ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION, BOBBY?

The recent mass killings in Tucson, Aurora and Newtown have sparked public conversations about the deficiencies in state-run mental health systems across the United States. But few states are poised to spend their own money to reverse as much as a decade of budget cutbacks in those areas.

Instead, many of them are counting on an infusion of federal mental-health dollars. Because Medicaid includes mental-health benefits, those states that opt into the Medicaid expansion included in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will be able to make mental health coverage available to thousands of their citizens who do not now have it.
For the first three years that additional coverage would cost the states nothing: Under terms of the Affordable Care Act, the federal government  will cover 100 percent of the costs of new Medicaid enrollees for the first three years and 90 percent after 2020.

Louisiana is not presently known for its sterling mental health care system.  Nevertheless, our governor, Bobby Jindal, has opted out of the Medicaid expansion which would cover mental health care on conservative principles, but I wonder if he may reconsider.   The majority of the citizens of Louisiana are against any sort of regulation of firearms or ammunition, giving as their reason that it's not guns that kill people, but deranged individuals who manage to get their hands on guns who kill people.  How about it, members of the NRA in Louisiana?  Why not start a campaign to urge the governor to sign on to the expanded Medicaid program that will enable more persons with mental illness to get treatment? 

The mentally ill deserve the same treatment as those with physical illness, because it's the right thing to do, but whatever your motive behind opting into the Medicaid expansion, just do it, Governor.  The Medicaid expansion program would serve a good many people with physical illnesses and offer preventive care.  What's not to like?  If conservative principles prevent you from giving the citizens of Louisiana services they need, then, in the name of simple compassion for the well-being of the people you serve, you should ditch your principles.

Also, Governor, in the event you hadn't noticed, the line of Republican governors who refuse to participate in the Medicaid expansion program is broken.  I expect more Republican governors will decide to adopt the program, so you would not stand alone if you changed your mind.  Perhaps you and your good friend Rick Perry (Tweedledum and Tweedledee?) from Texas might have a conversation about a change in policy. 

Arizona will participate in the expansion of Medicaid, Gov. Jan Brewer said Monday in her State of the State address, making her the third Republican governor to agree to one of the key components of President Barack Obama's health care reform.

Brewer said that if she did not accept the Medicaid funds for Arizona, other states could claim those federal dollars and create jobs that otherwise would be created in Arizona. Fellow Republican governors Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada also plan to expand Medicaid to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is currently $14,856 for an individual.

But 10 other Republican governors have already decided not to participate. The Supreme Court's 2012 ruling that affirmed Obama's health care law allows states to refuse to take part in the Medicaid expansion.

CAUTION!

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to eliminate state income and corporate taxes and shift the funding of Louisiana government toward higher sales taxes is a “huge change” that needs to be approached “very, very slowly,” said an LSU economics professor who closely monitors tax revenue.
....

“There are certain things you can say from the beginning,” said Jim Richardson, an LSU professor and member of the Revenue Estimating Conference, which decides how much state government can spend. “There will be a redistribution of who pays for state government. Unless there are some real different clauses built into the law, it will change the burden from higher-income to middle- or lower-income.”

Aside from removing the burden of taxation from the mostly polluting large industries in Louisiana, which are partly to blame for the state's place at the top of the lists of unhealthy places to live, along with removing the tax burden from wealthy individuals and placing it on the shoulders of the poor and middle class, what could possibly go wrong with Jindal's plan in place?

Well, the citizens of Louisiana who live near the border of another state with a sales tax less than a possible 12.5%, say Mississippi, with a tax of 7%, might decide to shop across the border, and how will local businesses accommodate themselves to the loss of revenue?  Of course, the out-of-state purchases will also reduce state sales tax revenue.  Or folks may decide to shop online more frequently.  By law, we are required to total sales taxes on online purchases on our income tax forms, though not everyone is scrupulous in this regard, but, if there is no income tax and no tax form, then how will we pay?

