The Next Victim of Racist City-Killing

Still think getting murdered like Detroit can't happen to your favorite not-white-enough city?

Zandar:

The latest example of the post-Katrina permanent minority underclass in Bobby Jindal's Louisiana?  The rich, white area of Baton Rouge is proposing seceding and taking the city's tax base with it to form a new city.

The predominantly white and wealthy residents of the southern area of Baton Rouge have proposed seceding from the city proper and incorporating into a new one to be called “St. George.” 

The movement began as an effort to create a new school district, but after the state legislature repeatedly mothballed its proposals — claiming that they could not approve an independent school district that was unaffiliated with a city — organizers shifted their energies to the creation of “St. George.” 

The new city would be the fifth largest in the state, with over 107,000 residents, and would include two of the largest tax revenue bases in the state: Perkins Rowe and the Mall of Louisiana. A study by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber concluded that Baton Rouge residents “will be disproportionately paying taxes to the proposed municipality,” given city governance’s reliance on sales tax revenues. 

If the succession were successful, the study claimed, it “could entail the dissolution of the present system of governance.”

But this is exactly what Jindal's plan to cut property taxes and raise sales taxes was intended to do:  shift the tax burden from the wealthy (with their wealth in property, stocks, and savings) and shift it to the poor (who have to pay sales taxes on everyday consumption).  The proposed St. George municipality would mean that Baton Rouge residents would be paying sales taxes at the shopping district in St. George, and all of the benefit would go to the resident of St. George.

SNIP

Taxpayer money went to create the improvements in southern Baton Rouge for everyone in the region.  Now they want to take those improvements and tell "those people" to get the hell out.  That's the way it's worked in America for 400 years.