Jindal's Rose Colored Glasses

Booby J's "news"letter is out today and it has some real whoppers. He crows about his brilliance at the Whitehouse when he "stood up to the President" and said the Prez had waved "the white flag of surrender" on the economy. He doesn't mention the criticism he got from Democratic Govs and even some Republican Govs for breaking with protocol and for misstating the idea of raising the minimum wage.

He went on Morning Joe and when Panelist Mike Barnicle asked Jindal to defend his own economic record: "The last time the Census Bureau checked the per capita income of Louisiana, you were 47th lowest in the United States, not all under your watch. What have you done, as governor, to bring in all these better paying jobs and boost your people's per capita income?"
Jindal responded, "Well, the great thing is, we're doing exactly what the president has not. Cut taxes, reform debt, make some investment in workforce training, make it easier for businesses to create jobs. And here's the record. In Louisiana, we now have more people working, highest incomes in our state's history. Larger population than ever before. And the president can't say all those things about the country. Our economy has grown 50 percent faster than the national GDP, even since the national recession."
He claims that Politiifact.com verified this. Politifact is fast and loose with facts and conclusions, but even they would not completely agree with his claim.

He went to West Monroe to award the 1st Governor's Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence to the Robertson family of Duck Dynasty fame. Being proud to support a racist group, he went on to say patriarch Phil Robertson and his wife, Miss Kay, earned barely more than $8,000 during the first year he began manufacturing duck calls in the early 1970s.

Well, the Federal Minimum Wage in 1972 was $1.60 -- Louisiana didn't and doesn't have one -- which paid $3,200 a year at 40 hours a week for 50 weeks. Earning $8,000 the first year in your own business was not bad back then, even for 2 people, one of whom was a woman.

Yes, Booby J is on his slow march to the Whitehouse.

Two Things: Discrimination

I read 2 interesting pieces, the T-P's (AP) piece on the Metro Planning Comms of BR and NO spending 300K of Federal funds on a feasibility study of a train from BR to The Crescent City; and The Gambit's editorial about the South being on the wrong side of history, once again, vis-a-vis gay marriage/rights.

About the first; In 2009 Jindal rejected the chance to get 300 million in stimulus money from the Fed to build a high speed train for the same route, with options to expand the service to points beyond. The studies had been done and the deal was ready to go, then Lil' Bobby nixed it. So why are we spending so much money on a new study? Boondoggle, perchance? Slopping the hogs?

As to the second, I have spent so much time watching the pullback of our civil rights by Conservatives: aliens, women, asians, blacks, hispanics, the poor, that I did not connect the dots. Gambit, much to my surprise, did just that. Every state in the South that had laws against interracial marriage now have laws against same sex marriage.

Time to reread M/F by Anthony Burgess.

Jindal Attacks Obama for...Creating Jobs!!!

I begin to wonder when our Gov last told the truth--I certainly can't recall a single time. His latest pack of lies came in an email 19 August 2011:
Dear Friend -Louisiana is now in the tenth month of consecutive, private-sector job growth according to new numbers from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics—with new, even lower unemployment numbers to boot.

These numbers serve as the tangible validations of our plan to put Louisiana's best foot forward in spite of a difficult national economy, in spite of a bloated and ineffective Washington.

Make no mistake; we arrived in our current situation because we had a plan.

When businesses were asked why they didn't come to Louisiana – one of the most cited reasons was corruption.  Thus, we laid out historic ethics reforms to inspire confidence in our state, tax cuts to embrace growth, and workforce training that guarantees citizens are ready and able on day one to go to work.

The evidence is clear: cleaning up government and empowering employers has brought us jobs, new families and growth during a national economic crisis!

President Obama's plan, or at this juncture shall I say plan-in-planning, is to preach from the national pulpit about the evils of wasteful and overly large government all the while expanding it as fast as he possibly can.  He is talking the talk, but staying rigidly immobile when it comes to walking the walk.

He has no plan, has not had a plan in many months, and is currently on vacation in Martha's Vineyard taking in the ocean views while the country scratches its head in total bemusement at how utterly disengaged this president is.

The plan will come next month, he tells us.

It's big government to the rescue in typical big government style—at the pace of a particularly lazy snail.

A plan should have been in place since day one. We had one, it worked, and Obama has only to look south toward Louisiana to see a clear path toward a brighter economic future.

Enjoy your vacation, Mr. President. We will continue working.