The high sales taxes will limit the efforts of parishes and municipalities to raise revenue for schools, libraries, etc. through sales taxes. Of course, local governments already rely too much on sales taxes for revenue, even as property taxes remain quite low compared to other states, but such is the way in Louisiana.

This plan is another of Jindal's mad schemes, which may have taken form with advice from his good friend Rick Perry, the governor of Texas.  I'm told there's no chance that the plan will make it into law, but Jindal's mad schemes have done so previously, because a majority of spineless legislators routinely give the governor what he wants.

UPDATE: Lamar White has a brilliant post on Bobby Jindal and his latest scheme, that should be required reading for all Louisianians.  Sadly, those who most need to know (I'm looking at you, members of the Louisiana State Legislature) will not read Lamar's words, or they will read and dismiss them.

This all may sound too biting, too personal. But, yes, it is personal: Louisiana is my home state. As his newest proposal should forcefully demonstrate to anyone in Louisiana with a working brain, it should be clear, Governor Bobby Jindal doesn’t give a damn about the overwhelming majority of Louisianans. He’s hoping that we’re all too stupid to realize that eliminating taxes for corporations and eliminating the state’s personal income tax may sound awesome, but in a state as poor as Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana, it merely shifts the tax burden to those who can least afford it. Over 39% of Louisianans don’t even make enough money to qualify to pay income taxes, and the overwhelming majority of those who do qualify don’t pay much.

If you care about Louisiana, you should be sickened and insulted by Jindal’s proposal. It’s cronyism at its worst, a sure-fire formula to establish a banana republic.

Bravo, Lamar!

H/T to Adrastos at First Draft for the link to Lamar.

BOBBY JINDAL - MAKE THE POOR PAY MORE

Gov. Bobby Jindal said Thursday that he wants to eliminate the state’s personal and corporate income taxes.

Jindal declined an interview request to discuss the proposal.

“Eliminating personal income taxes will put more money back into the pockets of Louisiana families and will change a complex tax code into a more simple system that will make Louisiana more attractive to companies who want to invest here and create jobs,” Jindal said in a prepared statement.
....

Legislative leaders who attended a briefing with the governor said the lost revenue will be replaced, possibly through sales tax increases.

We'll see if the legislators lie down and allow Jindal to walk over them with this brilliant idea. Jindal says he is concerned about the burden the sales tax will impose on low-income people and the poor, but I don't believe him.  In his policies, Jindal shows clearly that he does not care about the plight of the poor.  He is determined to destroy state government institutions and privatize the functions of government, no matter the negative impact on the poor.  The rich and big business are Jindal's constituency, along with Christian fundamentalists who want schools to teach junk science and all access to abortion banned.

As usual, Jindal declined an interview with the Baton Rouge Advocate.  The governor is inaccessible to the local press, but he gives interviews to certain friendly national media to further his ambition to be president. 

THIS MAN WANTS TO BE YOUR PRESIDENT

From the Advocate:

In Baton Rouge, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s latest round of state budget cuts are forcing shelter director Audrey Wascome to contemplate cutting the number of beds for battered women and children by a third.

The reductions will hit shelters for domestic violence victims across the state, including the Metropolitan Center for Women and Children in the New Orleans area. The Metropolitan Center’s executive director, Dale Standifer, said Thursday the cuts will erode funding for an emergency shelter that gives women a place to sleep when they have nowhere else to go.
....

Funding for family violence prevention and intervention programs was cut by $998,413, a 16 percent reduction in total dollars through the contracts the state holds with shelters and other domestic violence prevention providers.

Other reductions impacted hospice services, health care providers, dental benefits for pregnant women and contract services for the poor, the mentally ill and the drug-addicted.

Jindal wants to put the women and children in hotel rooms, but Wascome says there is no money to pay for hotel rooms.  Right now she turns away women and children every day, because the shelters are full, and she may have to reduce the number of beds in the because of budget cuts.  Why is it so often the most vulnerable who must suffer?

