Louisiana Education Reform

Bobby Jindal is, as usual, saying one thing while doing the opposite. He says we need to educate our children but he is slashing high education budgets and trying to kill the teacher unions. He would like to privatize public education an install a voucher system that would be inadequate to pay for middle and lower class education.

 True education reform would be to make all public universities tuition free. That will be expensive but it will yield enormous benefit to all of us in Louisiana. It spite of Rick Santorum's idiotic opinion of a college education, it is increasingly hard to get a good job without a college education. Indeed, Louisiana's poorly educated citizenry is the main reason (not tax breaks) more companies don't open  businesses here.

College is the best way to maintain the middle class and promote home ownership. And free tuition would go a long way to making Louisiana a great state.

The Jindal Microcosm

Is Jindal making reading for a 2012 national run? He is building environmentally disastrous berms offshore in the Gulf, he has gutted the budget and cut taxes and gutted higher education and Public Education and health care, especially mental health. He averted the inevitable crisis by accepting the 'heinous' stimulus money to fund teachers and health clinics in the state. He is paying his staff far more than their predecessors while dismantling the infrastructure for producing a healthy educated populous that might attract new business. But this will allow him to make a national claim that he cut spending and taxes before the crows come home to roost and everything falls apart. He may want to run for President, but he will happily settle for VP or a Cabinet position or, failing that, Chair of the RNC. He will settle for any national office, because he will have get out of Louisiana before his legacy unfolds.

Did he come up with this idea on his own? No, I think he has studied the Republican Agenda of the last 50 years, with its eye on destroying the Middle Class and stomping on the poor. They are banking on a submissive lower caste than will support a minority ruling caste. Think not? Why else would Republicans demand that the Unions accept slashing wages in exchange for saving the Auto Industry last year?