What was Jindal's plan? To publicly denounce and reject the Stimulus money from Washington before accepting it and handing out, via expensive helicopter trips, over-sized checks with his name on them, as though the checks came from him. He also fails to mention that a lot of that Public Sector job growth occurred in Charter Schools subsidized by the Feds, Katrina and Rita and BP clean up and rebuilding, subsidized by the Feds (and by money the Feds forced BP to pay). I am sure a few jobs were created by Jindal's dark deals with Chouest, Halliburton  and other friends.


Jindal criticizes The Pres for announcing he will present a plan for reducing waste and creating jobs without announcing that plan. That is very squirrelly logic from an ethically challenged man. And where is Jindal's Plan for Jobs? Where is the plan of the National Republican Party? 


They don't have one.

How Did Jindal Become A Millionaire?

Porpoises are turning up dead on the Mississippi and Alabama coast at 10 times the normal rate and I am sure BP had nothing to do with it. But back in July I said that we and the Gulf are screwed for at least 30 years, so let me talk about the Gov.

Jindal has held only a single job in the private sector, when he was 24. He worked one year for a consulting firm and for the last 16 years he has been paid by taxpayers, either as an appointee or as an elected official. But he is a multi-millionaire. How does that work? His parents weren't rich -- his mother worked as a bureaucrat in Gov. Foster's administration -- so they didn't give it to him.  A US Congressman gets $165,000 a year. How did he amass his millions?

He did lure Albemarle to LA with huge tax incentives, and he had over a quarter million dollars invested in that company in 2005 when his wife worked for them. And Albemarle happily contributed to both of his runs for Governor. But from where did those multi-millions come?

It does seem a mystery, but his wealth helps explain his war on Louisiana. The stupid rich don't think they benefit from public schools, public health and public wealfare -- all those things formerly called 'the commonweal '-- so they work to destroy it. Yet the Republican Governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, and Florida are so outrageously attacking the less-than-rich that they are making Jindal look like a small-time piker.

He's not. Just remember that he's not done yet.

Jindal's Plans

I just found this courtesy of jindalwatch.com/wheresbobby/ I consider Jeff Crouere a phony pundit and a fairly brain-dead Neo-Con but he got this right:

After spending the past few months fundraising and campaigning for out of state Republican candidates, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal began a jammed packed eight day book tour today. This morning, the Governor was interviewed on the Today show and Fox and Friends. He is also being featured on Fox News as one of the top 12 GOP presidential prospects for 2012. He will soon jet to California for meetings and fundraisers and then travel back across the country to Washington D.C. for more book promotion. He finally arrives back in Baton Rouge next Tuesday. In a poll on www.TheDeadPelican.com  67 percent of respondents believe that all of this travel is purely for self promotion that solely benefits the Governor.

 All of this publicity will help Governor Jindal sell copies of his book, “Leadership and Crisis,” make plenty of money and raise his profile nationally. However, while he is busy travelingand promoting, Chad Rogers, publisher of the Dead Pelican, and many others are asking a very simple question, “Who is running Louisiana?”

 I guess the state is just running itself. So, if a Governor is not needed, maybe we can save the salary and let the Lt. Governortake the job. From the minute he was elected Governor, Bobby Jindal has been consumed by an overwhelming desire for the national spotlight. In recent months, his national ambitions have reached an obscene level. During the fall campaign, he traveled all across the country, raising money, collecting political favors and helping various GOP candidates. Curiously, he refused to endorse any Louisiana candidates and neglected our state’s severe problems.

I think Jindal is destroying Public Health, Public Schools, Public Transportation, and fighting Social Security so he can cut taxes. The only reason to do this is to put it on display as being "Fiscally Responsible" to the Republican Party, the NRC, for a reach for some national office. It is clear that Bobby will have to hightail it out of the Bayou state pretty soon because his vultures will come home to roost and things will get very ugly here and for him. 

The only reason he is running for reelection is that LA has an off-year election for the Governor, so he won't have a shot for a National spot until next year. 

I don't think Fox would hire him, as they did hire Palin, as a pundit, so he'll need a job until that National offer comes.

