Friday, November 16, 2012

POST-ELECTION WISDOM OF BOBBY JINDAL

We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,”Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”
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If he does consider a White House run, his analysis Monday suggests he’s aligning himself with an emerging school of thought on the right that GOP’s consecutive White House defeats can’t merely be solved by passing an immigration reform bill and appealing more directly to nonwhites. Jindal, a Brown Graduate and Rhodes Scholar, is already a favorite of conservative intellectuals and his assessment that Republican difficulties owe as much to economics as demographics will be well-received by right-leaning thinkers.
Jindal is the purest of opportunists. Romney is dead as a politician, and Jindal has ambitions, so he dismisses him. If the Republicans need the support of brown people to win, Jindal is brown, the man in waiting, so to speak. He has the charisma of a door post, and he is a dismal failure as governor. In my opinion, he will not go far as a national candidate.

The governor may talk a good talk, but before Republicans latch on to him as their savior, they should educate themselves on the wreck the governor has made of the State of Louisiana.  If he had an infinite amount of time, rather than the two terms allowed him, I believe Jindal would privatize every state institution.  The budget is in deep deficit, but his only solution is cut, cut, cut.  The governor will not entertain any suggestion at all to raise taxes of any kind to fill the gap in his own state.  He governs like a dictator, and the supine Louisiana legislature goes along in fear and dread of the force of opposition from the tea party conservatives who are seem to be the majority of voters in the state.  By many measures of quality of life, Louisiana places at or near the bottom in the good stuff and at or near the top in the bad stuff. As the saying goes, "TBTG for Mississippi".
As Louisiana  debuts one of the nation’s most extensive private-school voucher programs, deep divides persist over who should be accountable for ferreting out academic failure and financial abuse: the government or parents.
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About 5,600 students and 119 private schools will participate in Louisiana’s new statewide voucher program this fall.
But wait!
Despite [Superintentendant John] White’s own assertions about the importance of accountability to the voucher program, he has chosen not to hold voucher schools to the same standards. Private schools receiving vouchers will be able to continue receiving tax money previously earmarked for public schools–more than $8,000 per pupil–while scoring in the F range.

Yes, that’s right, an F. Private schools can score an F and continue receiving public funding.
And no change in policy appears on the horizon.
Nearly 1,000 rank-and-file state employees have lost their jobs since July, bringing the total to nearly 3,200 since Gov. Bobby Jindal took office in 2008, according to a Civil Service report.

The State Civil Service on Tuesday reported 967 state employee layoffs for the first four months of the state fiscal year. The number exceeds the 957 employees losing their jobs in all of fiscal year 2010-11, according to the report.

The Civil Service totals do not include the announced reduction of 1,500 state employees planned for Jan. 21 throughout the LSU public hospital system.

The reductions have occurred as Jindal moved many traditional government functions to the private sector, particularly in the health care arena.

Budget cuts have led to additional reductions in the state workforce.
This in the midst of a recession.
Census data released Thursday indicates poverty levels in Louisiana have continued to climb while household incomes declined in the last year, making the state one of the poorest in the nation.

But while more people are finding themselves mired in poverty unemployment levels have slowly been ticking down — a trend officials say they find perplexing.

Reports from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey say the median, or midpoint, household income in Louisiana declined 4.7 percent from $43,804 in 2010 to $41,734 in 2011.

Additionally, reports say the number of people in poverty increased from 18.7 percent in 2010 to 20.4 percent in 2011, a 1.7 percent increase. According to the data, the New Orleans metro area, which includes Metairie and Kenner, is among the 10 metropolitan areas in the United States with the highest percent of people living in poverty.
Perhaps not so perplexing if one considers that the jobs created are mainly shit jobs that do not lift working people out of poverty.
Louisiana’s physicians are complaining about “the lack of detail and preparation” as LSU embarks on budget cuts that affect training programs for the state’s future physicians.

“We have created another tsunami or Hurricane Katrina-type condition in regard to graduate medical education in the state,” said Dr. Andy Blalock, the Louisiana State Medical Society president.

Blalock warned Monday that the state’s “best and brightest” current and future medical students and physicians in training would leave or not come at all amid the tumult.

LSU medical school statistics show that 70 percent of those who do their physician training in Louisiana continue to practice in the state. Each physician practice means $2 million to the state’s economy, Blalock said.
Translation: there was no plan.  The Jindal administration makes it up as they go along.
The national agency that accredits graduate medical education programs is pressing LSU officials for information on their plans to revamp physician training programs.

The inquiry from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, called ACGME, came in response to publicized comments by LSU System Executive Vice President Frank Opelka about a redesign of LSU hospitals’ clinics, which would affect “Graduate Medical Education.” GME is the name for programs that train physicians.
Whoops!  Jindal's hasty and ill-planned (no plan) move to privatize the operations of several state-owned hospitals risks loss of accreditation for the graduate medical programs at Louisiana State University, the state's flagship university.  Oh well.  Our Ivy-League and Oxford-educated governor surely must know what he's doing.
While other Republican governors are starting to back away from their opposition to implementing a key part of President Obama's health care law, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Tuesday that he's not reconsidering.

