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ALEC holds National meeting in D.C. in December to decide on ‘model’ legislation pushes for states, including Louisiana

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Economy, Education, Elections, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, PACs, Politicians, Privatization, Taxes on January 22, 2014| 7 Comments »

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may have suffered a mass exodus of sorts in the wake of its Stand Your Ground mantra that led to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, but ALEC is far too strong to let a few defections stand in the way of its political agenda in such areas as public education (even to borrowing from John White’s playbook), weakening workers’ rights, diluting environmental protections, healthcare and now even in the way U.S. senators are nominated and elected.

For that reason alone, the upcoming legislative session which begins at noon on March 10—less than two months from now—will bear close watching for any bills that might appear to have originated at ALEC’s States & Nation Policy Summit last month in Washington, D.C.

ALEC, while striving to change laws to meld with its agenda, nevertheless denies that it is a lobbying organization. That way, corporations and individuals who underwrite ALEC financially are able to claim robust tax write-offs for funding ALEC and its companion organization, the State Policy Network (SPN).

ALEC has a strong presence in Louisiana. Former legislator Noble Ellington, now a deputy commissioner in the Louisiana Department of Insurance, is a former national president of the organization and Gov. Bobby Jindal was recipient of its Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award a couple of years ago when ALEC held its national conference in New Orleans.

Current Louisiana legislators who are members of ALEC are:

House of Representatives:

  • Rep. John Anders (D-Vidalia), Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force;
  • Rep. Jeff Arnold (D-New Orleans),      attended 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting;
  • Rep. Timothy G. Burns (R-Mandeville), Civil Justice Task Force Alternate;
  • Rep. George “Greg” Cromer (R-Slidell), State Chairman, Civil Justice Task Force (announced he was resigning from ALEC and from his position as Alec state chairman of Louisiana on April 17, 2012);
  • Rep. James R. Fannin (R-Jonesboro), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force;
  • Rep. Franklin J. Foil (R-Baton Rouge), Communications and Technology Task Force;
  • Rep. Brett F. Geymann (R-Lake Charles), ALEC Communications and Technology Task Force;
  • Rep. Johnny Guinn (R-Jennings);
  • Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray), State Chairman, member of Education Task Force; (solicited funds for “ALEC Louisiana      Scholarship Fund” on state stationery July 2, 2012);
  • Rep. Cameron Henry, Jr. (R-Metairie), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force;
  • Rep. Bob Hensgens (R-Abbeville);
  • Rep. Frank Hoffmann (R-West Monroe), ALEC Education Task Force;
  • Rep. Girod Jackson (D-Marrero), (resigned last August after being charged with fraud);
  • Rep. Harvey LeBas (D-Ville Platte),  ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force;
  • Rep. Walter Leger, III (D-New Orleans), ALEC Education Task Force;
  • Rep. Joe Lopinto (R-Metairie), (attended 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting where he spoke on “Saving Dollars and Protecting Communities: State Successes in Corrections Policy”);
  • Rep. Nicholas J. Lorusso (R-New Orleans), ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force;
  • Rep. Erich Ponti (R-Baton Rouge;
  • Rep. John M. Schroder, Sr. (R-Covington), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force;
  • Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport);
  • Rep. Scott M. Simon (R-Abita Springs), ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force;
  • Rep. Thomas Willmott (R-Kenner), ALEC Health and Human Services Task Force;

Senate:

  • Sen. John A. Alario, Jr.(R-Westwego), ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force;
  • Sen. Jack L. Donahue, Jr. (R-Mandeville), ALEC Civil Justice Task Force member;
  • Sen. Dale Erdey (R-Livingston); Health and Human Services Task Force;
  • Sen. Daniel R. Martiny (R-Metairie); Public Safety and Elections Task Force;
  • Sen. Fred H. Mills, Jr. (R-New Iberia), ALEC Civil Justice Task Force member;
  • Sen. Ben Nevers, Sr. (D-Bogalusa), ALEC Education Task Force member;
  • Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia), ALEC Communications and Technology Task Force;
  • Sen. Gary L. Smith, Jr. (R-Norco), ALEC Communications and Technology Task Force;
  • Sen. Francis Thompson (D-Delhi)
  • Sen. Mack “Bodi” White, Jr. (R-Central), ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.

All ALEC meetings are held under tight security behind closed doors. During one recent conference, a reporter was not only barred from attending the meeting, but was actually not allowed into the hotel where the event was being held.

