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Archive for December, 2012

π-yush has more Christmas cheer: Revenue plans shutdown of all state satellite offices except Benson…er, New Orleans

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Layoffs, Revenue, State Agencies on December 19, 2012| 6 Comments »

Get ready, Louisiana taxpayers. If you encounter a need for a one-on-one meeting with a Louisiana Department of Revenue spokesperson to discuss your state taxes in the near future, you soon will be out of luck. You’ll need to juke on down to Baton Rouge or New Orleans to get face time.

Though no announcement has yet been made of a target date, LouisianaVoice has learned that all other state revenue satellite offices are being shuttered.

The closures, of course, will not affect New Orleans where the state is locked into that overpriced lease agreement with Tom Benson as part of the notorious state giveaway to keep the Saints in Louisiana. That’s the deal whereby Benson purchased the old Dominion Tower across from the Superdome with the understanding that the state would move all its New Orleans offices there and pay about twice was it was paying for its former office space.

It was not immediately known how many state employees would be affected, but suffice it to say the timing of the decision, coming as it does a week before Christmas, couldn’t be worse for Revenue staffers in Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lake Charles and Lafayette.

Having already gone for more than three years without a raise, they now face the prospects of unemployment.

Of course, certain employees have nothing to worry about. The cutbacks will only apply to the grunts, the ones who actually do the day-to-day work, the ones who have to suffer indignities from supervisors and flak from unhappy taxpayers.

This is the same agency, by the way, that hired former State Rep. Jane Smith first as Assistant Secretary at $124,446 despite her professed lack of knowledge about revenue. Upon the firing of Secretary Cynthia Bridges over that alternative fuel tax (a bill authored by smith, no less, and signed into law by Jindal), Smith was briefly promoted to secretary by Piyush.

Jindal later hired former executive counsel Tim Barfield as secretary but circumvented the state law which limited the secretary’s salary to $124,000 by also giving him the title of Executive Counsel of Revenue and bumping his salary up to a cool $250,000.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Barfield and his wife contributed $15,000 to Jindal’s campaigns in 2006 and 2010 and that one of his former employers, Amedisys, chipped in another $11,000 to the Piyush cause.

And apparently oblivious to the current state hiring freeze, the new secretary promptly went out and bought himself a chief staff in the person of Jarrod Coniglio, who “will take the lead for all of our day-to-day work and be a great help to us as we work to coordinate and execute with the highest efficiency, accuracy and customer service,” according to Barfield.

The price for his new aide that Bridges apparently never saw the need for? $115,003.

While on his shopping spree, Barfield also picked up a new press secretary: Douglas Baker at an annual salary of $105,997.

True to form in the Piyush administration, efforts to contact the newly-appointed Revenue press secretary for more detailed information about the office shut-downs and accompanying layoffs were unsuccessful.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables on December 17, 2012| 4 Comments »

“The coalition of the status quo is going to say my plan hurts teachers and hurts public education. They are going to do whatever it takes to say reform is a bad idea. They are going to argue for the status quo. It’s just the opposite. That type of rhetoric is insulting to the people across this state demanding better schools.”

—Gov. Piyush Jindal, in his Jan. 17, 2011 address to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) during which he unveiled his sweeping reform package for public education. Piyush’s mean spirited rhetoric, in which he trashes teachers as a collective group, now takes on a sinister tone in light of last Friday’s shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

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π-yush unleashed teacher vilification 11 months ago today, saying teachers are paid for time they’ve been breathing; six heroic Connecticut teachers stopped breathing last Friday

Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office on December 17, 2012| 9 Comments »

“We are going to create a system that pays teachers for doing a good job instead of for the length of time they have been breathing….”

That statement was contained in the rambling speech Gov. Piyush Jindal gave to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry exactly 11 months ago today as he unveiled his education reform plan.

Well, Piyush, you no longer have to worry about Victoria Soto monopolizing your precious oxygen supply. You see, Ms. Soto, 27, gave up her life to protect her students, her children, in Newtown, Connecticut last Friday.

And Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung, upon hearing gunshots, charged from a conference room and confronted shooter Adam Lanza. She lunged at him in an effort to protect her students—and paid with her life.

School psychologist Mary Sherlach also attempted to stop Lanza. She, too, was killed.