For 2010, the Violence Policy Center ranked Louisiana fourth in the nation in the number of women murdered by men in single victim-single offender homicides.  Between Jan. 1, 2010, and Oct. 31, 2012, domestic violence was blamed for the deaths of nearly 200 people across Louisiana, according to the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 

Bobby Jindal is the very soul of "compassionate conservatism", and he wishes to share his concept of "compassion" with the entire country. He wants to be in charge of the country so much that he travels frequently to promote his own cause and phones in his orders to his staff in Louisiana.

Jindal declines requests for interviews or commentary from the local media, because he wants to be a star on the national stage, and coverage by the media in Louisiana will not further his national ambitions.  The locals know too much and might ask embarrassing questions.

JINDAL'S BUDGET CUTS PROGRAMS FOR THE MOST FRAGILE

Bobby Jindal, governor of the State of Louisiana, who lusts for a role in national politics, discovered (Oops!) another hole in the state budget. Oh! What to do?  Here's Bobby's list of programs which will be cut:

Among the deepest cuts were at the state Department of Health and Hospitals and the state Department of Children and Family Services.

Doctors, hospitals, mentally ill patients, pregnant women and dying patients will be affected by the state’s financial problems.

State Sen. Sharon Broome, D-Baton Rouge, complained that the reductions affect departments that deal with the state’s most fragile residents. “I hope we can see these reductions with faces on them,” she told Nichols.

Faces?  Does the governor see human faces?  Would Jindal recognize a human face if he saw one?

Other reductions include:

• Contract reductions for health care providers who help the poor, the mentally ill and the drug-addicted.
• A 1 percent cut in the rate that doctors and hospitals are paid by the state to care for the poor.
• The elimination of dental benefits for pregnant women relying on the state for health care.
• Possibly laying off 63 state government workers.

Jindal is the man who wants to be president or vice-president of the US, or, if that doesn't happen, he wants a big job in Washington DC to have the power to mess up the country in the same way he's wrecked the state he "governs".  He spends much of his time traveling around the country drumming up support, ignoring our wreck of a state, except to dash home from time to time to cut the budgets of state agencies.  (For all I know, Jindal may cut the budget from afar, because he is not forthcoming with the local media about his out-of-state travels.)  When the national media portray Jindal as a rising star in the "new" Republican Party, beware.  The policies Jindal trumpets on the national scene are the same old Republican policies that advantage the rich at the expense of the poor and the middle class disguised by clever, manipulative words.  Jindal is the consummate flim-flam man.

DOES BOBBY UNDERSTAND THE FISCAL CLIFF?

Paul Krugman is fairly certain Bobby Jindal doesn't understand the fiscal cliff, based on a recent op-ed by the Louisiana governor.
....

"You really have to wonder how someone who's a major political figure could be this uninformed," the Nobel Prize-winning economist wrote in the New York Times blog post.

Krugman wrote that Jindal fails to mention that "the looming problem is spending cuts and tax increases that will shrink the deficit too soon."

The fiscal cliff is a set of $1.2 trillion in tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to take place on Jan. 1 if the government does not reach a deal to avert it. Economists warn that it could cause a recession by slashing government spending and raising taxes too quickly, but Krugman argues that Jindal doesn't seem to understand this.

I wonder what exactly Jindal does understand as he sets about destroying institutions in Louisiana.  Despite his Ivy-League university education and Rhodes Scholarship sponsored study at Oxford University, he seems to have only a dim understanding of his policies and their consequences.  He travels the country expounding his views, and the media see him as a shining light in the new Republican Party, but neither the media nor the Republican Party seem yet to have arrived at reality-based thinking.  How can it be that politicians and the media either ignore or make only feeble efforts to discover the facts of a situation or policy before holding forth? 

Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.

JINDAL HAS MOJO BACK?

The last year has been a bad one for many Republicans, but 2012 was exceptionally kind to Bobby Jindal.

The 41-year-old Louisiana governor ends the presidential campaign cycle as a staple on the Sunday talk shows, a regular subject of 2016 speculation, and a legitimate contender to become the next standard-bearer of a party that once again finds itself leaderless.

And the former Rhodes Scholar has Rick Perry to thank for it all.

