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(The Center Square) Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill this week that cuts the states income tax by small amounts over the next seven years, taking it below 3% for the first time in years.

Indiana currently has a flat 3.23% state income tax.

With the new law passed, that rate will drop to 3.15% in tax years 2023 and 2024, to 3.1% in 2025 and 2026, 3% in 2027 and 2028 and then 2.9% for 2029.

Republican legislators celebrated the cut, which, if other states dont make even deeper cuts in the next seven years, will make Indiana tied with North Dakota for the lowest state income tax in the nation, among states that have an income tax.

Others are asking why Indiana can't go further and eliminate the state income tax altogether.

Nine other states have no income tax, said former Libertarian Party candidate for governor Donald Rainwater this week. Why cant we be number 10?

"We'd like to see it eliminated completely," says Joshua Webb, the Indiana state director for Americans for Prosperity.

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming each have no income tax.

For most of its history, Indiana had neither an income tax nor a sales tax only a property tax. The state income tax was introduced in 1933, during the Great Depression, and the sales tax was imposed in 1962.

This years state income tax cut was unexpected, even after it was announced that because of increased state tax collections, the state was expecting to have a $5.1 billion surplus. Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bay had said in December and January he wanted to wait until 2023 to consider passing tax cuts when the General Assembly does another two-year budget and would have a better handle on the states economic condition following the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Holcomb had also said publicly he wanted to wait on a state income tax cut.

But the Indiana House moved forward, passing a bill, authored by Rep. Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, the chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, that provides a total of $1.1 billion in tax relief that comes from lowering the income tax to 2.9% over seven years and also repealing two utility taxes the utility receipts tax and utility use tax.

The bill as it passed the House had also included specific tax relief for businesses in the state, which, in addition to corporate income taxes, also pay an annual tax on all tangible assets owned by the business including all computers, furniture and equipment (with the first $80,000 worth of property exempted).

The House bill would have eliminated the 30% depreciation floor on new business personal property meaning businesses would no longer have to keep paying an annual tax on equipment that was several years old and had no longer retained 30% of its original value.

But that didnt make it through the Senate.

When it went to the Senate, they stripped the tax cuts out, said Natalie Robinson, the NFIB state director in Indiana.

Small businesses affected by the tax include small manufacturers and farmers, who own expensive equipment they may use for a decade or longer, said Robinson.

Read more here:
Indiana cuts income taxes over the next seven years - The Center Square

Incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp is set for a rematch against Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, provided he can fend off multiple primary challenges within his own party.

Four years ago, Kemp narrowly beat Abrams to become governor. His most significant challenge comes from former Sen. David Perdue, who is running with former President Donald Trump's support.

Read more: With Trump's backing, ex-Georgia Sen. David Perdue will run against GOP Gov. Brian Kemp

The governor of Georgia is in charge of the executive branch agencies and signs bills passed by the legislature into law, or can choose to veto them. The position has drawn national attention after the close 2018 race and Trump's opposition to Kemp. Kemp acknowledged that President Joe Biden won the presidential race in Georgia and refused to support Trump's efforts to overturn the election results.

That primary will be held on May 24.The general election will be held on Nov. 8., in whichShane Hazel is running for the Libertarian Party and Al Bartell is running as an independent.

Kemp is the current governorand former secretary of state. On his campaign website, he focusses on the work he has doneas governor on business growth, gun rights, and education, including raising teacher's salaries. He signed at least two bills that drew national attention, including the "heartbeat" abortion bill, which sought to ban abortions after about six weeks and was ultimately struck down,and SB 202, which changed how elections are administered in Georgia.Before his time as Secretary State, Kemp was abusinessman and served in the State Senate.

Abrams is the former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and ran against Kemp in 2018. Abrams has said she is running on expanding Medicaid, protecting voting rights, and access to education. She is the founder of Fair Fight Action, which has worked nationally onvoting andelection issues, access to medical care andmedical debt in the south. Abrams served 11 years in the Georgia House of Representativesand was known as a bipartisan legislator. In 2010 she was electedHouse Minority Leader.She also has authored a number of fiction and non-fiction books.

Perdue was the Georgia Senator before losing a re-election bid to current Sen. Jon Ossoff in 2021. Perdue has received Trump's endorsement for his false claims that the 2020 election results from Georgia were inaccurate, and he has proposed to create an election law enforcement division. He also wants to eliminate the state income tax, create a parent's bill of rights and pass termadditional limitsfor elected offices. Before his election to the Senate in 2014, Perdue was a businessman, including serving as an executive for Reebok and Dollar General.

