The Special Session is Baton Rouge can be best called collective insanity.

No one disputes that Louisiana’s tax policy, especially income tax, is a contributing factor to our economic malaise. Yet the legislature refuses to face up to a simple chicken-and-the-egg fact.

We give away untold fortunes in corporate support because we have to. We have to because we refuse to surrender the long-eviscerated belief that we all we have to do is to transfer wealth to protected crony industries and then we don’t have to worry about good policy or a welcoming economic environment.

This dichotomy was expressed clearly in a quote that I heard by a Democratic senator. He refused to support the governor’s plan to raise sales tax because he said it hurt the poor, but he also refused to eliminate the insane movie credits because it may create jobs. That’s a billion dollars plus over the last decade that could have gone to infrastructure or education largely to the benefit of the poor, just because Hollywood lobbyists are good.

By the way, I am not picking just on Democrats. Republicans are just as bad.

Wake up, legislators, we can’t have prosperity as long as we have an economy that doesn’t attract business. And we can’t achieve that as long as we favor crony capitalism by trying to buy jobs through shifting wealth to favorites and not correcting policy and taxation. That’s not how it works!

Cut wasteful social spending, end crony capitalism, rein in greedy trial lawyers, create fair tax policy, unfetter local government so that services and infrastructure can be paid for, drive larger urban areas to implement business attracting policies instead of wasteful social programs, and so on….pro-growth policies that require vision and political courage.

We can’t have a chicken until we fertilize the egg. Our legislators must decide: Keep doing the same things, the politically safe things, or finally overthrow the vestiges of Huey Long by leading us into the prosperity that so many other 21st century southern states enjoy.

This shouldn’t be so hard.