Da Gov is Marching on, Like Sherman Through Georgia

Da Gov is steamrolling his way through the LA Public Sector. After Katrina, he fired teachers and set up Charter schools to destroy the Public School System.  That system was in bad shape (due to lack of state funds, mostly) but was certainly as good as the Charters, often better.  His next move was to reject Medicare money from the Feds to cause a lack of funding for Public Health. Naturally he had to cut funding to the LSU Public Health System.

Last week the Legislature started to wake up. Maybe they realize that when the Clinics and Public Hospitals restrict access or close, they will have angry villagers railing at their walled communities, perhaps having their political heads. On metaphorical pikes, I hope.

Jindal, of course, will weather this storm off in TeaParty Land, basking in the glory of having cut taxes AND Government spending. The little darlin'.

Jindal tried last year and again this year to make deals to privatize LA prisons. I have no doubt he would like to sell our toll bridges and maybe the highways. It is a quick fix for a stupid budget that has cut taxes, mostly for the rich, but it will come back to roost in a very few years. Selling the Avoyelles Correctional Center would net the state $35 million but would cost 300 jobs and there is no assurance that cost per inmate would not quickly rise.

Jan Brewer did this same thing in Arizona. She went further and sold the State Capitol  in 2010 and leased it back from the purchaser. neither move saved the state money. Earlier this year, she decided that they should buy the capitol buildings back, because leasing it didn't make economic sense, and they would only lose $25 million. Nice deal for Management and Training Corp.; they make a $25 million profit on a 2 year investment, and that is over their profit from operating the prisons,

Think that won't happen here? Jindal won't buy it back, but his successor (Vitter?) will have to, if LA has the money.

While we wait for that to happen, Healthcare in our glum state has been dealt a serious blow. The sick will get sicker and it will be the children who suffer the most.

Why does Vitter tell such obvious lies?

A new email for Diaper Dave:

Dear Friend,

           

All too often we hear about radical environmentalist groups attacking Louisiana’s energy industry and threatening our jobs and economy. That’s why last year I requested a full audit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to find out just how much taxpayer money was being spent to fund lawsuits by these radical environmentalist groups who sue the federal government.

Turns out it’s a lot – tens of millions. GAO finally completed the report I requested and it shows that taxpayers have been on the hook for years while ‘Big Green’ trial lawyers have raked in millions of dollars suing the government.

Even worse, because of sloppy record keeping by federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a lack of cooperation by the U.S. Justice Department, we're not even sure how bad the problem really is. This is unacceptable and I'm going to continue working to demand greater transparency.

One particularly absurd example is the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group actively litigating against oil and gas exploration. This is the group who’s currently trying to shut down the entire Gulf of Mexico from offshore drilling. In 2008, the NRDC received $3.5 million from taxpayers, even as it pursued litigation that would imperil the jobs of tens of thousands of energy industry employees in Louisiana alone.

Additionally, between 2003 and 2010, the Treasury Department paid out approximately $14.2 million from its “Judgment Fund” to environmental plaintiffs who had filed suit against EPA.  

(Read more about this issue in a recent article from the Washington Examiner here.)

Allowing hard earned tax dollars to be carelessly paid out to these environmentalist groups is a threat to our ever increasing deficit, and it’s a threat to Louisiana’s economy. This report is a good start to helping expose this.

Sincerely,

David Vitter
United States Senator

So Dave makes it look like the "radical environmentalists" are being paid by Obama to destroy the economy of Louisiana. He fails to mention that the "'Big Green' trial lawyers" who have "raked in millions of dollars suing the Federal government" have been paid that money because they won their cases and the courts ordered, in some cases, the Feds to pay lawyer and court costs. This is legal and a very common practice.

He also makes the Treasury Dept seem careless in its paying of $14.2 million to environmental plaintiffs from its ""Judgment Fund"", as though the "Judgment Fund" is some bogus fund. The "Judgment Fund" is exactly that, the Judgment Fund, it is a fund created by  31 U.S.C. 1304 to pay legal costs when a government entity loses a court suit. Those "Big Green trial Lawyers" won their cases and the court order the Judgment Fund to pay them

If you click on the link  report  in Vitter's email, it will take you to his website, not to the GAO report which is here. No, you go his website and read more of the same sniveling lies that were in his email. There is a link to the report at the bottom of the page, but how many people will bother to click on it after they have read what he tells them it says? But if you actually read the GAO Report, you will find that he cherry picked the data, and that the report says just the opposite of what he tells us it says.

For instance:

Justice defended approximately 2,500 EPA-related cases filed from fiscal year 1995 through fiscal year 2010, but the number of environmental litigation cases from which plaintiffs received payments was small, representing about 8 percent of all cases (page 22 of the GOA Report).

It is notable that Vitter links to a piece in the Washington Examiner, a free daily paper in the D.C. area that is a Conservative rag that has a mottled history of questionable business practices.  The piece is an opinion column by Ron Arnold, man who has waged a life long war against Environmentalists.

Also, shutting down offshore drilling is not a bad thing--California and Florida banned it--but it would be bad for Vitter. He makes hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Oil.

SO the question remains: Why does David Vitter tell such obvious lies?

Defending James Gill

Mark Moseley either doesn't understand sarcasm or he deliberately edited Gill's Sunday column to make a point:

"When it comes to weird and slippery, Weiner’s got nothing on Vitter

Mark Moseley,June 28, 20111 COMMENT

By Mark Moseley, The Lens opinion writer |

The senator is seemingly invulnerable to his sex scandals.

