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On Oct. 18, the Texas State Legislature voted to refer to the ballot a constitutional amendment that would increase the homestead exemption for school district property taxes from $25,000 to $40,000. Voters will decide the measure on the May 2022 ballot. It would take effect for the 2022 tax year. The Legislative Budget Board estimated that the increase would cost the state $355 million in fiscal year 2023.

The amendment was filed as Senate Joint Resolution 2 (SJR 2) on Oct. 18, the last day of the legislatures third special session this year. It was approved by both chambers unanimously. The enabling legislation, Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), also received final approval on the last day of the session.

State Senator Paul Bettencourt (R), the author of the amendment, said, People see the need for property tax relief, and Texans are going to cry out for that continuously. This is a great way to bring that home to all of the taxpayers of Texas.

Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner (D) said, Texas House Democrats have been fighting for an increase in the homestead exemption for decades. While Republicans pushed for property tax rate cuts that largely benefit corporations, we have championed legislation that puts money directly into Texas homeowners pockets. Today, our longstanding efforts pay off under SJR 2. We are grateful our Republican colleagues have joined us to provide meaningful property tax relief to Texas homeowners.

Texas voters last approved an increase to the homestead tax exemption in 2015 with the passage of Proposition 1. The amendment increased the exemption from $15,000 to $25,000. It was approved by a margin of 86.4% to 13.6%.

This was the second amendment the legislature referred to the ballot for the election on May 7, 2022. Texas voters will also decide on an amendment that would authorize the state legislature to reduce the limitation on total ad valorem taxes imposed on the homesteads of elderly or disabled residents for school maintenance and operations to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year. The two ballot measures are the first to be featured on an even-numbered year statewide ballot since 2014. Between 1985 and 2020, 10 ballot measures have appeared on even-numbered year Texas ballots compared to 251 ballot measures on odd-numbered year statewide ballots during that same period.

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Texas voters to decide on an increase to the homestead exemption from school district property taxes in May 2022 Ballotpedia News - Ballotpedia News

Scott Wiggam| Guest columnist

Ohio has a chance to put an end to corporate entities benefitting from taxpayer-funded contracts while at the same time using that money to deny Ohioans their Second Amendment rights.

It is time for Ohio to enact the Firearm Industry Nondiscrimination (FIND) Act.

More: Ohio bill to ban gun store closures, firearm confiscation during emergencies moves forward

House Bill 297would deny corporations the ability to benefit from taxpayer-funded state or municipal contracts while at the same time holding policies that discriminate against firearm-related businesses.

This legislation wouldnt dictate that corporations cant hold antigun policies. It would simply say those corporations wouldnt be able to profit from state and local municipal contracts and then turn around and spend that money to deny law-abiding citizens their constitutionally protected God-given rights.

It is wrong that taxpayer dollars help to fund those working against their rights.

It is time for Ohio to take a stand.

This proposal wont be without opposition. Big banks especially will howl.

They will point out the billions of dollars they hold in municipal bonds for everything from transaction services with state agencies to projects to build roads and bridges. They will tell lawmakers that this is impossible, that theyre too big to stand up to.

Thats because they have forgotten that it was the taxpayers including Ohios taxpayers that paid the $700 billion bailout in 2008. Now those same banks, including Bank of American and Citigroup, get rich while they impose restrictions on gun companies and fund gun control groups. Those corporate banks are eating away Americas fundamental rights through woke boardroom corporate activism.

Ohio can stand up to these bank bullies. Our lawmakers already have a blueprint to do it too. In 2016 many states, including Ohio, passed nearly identical measures requiring that state contracts not be granted to companies that boycott Israel.

Earlier this Summer, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott signed the Texas FIND Act. Big banks railed against the proposal, but Texas lawmakers stood strong against corporate special interests and extreme gun control groups that have gotten fat off of taxpayer-funded contracts. They said enough was enough.

More: Mothers of Columbus homicide victims march through streets to call for end to gun violence

Texass law doesnt force the state to end contracts with corporations. It simply requires corporation that seek to do business with the state and local municipalities to certify that they hold no policies discriminating against firearms or ammunition and wont hold those policies while the state contracts are in force.

Corporations that have contracts can continue to compete for them. They just have stop unfairly discriminating against an industry that provides the means for Second Amendment rights.

If those banks and other corporations that provide services to the states dont want to abandon their discriminatory policies, there will be new business opportunities for local entities. Big banks threatened Texas lawmakers that no one could handle the billions in assets they provide to the states.