You could have fooled me about Jindal.  Do any of the journalists who heap praise on the governor ever check with the folks down in Louisiana?  You know, the state which Jindal "governs", and I use the word loosely and with scare quotes, because his policies are well on their way to destroying a good many institutions in Louisiana.  Where are you, Governor Jindal?  We seldom see you or hear from you in the Gret Stet where you should be accountable, but are not.  You won't talk to the local media, even as you concentrate your efforts to claim the spotlight in the national media. Your heavy-handed style of governance from afar, along with a legislature, most of whose members are either too lazy or too frightened to cross you, make for much mischief down heah.

From an adviser  to Perry:

"Anything we asked of him [Jindal], he was there," said one former Perry campaign official. "When the tide was high and when the tide was low, he was a loyal soldier." 

How we the people of Louisiana wish we could say the same.  Yes, we know Jindal can't run for a third term, and he doesn't want to be bored when he leaves office, so he feels compelled to make friends around the country who will be beholden to him should he decide to make another run for president or vice-president.  It's amazing to me that Jindal even entertains the thought that he can ever be president, but I suppose stranger things have happened.  A little ego goes a long way, and Jindal seems to have far more than his fair share.  Still, if all else fails, surely there's a well-paid lobbyist job out there waiting for him.

Rick, Bobby's separated-at-birth twin

That the media, who hail Jindal as a shining light in the Republican Party, know so little about the wreck he has made of our state, which made such a poor showing even before Jindal's depredations is quite discouraging. 

Photo of Jindal by Gage Skidmore from Wikipedia.    

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - BOBBY JINDAL

"If we want people to like us, we have to like them first."

There's truth in what you say, Governor.  My question for you is do you like us, us being the citizens of the state in which you serve as governor?  Louisiana is the name of the state way down in the South, remember?  Yes, I knew you would.  My next question is, if you like us, why are you so seldom here in Louisiana with the people of the state of which you are governor?

 

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.”
....

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.
....

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.
....

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.

TRUTH NOT TRUTHINESS, GOVERNOR JINDAL

Yesterday's issue of the Daily Comet carries an opinion piece and Republican commercial by Governor Bobby Jindal sent out before he left for the Republican convention in Tampa Florida.  I assume that's where the governor is, although we never know for sure until he's left the state and landed wherever he's headed, because he doesn't tell. 

Jindal was passed over as Romney's choice for vice-president, and he is not the keynote speaker at the convention, although he will give a speech sometime during the gathering, thus he may not have been in the best mood when he wrote "A Peek Behind the Curtain".   He speaks of gaffes and spin by Obama and Biden, but Jindal has his own collection of gaffes and spins.  You can read the entire propaganda piece with its varying assortment of truth and truthiness, but I want to focus on the one untruth that is spreading wildly in Republican commercials and speeches.

Romney says it, Ryan says it, the commercials say it, and now Jindal says it.  Although it has been pointed out time and again that that Obama did not remove the work requirement from the welfare reform law, the Republicans continue to push the lie.  Apparently, Republicans care not at all about the truth.  What a surprise!  An article in the Los Angeles Times explains the waivers to various states well.  I thought I should answer Jindal's false statement with the truth, so I left the following comment to the article in the Daily Comet online site.

Governor Jindal says:

"Even with rising unemployment, the President has moved to dismantle the historic reform of 1996 that instituted work requirements for welfare. Despite the fact that the welfare caseload fell by half after those historic reforms, the President is telling states that his administration will waive established work requirements for welfare assistance."
  
Either Governor Jindal is ignorant about what the waivers to the 5 states that requested them do, or he is less than candid about what he knows.  Why not ask his fellow Republican governors in the States of Utah and Nevada why they requested the waivers and how the waivers work?  The waivers do not eliminate the work requirement.  Any state that fails to meet the 20% employment requirement loses the waiver.

Republicans call for more power to be returned to the states, but when the president does just that, they slam him.  Gov. Jindal suggests that the American people don't need spin from the president and vice-president, but the governor seems to have learned a bit about spin himself, as he's spinning like a top with his charges that the work requirement for welfare has been eliminated.