Mary Ann Jacob, a library clerk at Sandy Hook, was prepared to sacrifice her life as well. She herded her students into a restroom and locked the door and then told her students she loved them—just in case it was the last thing they ever heard. Fortunately, they survived.

“After three years, they are given lifetime protection,” Jindal said in his typically long-winded vilification of teachers to LABI almost a year ago. “Short of selling drugs in the workplace or beating up one of the business’s clients, they can never be fired.”

Piyush, you are a moron, a buffoon, an idiot and as a lifelong citizen of Louisiana, it profoundly embarrasses me to have you as my governor.

There. I’ve said it.

I deliberately postponed writing this for a few days so as to temper my emotions and to write more rationally and calmly. In retrospect, I’m glad; my words are more carefully chosen today.

You see, I’m a little too close to this story to be completely objective (though I have never really laid claim to objectivity). I have three grandchildren who are each six years old, the same age as 16 of those 20 precious children slaughtered last Friday by that monster. Two are twins and the other, their first cousin, is nine days younger. They all attend the same school and I have had nightmares since Friday.

I have close friends who attend my church who are elementary school teachers and they are all heroes. They love their students and their every action at their schools is carried out with sole intent of feeding their students’ fertile minds so as to help them learn and prepare themselves for productive lives. I don’t know a single one of those wonderful teachers who put tenure or themselves ahead of their kids.

My high school teachers likewise were heroes. Two, Charlotte Lewis and Maggie Hinton, somehow saw potential in my writing abilities early on and encouraged me to keep writing. Another was Earvin Ryland. I took three courses under him: U.S. history, civics and geography and he consistently pushed me to do better—and he did it without belittling me or calling attention to my many scholastic shortcomings. Morgan Peoples, Mary Alice Garrett, Coach Perkins, Ruth Johnson, Coach Garner, Coach Garrett—heroes one and all. If some nutcase like Lanza had invaded Ruston High School back then, Coach Moose Phillips would have taken him apart with his bare hands.

And those heroes produced more heroes. Katherine McBride Cox would go on to a sterling career as an educator/principal in her own right; Nancy Garrison would become a university president; Patricia Wells would become a performer with the New York Metropolitan Opera; Bill Higgs would become a world-renowned heart surgeon; Nancy Byrd became a leading pediatrician in Houston; Joel Tellinghuisen would help pioneer the development of laser surgery; Allen Carpenter would excel as a pilot, first in Vietnam and later as a trainer of other pilots. There were others: Jerry Hood, Robert Bretz, Sid Aaron, and Martha Kavanaugh, to name only a few. And those, except for two, are just the ones in my class—the class of 1961. Pat Wells and Nancy Byrd were a couple of years ahead of us.

And to hear this asinine governor disparage such an honorable profession and such noble human beings by telling those fawning LABI supporters that teachers are paid “according to how long they have been on the job, regardless of their performance”—all for the sake of political points—makes my blood boil.

But Jindal isn’t the only one. Jonathan Pelto http://jonathanpelto.com/ writes a political blog similar to LouisianaVoice in Connecticut. Much of his writing has been about one Paul Vallas, former superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD), and now a plague on Connecticut. But Pelto is also familiar with our own Piyush.

Pelto posted a blog today in which he cited politicians from several states, including Piyush, who have a nasty habit of running around attacking teachers for political gain.

A Rhode Island state legislator called teachers “pigs at the public trough.” Had he said such a thing in my presence, I would have done my best, even at age 69, to deck him. How dare he—a “pig at the public trough” in his own right—say such a thing!

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has verbally attacked teachers in that state and even in Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy once said that all a teacher need do is “show up for four years” to be given tenure.

I wonder how Gov. Malloy feels today. I wonder if he would be willing to face the families of Victoria Soto, Dawn Hochsprung, Mary Sherlach or perhaps Mary Ann Jacob herself and make such an idiotic statement.

As much as I personally disagree with Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White on the so-called “reforms” he is attempting to implement, he at least had the decency to issue a statement about those horrific shootings last Friday:

“Today’s events in Connecticut are unspeakably tragic. There are no words to capture the grief all who know and love the victims must feel. They are also sobering reminders of the fragile nature of life, especially the lives of children. I urge that superintendents, principals, and school boards continue to be vigilant in maintaining crisis management plans and the preparations necessary to implement them.”