James Gill of The Times-Picayune is probably the region’s most talented political columnist, yet he’s not immune from the occasional howler. Consider this excerpt from his Sunday column:

A strong case could be made that [Sen. David] Vitter is neither so weird nor so slippery as [Rep. Anthony] Weiner, who, when questioned about pictures of bulging underpants distributed on his Twitter account, lied through his teeth for several days until he was finally forced to come clean.

Fates preserve us! If lying about tumescent tweets for a week is the benchmark for “weird and slippery,” how can Gill possibly discount Vitter? Our junior U.S. senator is the king of weird slipperiness, if not slippery weirdness. Vitter lied through his teeth for nearly a decade about his chronic and illegal whore-chasing, yet neither the local media, nor fellow Republicans, nor Louisiana voters ever forced him to come clean. He’s still in office. Let’s see Weiner pull that off! I invite anyone to make “a strong case” for Vitter over Weiner. Please make that case, right here, I beg you. No, I double dog dare ya."

The problem is that he deleted Gill's next sentence. If he had printed it, the sarcasm would have been drippingly obvious. To wit:

"A strong case could be made that Vitter is neither so weird nor so slippery as Weiner, who, when questioned about pictures of bulging underpants distributed on his Twitter account, lied through his teeth for several days until he was finally forced to come clean.

Climbing in the sack with hookers seems positively conventional by comparison."

This sort of editing bothers me because Mark Moseley misquoted James Gill by deletion so he could attack David Vitter. David V is very easy to attack and there is no need to abuse James Gill to do it.

So, Mark, I would say that the howler is yours, not James Gill's.

Letter From Diaper Dave

I got this email today from Diaper Dave:

Dear Friend,

            Last week, President Obama visited a Chrysler plant in Ohio to congratulate himself on his “tough decisions” to extend $60 billion in bailouts to American automakers General Motors and Chrysler.

            It’s a pretty outrageous move for the president to claim credit for bailouts that, even according to White House estimates, will result in a loss of at least $14 billion for American taxpayers. 

            Not only are $14 billion of your tax dollars gone – forever – but the Obama administration gave GM a special deal that will save the company billions of dollars in taxes that GM would have owed if they had gone into regular bankruptcy. Even more outrageously, much of Chrysler’s bailout money was used to pay for gold-plated union pension packages, instead of going to more deserving creditors. 

By stepping in and giving special treatment to the failing automakers, the Obama administration sent a message that if a company is large enough, they don’t have to worry about being held responsible for their mistakes.  It’s the same old “too big to fail” mentality that puts taxpayers on the hook for the irresponsible decisions of other out-of-control businesses.

That’s why I opposed the initial automaker bailouts under President Bush and the dramatically increased bailouts under President Obama.  The automaker bailouts are just one example on a long list of wasteful spending that has led America $14.3 trillion into debt.  I’ve fought hard to get the federal government out of the bailout business and will continue fighting to end these dangerous policies that have cost billions upon billions of dollars in taxpayer money. 

Sincerely,

It is typical of Vitter to characterize the return of 77% of the Auto Bailout as a loss of $14 billion. He ignores the fact that had GM and Chrysler gone bankrupt, some 2.5 million jobs would have been lost, cutting nearly $100 billion in wages; He also finds it outrageous that some of the bailout for Chrysler went to shore up pension plans, pensions that were part of legal contracts that Chrysler entered into and is obligated to pay. He ignores the fact that the bailout saved the economies of Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.

He is blissfully ignorant of the changes that GM and Chrysler have made; they are now producing smaller, more energy efficient vehicles-- and Chevy's plug-in, the Volt, has been named Car of the Year.

Vitter sees investing $14 billion in our economy as a huge waste of money--no wonder he voted for the Ryan "budget".

Election Prediction

Okay, I know this is a weird Mid-term and that the polls are whacked, but I think there is a chance that Vitter will lose. I had lunch yesterday with a close friend who is a Republican and he told me me he can't vote for Vitter. This is a guy, a Vietnam era Vet (a story I cannot tell), who totes guns, sells guns, and teaches shooting. He didn't say he would vote for Melancon, but he is voting for Fayard.

We had lunch at Santa Fe. My first time since they moved to Esplanade. It was pretty awful, he had a tamale with pork, I had the Chili Relleno. Both were too salty and covered with velveta-like cheese, garnished with puréed avocado, not guacamole. Edible, but more Tex than Mex. The Roasted Beet salad was great. With roasted pecans, feta and a simple vinagrette--no choice of dressing offered, hurrah!

We're Rich!

Devasted Economy? Not Really

I understand Vitter and Jindal and Chris John coming out against the Federal study that show the financial impact on Louisiana to be minimal. But what accounts for Mary's knee jerk reaction to the drilling moratorium? Unemployment claims have declined every month since April and most of the jobs lost due to the moratorium have been replaced by clean up jobs. You should be concerned with the 2 huge fish kills in the past week and the oily shrimp and crabs that have been brought up from the Gulf, It is on local news every night, don't you see it in Washington.
Our Governor has done his best to wreck Louisiana's economy by dismantling our health care system and our public schools--do you think that firing Dr Ryan is a coincidence? And why do so many of his staff get paid 6 digit salaries? That has never happened before.
Mary should be promoting a strong alternative energy program. Louisiana is perfect for wind farms and every home should have solar panels and solar water heaters. A Federal subsidy would go a long way to making that happen-- I am not talking about the Income Tax benefit already in place; that is a good thing, but it does not help people who do not earn enough to qualify for the rebate.

Lying Vitter, Continued

3 cheers for family values, Vitter style. If you think that David Vitter is not a lying, hypocritical Republican, watch this: