Mediaboss Marketing

Sales tax collection amendment headed to voters

The proposed constitutional amendment to consolidate local sales tax collections under state control cleared its last hurdles Thursday when the House and Senate unanimously and almost simultaneously approved the compromise version worked out in a conference committee.

The conference report on House Speaker Clay Schexnayders HB199 was approved 101-0 in the House and 37-0 in the Senate.

Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, whose district includes part of southern Lafayette Parish, served as House floor manager. He explained that the bill creates an eight-member commission to oversee consolidated sales tax collections. It will require a two-thirds vote by the commission, followed by a two-thirds vote in each house of the Legislature, to alter the sales tax laws without the need for a constitutional amendment.

We dont touch any of the revenue levied by local authorities, he said in answer to a question from the back mic.

After the unanimous vote, Beaullieu thanked the members and said, Youve made a big deal for the state of Louisiana today.

It will appear on the midterm election ballot on Nov. 8, 2022.

The House delayed a final vote Thursday on another of Schexnayders projects, HCR40, which would direct the Department of Economic Development and the State Board of Commerce to suspend tax incentives, subsidies and other public financial support for solar projects not regulated by the Public Service Commission. The House was scheduled to vote on the Senates amended version. It will likely be brought back up when the House reconvenes on Monday.

A slightly amended version of SB247 by Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, which sets up the ground rules for legalized sports wagering, cleared the House Thursday, but only after several members hurled some questions at its House sponsor, Rep. John Stefanski, R-Crowley.

The bill had been amended to include wagering on horse racing at all licensed locations. In the original, it would have been available only at riverboat casinos, not land-based ones, Stefanski said.

Rep. Larry Frieman, R-Abita Springs, asked Stefanski why the bill has a cap of 20 licenses when sports wagering was approved by local option in 55 parishes last November. Stefanski explained that he and Cortez put a lot of thought and effort into the bill and acknowledged that it will create dead zones for legal sports wagering in the state.

If you dont have a cap, youll have a casino on every corner, and thats not the intent of this, Stefanski said. We thought it would be in the best interest of the state. This is a good starting point.

Rep. Robby Carter, D-Amite, extracted an assurance from Stefanski that the bill will not hurt my horse racers.

If anything it will help the horse racers, Stefanski told him.

SB247 passed 78-15. Six of Lafayette Parishs seven representatives voted for it; Rep. Stuart Bishop was absent.

The bill gives priority for the 20 licenses to the existing 16 riverboat casinos and four land-based casinos under state jurisdiction.

It now goes back to the Senate to concur in the House amendments or reject them. The original version passed the Senate 31-6 on May 19.

In a rare move that may be a bellwether of the Houses opinion of the bill, the House on Thursday voted down a motion to direct the Commerce Committee to report a bill that would allow Louisianians to sue social media companies for censoring their religious or political opinions.

The motion to discharge the bill from committee was rejected 25-38, with 42 members abstaining. Among the Lafayette delegation, Republican Reps. Beau Beaullieu and Julie Emerson voted to force the bill out of committee, Republican Jonathan Goudeau and Democrat Vincent Pierre voted against it and Republicans Stuart Bishop and Jean-Paul Coussan and Democrat Marcus Bryant abstained.

Speaker Clay Schexnayder voted nay, something he seldom does.

SB196 by Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, has been controversial from the start. It initially fell one vote short of the 20 votes needed to clear the Senate early in the session, but it eventually passed 37-0 on May 20. It has since bounced around the House like a pinball. On May 20, Schexnayder referred it first to the Civil Law and Procedure Committee, where it languished for a week without a hearing before being discharged on Wednesday and recommitted to the Commerce Committee. No hearing has been scheduled, and with less than a week until the end of the session its chances of passage appear remote.

The bill would have authorized up to $75,000 in actual civil damages to plaintiffs who can prove a social media company has censored their content.

HCR51 by Rep. Mark Wright, R-Covington, which calls for a national constitutional convention to establish unspecified term limits for the U.S. House and Senate, was tabled in the Senate Thursday on a 21-13 vote.