Also: Who's running: Where Sen. Raphael Warnock, challengers stand on the issues

Related: Challenges against split of Augusta Judicial Circuit dismissed by Georgia Supreme Court

Davis is a public speaker and activist. According to her website, her priorities include election integrity, religious and medical freedom and opposing abortion.

Taylor works in public education and has worked as a teacher and counselor. Her platform is "Jesus, guns and babies," and she is also running on election integrity and educational issues.

RepublicanTom Williams also qualified to run, but appears not to have submitted contact information. TheChronicle was unable to find any additional information about his candidacy.

Read the rest here:
Georgia elections: Who is running for governor in the 2022 primary and general? - The Augusta Chronicle

One can imagine a just war between a state representing individuals who want to be free and left alone and, on the other side, a tyrannical state aggressor intent on subjecting and looting the libertarian country. If the libertarians win, liberty would increase in the world. But reality is never so simple and war instead typically reinforces, on all sides, the power of the state and the idea that the individual must submit to the collective. War does not bring out the best in all people (contrary to what state propaganda suggests, including the parading women soldiers in Moscow shown on the featured image of this post).

An interesting Wall Street Journal story about the successful resistance of a small Ukrainian town illustrates how war arouses primitive instincts (Yaroslav Trofimov, A Ukrainian Town Deals Russia One of the Wars Most Decisive Routs, March 16), although I admit it is not the most tragic illustration in the history of warfare:

Russian soldiers took over villagers homes in Rakove and created a sniper position on a roof. They looked for sacks to fill with soil for fortifications, burned hay to create a smoke screen and demanded food.

A local woman who agreed to cook for the Russians is now under investigation, said Mr. Dombrovsky. A traitorshe did it for money, he said. I dont think the village will forgive her and let her live here.

In the practice of war if not generally in tribal morality, a traitor is anybody who takes another side than his tribes. But note the other element in the story: she did it for money! I suspect that Mr. Dombrovsky would not have been happier if she had done it for free, perhaps for the cause, and with a big smile. At any rate, money is apparently an aggravating factor (even if paid in deeply depreciated rubles), which corresponds to the reigning orthodoxy among our own academic philosophers.

A moral case can be made that coerced cooperation with the violent aggressors of ones neighbor is acceptable, but not cooperation for the purpose of obtaining personal benefits. But then, isnt avoiding harm a personal benefit? Does it matter that Mr. Dombrovsky, who is a special forces commander, is presumably paid himself? What if the woman had cooked for free and was only paid a tip afterwards ?

We dont know enough about this case to make any serious ethical analysis, but I would bet that Mr. Dombovskys comment reflected a generalized suspicion toward individualist behavior on free markets. If that is true, we are not dealing with the pure war case of a group of libertarians defending themselves against aggressors, but with two more or less authoritarian camps. Not surprisingly, dealing with actual cases is more complicated than with stylized models.

All that seems to confirm the classical-liberal or libertarian idea that an individual usually acts in his own personal interest and that only a minimal ethicsJames Buchanan would say an ethics of reciprocityshould be recognized as a necessary constraint on personal behavior in a free society. (See my review of Buchanan Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative in the forthcoming Spring issue of Regulation.)

Female Russian soldiers of the Military University of the Russian Defense Ministry march along the Red Square during the Victory Day military parade to mark the 72nd anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War, the Eastern Front of World War II, in Moscow, Russia, 9 May 2017.

Original post:
The Traitor Was Paid to Cook for the Russians - Econlib

By Tom Baxter

Last week, as 2,189 candidates were qualifying to run for office this year, there was an ominous reminder that going forward, election results in Georgia may never be as cut and dried as they used to be.

By a majority of 73 percent, voters in Camden County rejected plans to build a commercial spaceport in which the county has already invested more than $10 million. The turnout was 17 percent, which is low but not out of line with a lot of local special elections. Local residents succeeded in getting a vote on the question after a petition drive in which they gathered some 3,500 signatures. The county commission is challenging their right to hold the referendum in a court suit.

Heres the ominous part: Instead of accepting the landslide vote as the end of the line for this long-debated project, the county commission filed an emergency motion to block certification of the results until its lawsuit is settled.

Its not such a surprise the county would do this. Both sides are heavily dug in on this issue, enough to exhaust every possible legal remedy. The Georgia Supreme Court quickly denied the motion, while allowing the lawsuit challenging the referendum to proceed.

