Eighty-eight corporate members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) made campaign contributions to 66 Louisiana legislators totaling more than $884,000 since 2003, according to records obtained by Capitol News Service.
That comes to about $13,400 per legislator to entice them to cast favorable votes on ALEC legislation ranging from education and pension reform and privatization of state prisons.
It’s downright shameful that our legislators’ votes can be purchased so cheaply, especially on issues that adversely affect the lives of more than 60,000 state employees and teachers…but it’s true.
Baton Rouge Business Report editor Rolfe McCollister said Tuesday that public teachers have abandoned school children in favor of traveling to Baton Rouge on Wednesday to protest Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reform bills and that Rep. Pat Smith (D-Baton Rouge) is a thief for having stolen the future of multiple generations of children while serving on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board.
Those comments were about as shallow and lacking of substance as Gov. Jindal’s ridiculous claim that better teachers would help reduce the number of teen pregnancies. One’s first reaction to that would be, “Where did that come from?” but we saw the same report the governor quoted and it looked as idiotic in print as it sounded coming out of the governor’s mouth.
We challenge the governor, right here and right now, to provide a single instance—just one—in which that asinine claim can be substantiated.
But there was really no reason to expect any other reaction from McCollister in consideration of his own financial investment in Gov. Jindal. Apparently no boy wonder governor has ever tried to engineer an advertising boycott of his publication. If that happened, you have to wonder how long it would take him to cry foul.
Teachers have been a favorite scapegoat for legislators for years—legislators who, by the way, have reneged on their obligation to pay down the state pension systems’ $18 billion unfunded accrued liability and are now being called on to tax state workers an additional 3 percent of their paychecks not to pay the UAL but to fill in the holes in the governor’s budget.
But is it really necessary to unleash the financial resources of the corporate world on teachers and state employees?
Apparently so, and the names of many of those corporations are as familiar as, well, Coca Cola, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Cox Communications, Humana, Johnson & Johnson, Anheuser-Busch, Federal Express, UPS, Pfizer, Chevron/Texaco, Bayer, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, BP (yes, that BP), Bristol Meyers, Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly, Entergy, GEICO, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Hunt-Guillot, John Deere, International Paper, K12 Management (a large but troubled online school corporation), United Health Group, Liberty Mutual, Monsanto, Marathon Oil, Northrup Grumman, Pepsi Cola, Procter & Gamble, Reynolds American, U.S. Airways, Time Warner, Travelers Insurance, Zurich American, UST Affairs (a tobacco lobbyist), Waste Management, Verizon, Walgreens, private prison companies Corrections Cooperation of America and Wackenhut Corrections, and, of course, the biggest of them all, Koch Industries.
There also were four major political action committees—East Pac, West Pac, North Pac and South Pac—all run through the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI). Two other donor PACs included JazzPAC and Future PAC.
And yet Rolfe McCollister condemns the evil teachers’ unions for their undue influence on the education system.
Many of these corporate donors also have contributed to the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children. Some have done both and some contributors to Jindal’s wife’s foundation have also received favorable waivers of state regulations, have been awarded lucrative state contracts or have been the beneficiaries of favorable legislation.
And of course, many recipients of those contributions from ALEC corporations are themselves members of ALEC. Some are no longer in the legislature and several of those have been given positions in the Jindal administration at six-figure salaries that will substantially boost their retirements even as Jindal is asking rank-and-file state employees to take reduced benefits, work longer and pay more.
Among those are current and former legislators Noble Ellington ($55,000 in contributions), Jane Smith ($15,000), Mert Smiley ($8,500), Jim Tucker ($24,000), Jim Fannin ($6,500), Brett Geymann ($37,100), Daniel Martiny ($39,000), Elton Aubert ($35,500), Frank Hoffman ($16,800), Gerald Long ($36,000), Hollis Downs ($15,500), Nickie Monica ($23,500), Robert Adley ($50,400), Tim Burns ($11,500), and Willie Mount ($12,000).
Of those named above, Aubert was the only Democrat. There were others—Republican and Democrat—but their contributions were significantly less than the ones listed here.
And when ALEC issues the call, both the corporations and legislators convene at some conference somewhere. (last year’s national convention was held in New Orleans and hosted by outgoing National President Noble Ellington.)
When the corporate reps and legislators get together, they sit down side by side and the corporations draft legislation for the state lawmakers to take back home and introduce to their respective state legislatures or assemblies.