It also faced stiff vocal opposition in the House, where it passed 66-23 on May 24.

Sen. Edward Price, D-Gonzales, warned that this is a very, very scary path to open up the Constitution. We need to be very careful doing this.

Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, recalled that after this resolution came up last session, several members were intimidated. I dont know who was behind it, Morris said, but I move to table.

Two of Lafayette Parishs senators, Republican Bob Hensgens and Democrat Gerald Boudreaux, voted to table. Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, abstained.

Go here to see the original:
Legislative Roundup: Sales tax collections amendment headed to voters; sports betting clears House; social media censorship bill falters - The Current

On Friday's "Fox News Primetime", host Ben Domenech sounded off on how the establishment the political and corporate ruling class used the threat of a virus to consolidate and expand its power with the help of violent riots, widespread propaganda, and tech censorship.

DOMENECH: Human actions and decisions made the real-life costs of the pandemic far higher than they otherwise might have been. They unnecessarily erased an entire year of education, destroyed small businesses, and wrecked huge portions of our economy. Instead, it was Americas innovation industry that won the day, in ways the corporate propaganda press last year deemed impossible, all the way up until the vaccines were here.

The ruling class used the threat of disease to consolidate its power, and it has used lies, violent riots, re-education, corporate media propaganda and tech censorship to achieve this -- but it is a house that cannot stand because it is built on nothing but threats and the kind of shameless hubris weve had to see to believe. The Wuhan lab leak theory, dismissed by Anthony Fauci and the Washington Post and CNN, is gaining traction now is a cause for outrage at elite hypocrisy and dishonesty.

Read the rest here:
US 'Ruling class used the threat of disease to consolidate its power'; used censorship, riots: Ben Domenech - Fox News

Slavery is not just something that just happened with the people who were white to people who were Black, said Lisa Kinnemore, a member of Georgias state board of education, as it deliberated a resolution on Thursday restricting classroom discussion of racism. Black people were actually slaves to Black people. It goes all the way to back even to ancient times, slavery in Egypt and Rome and all around the world.

This sentiment an explicit rejection of the horrors of American slavery and its roots in white supremacy underpinned the 11 to 2 vote by the board to adopt a resolution to provide a framework for policy revisions on the teaching of race and sex in Georgias classrooms.

Kinnemores comments left Jason Esteves, chair of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education, momentarily speechless as discussed the vote with The Intercept shortly after the meeting.

Look, this wont impact [Atlanta Public Schools], he said. Were going to keep doing what were doing. This will have an effect on counties that are more conservative, that were still making moves toward equity and inclusion.

Parents mostly white have been storming school board meetings across the state over the last few weeks, heeding a call by conservative demagogues to fight against critical race theory being taught in schools. Gov. Brian Kemp wrote a letter to the state board of education last month, calling critical race theory a divisive, anti-American agenda which has no place in Georgia classrooms. Kemp echoes a wave of protests across the country over the last two months, from rich Virginia suburbanites launching a campaign to oust the state school board to a disrupted meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, with parents protesting mask mandates unmasked, of course along with critical race theory.

In practice, these white parents havent been railing against the arcane legal theory but against the idea that students should be taught that racism is a real, current problem created by longstanding structural inequality. Local school board meetings have devolved into vitriolic shouting matches, with boards looking for ways to control public comment afterward.

The board drafted the resolution without public input and then blocked comments from the YouTube livestream. Impassioned pleas, it seems, are fit only for those on one side of this argument.

Eventually what they want is for people not to talk about it any more.

There was so much energy and excitement behind, finally, making some movement toward those issues, Esteves said. Were now seeing a complete reversal. The state board of education just took away their cover and gave opponents a weapon to use against those efforts. Eventually what they want is for people not to talk about it any more.

About three out of five of Georgias public school students are children of color. Demography projects Georgia will become a majority-minority state within the next decade. But even as Republicans continue to argue against the legitimacy of the November election, the political reality remains: a purple state on the knifes edge of flipping permanently Democratic because it has run out of racially resentful white voters.