Still, the refusal to accept even this clear a demonstration of the voters will makes you wonder whats going to happen in upcoming elections when the outcomes are much closer, and local election boards in many parts of the state arent as nonpartisan as they were before the 2020 election. There is a growing tendency not to accept the results of elections, even when the margin is 3-to-1.

This doesnt seem to have dissuaded people from running for office, however. Of the candidates who qualified last week, 996 are Republicans, 597 are Democrats, five are independents and four are Libertarians. The remaining 587 candidates are running in non-partisan races.

These totals might lead you to think that Republicans are either more numerous or more fractious than they really are. Every small rural county controlled by Republicans has roughly as many local offices as a large urban Democratic county, so there are a lot more Republicans in these local races, unchallenged by Democrats.

And while former President Donald Trumps beef with Gov. Brian Kemp has generated challenge races down to the level of insurance commissioner, overall Republicans dont seem more likely to do battle with each other in primaries than do Democrats. For instance, there are four candidates running for lieutenant governor as Republicans, and nine running as Democrats.

Its noteworthy that this is the highest office for which a Libertarian is also running. The presence of Libertarian candidates on the ballot caused runoffs for the U.S. Senate in 1992, 2008 and 2020, but that wont happen this year.

The races for state legislative seats probably give us the best indication of the balance between the parties and their relative fractiousness. Overall, 257 Republicans are running for the House or Senate, compared to 241 Democrats. In 42 races, Republicans dont have Democratic challengers; in 28 races, Democrats dont have Republican opposition. House District 28 in northeast Georgia has the most Republicans vying for office six, with one Democratic candidate. House District 90 in DeKalb County has the most Democrats five, with one Republican.

For all their partisan differences, the Democratic and Republican legislative candidates are very similar in many respects. The average age of the Republican candidates is 53. For Democrats, its 51.

The Democrats have 22 candidates who list themselves as attorneys or lawyers and 18 retirees; the Republicans have 21 retirees and 21 attorneys. Its hard to sort out candidates who are business people because they have different ways of identifying themselves. Republicans have the edge in this category, but not by as much as youd think. Interestingly, the five candidates who list themselves as entrepreneurs are all Democrats, while the two candidates who list themselves as CEOs are Republicans.

Four Republicans and three Democrats list themselves as retired military. The only chef candidate is a Democrat; the only chiropractor, a Republican. All in all, the candidates are a pretty wide reflection of what Georgians do for a living. Of course, the winning candidates may be a different story.

Thanks to Maggie Lee for her able data crunching.

See the rest here:
When 3-to-1 is challenged, what about the close races? - SaportaReport

Far-right influencers have often encouraged people to use the small privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo instead of Google, saying that the giant search engine censored conservative ideas.

The praise for DuckDuckGo turned to outrage this week, though, after the company said Russian disinformation would be minimized on its site.

DuckDuckGos chief executive, Gabriel Weinberg, tweeted on Thursday that the search engine would rank websites associated with disinformation lower in its search results.

Like so many others I am sickened by Russias invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create, he wrote.

DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsofts Bing, which announced that it would follow the European Unions order to restrict access to the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik.

But the criticism from the far right was directed at DuckDuckGo. The conservative website Breitbart said DuckDuckGo was adopting the censorship policies of Big Tech. In social media channels devoted to conspiracy theories, users vowed to switch to alternatives like the Russian search engine Yandex. The hashtag #DuckDuckGone trended across Twitter in the United States by Friday. And on YouTube, users criticized the company for silencing voices.

If youre using DuckDuckGo, I suggest you stop using it and switch to something else, said Tarl Warwick, a self-described libertarian YouTube user with nearly half a million followers. He added: I want tens of thousands of people to stop using it.

In a statement, Kamyl Bazbaz, the vice president of communications for DuckDuckGo, said that the affected sites were engaged in active disinformation campaigns, meaning they were similar to other low-quality websites already penalized by search algorithms.

This isnt censorship, its just search rankings, he said.

The backlash underscored the difficulties some technology companies face in limiting the spread of Russian propaganda at a time when pockets of America express support for the Kremlin and believe Big Tech companies are censoring their views.

Last month, The New York Times reported that search results on DuckDuckGo and Bing surfaced more untrustworthy websites than the same searches using conspiracy theory terms entered in Google.

DuckDuckGo controls about 3 percent of the search engine market in the United States. The site is especially popular among privacy activists because the company doesnt track its users, unlike Google and Bing.

The company also announced this month that it would pause its relationship with Yandex, the Russian search engine, which was providing certain links for results in Russia and Turkey.

See the article here:
The far right complains after the search engine DuckDuckGo vows to limit Russian propaganda. - The New York Times