They forgot about the little guys the state and regional banks. The Independent Bankers Association of Texas said the law wasnt an obstacle, but a business opportunity. Corporations unwilling to abandon their campaign of imposing woke policies could easily be supplanted by local businesses. That keeps taxpayer money flowing to local businesses. For Ohio, that would mean Ohio tax dollars benefit Ohio businesses and dont get carried off to fill fat cat wallets on Wall Street.

Thats not just smart policy. Thats smart business.

In Ohio, over 12,000 jobs are tied to the firearm and ammunition industry. Those jobs pay over a half a billion dollars in annual wages and generate $1.7 billion in economic activity. These businesses paid $202 million in federal and state taxes and an additional $32.7 million in excise taxes that benefits wildlife conservation, including right here in Ohio.

Yet these businesses are targeted by woke corporations because they despise what they represent. They provide firearms that law-abiding gun owners use every day. Firearm-related businesses are especially in the crosshairs of these discriminating corporations because they provide the means to gun owners to exercise their Second Amendment right to lawfully use firearms for recreational shooting, hunting, and self-defense.

Ohio needs its own FIND Act. Ohios lawmakers must make this a priority. Bring Ohio values to the Buckeye State and stop importing woke corporate activism that denies our states citizens their rights.

Scott Wiggam is the State Representative for the 1st Ohio House District, which encompasses all of Wayne County.

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Ohio must stand against companies that deny 'constitutionally protected God-given rights' to firearms - The Columbus Dispatch

(The Center Square) Tennessees State Funding Board is scheduled to approve $22.7 million in FastTrack economic incentive grants at its Monday meeting.

The grants include $10.5 million to Life Technologies Corporations Thermo Fisher Scientific for its technology assembly facility in Lebanon, which the company has invested more than $100 million in and is expected to employ 1,400 people.

The Smith & Wesson Company is set to receive a $9 million FastTrack grant as it prepares to move its operations and corporate office to Maryville in Blount County.

IMC Companies is slated to receive $2 million for a facility in Collierville, and a $1.2 million grant will be awarded to a company that isnt named.

FastTrack grants are state grants sent to local governments for specific infrastructure improvements or to companies to help offset the costs of expanding or moving into the state with the goal of increasing the number of full-time jobs and the average wages of jobs available in an area.

Smith & Wesson, a leading firearms manufacturer founded in 1852, announced in late September it would be moving and spending $125 million on a new facility that would create 750 new jobs.

Mark Smith, president and chief Executive Officer ofSmith & Wesson, said proposed legislation in their former home of Massachusetts, if enacted, would prohibit the company from manufacturing many of its products,including a bill that would prohibit manufacturers from making guns with a large capacity feeding or assault weapons.

Smith said Tennessee had several key factors in its favor, including support of the Second Amendment, being business friendly, a low cost of living and high quality of life, access to education and qualified labor.

"These bills would prevent Smith & Wesson from manufacturing firearms that are legal in almost every state in America and that are safely used by tens of millions of law-abiding citizens every day exercising their Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights, protecting themselves and their families, and enjoying the shooting sports, Smith said. While we are hopeful that this arbitrary and damaging legislation will be defeated in this session, these products made up over 60% of our revenue last year, and the unfortunate likelihood that such restrictions would be raised again led to a review of the best path forward for Smith & Wesson."

Thermo Fisher Scientific workers will make bioprocess containers and fluid transfer assemblies for biopharma companies to develop and produce therapeutics and vaccines at the facility.

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Tennessee readies to approve $22.7M in business incentives - The Center Square

One criticism of S.B. 8 is that this private enforcement regime would allow blue states to prohibit firearm ownership. I've asked gun rights activists what would happen if California banned the sale and possession of handguns through a private cause of action. Their response: "Come and take it." They would engage in active civil disobedience, and resist the law. They would be happy to get sued, and would win in court every time. Of course, gun rights activists know that Heller is secure. Even if the Court will not expand the Second Amendment to conceal carry in Bruen, there is no realistic chance the Court scales back the right to keep a gun in the home.

Abortion, however, stands in a very different position.Roe and Casey are on the chopping block. There is a chance both precedents are overruled this Term. And abortion providers understand this risk all too well. As a result, with few exceptions, abortion providers have strictly complied with S.B. 8. Indeed, during the brief interregnum before the Fifth Circuit stayed Judge Pitman's ruling, Planned Parenthood refused to provide post-cardiac-activity abortions. Why? Under S.B. 8, the providers would be subject to retroactive liability. And those suits could bankrupt Planned Parenthood.