Jindal's War on Louisiana

No word on mental health, but as I posted a month or so ago, closing access to mental health will have severe repercussions and look what happened last Saturday in Arizona.
The Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals’ Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Unit provides these facts about Louisiana on their website:

• Approximately 208,000 adults or seven percent of adults in Louisiana have been diagnosed with diabetes.
• African Americans have the highest prevalence of diabetes, with a nine percent diagnosis rate, compared to five percent of Hispanics and six percent of the white population.
• Over 20% of adults currently do not have health insurance of any kind, including Medicaid or Medicare.
• Nearly one out of four adults is obese.
• Louisiana has the fourth highest cardiovascular death rate in the nation.
• One in four adults in Louisiana are current smokers.
• One in four Louisiana children have tried cigarettes by the 6th grade.
• Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Louisiana, accounting for almost 40 percent of all deaths in the state.

The Myth of Charter Schools and Waiting for Superman

I found this on Daily Kos:

Waiting For SuperFraud 

By Michael T. Martin

Public schools have to fail. There is no alternative. So give up trying to argue otherwise with facts and logic.

The mockumentary Waiting For Superman made this clear. Funded by millionaires, the movie told the story of some privatized schools in Harlem portrayed as saviors of children otherwise condemned to public schools. Privatized schools mostly funded by hedge fund millionaires on Wall Street. They spent two million dollars to promote the film nationally. Another major film titled "The Lottery" told a similar tale: children in Harlem desperate to escape public schools. Funded by more millionaires.

State Senator Bill Perkins, who represents the people of Harlem, tried to put profit restrictions on these privatized schools. So the millionaires spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to run an opponent against him in the November, 2010, election. The people of Harlem voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Perkins.

One of the supposed heroes in the mockumentary was Michele Rhee, the caustic head of Washington, D.C., schools. She subsequently was the focus of the November, 2010, mayor’s election in D.C., campaigning for the existing mayor who appointed her, promising to resign if he lost. The people of D.C. voted him and her out.

The little people in Harlem and D.C. who see the truth on the ground voted against the millionaires. But the big money people still rate Rhee as a hero and keep pouring money and propaganda into charter schools. Ever wonder why? Brooklyn city councilman Charles Barron laments the situation in New York City: "Our public schools need to be in the control of parents and the community, as opposed to businessmen who see the $23 billion budget as a means to giving no-bid contracts to their cronies."

In April, 1999, the Wall Street financiers at Merrill Lynch published a 193 page "In-depth Report" titled "The Book of Knowledge, Investing in the Growing Education and Training Industry." Early in the report they noted: "The K-12 market is the largest segment of the education industry with approximately $360 billion spent annually or over $6,500 per year per child. Despite the size, the K-12 market is the most problematic to invest in today. Entrenched bureaucracies and personal and political interests contribute to the challenges facing this sector."

Public schools HAVE to fail in order to crack open this egg and give these financiers access to the $360 billion they are after (estimates are that it is around $700 billion today). No matter what logic you use to explain the problems or successes of public education, it will be of no avail: public schools HAVE to fail. Whatever it takes. In a 2007 appellate court decision ruling that Merrill Lynch could not be sued by Enron stockholders for facilitating the fraud of Enron, the dissenting third member of the judicial panel wrote: "The majority immunizes a broad array of undeniably fraudulent conduct from civil liability."

Big money wants the public schools to fail and they are quite willing to engage in "undeniably fraudulent conduct" to ensure it. One prescient book titled "The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America’s Public Schools" told the tale back in 1996 but logic and facts won’t stop big money.

Back about the time NCLB was promulgated, Ron Susskind, a New York Times reporter, related a conversation with a senior aide to President George W. Bush in the summer of 2002: "The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore.’"

Big money is "the way the world really works anymore." Enough money to buy political influence. A lesson well taken from the experience of the tobacco industry in fighting the truth of lung cancer. A lesson perhaps best exemplified by the Tobacco Institute’s "Powell Memorandum" that exhorted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to establish a conspiracy to counter the environmentalism and consumerism of the public schools. The author of which was soon afterward appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The current leadership of the Republican Congress in the House and Senate both have long established economic ties to the tobacco industry. House speaker Boehner was criticized several years ago for handing out tobacco lobby checks on the floor of the House during a crucial vote on tobacco regulation. People whose self interest depends on addicting children to a poisonous product now claim to have the best interests of children in mind.

The overarching thrust of the mockumentary Waiting For Superman is that teachers’ unions are responsible for the faux failure of public schools. That teachers have their own self interest rather than that of children in mind. The teachers’ unions that have been major supporters of the Democratic Party since the Civil Rights era. So the Republican Party will stop at nothing to undermine public education.

After President Clinton was elected in the early 1990s, Reed Hundt, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (1993-97), asked H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Education Bill Bennett to support legislation that would pay for internet access in all classrooms and libraries in the country. "I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education."