There you have it.  I also gave a contribution to the Obama campaign, my first and probably only contribution of this election season, because the thought of the Romney-Ryan team running the country scares me to death.

WEEKLY REMINDER

DON'T WORRY...I'M HAPPY

Gov. Bobby Jindal praised Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s running mate choice Saturday and dismissed speculation that he is angling for a cabinet post.

Jindal frequently joined Romney on the campaign trail and had emerged as a possible vice presidential candidate. The governor made appearances for Romney in Louisiana, Ohio, Utah, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Colorado.
....

“Don’t mistake my motives here. I have been traveling all over the country and been campaigning for and with Gov. Romney because it is crucial that he wins, and that we make Barack Obama a one-term president. As for me — why would a guy with the best job in the world be looking for another one?” he said.

Why, indeed, Governor?  I have a question for you.  Why, if you have the best job in the world, do you spend so little time, you know, actually doing it?  Why are you absent from the state so often?  The governor's advisor, Timmy Teepell, says Jindal will be campaigning for Romney next week, because he believes Romney's election is vital to the interests of Louisiana.

“He loves being governor. He’s going to be governor until the very last day of his second term. None of that’s changed,” Teepell said.

Hmm.  What about the days in between?  Do they protest too much?

BOBBY, WE HARDLY KNOW YE

Governor Bobby Jindal joined the Republican governor rogues gallery in a debate at the Aspen Institute.  Michelle Millhollon reports on the gathering which was mainly a closed affair, but...

For a $15 admission price, the public could grab a seat on the Aspen Institute’s campus Wednesday night to listen to a panel discussion featuring Jindal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The talk was broadcast on Aspen’s public radio station and was streamed on the Internet.

Ha!  How about that lineup?

Jindal apologized several times for talking fast during the event, explaining that he wanted to fit in several points. Christie ribbed him for his bullet-point approach.

I've heard Jindal speak, and I vouch for the fact that he talks fast.  After a while, I stopped trying to keep up and switched off.

Jindal rapidly described the changes he successfully proposed for Louisiana’s public school system, racing from teacher tenure to the scholarships that use public dollars to send children to private or parochial schools.

“Basically vouchers,” Isaacson interjected to put a new name to the scholarships.

“We call it scholarships. The teacher unions call it four-letter words,” Jindal retorted.

Har-de-har-har.  Jindal made a funny.   And then is it back home to Louisiana for the governor?  Indeed not.  Jindal is off to Washington DC for meetings.  Bobby, we hardly know ye. 

FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME

From the Advocate in Baton Rouge:

Gov. Bobby Jindal wants state employees to contribute more toward their future pension benefits.

But legislation Jindal is proposing exempts the governor and other elected officials who are members of the Louisiana State Employee Retirement System, called LASERS, from the 3 percent increase in the contribution rate sought in the legislation.

The 3 percent translates into a near 40 percent increase for rank-and-file members of LASERS. But not for the governor and other elected officials — their contribution rates would not increase.

“... this Act shall not apply to an elected official during the term of office he is serving on July 1, 2012. The contribution rate for such a member shall remain what it was on July 1, 2012, for the duration of his term of office,” according to Senate Bill 52 and House Bill 56, two pension revamp measures backed by Jindal.

The law will not apply to the present administration and legislators, but why should not the pain be shared by all state employees?  The exemption is an outrage!  Jindal refuses all requests for interviews.

The legislature has the opportunity to tinker with Jindal's proposals, but they have so very often shown themselves to be sheep-like in following the governor's directions.

If you read the entire article, you will note that Jindal is zealous in providing for the portion of his own retirement that will be paid out of state coffers.

WHAT GOVERNOR JINDAL AND HIS HELPERS DID FOR LOUISIANA

From the Editor's Column in the summer issue of Louisiana Cultural Vistas:

Inventing America and Destroying Louisiana

It was Washington's generation that had to invent America and all its institutions and envision what a great nation ought to be. It was Washington and his contemporaries, foremost among them Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, who understood that a national government had to secure revenue for its institutions, and was obligated not only to provide for the national defense and the delivery of mail, but also to found libraries and universities, and to promote exploration, learning, and a civil society.

