Bobby just keeps on taking hits from the national media.
First it was Politico, then the Washington Post and the New York Times.
On Tuesday, Bobby made the unwise decision to appear on Morning Joe on MSNBC and got him appropriately scalded.
While he did his best to squirm out from under the host Joe Scarborough’s scrutiny of looming budget cuts of up to 40 percent for LSU and tuition costs that have already risen by 90 percent at the state’s other public colleges and universities, he kept getting steered back to an estimated $350 million in budget cuts anticipated for the entire state university system, including about $141.5 million just for LSU.
That means about $210 million for the other schools, or an average of about $21 million each.
All the latest budget cuts are on top of $460 million in cuts imposed by Bobby, who obviously failed economics while enrolled at Brown, since he took office seven years ago.
As further evidence of his disconnect since abandoning the governor’s office in his shameless quest for the GOP presidential nomination, when pinned down by Scarborough on the proposed university budget cuts, he stammered and sputtered and finally claimed that it cost “less than $10,000” per year for housing, fees and books at LSU.
When Bobby took office in 2008, tuition and fees at LSU were around $5,000 a year. That was then. This is now. Because Louisiana has experienced sharp increases in tuition over the past five years because of Bobby’s policies, it now costs not “less than $10,000” but $20,564 per year to attend the state’s flagship university, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. http://theadvocate.com/news/11567837-123/jindal-stumped-with-lsu-tuition
C.B. Forgotston, king of the subversive bloggers, noted that Bobby’s spokesperson Shannon Bates Dirmann claimed that her boss was not referring to housing costs in his estimate of fees but in a review of the video, Bobby clearly included housing in his estimate.
“Dirmann blatantly lied,” Forgotston said.
In a related matter, LouisianaVoice, with an assist from one of our readers and USA Today, came upon some interesting statistics that tie directly to one of our earlier stories about how the budget cuts might impact college sports.
Our earlier story, which was a bit more parody than serious, speculated on what would happen if budget cuts included the so-called “paper courses” that help keep student athletes eligible among the 1,400 classes LSU might lose.
Our reader suggested this web page to track the amounts schools all over the country receive in state subsidy funding. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/schools/finances/
We checked out the link and compiled the data for the Southern University and the nine schools under the University of Louisiana system.
ATHLETIC ATHLETIC ATHLETIC PCT. ATHLETIC
SCHOOL REVENUE EXPENSES ST. SUBSIDY SUBSIDY
- TECH $18.5M $18.44M $9.2M 49.6
ULM $11.2M $11.44M $4.1M 36.5
GSU $6.3M $7.85M $3.63M 57.9
SU $8.8M $7.7M $4.75M 54.1
NWS $11.8M $12.34M $7.6M 64.7
SLU $10.9M $10.9M $6.54M 59.8
MCN $9.7M $10.3M $4.5M 46.3
ULL $18.1M $18.65M $7.7M 42.4
NSU $6.96M $6.96M $4.2M 60.6
UNO $4.3M $4.3M $2.96M 69.33
TOTALS $106.56M $108.88 $55.18M 50.7% ave.
TEXAS $165.7M $146.7M 0 0
ALABAMA $143.8M $116.6M $5.79M 4.0
LSU $117.5M $105.3M 0 0
As you can perhaps see (the columns don’t line up precisely in our format), the state subsidized the 10 schools a total of nearly $55.2 million during 2013, which represents approximately 26 percent of the total combined cuts for the schools.
By comparison, we also included three other schools. The University of Texas had the largest amount of sports revenues in the nation at $165.7 million in 2013 against expenses of $146.7 million and received no subsidies from the State of Texas.
LSU, with a revenues of $117.5 million against $105.3 million in expenses, also is self-sustaining in that it received no subsidies from the state. The University of Alabama had revenues of $143.8 million and expenses of $116.6 million and received nearly $5.8 million, or 4 percent of its total revenue, from the state of Alabama.
Of the 10 Louisiana schools receiving subsidies, Louisiana Tech had the most at $9.2 million, which was nearly half (49.6 percent) of total revenues.
Though the University of New Orleans had the lowest amount in revenues at $4.3 million and the lowest amount of state subsidies at $2.96 million, its percentage of state support was the highest at 69.33 percent.
The University of Louisiana Monroe was third lowest in the amount of funding from the state at $4.1 million against revenues of $11.2 million for the lowest percentage (36.5 percent) of state subsidies of the 10 schools.
Grambling State University’s state funding of $3.63 million was second lowest but it represented nearly 58 percent of its total revenue of $6.3 million, the USA Today report said.
In all, the 10 state schools received 50.7 percent of their sports budget in the form of state subsidies, something the Legislature may have to consider when it convenes in April to tackle the projected $1.6 billion in budgetary shortfalls anticipated for the state budget.
Granted, that $55.2 million for the 10 schools won’t go far in filling the void, but as the late Sen. Everett Dirksen once said: “A billion her and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
But according to Bobby’s math, the deficit is probably only a couple of million dollars and can be made up by selling a state building or two or by laying off a few hundred more state employees. We just don’t really know what he’s thinking because he is never in the state anymore and gives all his interviews to Politico.
Shannon Bates Dirmann!! The most recent head of boards and commissions (of the constant revolving door of people holding that position) is (or perhaps was, I haven’t called that office in almost a year) Barker Dirmann!! I assume either one or the other got the job from a domestic relationship prior to their marriage, or else they hooked up after each got their positions as part of the whole Jindal “keeping it all in one big happy loyal extended family.”
At any rate, I don’t think even Jindal’s biggest detractors could have ever envisioned him imploding to this degree. People all over the U. S. will wonder how we could have been so foolish as to place such a clown in office. I don’t guess maybe we can use Mike Foster as a scapegoat, huh?
Nope. Foster didn’t elect him governor. I even had an assist in that—the first time but certainly not in 2011.
Uneducated people can be politically controlled by dictators. The surest way to ensure a conservative and uneducated population is to put college out of reach. This is what Ronald Reagan did when he made it more difficult for poor and less educated families to do federal paperwork for financial aid.
Bobby’s agenda is to reduce LSU to little more than a football team—self supporting of course and keep potential students out of college, who, upon being well educated will either leave the state or become Democrats.
It makes no sense to cut funding to a blockbuster economic engine like LSU and throw money to crap like chicken plants and reality shows to “create” jobs. Likewise, how does cutting state employee jobs create jobs? I guess I will never understand what is good about the “trickle down” effect. It seems more like being pooped on.
“Methinks it is much more like a warm yellow rain.”
Why is media so late to take a real look at Jindal? Where were they when he was running for governer? He has was awful back when he was head of DHH, but the media just repeated his superficial claims of success. So much damage has already been done to our state and part of the responsibility is much of the media. If only more of the media was like my hero Tom Aswell.
Two more national articles were posted today about Jindal. One is by Eleanor Clift in The Daily Beast. The other is by Jim Geraghty in the National Review on-line. Neither one is complimentary, even if they’re not scathing. The drumbeat continues, and the day is only half over.