Kemp and others have begun to implicitly draw a connection between the eroding defense of white supremacy among white voters and their own political futures by describing anti-racist education initiatives as inherently political. Basically, theyre saying the quiet part out loud.

Take Kinnemore, for example. Then-Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Kinnemore to the board in 2013 after her kamikaze run against a well-respected local Democratic legislator in DeKalb County.

Kinnemore, who is Black, lives about a mile due south from my house, in a community that is about 90 percent Black, in the shadow of the largest memorial to the Confederacy in America. I note in passing that the keepers of the Stone Mountain carving have been open to recontextualizing the monument despite the wailing of Lost Cause revisionists, because the redolent racism of the carvings history is noxious. Those white supremacists are Kinnemores audience. Her political existence is a 4Chan-style trolling operation designed to elicit pain from Black parents for the amusement of white supremacists.

Her appointment is in no way an attempt to build support for conservative politics among nonwhite voters. Republicans do not have a plan for that here. Instead, they hope to preserve the racial biases of young white voters intact as long as they can, staving off losses as older white conservatives die and younger ones change after contact with the real world.

The resolution contains language barring instruction in ways that suggest that racism is acceptable. But it also says the state school board believes that no teacher, administrator, or other school employee should offer instruction suggesting that meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a members of a particular race to oppress members of another race; (or) that the advent of slavery in the territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States; or that, with respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.

How one teaches the political dimension of slavery on the crafting of the Constitution, with the three-fifths compromise, the ramifications of the Civil War, the lingering effects of Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears and the reservation system, turn of the century anti-Asian discrimination, the civil rights movement, and the many, many other facets of white supremacist ideology on America is a lesson left to the readers imagination.

The resolution does not itself impose standards for the states schools,Georgia educationboard chair Scott Sweeney said. It does not mention critical race theory per se. This is not something going directly after critical race theory. What it is trying to do is draw a distinction between divisive ideologies in finding their way into standards. This is a foundational statement more than anything else. With regard to divisiveness, for example, can you imagine any supremacist ideology making its way into standards? I cannot. So, this is agnostic with regard to those types of divisiveness.

The nature of racism today is what is left unsaid and unexamined. One has to assume there is no white supremacist ideology baked into the current curriculum for his statement to be considered true.

The boards vote drew swift condemnation.

The nature of racism today is what is left unsaid and unexamined.

The prohibitions outlined in the resolution would undermine Holocaust education in Georgia, said Allison Padilla-Goodman, vice president of the southern division at the Anti-Defamation League. Indeed, it could prohibit teaching that the Nuremburg laws were taken from Jim Crow America. The resolution is fundamentally contradictory. It claims to respect First Amendment rights and strongly encourages educators, who teach about controversial public policy or social affairs issues, to explore them from diverse and contending perspectives. Yet, the resolution clearly would prohibit a teacher or student from talking about systemic racism or inequity in America. And the resolution is so vaguely written that it undoubtedly will come under constitutional challenge and may suffer the same fate as President Trumps divisive concepts executive order.

Discussions about race and its place in our history and in current events are an important part of education and one that Georgia educators will continue to address, added Craig Harper, executive director of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators. The non-binding resolution adopted at a special called session of the State Board of Education does not prohibit educators from continuing to teach and discuss all aspects of our history as they do now. The board members conversation highlighted the importance of including more people and perspectives. Our many communities and educators, who have valuable insights and expertise, must work together to determine how Georgia will address these critical issues moving forward.

Esteves expects teachers to gear up for a fight.

Teachers can speak out and talk about how this limits their ability to have really important conversations in their classrooms, he said. School boards can affirm their commitment to equity and inclusion. They can resist any efforts to disrupt or pause equity initiatives.

Original post:
Georgia Board of Education Votes to Censor American History - The Intercept - First Look Media

Home to the largest Confederate memorial in the country, the state of Georgia took another leap in whitewashing history. The majority-white Georgia Board of Education passed a resolution declaring slavery and racism are inconsistent with America.

Calling an emergency meeting, the state board of education met Thursday to weigh in on critical race theory. A manufactured crisis of conservative origin, K-12 public school students are not learning critical race theory.

