Tagtaxation

How lax regs, low taxes power Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

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As an environmental lawyer with close ties to Louisiana’s ever-growing community of local activists fighting on the same issues, I’ve been sounding the alarm about the state’s so-called Cancer Alley — the web of massive petrochemical plants lining the lower Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to below New Orleans — for years. The small river towns between those two cities —...

Hypocritical Jindal raises taxes on New Orleans tourists

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It’s not really breaking news at this point that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is a hypocrite. Not just in the environmental laws that his agencies consistently fail to enforce, but in his other policies like taxpayer funding of schools that teach religious creationism or slashing spending on children, Jindal talks up the 21st Century even as he tries to push Louisiana back into the 19th...

How far will Jindal go to prove his tax isn’t really a tax

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As feared — but predicted — the tax on New Orleans hotel guests is headed to the desk of Gov. Bobby Jindal. It’s hard to imagine that Jindal — who harbors dreams of riding all the way to the White House on the white horse of fiscal conservatism — would endanger his reputation by approving a tax hike when it finances such a dubious purpose. And before...

An arguably unconstitutional tax hike races toward Jindal’s desk

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Earlier this month I told you about the ill-conceived plan racing its way through Baton Rouge to impose a new tax on tourists visiting New Orleans and to use the money not to address the burning problems in our neighborhoods — high crime and lack of code enforcement — but on an amorphous tourism slush fund. Although our arguments have gained some traction, so far common sense has not...

Jindal to embrace stealth tax hike?

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Governor Bobby Jindal is said to have lost his “mojo” this legislative sessions. His plan to repeal the state income tax failed before it got started. His education reforms are on life-support due to successful court challenges to his plans for vouchers and public charter school supports. Yet, publicly he remains committed, he says to vetoing any tax that comes before him. He opposes the...

Stop the bass-ackwards plan for New Orleans tourism

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There’s an old saying that he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Well, here in New Orleans, the tourism industry is a double-edged sword. Ever since the first oil-and-gas crash of the 1980s and especially since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, the Crescent City has depended on the kindness — and the tourism dollars — of strangers from all over the world to...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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