"We are not implementing the exchange," Jindal said in a phone interview on Tuesday night.
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If state governments do not agree to set up an exchange, the law says that the federal government will step in and do it.
So what's the point of Jindal's decision to opt out?  To keep his hands from being soiled by the touch of "socialism"?

Bobby never gives interviews to the local media, only condescending to speak to the national media.  I'm guessing it's because the locals know more, and their questions are likely to probe deeper than he'd care to answer, and, of course, the media here doesn't give him the national exposure he so craves.  Since Jindal was elected, he's seldom home in Louisiana, as he's been all around the country campaigning for "other candidates".   Now that the election is over, the governor will perform his duties as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association, which I expect will require him to be out of state as much as ever.  Jindal often says he's not looking for a job since he has the best job in the world, but those of us in Louisiana wonder why he's seldom here working at his job.

20 comments:

  1. Well, Romney had the charisma of a doorpost and was an utter failure as a governor (except for RomneyCare), and he was nominated and came close to becoming President. I wouldn't dismiss Jindal yet.

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    1. Eleanor, you're probably right. I shouldn't count him out. I will do my bit to get the word around about his poor governance.

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  2. Everything is politics, but, seriously, if Jindal hadn't spoken up as he did, I doubt even he could have looked himself in the mirror. It was an insulting and demeaning comment. I'm glad Jindal responded to it.

    That said, Jindal isn't fooling anyone. The only one he's fooling is himself.

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    1. Elizabeth, I don't know how he can look in the mirror after what he's done to the state. The office of governor is only a stepping stone to his true goal which is something big on the national scene.

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  3. I'm reminded of the expression "if my grandmother had balls she'd be my grandfather." If the Republicans made all the changes he suggests they'd be Democrats...

    "But ya ARE, Blanche, but ya ARE..."

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    1. Very true, Renz. I can't take a word Jindal says seriously.

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  4. Ya ARE the party of Big Corporations and Wall Street, etc.

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  5. "The wreck he has made of Louisiana . . . . " Butthead Perry has likewise done awful things for the state but keeps getting re-elected over here.

    You know, since the election the rightwingers have been foaming at the mouth about how bad things are in America, how our Constitution doesn't work, that there's no democracy left in this country, yada yada.

    But who exactly was it who elected - and keeps electing - these scarecrows to high office? What party is it that keeps handing billions of dollars from the public trough to private firms with no accountability? What party is it that keeps tax rates high for the poor and low for the rich?

    And yet - as in a tale of enchantment and wizardry, the people keep voting for these fatheads and con artists, against their own best interests - then blaming everyone but themselves for the lousy results. Madness.

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    1. Russ, thank goodness governors in Louisiana are limited to two terms. In a state not known for electing sterling statesmen to the governor's office, I believe Jindal will be counted as one of the worst.

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  6. It's so good to know there's some sanity left in LA, even with Governor Jindal strutting about. Please keep getting the word out. We don't always realize things are so bad. You all will be in my prayers.

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    1. tonip1, you have no idea how good it is to hear from fellow Louisianians from the world of reality-based thinking. Thanks for the prayers. The Lord knows we need them.

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  7. Please continue to get the word out, Jindal campaigned on ethics and promised a "transparent government". What he delivered was not even close. He relies on something called ""deliberative process privilege," an exemption to the Louisiana Public Records Law that Jindal rammed through the Legislature in 2009 over the objections of the state's largest newspapers. White claimed in his letter that the privilege, which critics say applies only to the governor's office, "protects documents reflecting advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated.""
    http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/the-jindal-administration-and-deliberative-process/Content?oid=2093004

    His approval ratings in Louisiana are in the 50's. He obviously isn't planning on running for senator with numbers like that. He's clearly campaigning on the state dollar for presidency in 2016. His "Plan B" will likely be a consultant for one of the health care organizations which will likely privatize many or all of Louisiana's state hospitals.

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    1. Unknown, thanks for your additional information on the sorry state of the state. I could have gone on and on in my post, but it is already long, as you can see. I'm not done yet; there is more to come.

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  8. Your boy is first out of the 2016 gate, for sure. Guess that would rule out Nikki for veep, if he makes it through the primaries. Be very surprised if a majority of Republican primary voters will go for an individual they may well regard as a "person of color", but maybe we'll see.

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    1. The racists in Louisiana did not seem to mind the brown skin, but a black governor would be an entirely different matter.

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  9. Ambition is not wisdom.
    Aggression too often substituted for thought.
    Motion mistaken for innovation.
    It will be painful, the deliberation needed
    to restore real care to people
    that is meant by the term civilization.

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