Apparently, there is good reason for that. It is at these conferences that ALEC members meet with state legislators to draft “model” laws for legislators to take back to their states for introduction and, hopefully, passage. Some of the bills being considered for 2014 are particularly noteworthy.

We won’t know which proposals were ultimately approved at that December meeting in Washington, however, because of the secrecy in which the meetings are held. We will know only if and when they are introduced as bills in the upcoming legislative session. But they should be easy to recognize.

One which will be easy to recognize is ALEC’s push for implementation of Louisiana’s Course Choice Program in other states. Course Choice, overseen by our old friend Lefty Lefkowith, is a “mini-voucher” program which lets high school students take free online classes if their regular schools do not offer it or if their schools have been rated a C, D or F by the state.

Course Choice has been beset by problems in Louisiana since its inception first when companies offering classes under the program began canvassing neighborhoods to recruit students and then signing them up without their knowledge or permission. Vendors offering the courses were to be paid half the tuition up front and the balance upon students’ graduation, making it a win-win for the vendors in that it didn’t really matter if students completed the courses for the companies to be guaranteed half the tuition. Moreover, there was no oversight built into the program that would ensure students actually completed the courses, thus making it easy for companies to ease students through the courses whether or not they actually performed the work necessary to obtain a grade. The Louisiana Supreme Court, however ruled the funding mechanism for Course Choice from the state’s Minimum Foundation Program unconstitutional.

Three other education proposals by ALEC appear to also borrow from the states of Utah. The first, the Early Intervention Program Act, is based on Utah’s 2012 law which has profited ALEC member Imagine Learning by diverting some $2 million in tax money from public schools to private corporations. But Imagine Learning did not offer test scores for the beginning and ending of the use of its software, little is known of what, if any, benefits students might have received. The Student Achievement Backpack Act and the Technology-Based Reading Intervention for English Learners Act also appear to be based on Utah’s education reform laws.

The former provides access to student data in a “cloud-based” electronic portal format and was inspired by Digital Learning Now, a project of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education when he was Florida’s governor.

Not all of ALEC’s proposals address public education.

For example, do you like to know the country of origin of the food you place on your table? More than 90 percent of American consumers want labels telling them where their meat, fruits, vegetables and fish are from, according to polling data. ALEC, though, is resisting implementation of what it calls “additional regulations and requirements for our meat producers and processors,” including those that would label countries of origin.

ALEC’s “Punitive Damages Standards Act” and the accompanying “Noneconomic Damage Awards Act” would make it more difficult to hold corporations accountable or liable when their products or practices result in serious harm or injury.

The organization’s “Medicaid Block Grant Act” seeks federal authorization to fund state Medicaid programs through a block grant or similar funding, a move that would cut Medicaid funding by as much as 75 percent. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has pushed similar block grant systems for Medicaid in several of his budget proposals.

In what has to qualify as a “WTF” proposal, ALEC for the second straight year is seeking approval of a bill to end licensing, certification and specialty certification for doctors and other medical professionals as requirements to practice medicine in the respective states and to prohibit states from funding the Federation of State Medical Boards.

Then there is the “Equal State’s Enfranchisement Act,” which is considered an assault of sorts on the 17th Amendment. For more than a century, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures, a practice which often led to deadlocks and stalemates, leaving Senate seats open for months on end. But 101 years ago, in 1913, the 17th Amendment was ratified, changing the method of choosing senators to popular vote by the citizenry.

While ALEC’s proposal doesn’t mean full repeal of the 17th Amendment, it does mean that in addition to other candidates, legislatures would be able to add their own candidates’ names to ballots for senate seats. ALEC, apparently, is oblivious or unconcerned with a national poll that shows 71 percent of voters prefer electing senators by popular vote.

To keep track of these and other ALEC bills introduced in the upcoming session, just keep an eye on the member legislators and the bills they file.

And keep reading LouisianaVoice.

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Jindal’s perpetually optimistic ‘glass half full’ chirping does little to offset negatives; LA. has second lowest credit rating

Posted in Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Media, Politicians on January 21, 2014| 4 Comments »

Even as Bobby Jindal continues to bombard us with glowing reports about the best this and most favorable that—surveys by all the right organizations, at least from the administration’s perspective—which advance the governor’s agenda, other reports don’t paint such a rosy picture.