YouTube comments during the meeting questioned the validity of the so-called emergency. The resolution adopted similar language as proposals in Republican-controlled legislatures across the country.

Merely symbolic, the resolution serves as a statement of values from the states top education body. But it does not change curriculum or teaching standards for the time being.

By passing a resolution that falsely affirms slavery and racism were exceptions and inconsistent with American values, the boards resolution ignores history. The Tulsa Race Massacre commemorated just a few days earlier is a prime example of the harm done by state-sanctioned white terror and the whitewashing of history.

Governor Brian Kemp congratulated the board on the latest move. Running for re-election, Kemp jumped on the anti-critical race theory bandwagon to keep ginning up support. Kemp and company see critical race theory as being anti-American but have no problem with burying dissenting opinions and views.

As a part of his bid for governor, Brian Kemp bragged about rounding up undocumented immigrants in his truck. He also refused to apologize for taking a photo with a known white nationalist during the 2018 election. The same supporter previously threatened a Black woman veteran at a Stacey Abrams event and threatened violence against Muslims.

Pushing back on efforts to bury history, actor Tom Hanks outlined the importance of learning about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Americas history in an essay for the New York Times. Hanks wonders how different the country may have been if people learned about events like Tulsa in elementary school.

Many students like me were told that the lynching of Black Americans was tragic but not that these public murders were commonplace and often lauded by local papers and law enforcement, wrote Hanks. The truth about Tulsa, and the repeated violence by some white Americans against Black Americans, was systematically ignored, perhaps because it was regarded as too honest, too painful a lesson for our young white ears.

Conservatives continue to distract from conversations of equity and justice by focusing on protecting people from feeling bad about racism. But people, students included, wouldnt have to worry about feeling bad about racism if they werent racist.

Hanks also called out the willful ignorance of those who insist racism is inconsistent with Americas founding principles.

When people hear about systemic racism in America, just the use of those words draws the ire of those white people who insist that since July 4, 1776, we have all been free, we were all created equally, that any American can become president and catch a cab in Midtown Manhattan no matter the color of our skin, that, yes, American progress toward justice for all can be slow but remains relentless, Hanks continued.

You can watch the state board meeting here:

SEE ALSO:

Oklahoma Governor Puts Feelings Over Facts By Signing Anti-Critical Race Theory Law

Louisiana Republican Encourages Teaching The Good Of Slavery, Not Critical Race Theory

View original post here:
Georgia Board Of Education Responds To Fake Crisis With Resolution To Censor Discussions On Racism - NewsOne

Douglas Murray, author of The Madness Of Crowds, joined The Federalists Ben Domenech on Fox News Primetime to discuss the dangers of Big Tech censorship Friday night.

These companiesthat assume the right to decide what you and I can know, read and sayare nowhere near up for the job, Murray said. My own view is that actually nobody could be, but they are especially unqualified; they talk about free speech as if nobody thought about it until a seminar they had some time last semester.

We are dealing with kids here, he said, adding these companies got everything about the last year wildly wrong and citing Big Techs censorship of the Wuhan lab leak theory.

Murray and Domenech also discussed Facebooks recent announcement that it will suspend former President Donald Trumps account for the next two years. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook wouldnt be an arbiter for political speech? Domenech asked. Apparently he doesnt remember it either.

Murray noted Facebooks Nick Clegg, who announced today we believe his [Donald Trumps] actions constitute a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available, was a former deputy prime minister in Murrays native Great Britain. He was chucked out by his own constituents, Murray said. But now he gets to say what a former president of the United States can say, where and when. So in some ways I congratulate him for an enormous global upgrade.

It is insulting Mark Zuckerberg occupies a more powerful position than the pope in Rome, Domenech added.

These displays of power and of censorship, Murray concluded, show it is high time we make it clear that we cannot and will not live under the rules of Big Tech. They are not up to the job that they have taken upon their shoulders to perform.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

Go here to see the original:
Douglas Murray: Big Tech Censors Are Unqualified To Talk About Free Speech - The Federalist