battle received national attention last week, when the office of Gov. John Bel Edwards sent letters to thousands of elderly and disabled Medicaid recipients, warning spending cuts proposed by Republican lawmakers could result in the cancellation of critical health programs — including funding for nursing homes and long-term care. News of the letters, mailed Thursday to 37,000 people, was picked up by several national media outlets, including CBS News, Huffington Post and CNN, which ran a story under: “Tens of thousands of Louisiana residents could face eviction from nursing and group homes.” The Edwards administration sent the ominous notices in response to a balanced budget Republicans in Louisiana’s House advanced in April, which slashed state Medicaid funding. Republicans reacted furiously, saying Edwards was interfering with the budget process and using the sick and elderly as political pawns. [ RELATED: Louisiana Democrats Threaten To Evict Nursing Home Residents ] The decision to send the letters as lawmakers were working through the budget process was an “unprecedented, irresponsible political move,” Republican state Rep. Lance Harris said. “It’s an unnecessary political scare tactic done to intimidate and frighten the most vulnerable into believing they will be kicked out on the street if…

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Louisiana Governor Vetoes Bill To Curb Protests Against Controversial College Speakers

Wendy Wilson

  Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has vetoed a bipartisan bill that sought to protect controversial speakers on college campuses. The bill, which passed overwhelmingly in the state legislature, was a response to protests by college students across the country against speakers they viewed as offensive, many of them conservatives. Some protests have turned violent, such as one at Middlebury College in Vermont. The legislation would have asked colleges to establish disciplinary measures to punish hecklers and violent protesters, reports WORLD magazine. The Democratic governor said June 27 that the legislation was “unnecessary and overly burdensome” and would “only frustrate the goals it purports to achieve,” according to The Times-Picayune. But free speech advocates said his veto was shortsighted because it ignores the “hecklers veto.” The bill passed by the legislature was “significantly watered-down” compared to an earlier version that called for stiffer penalties for disrupting speakers, according to the The Times-Picayune. The bill was sponsored by House Republican Caucus Chairman Lance Harris of Alexandria, who said he modeled his proposal after an Arizona law that passed last year. Republicans in several other states have proposed similar measures.  

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Gas Tax Increase Fails in Louisiana

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

The Hayride is reporting that the effort to increase the gas tax in the state of Louisiana has failed in the State’s House of Representatives: We heard this morning from several people in the know that at last night’s meeting of the Louisiana House Republican Delegation, Rep. Steve Carter admitted to the members that HB 632, the gas tax increase bill he’s been trying to drag across the finish line for this entire legislative session, simply does not have the 70 votes required for passage on the House floor. And shortly thereafter, the Louisiana Association of General Contractors, which had been attempting to rally support for Carter’s gas tax bill, threw in the towel on the gas tax. That association’s CEO Ken Naquin said as much in an e-mail to AGC’s membership… From: Ken Naquin Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2017 10:27 AM To: LAGC Subject: Fuel Tax Bill Dead for Session To: LAGC Highway Division Members Ladies and Gentlemen: Yes, the tag line is correct. Rep. Steve Carter will address the House floor today and hang HB 632 up, on the calendar. As of late last night, after an exhaustive full floor lobby, we can only garner 60 yes votes,…

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AFP Sponsors ‘Day at the Capitol’ for Key Vote in Louisiana Gas Tax Hike Battle

Tina LaFleur
Tennessee Star

  If it seems like every other State in the Union has either raised their fuel tax – or is working on it – it’s because they are. A full 21 states’ legislatures have proposed raising the gas tax, and more of those proposals have been successful than not. California and Tennessee consumers will see a sharp increase in prices at the pump thanks to increased taxes; while South Carolina’s governor just spared his constituency by vetoing a gas tax hike. Louisiana is up next, with a vote Tuesday in the powerful Ways and Means Committee which will determine the fate of a years-long battle to raise the gas tax there. Americans for Prosperity (AFP), whose Tennessee state group opposed the gas tax in Tennessee, is sponsoring a “Day at the Capitol” through its Louisiana state group. Activists are called to gather Tuesday, May 16 in Baton  Rouge from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Ways and Means Committee room. The hearing begins at 9:30 a.m. The Hayride reports: There are 19 members of the House Ways And Means Committee – 12 Republicans and seven Democrats. HB 632 by Rep. Steve Carter, which is the gas tax bill, has eight…

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