For every claim of a favorable business climate, there is a one that reflects one of the highest pay disparities between men and women in the nation. For each boast of low taxes, national comparisons point to one of the highest poverty rates in the U.S. For all the laudatory praise of the state’s recreational facilities, we still have the second highest obesity rate in the country. In the face of the administration’s trumpeting of all those surveys rating Louisiana as having a favorable business climate, there is no escaping the fact that we are near the top in the number of citizens without health insurance. Yes, we have a deep labor pool, one survey cheerily reports even as another chides Louisiana for its dearth of skilled labor.

Of course if one listens to Jindal or reads his news releases, you hear only that the glass if half full, never than it’s half empty. Balance in reporting is not in the governor’s vocabulary.

All the so-called good news from the conservative think tanks that have the same political philosophy as Jindal and obediently do all in their power to put his best face forward does little to offset the reality of a state beset by problems too many to enumerate.

The latest bit of adverse news comes in the form of credit ratings for the individual states that show to virtually no one’s surprise, with the possible exception of Jindal and his Secretary of Economic Development Steven Moret (and probably Rolfe McCollister, a member of Jindal’s very own LSU Board of Stuporvisors and one of Jindal’s most vocal cheerleaders), that Louisiana is second only to Mississippi (a familiar position in most other negative surveys, as well) as having the worst credit rating of the 50 states.

http://money.msn.com/credit-rating/10-states-with-the-lowest-credit-scores

Southern states in general have the lowest credit ratings, according to the credit bureau Experian. And while living in one of the states with low credit scores does not mean individuals have low credit scorea but the credit scores are employed as one means of evaluating the risks in extending consumer credit and to determine how much interest to charge borrowers, the report says.

The latest credit rating is for the last quarter of 2013 and the 10 lowest scores ranged from a low of 707 for Mississippi to a high of 729 for New Mexico—well below the national average of 748 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The survey reveals that southern states have some of the lowest credit scores in the nation, according to calculations from the credit bureau Experian.

The ratings are designed to reflect applicants’ ability to repay debt and lenders use credit scores to assess the risks in extending consumer credit and to determine what interest rates to charge borrowers which means that the state ratings have a direct bearing on consumer credit.

In Mississippi, recently named as the poorest state in the nation, Gov. Phil Bryant has proclaimed that 2014 would be a breakout year for the state’s “Creative Economy,” noting that somehow the state’s claim to be the birthplace of blues might be the springboard for the state that has an unemployment rate in excess of 10 percent. We suppose the thinking could be that as the nation’s economic anchor, there is only one direction to go: up.

Louisiana, with a credit rating of 720, wasn’t much better. Like its poorer neighbor to the east, the state was hit hard by the double whammy of Hurricane Katrina and the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.

Still, the administration, in grasping at any straw to enhance its image, leans heavily on a report by the Louisiana Resiliency Assistance Program that said both Baton Rouge and New Orleans have made great strides in recovering from those twin disasters and the New Orleans ranks as “one of the best cities in the nation for business development and economic growth.”

Overlooked (deliberately, perhaps?) in that optimistic report is the fact that the Louisiana Resiliency Assistance Program is part of the Louisiana Office of Community Development’s Disaster Recovery Unit—a creation of the administration.

No conflict of interest there.

Other bottom 10 states in credit rating and their scores are, in order, Georgia (721), Nevada and Texas (722), Arkansas (725), Oklahoma and Alabama (727), South Carolina (728), and New Mexico (729).

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Gov. Jindal has web page designed to keep us informed; unfortunately, it has a few omissions; we’re here to help

Posted in Attorney General, Campaign Contributions, Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Uncategorized on November 23, 2013| 7 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal has this cool web page on which he is conscientious about posting the latest updates about all the wonderful things going on in Louisiana, thanks in large part to his diligent work on behalf of the state.

The web page, of course, has the requisite “donate” button on which to click to make contributions—ostensibly for his long-anticipated presidential campaign since his last run for governor was more than two years ago and he’s term limited from running again.

The web page is paid for by Friends of Bobby Jindal, Inc., AKA the Committee to Re-Elect Bobby Jindal, Inc. Records filed with the Secretary of State indicate the agent for the organization is David Woolridge of the law firm Roedel, Parsons, Koch, Blanche, Balhoff, and McCollister. Officers include Alexandra “Allee” Bautsch, finance director (also Jindal’s campaign finance director), deputy finance director Erin Riecke, and Melvin Kendal.

