Louisiana Voice

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?

Read Full Post »

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reform package has some interesting bedfellows, including a national organization that writes legislation which it spoon feeds to state lawmakers throughout the U.S. and a local organization with ties to Jindal political campaigns past and present.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which boasts that its membership comprises about a third of all state legislators in the U.S., regularly holds conferences and seminars at which it unveils proposed legislation for its members to take home for enactment.

Believe in Louisiana, a Baton Rouge Political 527 non-profit corporation, has been running television ads throughout the state in support of Jindal’s education reform legislation.

Believe in Louisiana is headed by Rolfe McCollister, publisher of the Baton Rouge Business Report and former chairman of Jindal’s 2007 transition team and treasurer of his most recent campaign for governor. McCollister also made five separate contributions to Jindal’s first two gubernatorial campaigns totaling $17,000.

Also making five contributions totaling $8,500 was Business Report President Julio Melara. Melara also is president of two other Baton Rouge publications, 1012 Magazine (for Interstates 10 and 12 that run through Baton Rouge) and 225 Magazine (Baton Rouge is in telephone Area Code 225).

Before entering the publishing business Melara worked as an advertising salesman for a New Orleans radio station.

Within weeks of becoming governor in January 2008, Jindal appointed Melara to the Louisiana Superdome Commission.

At the same time, Jindal appointed six other members to the Superdome Commission. They included Chairman Ron Forman of New Orleans, David Chosen of Lake Charles, Bill Windham of Bossier City, J.E. Brignac of Prairieville, Tim Coulon of Harvey and Robert Bruno of New Orleans.

Most of those contributed to various Jindal gubernatorial campaigns. Forman gave $2,000 in 2011; Bruno, his wife, and law firm gave $28,500 between 2007 and 2010; Windham and his wife made six contributions between 2003 and 2011 totaling $30,000; Brignac, his wife and business gave $22,200 between 2007 and 2011, and Coulon’s own political campaign for Jefferson Parish President and his consulting company gave Jindal $7,500 in 2007 and 2009, records show.

Coulon, as an agent of Lagniappe Industries, was implicated in 2010 in the federal investigation into the parish’s $160 million contract with the River Birch Land Fill, owned by Fred Heebe and his stepfather Albert Ward. Heebe also made a $2,500 in-kind contribution to Jindal in 2008.

Coulon, while serving as parish president, appointed Ward to the board of West Jefferson Hospital. Ward subsequently voted to replace the hospital’s insurance carrier with Lagniappe.

Though there is nothing to link Melara directly to the land fill or insurance deals, Jindal never returned any of the donations from those individuals.

Former State Rep. Noble Ellington of Winnsboro is the immediate past national president of ALEC and hosted the organization’s annual convention in New Orleans last August.

Ellington, who did not run for re-election following a 24-year career in the Louisiana Legislature, was recently appointed to the number two position at the Louisiana Department of Insurance at a salary of $150,000 per year.

Besides Ellington, at least 52 current and former House members and 18 current or former members of the Senate are affiliated with ALEC, either as members or attendees at ALEC events.

As recently as last month, ALEC hosted a secretive “education academy” on Amelia Island off the coast of Florida. The meeting was “invitation only” and closed to the pubic and the media—especially the media.

That meeting followed closely on the heels of the release of ALEC’s 17th annual Report Card on American Education.

The report was authored by Matthew Lardner and Dan Lips, both of whom are affiliated with the right-wing Republican organizations the Goldwater Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The two gave overall grades to every state’s public schools based on how they rated in 14 categories.

ALEC has been drafting and promoting education bills for more than two decades in its effort to privatize public education through a growing network of school voucher systems that divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools. Those public dollars are used to create new private charter schools in the name of reform.

The ALEC 130-page report card is sorely lacking in any real evidence that school choice, charters, or firing teachers improves student performance.

The National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) exam is the largest and most accepted national, standardized assessment of student knowledge in several subject areas.

Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Kansas, New Hampshire and New York are listed as the top 10 states in NAEP performance.

Yet, from those 10, only Colorado was among the 13 states the ALEC report card gives a B or better. Vermont, which scored number two on the NAEP, tied for dead last for policy with a D+ on the ALEC report card. Conversely, Missouri, ALEC’s standard-bearer with an A- grade, scored 47th on NAEP.

John Underwood, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin, said the ALEC agenda has nothing to do with educating students. He said tables ranking states according to the NAEP performance of low-income students, students of color and students with disabilities, potentially the most interesting, revealing and useful data in the ALEC report, was not factored into ALEC’s final grade.

“Why is that not part of the states’ A to F grades?” Underwood asked. Missouri, he said, ranked 43rd in low-income students’ fourth grade reading score improvement and 34th in math improvement, but still got ALEC’s top grade. Maryland was number one in reading improvement and number two in math improvement, but got a C- from ALEC.

The answer is quite simple: someone is skewing the numbers—and NAEP’s testing procedures have been around a lot longer than ALEC’s.

But then, numbers can be tweaked to advance just about any theory. Someone once said, “There are lies, there are damned lies, and there are statistics.” At this juncture, ALEC appears to be the one playing with the statistics and tweaking the numbers.

For that “Education Academy” on Amelia Island, Florida, last month, ALEC’s invitation said the organization’s goal was “to ensure the successful and productive education for all American students.”

The invitation even offered to pick up the tab for attendees: “You are cordially invited to attend ALEC’s K-12 Education Reform Academy, February 3-4, 2012 at the Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Florida. For invited legislators like you, ALEC will cover your room for up to two nights at the host hotel. ALEC will also reimburse up to $500 for travel expenses, which includes coach airfare, cab fare, and a reimbursement of 55.5 cents per mile driven.

“This event will address the top reforms in K-12 education that ALEC believes each state must have to ensure the successful and productive education for all American students. We will discuss what you as a state legislator can do to address a variety of issues surrounding K-12 education reform, including charter schools accessibility, accountability and transparency standards for teacher excellence, open enrollment, vouchers, tax credits and blended learning options.”

It’s ironic how ALEC—and Jindal—toss around those two words accountability and transparency in their rhetoric to reinforce their respective public images, yet run and hide when asked to deliver. It would seem they want those principles applied to others, but not themselves.

With apologies to The Wizard of Oz author Frank Baum, they’d rather remain behind the curtain where they can pull the levers and push the buttons while luring the metaphoric Dorothy (voters) down the Yellow Brick Road.

There you have it. Jindal’s education reform package is not his own any more than prison privatization or the overhaul of state employee retirement can be claimed by him as original ideas.

He has his marching orders and ALEC is calling the shots.

And you may be assured that any member of the Louisiana Legislature who goes along with these “reforms” is likewise listening to the corporate powers behind the curtain that shields ALEC from public view.

Does anyone remember the economic collapse and political chaos that came about when we allowed Wall Street to write the rules?

Does anyone see the damages already done by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision?

Read Full Post »