And it shall be called progress in much the same manner as the deregulation of mortgage and investment banks was called progress.
And savings and loans before that.
What could possibly go wrong?
KEEP DOING A GOOD JOB REPORTING THE NEWS IN BATON ROUGE LOUISIANA.
Either Monday or Tuesday if this week there was one legislator interviewed that said on Channel 2 in BR that there was a growing problem with the UAL, unfunded annual leave. Really?!? We need to pass legislation that the first time some bone-headed legislator makes a mistake like that, they’re fired. You want to hold teachers to a high standard, the citizens of Louisiana should expect the same high quality from its legislators!
Unfunded Annual Leave!? Really? And this person will be allowed to cast a vote. Bah!!!!
Watch out. Next thing you know civil service will be changing the leave accrual and payout rules for employees. (Up to 300 hours of annual leave and accumulated k-time of employees actually sits on the books as a state liability.) Change the rules, and voila!, state liability is immediately cut.
To A Hathorn: Can you tell us who that legislator might happen to be?
Click to access education.pdf
Well, it looks like an education does reduce teen pregnancy. Maybe the writer isn’t as smart as they think they are.
Right. We have a copy of that same study and thanks for sending it along. It only reinforces our position and you missed the point altogether. Gov. Jindal said good teachers reduce teen pregnancy. This report you sent along never once–I repeat, not once–connects the problem of teen pregnancy to teachers, good or bad. In fact, nowhere in this report does the word teacher or teachers even appear. As we have consistently said, school failures, as well as teen pregnancies, can be traced back to the home and the parents. In fact, this report you sent says in bold black letters (enclosed in a box) that “Parenthood is a leading cause of school dropout among teen girls.” Again, I challenge Gov. Jindal–and now you–to show one example, just one, where teachers are responsible for the problem of teen pregnancies. Of course there is a high dropout rate among pregnant teens. No one would argue that point. But again, you completely missed the point; teachers are not the cause of teen pregnancies. (If they are, they are generally prosecuted.)
Your report also says, “Children of teen mothers do worse in school than those born to older parents” and are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade, are less likely to complete high school and have lower performance(s) on standardized tests.
Ergo, let’s blame the teachers, right? Good grief, man, you and Jindal spew useless rhetoric and statistics like Mauna Loa spews molten lava.
And while you’re at it, please make your subject and verb agree. I’m certain you were taught that in school. “…the writer isn’t as smart as they think they are”? Really?
Does it really need to be spelled out that better teachers can lead to a better education, and that a better education can lead to more graduates and less teen pregnancy?
This State has been capitulating to (and throwing money at) the teachers since before Roemer was governor. Enough is enough! We’ve always had parents that didn’t care. Granted, that group is probably a much larger number today, but you can’t legislate parental encouragement. At least the Jindal plan offers an option to the parents that do care about their child’s education.
Duh! Of course good education leads to reduced teen pregnancy. It also leads to college education, higher per capita income, and overall better quality of life. You know what works better to reduce teen pregnancy? Good sex education.
However, nothing in this study you cite, nothing in the Jindal reform package, actually addresses the quality of education per se. It takes on mere faith the false premise that “private” education is de facto better than public education without providing one iota of empirical evidence. At the same time, it does not put in place a means for a parent to compare and test the performance of the local private school versus the local public school. There will be no equivalent measurements to allow an apple-to-apple comparison, and therefore, communities just have to go on faith in this free market approach to a community responsibility.
How about, instead of privatizing education, we get rid of private schools? If all kids in a given community go to the public school, then there will be an increased community investment in the success of that school. All those super involved parents at private schools will shift their attention to the public schools, and maybe help a child who does not have the benefit of an involved parent. Believe it or not, in states with good public school systems, there are very few private schools cherry picking the better students.
Besides, where are all these fantastic new teachers going to come from who are going to work in these private schools? They’re going to get pulled right out of the public school systems, causing escalating damage. Or did you think Jindal would be opening up his own teacher training center to make certain a “good” teacher is one who does not believe in evolution and believes in the “just say no to sex” method of birth control?
http://www.openeducation.net/2009/01/05/abstinence-only-sex-education-statistics-final-nail-in-the-coffin/
[…] a few) in the following legislative session, promoting (and passing, due to a eerily compliant, ALEC-purchased legislature) a number of ALEC model bills, including those related to education reform (Act 1, […]
[…] ALEC spreads the wealth among Louisiana legislators to get reform agenda passed while trashing emplo… […]