Likewise, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu offered her response:

“We are all heartbroken by the senseless shooting today in Newtown, Connecticut. The magnitude of this tragedy is incomprehensible, with so many innocent lives lost. To the families and community of Sandy Hook Elementary – we share in your grief, and hold you up in our prayers.”

Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE) President Joyce Haynes said this:

“As members of the education community, we are deeply concerned for everyone in the Newtown, Connecticut community. We join our entire nation in mourning the deaths of innocent children and educators due to violence.”

Additionally, LAE provided a web link to a guide on how to respond before, during and after such a crisis http://www.neahin.org/blog/school-crisis-resources.html.

As for Piyush and U.S. Sen. David Vitter?

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a peep.

If either has uttered a single word of sympathy for the lives lost in that tragedy, I’ve not seen it. Nor could Google provide a clue to any statement by those two.

It can only be assumed that Vitter is keeping his mouth shut to placate his NRA supporters while Jindal, in his ongoing candidacy for the 2016 presidential nomination, is probably being interviewed by Fox News on how the National Republican Party ought not to be stupid.

Well, Piyush, to fully understand the sacrifices made by teachers—every day—all you need do is ask someone whose life has been changed for the better by a caring, giving teacher who puts the welfare of her students first—some of whom died last Friday doing just that—and others who took it upon themselves to encourage a below-average student 50-plus years ago.

Piyush, I shudder to think what action you would have taken in a situation like that of last Friday. I can almost visualize you quivering and whimpering under a desk, perhaps even wetting your pants, fearful that you won’t realize your dream of being president.

To fully understand stupidity, daft rhetoric and what it’s like to appear a fool, Piyush, you need only to stand in front of a mirror.

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Connecticut blogger takes political opportunists like π-yush to task over teacher bashing for the purpose of politica gain

Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Vouchers on December 17, 2012| 1 Comment »

The following is a guest column posted by a fellow blogger from Connecticut. His name is Jonathan Pelto and his blog may be found at http://jonathanpelto.com/

Teachers are True First Responders

As our state and nation work to process the incomprehensible, the first thing that stands out when we look back on the Newtown tragedy, and the many other school shootings that have plagued our nation over the fourteen years since Columbine, is that time after time, faced with unimaginable horror and fear, teachers and other school personnel have inevitably stepped forward to protect their students.

We may never fully know the details about the events that took place in Newtown on Friday, but one thing is absolutely clear and that is that teachers and school personnel gave their lives to save their children.

At times of great tragedy, our elected officials lose their partisan standing and become a voice for the People. As President Obama shed tears and spoke of his personal heartbreak, he spoke for every single American.

And Governor Dannel Malloy has echoed our collective despair and sadness in the face of this unspeakable horror.

Both the President and the Governor spoke eloquently of the courage and dedication of the teachers and the other adults in the Newtown Elementary School, as well as the first responders.

Praising each is certainly the right thing to do, and nothing should dim the light of honor that shines on the courage and dedication of the police officers, fire fighters and emergency services personnel who rose to the challenge on Friday. As a result of their training, their character and their honor, we know that first responders run into buildings when everyone else is running out.

But to limit the definition of first responders to just those uniformed people is a mistake, for it must be said that in every sense of the word, teachers are truly first responders as well.

Every single day, thanks to their training, their character and their honor, teachers throughout this country, get up and go into their schools, dedicated to helping their children.

On most days the challenges teachers confront are related to teaching and creating an atmosphere where children can learn and grow. But while a “regular” school day is the norm, teachers are always engaged in taking whatever steps are necessary to protect their students.

Whether it is simply the day-to-day education process, stepping up to help a child in need, seeking to instill appropriate behavior, smoothing out an argument, breaking up a fight or stepping into the line of fire, teachers are the ones there who are truly first in line to respond to the conditions around them.

Far too often we take that for granted.

The teachers and school personnel in Newtown, those who gave up their lives and the rest who worked to ensure the safety of their students, are an incredible reminder that teachers deserve praise and respect.

As a result of Friday’s horrors, all of our leaders, regardless of party affiliation or political ideology, correctly speak of the courage of the first responders and the teachers.

