WILL BOBBY JINDAL IMPLEMENT MEDICAID EXPANSION?

From blogger CenLamar: 

The Dumbest Decision in Contemporary Louisiana History

In less than thirty days, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will make a final decision on whether he wants to accept, according to a report published by his own Department of Health and Hospitals, as much as $25 billion from the federal government in order to guarantee and expand health care coverage for as many as 653,000 poor and working class Louisiana families and individuals.
....

"The fiscally, socially, ethically, and morally responsible thing to do would be to accept the Medicaid expansion dollars to which we are already entitled. The fiscally, socially, ethically, and morally responsible thing to do would be to champion and embrace the promise of lifting hundreds of thousands of our neighbors and fellow citizens out of despair and hopelessness, to provide them with the very basic opportunity to access affordable and quality health care. It is profoundly decent, but even more than that, it is also represents the single most important and transformative investment in Louisiana’s workforce in modern history."

What are the chances that Jindal will do the right thing?  Slim to none I'd say.  The governor wants to remain pure in the eyes of his Tea Party fans, and anything that involves a link with Obamacare would render him impure.  So what if hundreds of thousands of the poor and working class in Louisiana remain without health insurance?  The governor's ideology trumps health care.

A number of Republican governors have set aside ideology and implemented the Medicaid Expansion as a no-brainer because it will not cost the states a dime for nine years and then only 10% of the costs thereafter.   In addition, perhaps the governors may have been ashamed to so blatantly put their political ambitions above the welfare of the poor and low income people of their states.  Such a lack of compassion in a man who claims to be a Catholic Christian but chooses to ignore Roman Catholic social justice teachings about preferential treatment of the poor is puzzling to me.  Has he ever heard or read the words of Pope Francis?

How healthy are the people of Louisiana?  Are the citizens of the state so far above the rest of the country in good health that we do not need the Medicaid expansion?  Indeed not.  There we are in our usual place in the group of least-healthy states, tied for 49th place with three other states.

Click on the chart and map for larger views.
 

BLOGGER REVEALS BOBBY JINDAL'S "FIXES" FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN LOUISIANA

Blogger, Lamar White, has done brilliant reporting, yes, real reporting, on Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and his gradual destruction of public education in Louisiana.  To all you professional journalists who mock the efforts of bloggers, and not all paid journalists do, my advice would be to learn from the likes of Lamar and other fine bloggers.  Lamar explores the results of the efforts of the out-of-towners whom Jindal has brought in and paid high salaries to "fix" public education in Louisiana.  I don't mean to imply that our education system did not and does not need fixing, but Jindal's failing gurus are most emphatically not doing the job of improving public education in Louisiana.

John White and his team at the Department of Education, in an effort to demonstrate how the public school system is failing Louisiana school children, are diverting millions in funding every year from public schools in order to enrich some of the worst schools in the United States– religious zealots posing as educators, fly-by-night operators who don’t even have the necessary infrastructure, and bigoted and religiously intolerant “church schools” that specialize in utilizing thoroughly debunked textbooks and materials to stifle dissent, schools that seek to enrich themselves with taxpayer dollars while reserving their right to expel any student on the basis of their perceived sexual orientation or religion.  

There you have it - the fix for public education by the well-paid out-of-towners, who are no more than flim-flam artists paid generous salaries by our flim-flam artist governor.  I am no xenophobe, but please, Governor Jindal, if you're going to bring in people from other states and pay them high salaries, even as you lay off thousands of state employees and raise the unemployment figures here in Louisiana, at the very least, hire people who are knowledgeable and competent in their jobs, and not the likes of John White and his cohorts.