Strangely enough, even though Friends of Bobby Jindal solicits contributions through the web page, there apparently have been no campaign finance reports filed with the Louisiana Ethics Commissions. All contributions and expenditures are listed in Jindal’s name individually and not in Friends of Bobby Jindal or the Committee to Re-Elect Bobby Jindal.

You can check out his page right here  http://www.bobbyjindal.com/ to see glowing reports on the following projects:

  • The South African energy company Sasol’s integrated gas-to-liquids and chemicals project n Louisiana was named Foreign Direct Investment Deal of the Year (no mention of how many jobs that would actually produce for the state).
  • Industrial Valve Production Co. Cortec will build a new distribution facility in Louisiana which will create a whopping 70 jobs.
  • A New York Post editorial has praised Jindal for his efforts to crack down on abuse in the state’s food stamp program (abuse, by the way, which pales in comparisons to the costs of that CNSI contract with the Department of Health and Hospitals, corporate tax breaks and legislators recently exposed for using campaign funds to pay for private vehicles, auto insurance, and LSU football tickets).

And while we certainly appreciate his dedication to keeping us informed, we can’t help but notice that he missed a couple of recent developments. And because we’re here to help, we are more than happy to fill in the blanks so that you, the reader, may remain informed about our state.

  • Speaking of CNSI, writer Michael Volpe penned an interesting story on Friday, Nov. 22 when he wrote that CNSI, one of the subcontractors working on the Obamacare website, is currently under investigation by the FBI in Louisiana and is currently embroiled in legal disputes over services provided to the states of South Dakota, Illinois and Michigan. Jindal’s former DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein was formerly employed by CNSI and it has been revealed that he was in constant contact with company officials in the days leading up to its selection for the $800 million contract. http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/22/subcontractor-working-on-obamacare-site-under-fbi-investigation/
  • While Mississippi was chosen as assembly sites for Airbus Aircraft and Nissan and Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai have built assembly plants in Alabama, the five facilities employing thousands (compared to 70 for Industrial Valve Production Co. Cortec), GM closed its Shreveport truck assembly plant.
  • For anyone who has ever wondered what the job of the Louisiana Attorney General is, consider this: the Evangeline Parish Police Jury, obviously with little to do about road maintenance in Evangeline, has asked the AG’s office for a legal opinion as to whether or not a rooster is a chicken (brings to mind the story about the child asking his mother if chickens are born. “No, chickens are hatched from an egg,” his mother said. “Was I hatched from an egg?” “No, you were born.” “Are eggs born?” “No, eggs are laid.” “Are people laid?” “Some are; others are chicken.”). State law, it seems, prohibits staging fights between “any bird which is of the species Gallus gallus. Proponents of cockfighting maintain their birds are of a species other than Gallus gallus and the AG has been asked to weigh in on the matter. (Sigh.).
  • That sink hole in Assumption Parish continues to expand with no indication from the fourth floor of the State Capitol that there is any concern on the part of the governor for the plight of all those displaced residents.
  • Our friend Don Whittinghill, who provided us the information on the auto assembly plants in Mississippi and Alabama, also provided another interest tidbit missing from Jindal’s web page: Last year, 91,215 people moved to Louisiana while 95,958 left for greener pastures—a net loss of 4,741 people. This could be related to Louisiana’s construction job growth of 8.3 percent compared to a 19.1 percent gain by Mississippi.
  • Louisiana is ranked as the seventh-worst governed state in the nation, according to the financial news site 24/7 Wall Street. The survey’s results are based on financial data, services provided by the state and residents’ standard of living. The state’s budget deficit of 25.1 percent was the fourth largest in the nation, ranking behind (in order) New Jersey (37.5 percent), Nevada (37 percent), and California (27.8 percent). The national average budget gap was 15.5 percent. The percentage of citizens living below the poverty line (19.9 percent) was third highest, surpassed only by Mississippi (24.2 percent) and New Mexico (20.8 percent), and the state’s median household income of $42,944 was eighth lowest in the nation. Moreover, nearly 500 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2012 made Louisiana one of the most dangerous states in which to live.

So, Governor, we know you are a busy man, flitting all over the country to appear on CNN and Faux News, writing all those provocative op-eds in the Washington Post about how all the other Republicans (except you, of course) are a bunch of children whose hand you feel compelled to hold while leading them out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land.