But, of course, in truth, we’ve seen a growing trend in which politicians have used teachers as pawns or even scapegoats in a terrible game of political pandering and maneuvering. Unfair, inappropriate and mean-spirited verbal attacks on teachers and their unions have become commonplace.

It wasn’t long ago that a Democratic state legislator in Rhode Island called teachers, “pigs at the public trough” during a hearing on public employee pension reform, despite the fact that it is federal law that requires that states have public teacher pension programs, and it is federal law that prohibits teachers from participating in social security, meaning those mandated state pensions are their only direct mechanism for retirement payments.

Meanwhile, Republican Governor Chris Christie’s mean-spirited attacks on New Jersey’s teachers have become legendary.

Sadly, earlier this year, as a way to build support for his education reform proposal, even our own Governor, Dannel Malloy, claimed that all a teacher need do is “show up for four years” to be given tenure, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Malloy’s comment was not unlike the one made by Republican wing-nut, Governor Bobby Jindal, who said – during the very same month, when Jindal introduced his own education reform bill – that getting tenure was nothing more than a “reward” for a teacher based on “the length of time they have been breathing.”

These types of comments are not only untrue and idiotic, but they demean teachers and the teacher profession.

All you have to do is show up for four years and you get tenure?

Tenure is nothing more than simply showing up and breathing?

On Friday, 27-year-old Victoria Soto, the smart, wonderful, beautiful, young teacher who gave up her life to save her children must have been pretty close to that four-year mark.

I don’t know if she already had reached it and had received the evaluations needed to become a tenured teacher of if that challenge was still ahead of her, but no one on this earth can say that Victoria Soto simply showed up for work or thought her job as a teacher was simply to be there and breathe.

No, teachers more than simply show up.

And December 13, 2012 will always be remembered, and one of the things that it will be remembered for is that the real truth about teachers and teaching is very different from the made up fictions concocted by the politicians.

Heroes come in many forms.

Heroes are people who dedicate their lives to helping others.

The teachers in Newtown like the police officers, firefighters and emergency personnel who arrived at Sandy Hook Elementary were heroes.

The fact is, most teachers, like most firefighters, most police officers and most emergency personnel are heroes. They all up every day and take whatever steps are necessary to protect and enhance the lives of the people they are so dedicated to serve.

So next time we talk about first responders, let us not forget that teachers are truly first responders as well.

Meanwhile, here in Connecticut, despite the fact that the grieving process has barely begun, our state’s fiscal crisis remains very real and the Connecticut General Assembly is still scheduled to go into special session on Wednesday to deal with the projected $415 million budget deficit.

The decisions the Governor and legislators make will directly impact tens of thousands of Connecticut residents.

There are some reports that an agreement has been reached, and if so, it probably means significant cuts to vital social and health services, at the very moment we should all understand the importance of these types of services, and redouble our efforts to cut them.

The vast majority of those cuts would be unnecessary if legislators would simply stand up and require that those making more than $1 million pay their fair share in taxes. The $1.5 billion dollar tax increase proposed by Governor Malloy, and passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, last year, shielded those who make more than $1 million from having to pay a higher tax rate.

Now, by requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share starting in January, Connecticut can put a fairer tax system in place and avert the disastrous cuts that have been proposed.

We have heard wonderful, caring words these last few days from our elected officials. Those efforts are deeply appreciated. But now the time for action has come and the question is whether they will use their powers to turn their words into actions.

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π-yush Gump pens WSJ op-ed contraceptive piece advising National Republican Party that ‘Stupid is as stupid does’

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Campaign Contributions, Courts, Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Recovery School District on December 14, 2012| 9 Comments »

It’s certainly refreshing and reassuring to know that the woes of running a state government laden with the ever-increasing burden of budgetary shortfalls has not distracted Gov. Piyush Jindal from his primary objective of tending to the more pressing needs of advising the national Republican Party on how not to be stupid.

Jindal, in his latest appearance on the national stage, has authored an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he calls for over-the-counter sales of oral contraceptives.

This, by the way, is yet another in a series of instances in which Jindal makes himself available to the national media while ignoring requests for interviews from new media in Louisiana—a somewhat curious pattern of behavior for a man who insists he has the job he wants.