So how bitter it is for us to descend to the present political movement in Louisiana, of an infantile populism that imagines it can have a democracy and not and not have taxes adequate to provide for the commonwealth, that would savage by a loss of $300 million a year to a higher education system that had just barely gained the ranks of respectability, that incarcerates its own citizens at the highest rate in the free world, that has a high school graduation rate of of 59 percent, that slashes its arts programs 60 percent in a single year and completely eliminates funding for humanities? It is a barbarism we are imposing on ourselves, a dark that descends from the head of the stairs.

To put it in more colloquial terms, imagine that Louisiana was a football team in a 50-team league and finished perennially, year after year, in 49th or 50th place. Would we not be firing its coaches and running them out of town rather than even contemplating re-appointing them? Would the citizens really care that the tickets cost only a nickel and clamor to see such a team play? And yet politically, that is the low bar we have set for ourselves: in education, in health care, in literacy, in the humanities and culture. And it is not being imposed by Washington or people from New Jersey; we have done it to ourselves.

The complete loss of the state appropriation for the humanities, just recently at $2 million annually, will cost the state $14 million annually in economic impact, increase our illiteracy...and diminish the quality of life incalculably. I could delineate this in detail but I will suffice to illustrate the result as Laurence Sterne might have in his prescient post-modern novel "Tristram Shandy":

as a black hole.

Martin Sartisky, Ph. D.
Editor-in-Chief

There you have it. We have done it to ourselves. And Bobby Jindal is very likely to be reelected on his platform of no new taxes and ridding ourselves of the old taxes. Governance by slash and burn. Unfortunately, if I said, "Only in Louisiana!" I would not speak truth. We are surely at the extreme of the spectrum, but the same sort of madness is spread throughout the land.

LOUISIANA'S GOV. JINDAL IS SLIPPING IN THE POLLS

From Arjun Jaikumar at Daily Kos:

Polls for the Louisiana Governor's race slated for fall 2011 have been rare so far, with conventional wisdom dictating that incumbent Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal is the runaway favorite in this red state.

A new poll is out, however, from Republican pollster Market Research Insight (though it appears to have been conducted for "a group of business people", and not the Jindal campaign).

The poll shows decent but unspectacular numbers for Jindal:

Market Research Insight (R) for "a consortium of business interests". 1/10-14. Registered voters. MoE 4%.

Reelect Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) 49
Prefer someone else 40
....

So this poll isn't wholly surprising...unless you compare it to Jindal's once-stratospheric approval ratings. While pollsters once had Jindal's approval in the mid-70s, his current numbers indicate he's slid back to being a generic Republican.

Which, in Louisiana, isn't a bad place to be. It's just not completely safe, and it might be a touch early for Jindal to start burnishing his credentials for his expected 2016 presidential run. Rather, he might want to prevent his home-state approval from falling any more than it already has.

A good many folks who strongly supported the governor in the last election became quite disenchanted with our peripatetic chief executive for being absent from the state, raising money for Republican candidates in the 2010 election, when we faced a budget crisis here in the state where Jindal was elected to govern.

Some of us hoped that Jindal might be appointed to head the RNC to replace Michael Steele, thus moving him permanently out of the governor's office, but - alas - it did not happen. Now Jindal travels around the state and the country to raise money for his war chest, which already holds $7 million, for the next gubernatorial election.

Meanwhile, the state budget deficit is projected to be $1.6 billion. The governor needs to focus on finding rational solutions to the budget crisis, but he won't. Since Jindal will not entertain the idea of raising taxes, the budget must be balanced by deeper and more painful cuts than have already been put in place. As is usually the case, I fear the least amongst us will bear the brunt of the cuts.

Jindal seems to enjoy running for office and raising money for campaigns, his own and other politicians' campaigns, but he does not seem to savor doing the job he was elected to do. Yet, he will probably be reelected without much of a struggle, because Louisiana becomes more Republican with every day that goes by.