We know you have all you can do in your efforts to climb from the bottom of the pile of potential GOP presidential contenders and that your sending Timmy Teepell to help get Neil Riser elected to Congress kind of blew up in your face—like that governor’s race in Virginia.

So, we want you to know, we’ve got your back.

We promise to keep a dutiful watch on your web blog and when we discover an omission in your superb coverage of all that’s good and wonderful in this state, we’ll be sure and jump in and fill the gap.

That’s the least we can do.

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New lower paying jobs assigned to Jindalites in effort to put them in touch with and appreciative of state’s working poor

Posted in Economy, Education, Governor's Office, Jobs on November 3, 2013| 16 Comments »

It’s easy to sit back and take pot shots at those in charge so when I recently said Gov. Bobby Jindal was out of touch, perhaps I was remiss in not offering solutions as to how he could regain the connection with the average working people of the state he purports to govern, often from the New York studios of Faux News or the latest conclave of Republican governors.

You know the people I’m talking about: those who congregate each Sunday in the Protestant churches of north Louisiana—those same churches that Jindal used to visit during his first term of office but hasn’t since—and who returned to the drudgery of their workaday jobs on Monday morning while Jindal basked in the glowing praise of the usual cast of sycophants.

My neglect in offering suggestions for Jindal and Co. to overcome their respective psychopathic behavior was brought home to me by Robert Mann in his recent blog Something Like the Truth about Jindal’s “Poverty of Compassion,” in which he said he has often wondered why Jindal “is so apathetic about the plight of the working poor.”

Mann said Jindal, speaking at the Republican Governors Association (RGA) during its “American Comeback” project, said when he was born his dad had no medical insurance and paid for little Bobby’s delivery on the installment plan. “And the doctor was willing to do that,” he said in explaining why Daddy did not need health insurance. “He didn’t want help from the government,” he told his fellow GOP governors, to what almost certainly was enthusiastic applause.

So the obvious lesson here is if you need a heart, lung, or kidney transplant or if neurosurgery is necessary, you don’t need insurance. All you need is an understanding surgeon, team of nurses, anesthesiologist and other OR personnel who are willing to tote the note for a few decades—or longer.

Well, that little episode certainly sheds a glaring light on Jindal’s psyche. Perhaps he was taking his cue from Texas Republican Congressman Steve Stockman’s aide Donny Ferguson, who in June boasted that he took the challenge of trying to feed himself on the $31.50 per week level of SNAP food stamp benefits under the Farm Bill—and actually got by on $27.58.

Anyone can pull that off—for one week, as this clown did. A gallon of milk, peanut butter, crackers a few canned biscuits, sardines, bologna and bread, and anyone can get by for a week.

But why doesn’t Ferguson try that little ploy for a year or longer? Why doesn’t he do it permanently, the way the real people on SNAP do? The Spam might lose some of its appeal as a publicity stunt. He might switch the peanut butter for a package of those Kraft American Cheese slices—you know the ones that used to advertise five ounces of milk in ever two-thirds-ounce slice (I actually called the Kraft advertising agency once to ask how they did that. There was a long pause on the other end of the line before the Madison Avenue shill declared, “Oh, you want American; I’m in cheddar.”). But even those cheese slices will get old before too long.

So, after making that suggestion to Ferguson, I’ve decided to offer the same solution to Jindal and his minions. All he and his cadre of confidants have to do is get back to the roots they never knew: the hardscrabble life of long hours and low pay of 19.9 percent of Louisiana citizens living in poverty (second highest in the nation), many of whom do work but at minimum wage jobs with no benefits.

Here are some choice jobs I’ve found for Jindal and select members of his cabinet:

  • Superintendent of Education John White: Since Wal-Mart is out front in bankrolling pseudo education reform, White seems the ideal candidate for a Wal-Mart greeter as he forgoes his $275,000-a-year salary;
  • Jindal’s Assistant Chief of Staff Kyle Plotkin: Pizza delivery boy for Domino’s because he already carries Jindal’s water for him and the Domino’s pay would be closer to his actual worth instead of the $110,000 he now makes;
  • Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols: Her $162,700 salary is completely disproportionate to her actual worth at her new job as a hostess for a Cracker Barrel Restaurant.
  • Dr. Christopher Rich approves workers compensation claims at a pathetically low rate of 14 percent—at $225,000 per year. He appears more qualified to transport claimants as a passenger van driver for a cut-rate chiropractor’s office;
  • Jimmy Faircloth has raked in more than a million dollars while losing court cases for the state, making him more realistically suited to run cheesy TV ads as a personal injury lawyer in Paincourtville (that’s a real town in Assumption Parish, by the way—and aptly named);
  • Jan Kosofsky, Executive Director and Deputy Director Carol Nacoste of the Capital Area Human Services District have received raises of $21,000 and $15,000, to bump their salaries up to $189,500 and $142,000, respectively, since 2011 while the remaining 200 agency employees received no salary increases. For that little indiscretion, they are infinitely more qualified to work as worm counters in a bait stand on Bayou Corne (site of that expanding sinkhole in Assumption Parish). My first job as a 12-year-old growing up in Ruston, LA., was counting worms at a bait stand out on Cooktown Road. Clarence Cooley paid me five cents per each 100-count carton filled (He sold them for 50 cents each) and my standing instructions were to always throw in a few extra to keep the customers happy. I generally made about $5 per Saturday;
  • Public Service Commission (PSC) member Scott Angelle, who resigned his $129,000-a-year job as Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in the wake of that sinkhole at Bayou Corne to run for the PSC rather than stay and address the problem. He is hereby reassigned to clean porta-potties at construction sites around Baton Rouge;
  • Joe Namath once called sportswriters “$125 a week jerks.” That seems a tad inflated for Timmy Teepell, but he can be the sports editor of the Grand Coteau Weekly World News Guardian Tribune Shopper.
  • And saving the best for last, Gov. Bobby Jindal hereby relinquishes his $130,000-a-year job in favor of plucking chickens at that Foster Farms poultry processing plant in Farmerville in Union Parish—the one for whom Jindal orchestrated a $50 million infusion of state money as repayment for a generous campaign contribution so that 65 percent of the plant’s 950 employees can drive the few miles from Arkansas to Farmerville to work in the Louisiana taxpayer-supported plant.

I haven’t attempted to assign all of Jindal’s cabinet members with special employment because jobs are scarce and not everyone can find employment. Accordingly, those who are not assigned jobs are going to have to accept meager unemployment benefits—and apply for food stamps.

These new assignments should put officials of this administration in touch with those who put them in office—the people who thought Jindal represented a new day in Louisiana politics only to find that the man they elected cares first and foremost for his own political fortunes and little for those who elected him.

Jindal has forgotten those who believed in him—if he ever thought of them in the first place. Perhaps living their lives—for more than a week the way Donny Ferguson did—might make him more appreciative of the great unwashed.

Or perhaps not.

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The solution to the federal government shutdown is really quite simple: we should fire all 535 members of Congress

Posted in Congress, Economy, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Supriya Jinda Foundation on October 5, 2013| 32 Comments »

While we normally do not delve into national politics (we have quite enough to do to keep up with the jesters on the fourth floor of the State Capitol), we have decided to offer up our solution to the impasse in Washington, aka the federal government shutdown.

If the board of a larger corporation like, say, Wal-Mart disagrees with the company’s CEO or president, there are no closures of Wal-Mart stores. That would be self-defeating in every respect. Corporate profits would plummet, consumers would buy elsewhere and the stockholders would elect new board members and new officers.

So how is it that Congress—America’s corporate board—can shut down company operations because of disagreements among themselves and with the President—the country’s CEO? Is our national company that near bankruptcy, financial collapse, that hysteria is now the order of the day when it comes to running the store?

To borrow a line from the television sitcom Two and a Half Men, our elected representatives appear to have the emotional stability of a sack of rats in a burning meth lab. Come to think of it, the analogy might not be that far off.

When either side of the aisle in Congress, whether Republicans or Democrats, takes it upon itself to hold the entire country hostage over its inability or unwillingness to compromise, drastic measures are in order.

When 535 men and women can cancel services to more than 300 million Americans on a whim, the system is broken and is in immediate need of repair.

When either side of the issue comments that it is “winning” and that it “doesn’t matter” to them how long the shutdown lasts—and please remember that there are cancer patients and wounded veterans who run the risk of not receiving needed medical treatments—then arrogance has supplanted diplomacy and common sense in our nation’s capital and something must be done.

When Rep. Randy Neugegauer (R-TX) can publicly insult a park ranger for doing her job in closing access to the temporarily closed World War II Memorial in Washington because of the government shutdown—a shutdown brought about by congressional stupidity and not by any action of the park ranger—then he, not she, should be ashamed.