This fear of prospective liability has largely defined the litigation strategy. Planned Parenthood, as well as the United States, have gone on offense to avoid raising their constitutional arguments in a clean, defensive posture. Today, briefs were filed inUnited States v. Texas. The intervenors make this point directly:

The United States also complains that "the theoretical availability of S.B. 8's 'undue burden' defense has not actually prevented the law from achieving near-total deterrence of covered abortions." Mot. to Vacate Stay at 15. But that is because this Court is currently considering whether to limit or overrule Roe and Casey.28 See Tex. Health & Safety Code 171.209(e) ("The affirmative defense under Subsection (b) is not available if the United States Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) or Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992)"). If abortion providers felt confident that this Court would persist in its support for Roe and Casey, then they could violate the statute without fear of liability. The deterrence comes from the uncertainty surrounding the future of Roe, and there is nothing unconstitutional about a statute that threatens to impose retroactive civil liability in response to a Supreme Court ruling.

The Intervenors argue forcefully that the proper channel to review this law would be in a defensive posture. And they draw an analogy to the wedding provider cases:

[T]his Court has no basis in fact or law to presume that the Texas courts would reject valid constitutional defenses asserted in SB 8 litigation. The United States does not even assert otherwise; it just complains that SB 8 deters abortion providers from defying the law and inviting this litigation. But that objection is misguided and immaterial. It is common that the risk of losing a constitutional defense will deter a party from engaging in protected conductthink of the Christian wedding vendors who are facing threats of private lawsuits if they decline to participate in same-sex weddingsbut the deterrence comes from the uncertainty on whether the courts will ultimately accept their constitutional defense. See Arlene's Flowers, Inc. v. Washington, 141 S. Ct. 2884 (2021) (denying certiorari). What is deterring abortion providers here is not the procedural structure of SB 8 or its threatened penalties, but the uncertain status of the right to abortion given the grant of certiorari in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392. Few if any rational abortion providers will risk violating SB 8 when this Court is considering whether to overrule Roe and Casey. That is what is inducing Texas abortion providers to comply with SB 8.

Baronelle Stutzman and Jack Phillips were placed in this position.

Update: Shortly after I wrote this post, the Firearms Policy Coalition filed an amicus brief in support of DOJ inU.S. v. Texas. The group sees S.B. 8 as the type fo law that could be used to violate gun rights:

FPC is interested in this case because the ap-proach used by Texas to avoid pre-enforcement re-view of its restriction on abortion and its delegation of enforcement to private litigants could just as easily be used by other States to restrict First and Second Amendment rights or, indeed, virtually any settled or debated constitutional right. FPC takes no position on whether abortion should be protected by the Con-stitution but believes that the judicial review of re-strictions on established constitutional rights, espe-cially those protected under this Court's cases, cannot be circumvented in the manner used by Texas.

What do I know?

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Why Aren't Texas Abortion Providers Actively Resisting S.B. 8? - Reason

During a December 5 rally in Georgia last year Donald Trump turned his focus to a local official, showing supporters a video of Richard Barron, the Fulton County elections director.

"So, if you just take the crime of what those Democratic workers were doing," Trump told attendees, "that's ten times more than I need to win the state."

VICE reports it was then that Barron started getting attacked in a deluge of voicemails, many of which "were graphic and specifically called for his death."

"Hey, Rick," one racist and homophobic voicemail said. "Two hundred and thirty four years ago, the founding caucasian fathers of America gave us the Second Amendment. Time's running out, Richard. We're coming after you and every motherfucker that stole this election with our Second Amendment, subpoenas be damned, you're going to be served lead, you fucking enemy enemy communist cocksucker. You will be served lead."

"Hey, Rick," another said. "Watching this video of you on YouTube. I can't believe you can't count votes in Fulton County. It's absolutely incredible. How deceivious? How deceitful you are? You need to get your act together or people like me really may go after people like you."

"If you have a hand in this," another caller said, "you deserve to go to prison, you actually deserve to hang by your goddamn skinny-ass soyboy neck."

Reporting on what it says is a "mass exodus" of elections officials some, like Barron who have decades of irreplaceable experience and expertise VICE says it spoke with over a dozen who were the targets of death threats and other attacks.

"Officials across the United States experienced physical stalking, explicitly violent phone calls, racial slurs, home surveillance, bomb scares, and threats of mass shootings. For some officials in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the threats have continued for nearly a year. And now, many of these officials want to quit," VICE adds.

One local Pennsylvania city commissioner, Al Schmidt, who had been targeted by named by Trump had to leave home and live under police protection after the death threats sent to him and his wife started.

Watch:

Death Threats Are Creating a Mass Exodus of Election Officialswww.youtube.com

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'You actually deserve to hang': Elections chief reveals death threats after Trump targeted him - Raw Story