Grover Norquist, a major political leader in the Republican conservative movement, was asked by writer Ben Adler of The New Republic "How evolution should be taught in public schools." Norquist responded "The real problem here is that you shouldn’t have government-run schools." Norquist is better known for his patriotic comment that he wants to shrink the federal government to where he can drown it in a bathtub. His words; somewhat evocative of drowning a child.

So there are powerful forces who will ensure that public schools fail. There is no sense arguing to the contrary, there is over $700 billion to believe otherwise. The same greed by the same people that left the U.S. economy in ruins, with millions of ordinary people unemployed and in bankruptcy, will ensure that the U.S. education system is soon in the same condition. Public education has to fail, because that is "the way the world really works anymore."

Jindal and the Destruction of Louisiana

Here is a piece in the Advocate that helps explain the the new Census results. LA has the lowest population growth of the South. This is directly due to Jindal's selfish ambitions. I know he wants to get on the National stage, but, like most Republicans, he is hopelessly deluded. The Neo Cons don't like Gays or Latinos, and they are not big on women (except for scandals), and they hate the poor and the working class.
His book is not doing as well as Palin's second work of fiction--perhaps the title?--and he is allegedly gearing up to run for re-election next Novembre.

But the roof is about to fall in on him: cutting taxes on the wealthy to foment a budget crisis is not a good economic plan. When his house of cards falls, will he still be able to tout his tax cutting strategy to the Conservative faithful?  I think not, he is BROWN, lest you forget, and those tea partiers seem partial to white folks. Happy New Year!

Jindal hates Louisiana

Sorry, I don't where I got this, but it is not mine:

Bobby Jindal used his widely panned response to Barack Obama's first State of the Union to infamously decry $160m of "wasted" government spending on Volcano Monitors, used by scientists to predict volcanic eruptions. Only months later, the scorned monitors detected a volcano eruption in Alaska.
One year later, he demanded $300m of sand berms to "protect the coast" from BP oil, despite wide and deep scientific testimony opposing the plan. The sand berms were recently declared an utter failure.
Bobby Jindal is a fraud and he hates science.

I have been saying this for a long time, Jindal hates Louisiana.

Louisiana, They're Trying to Wash Us Away

Now the Feds have waded in on Jindal sand castles:
http://www.fox8live.com/news/local/story/Oil-blocking-sand-berms-called-a-waste-of-money/ClIpRwPXIEW1_uysLt6MzQ.cspx

BP allotted $390 million for Bobby's little toy berms, and he has spent nearly $200 million so far. No one, excepting the home-schooled Jindal posse, think the berms will have any positive effect on the wetlands. Most are expected to disappear because of wave action. But why spend $200 million on castles in the sand when it could have been spent on rebuilding the wetlands--you know, filling in canals and planting oyster grass and cypress trees?
The answer is simple. Jindal wants to show the country that he is an effective leader: he slashed the LA budget (never mind that he cut mental health services and public clinics or that he devastated public education and screwed public transportation -- the light rail train from N.O. to Red Stick -- and he saved the wetlands from the black curse of BP's oil spill by building useless berms.
And guess where that sand for the berms came from: it was dredged up from the coastal waterways, which killed massive numbers of bottom-dwelling creatures and altered water flows and currents. Bravo!
Did I mention that money could be better spent restoring the wetlands? But there is no photo opts in doing the right thing.

Bulldozing LSU

I was too dismayed by the foul give away going on in D.C. to write about this Tuesday story in the TiPsy. Mary Landrieu's support of Bernie Sanders 8 1/2 speech this past Friday baffled me because she said she would have a hard time deciding which way to vote, because, you know, a family making $500,000 can be very middle class. I have many well-off friends but I don't know anyone making that much money. Billy Goldring, maybe.
I made my calls and sent my emails and had no impact on my elected officials, so I can move on.