And then we have Rep. Lee Terry (R-NEB) who said he cannot afford to give up his salary during the shutdown. He was dismissive of those who are declining their pay, saying, “Whatever gets them good press.” Good press seems the do-all, end-all for elected officials these days but they often miss the mark by a wide margin. “I’ve got a nice house and a kid in college,” Terry sniffed in refusing for relinquish his salary. “Giving our paycheck away when you still worked and earned it? That’s just not going to fly.”

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) expressed similar sentiments, saying he’s keeping his money because he’s “working to earn it.”

Certainly not like those federal employees who also have houses and kids in college and credit card debt and utility and grocery bills but who aren’t working because they were furloughed as a result of increasingly recurring—and tiresome—congressional gridlock and 535 megalomaniacs jockeying for “good press.”

Unfortunately, the solution to this idiocy cannot be implemented overnight; it will take several years.

Nevertheless, here is our solution:

Fire every damned one of them.

That’s right. Put them on the street for a change. Let them struggle to make ends meet each month. In short, put them back in touch with their constituents by making them one of us. We at LouisianaVoice have long felt that if we sent the politicians into battle before sacrificing our young men and women, there well might be fewer unnecessary, foolish, and costly wars like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Syria that benefit only the defense contractors.

So why not take that idea further and whenever federal employees are placed on furlough because of a federal shutdown resulting from sheer pigheadedness and some philosophical point, stop the pay for members of Congress and put them on furlough—permanently.

Constitutionally, it cannot be done in one fell swoop. Senators are elected on a rotating basis—one-third every two years. But in 2014, we could fire 468 of ‘em—all 435 members of the House and one-third, or 33 senators. Two years later, in 2016, send another one-third of the senators home and the final one-third in 2018. (Somewhere along the way, of course, there would be 34 senators up for re-election to account for all 100, but it should be just as easy to fire 34 as 33.)

None are righteous, no not one. All 535 have lost touch with the American people. Witness the shabby way in which 5th District Congressman Rodney Alexander “retired” with little advance notice, all so that (a) Gov. Bobby Jindal could install his choice, State Sen. Neil Riser, into Alexander’s seat and (b) Alexander could be rewarded for opening the door to Jindal’s boy via his appointment as head of the State Department of Veterans Affairs, a position which, incidentally, will bump his state retirement from his tenure in the state legislature before his election to Congress from approximately $7500 to about $82,000 per year.

He’s not alone, of course. Far too many members of Congress have parlayed their time in Washington into small—and not-so-small—fortunes.

Jindal, for example, spent a tad more than three years in Congress and emerged a multi-millionaire, a status he was far from enjoying when he entered.

And at least four of our own former congressmen—Sen. John Breaux and congressmen Bob Livingston, Richard Baker and Billy Tauzin—simply retired and moved over to K Street as highly paid lobbyists. There are others, but those come to mind quickly. Tauzin, it should be noted, used his position in Congress to set up his future employer—and himself—in a way we can only dream of. He rammed through a Medicare bill that prohibited the federal government from negotiating the cost of prescription drugs with pharmaceutical companies, meaning that the pharmaceutical companies set the prices—and that was that. And then he resigned and went to work as a lobbyist for (you guessed it) the pharmaceutical industry.

Other members of Congress (and some governors) establish non-profit, tax-exempt foundations that allow well-heeled donors to circumvent laws that limit campaign contributions to $5,000 per election cycle. Donations to foundations such as the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children and Jindal’s Believe in Louisiana, however, have no such restrictions placed on them.

As might be expected, contributions to these foundations from individuals seeking lucrative appointments and corporations seeking favorable legislation tend to spiral out of control.

And there are members of Congress, Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid among them, who use their positions to garner inside information that allows them to anticipate and profit from stock market fluctuations or to make property investments that enrich them personally.

There is less controversy in Congress over the issue of the NSA’s spying on American citizens—an issue that should prompt outrage on the part of the American people.

And now these self-righteous hypocrites beat their breasts as each side waits for the other to blink—all over the issue of ObamaCare which, good or bad, passed Congress and was ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The American people should be asked to tolerate only so much from these miscreants. Our patience should be wearing a bit then with these spoiled brats.

The only reasonable solution, therefore, is to fire them all.

No exceptions.

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