But back to that WSJ piece. Whether or not you agree with him—and on this issue, a case could certainly be made for such a policy—it is puzzling, to say the least, how a devout Catholic such as Jindal can endorse birth control in any form.

The Catholic Church, last time we checked, was unconditionally opposed to birth control and Piyush is such a good Catholic that he once claimed to have performed an exorcism during his student days at Brown University.

“As a conservative Republican,” he says in the piece, “I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptive issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control.”

Well, that’s certainly seizing the high ground. Jindal arbitrarily hijacks the Rodney Dangerfield claim of “no respect” for the national Republican Party. Good move, there Swifty. My grandfather always told me that when I find myself in a hole, quit digging.

Piyush is looking more and more like a politician who was created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) but who now wants to put distance between himself and the right wing Tea Partiers who owe their very existence to ALEC. And he’s still digging.

Yep. Piyush is claiming the middle ground, apparently so as not to appear stupid.

The Boy Blunder has, in the wake of the Mitt Romney loss to President Obama, morphed into the Forrest Gump of political science. Maybe we should henceforth simply refer to him as Piyush Gump: stupid is as stupid does.

He implied that Romney ran a “stupid” campaign—but only after the election. Prior to Nov. 6, Piyush campaigned tirelessly for the Republican nominee with nary a hint of discomfort or embarrassment over any supposed GOP stupidity.

Neither Piyush nor any of his appointees, of course, could ever be accused of doing anything stupid.

After all, it would be stupid to repeatedly hide behind something called the “deliberative process” in an effort to avoid revealing information to the public.

It would be stupid to suggest to subordinates that they use private email accounts for communicating about Medicaid budget cuts.

It would be stupid for Jindal’s education superintendent to approve 315 vouchers for the New Living Word School in Ruston without first learning that the school had no instructors, no desks and no classrooms.

It would be stupid for the education superintendent to send an email to the governor’s office outlining his plans to lie to a legislative committee about New Living Word to “take some air out of the room.”

It would be stupid to attempt implementation of a funding method for school vouchers that is clearly unconstitutional.

It would be stupid to describe the judge who ruled that funding method as unconstitutional as “wrong-headed.”

It would be stupid to ignore a growing hole in Assumption that has swallowed up some eight acres of land while belching toxic gases because campaigning against a judge in Iowa is considered more important.

It would be stupid to close a state prison without at least extending the courtesy of a heads-up to legislators in the area.

It would be stupid to close a state hospital without at least extending the courtesy of a heads-up to legislators in that area.

It would be stupid not to fire—or at least punish—a Recovery School District Superintendent who wrecked a state vehicle on one of his three dozen trips to Chicago on private business, including appearing on a Chicago television station to announce his intention to run for mayor.

It would be stupid to attempt a total takeover of the state’s flagship university by loading up its governing board with campaign contributors—and to coerce that board into firing the president, the university’s legal counsel, and the head of the university’s health care system.

It would be stupid to fire or demote scores of other state employees and elected members of the state legislature whose only sin was to disagree with Pontiff Piyush.

It would be stupid for his commissioner of administration to refuse to release a copy of a consultant’s report on the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits.

It would be stupid for his secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to refuse to divulge to the senate committee considering his confirmation the identity of the winner of a 10-year, $300 million contract—when it was later learned that the winner was a company for whom the secretary had once worked.

It would be stupid for that same DHH secretary to swear under oath to that same committee that he had established a fire wall between him and his former company and that he had had no communication with the company during the selection process—when in fact, as was subsequently learned, he had been in constant communication with the company during the entire selection process.

It would be stupid for a governor to refuse to return $55,000 in campaign contributions after learning it had been laundered through a bank into his campaign.

And it would be oh, so very stupid to insist on no new taxes or tax increases in the wake of a budget deficit hole rivaling the one in Assumption Parish.

Piyush is not stupid. That’s why he is offering advice to his fellow Republicans.

That’s why he is writing op-ed pieces for the WSJ about the need to sell contraceptives over the counter.

And if that doesn’t work, he can always reprise his Brown experience and perform an exorcism on Republican stupidity in much the same manner he performed his exorcism on the collective courage of certain legislators.

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