I was dismayed by the Tuesday article because it only presents the pro side of the plan to give LSU autonomy. Jan Moller is a good reporter, so I assume his piece was heavily edited to sell us the idea.
But let me point out a few details of the downside of this odious plan. The plan would eliminate 115 administrative jobs. Does this sound like a good idea with our unemployment already so high? This plan, despite their rosy prediction of saving $85 million over the next 5 years, will likely raise tuition $750 a semester.
The interesting thing about the Louisiana Flagship Coalition (LFC) is that it presents itself as a group working to preserve and improve LSU, but they are really Jindal supporters moving his anti public school agenda through the back door.
This plan would have a domino effect on jobs in Louisiana far exceeding the puny dreams of its creators. Taking LSU out of the State University system and raising tuition would effective limit the options of our high school grads. at this time, any LA High School grad can attend a state university if they can afford it. If LSU opts out of the system, that won't be the case.
The LFC believes that one of LSU's problem is its low graduate percentage, but I firmly assert that a kid getting 1 or 2 or 3 years of university is better off than a kid with only a HS diploma. The LFC would end that by raising admittance standards. That would have a rippling effect though out the LA university system because all the grads denied admittance to LSU would have to go to other schools in the system, placing huge pressure on those schools.
I envision Louisiana sliding downwards into the maelstrom of higher unemployment and lower business investment, both due to the poorly educated youth.
And, education is only one part of the equation of destruction. Jindal wants to kill public health,too. Did you read this? Free clinics in poor neighborhoods do not have a place in Bobby's heart.
Oh, Jindal is going on a fund-raising tour of Texas today--and you thought he was back to rule judiciously.

War on Louisiana: Jindal's Agenda, Part 2

I heard this, La. Drops Use Of Christmas Trees To Save Coast, on TV yesterday, but combined with the news about LSU, it was too much bad stuff to write about.

Now I can.

The meager program costs $175,000 and has the added benefit of recycling Xmas trees and so reduces garbage costs. It started in 1991 and has helped to rebuild and slow the loss of vital wetlands. Jindal tossed this cheap program, thereby putting more pressure on local budgets, yet he thought redesigning the State flag was a priority.
The story about LSU ran on the front page of the T-P yesterday. The upshot is that LA Flagship Coalition, a non-profit formed by Sean Reilly of Lamar Advertising and Lane Grigsby of Cajun Contractors to take LSU out of the University system, would free LSU to run its own affairs and opt out of Civil Service rules. It would hire non-union workers to reduce costs. LSU was ranked as one of the best universities in the US the last 2 years, based on 2007 and 08, and before the draconian budget cuts by Lil Bobby in 08. Reilly speculates that the LSU System would benefit by sharing the money that LSU would have gotten from the state. But Jindal is certain to cut the budget by that amount so he can continue to toot his horn about his "fiscal responsibility".

War on Louisiana: Jindal's Agenda, Part 1

This week liberal outrage has been focused on Arizona's Brewercare that is effectively killing it's citizens by denying Healthcare-provided organ transplants. Keith Olbermann interviewed 2 men last week who had been prepped to get transplants but, at the last minute, were told they were no longer eligible because of Gov Jan Brewer's Healthcare cuts. He followed up on the story this week and he encouraged viewers to donate money to help with the vital transplants. 
The NY Times ran this story yesterday: Arizona Cuts Financing for Transplant Patients.

This is horrible stuff and Gov Brewer is showing a callous lack of humanity. But consider Gov Jindal.
True, he is not actively killing people by denying services, but he is closing down public clinics and cutting financing to public schools. This has 2 effects, fewer people get adequate healthcare and education, and more people are out of work, so this damages the LA economy. And eventually, denying mental services to poor people will result in deaths, either by suicide or murder.

I got another email from Jindal's publisher today, another invite to join Jindal in Red Stick for a book signing. I responded that I would rather eat a bug and a better title for his book would be : Bobby Jindal--Leadership to Crisis.

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?

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.

Jindal's Berms are Killing

Officials with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Louisiana Audubon Council disagreed in comments submitted this week to the Army Corps of Engineers in response to LA's permit request for the 6 berms already under construction and twelve more more. The first 6 berms are being built under an emergency permit while a permanent permit is considered.
Fisheries & Wildlife Service official James Boggs urged the corps not to approve construction of any more pieces of the project beyond those already built.
Boggs said the berms were too small to withstand coastal erosive forces, including storm waves and surges, and was demonstrated when Hurricane Alex "almost eliminated the nascent berm" with just tropical storm winds in July.
The slow pace of construction makes it unlikely that the state's goal of completing the first six berms by the end of November will be met, or that the state could complete the remaining 56 miles of the project within nine months, as proposed.
"Any large-scale threat to the Louisiana coast from Deepwater Horizon oil will likely have dissipated long before the completion of the berm barrier project," he wrote.
The danger caused by these bogus berms was highlighted today by the annoucement today from the Gulf Restoration Network.
But I guess we should be used to Bobby's blatant lying.