Louisiana Voice

As we wrote in Monday’s post, Gov. Bobby appears to be quite adept at embellishing the facts when it comes to his claims of resuscitating a moribund Louisiana economy. But a seasoned politician should know better than to put claims out there that are so easily debunked.

Of course, we have to give him credit: he was apparently way ahead of the curve on using private emails to conduct public business. While the national media is obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account as a means of keeping the public in the dark, the Louisiana media, namely AP’s Melinda Deslatte, called Jindal and his staff out more than two years ago on that very issue. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/top-jindal-aides-use-personal-email-strategize

But back to the matter of Gov. Bobby’s pumping up his résumé. Back in September of 2011, LouisianaVoice cited his inaccurate claims in TV ads during his 2011 reelection campaign. https://louisianavoice.com/2011/09/29/jindal-plays-fast-and-loose-with-jobs-claim-tv-campaign-ad/

In those ads, he made all sorts of claims about the number of jobs created during his first term. He named 17 companies across the state, leaving the unspoken impression that each was a new company when in fact many were companies already domiciled in Louisiana that announced expansions which were, in all likelihood, already in the planning before he ever took office.

The ad flashed purported job gains for which he took full credit. But a closer look at the actual number of jobs as posted on the companies’ own web sites should have raised eyebrows then and certainly should result in anything he says now to being taken with a huge grain of salt.

For example, he claimed responsibility for the following figures (actual jobs created are in parenthesis):

• 3,970 new jobs at the Foster Farms chicken processing plant in Union Parish (1,060);
• 6,050 new jobs at the Nucor Steel plant in St. James Parish (650);
• 1,570 jobs at Blade Dynamics in New Orleans (600);
• 1,300 jobs at Globemaster in Covington (500);
• 2,282 jobs at LaShip in Terrebonne Parish (1,000);
• 1,253 jobs at DG Foods in Bastrop (317);
• 1,970 new jobs resulting from CenturyLink expansion in Monroe (1,150);
• 1,920 new jobs at the ConAgra sweet potato processing plant in Delhi (500);
• 650 new jobs from expansion of Schlumberger oilfield equipment company in Shreveport (120);
• 500 new jobs from Ronpak fast food packaging company in Shreveport (175);
• 446 new jobs at Northwest Pipe (120);
• 805 jobs at Zagis USA in Jefferson Davis Parish (161);
• 880 new jobs from expansion of Aeroframe facility in Lake Charles (300);
• 727 new jobs at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish (77);
• 339 new jobs at the Northrop Grumman facility in Lake Charles (80)

In all, Gov. Bobby’s 2011 TV ad claimed that he created 25,425 new jobs through the Department of Economic Development when in fact only 6,729 new jobs were actually created, or about 26.5 percent of the total claimed.

And now, with Gov. Bobby flailing away like a drowning man in his desperate attempt to gain traction in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, makes a whole new laundry list of distorted claims in Monday’s USA Today op-ed piece that reads more like a campaign ad than a legitimate opinion piece.

We listed several of those in Monday’s post but overlooked one major claim, the inaccuracy of which came to light on Tuesday when LouisianaVoice received its monthly report from the Louisiana Department of Civil Service.

That report, which is a public record not controlled by the Division of Administration and Commissioner Kristy Nichols and thus, immediately available to any member of the public, is the monthly state employee layoff report and when comparing its contents with Gov. Bobby’s USA Today claim, the differences were quite striking.

You will need to scroll down to the third page to get to the meat of the report but the gist of it is that since Fiscal year 2008-2009, which started six months prior to Gov. Bobby’s first taking office, the number of state jobs abolished is 13,577 and the number of actual employees laid off is 8,396 (the difference is that were 5,181 of those that were vacant positions). ELIMINATED STATE POSITIONS BY YEAR

And, it should be noted, the bulk of those layoffs were the result of his giving away the state’s charity hospital system and, in the process, separating thousands of medical staffers from the state payroll.

That’s a far cry from Gov. Bobby’s spouting that there are “over 30,000 fewer state workers then when we took office in 2008.”

In fact, the actual reduction in the number of employees is 72 percent lower than the number he claims.

That’s 194 percent higher than his current approval rating of 27 percent.

It’s enough to make one wonder if the man is even capable of telling the truth—and that’s no embellishment.