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Archive for the ‘Governor’s Office’ Category

Let your voice be heard this legislative session: LouisianaVoice’s handy dandy legislative guide

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators on February 16, 2014| 14 Comments »

The 2014 legislative session is less than a month away (March 10) and as always, we can expect the unexpected, the unusual, the downright bizarre and of course, controversy.

Under the law, sessions during even-number years—this year, for instance—consists of 85 calendar days during which the legislature may meet on no more than 60 days, though lawmakers receive per diem payments for all 85 days.

During odd-number years, the session is 60 calendar days and legislators are restricted to no more than 45 legislative days—again with full pay for all 60 days.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has two more regular sessions in which to push through his full ALEC-sponsored agenda so it is quite likely that we will see more controversial bills from the administration as well as the re-introduction of past bills that failed the first time around.

In the past we’ve been treated to a senator (Mike Walsworth, R-West Monroe) asking a high school science teacher during a committee hearing if cultures her students were growing in her classeroom could produce a human being.

We’ve had a House member (Nancy Landry) attempt to change a rule to force teachers in Baton Rouge to testify about controversial education bills to declare if they were on sick leave or otherwise authorized to miss a day of school (her precedent-setting rule failed).

There was even a strange question from then Rep. Mert Smiley (R-Port Vincent) who asked if there was some rule or regulation that could be invoked to prevent employees of the Office of Risk Management from leaving the agency for employment elsewhere (no such rule has existed since Jan. 1, 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation).

And then there was Rep. Valerie Hodges (R-Denham Springs) who voted in favor of state funding for church-affiliated charter schools—until an Islamic school in New Orleans applied for a charter. That’s when the fecal matter hit the Westinghouse oscillating air circulation device. Apparently her vote was restricted to her interpretation of what constitutes a non-secular school.

Despite the far too frequent lapses into idiocy such as exhibited by these three, there are important issues which come before the House and Senate and many times the forgotten citizens back home would like to make their voices heard but don’t always know the best way to get through to their legislators.

Well, we didn’t name this blog LouisianaVoice for nothing.

A regular reader in Lafayette inspired us with the solution.

We have decided to post the names of all 144 legislators (105 representatives and 39 senators) along the corresponding telephone numbers and email addresses.

By doing this, we are not necessarily soliciting a telephone or email campaign because we don’t even know what legislation will be introduced this year. This is simply an informational guide so that readers will have the information if and when it becomes necessary.

We also do this with full knowledge that some legislators simply do not return calls. We’re still waiting for a return call from Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia) from more than a year ago—well before his crash-and-burn congressional campaign.

We suggest you print this post and post it somewhere—or save it to a shortcut on your computer. If you do not know the name of your senator and representative, shame on you but here are the links that will help you find them:

House of Representatives

Senate

And here are the alphabetical lists of both the House and Senate:

Members of the House (to reach your representative during the session dial the House clerk at 225-342-7259):

Members of the Senate (to call senators in Baton Rouge, the main switchboard number is 225-342-2040):

You now have the contact information to make your opinion(s) known to your elected officials.

Oh, wait. We almost forgot:

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Governor's Office, Notable Quotables on February 14, 2014| 12 Comments »

“There was a time when liberals in this country believed in debate. There was a time when the left preached tolerance.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal, speaking at the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Library Thursday.

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Jindal reveals his burning desire to become ‘Prophet-in-Chief’ with Thursday’s sanctimonious California speech

Posted in Governor's Office, Teague on February 14, 2014| 23 Comments »

'BEGONE...EVIL CRITICS'(Borrowed from the ‘Forward Now’ blog)

It seems we have all been dead wrong about Gov. Bobby Jindal’s aspirations to become Commander-in-Chief.

He would much rather be anointed as Prophet-in-Chief if that speech he gave at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday is any indication.

And you may wish to change the spelling to profit—as in political profit—as might be realized by his shameless pandering to the religious right, the Family Forum, and, of course, the Tea Party.

Three words kept coming to mind as I read the text of his speech—written, by the way, on the Louisiana Governor’s Office letterhead so as to completely blur the line between church and state (wouldn’t his campaign committee letterhead have been far more appropriate?).

Those three words are: sanctimonious little twit.

While wagging his finger in our collective faces, Jindal had the nerve to quote John Adams as saying, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.”

There is but one way that statement can be taken: sinners and rapscallions need not apply. The accused no longer are entitled to a fair trial if their crime was not committed in the name of God. Those who profess to no religious belief apparently have no rights under our Constitution if those words are to be taken literally.

But Jindal failed to mention a couple other Adams utterances:

  • “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”
  • “A constitution of government once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty lost once is lost forever.”

The first quote simply means we should trust no one who would impose his version of morality on the rest of us. The second quote is self-explanatory.

And to be sure, the freedom to express no religious conviction is every bit as sacred as setting oneself up as a moralist over society. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion—and that includes the practice to not cling to any religious tenet, including Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or the Presleyterians/Elviscopalians (those who think they will come back in their next life as Elvis).

Pointing out (correctly) that “every person wants to live out his or her values,” Jindal proceeded to cite several cases in which the federal government (Obama, in his preferred nomenclature) has sought to impose certain conditions, including attempts to force businesses to accept the administration’s contraception mandate under Obamacare, trying to protect a single teacher at a church-affiliated elementary school who became pregnant from being fired by the school, and a ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court that a photography business had violated the state’s Human Rights Act by refusing to photograph a same sex wedding ceremony.

Even as he invoked the word tolerance (“There was a time when the left preached tolerance.”), Jindal quietly ignored events in his home state: the refusal of a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish to preside over an interracial marriage and the expulsion of a pregnant teenager at a church school in Richland Parish while the boy who impregnated her, a football player, received not so much as a reprimand. Moreover, the school then attempted to impose a policy whereby it could indiscriminately test female students for pregnancies. Public outcry was such that the school quickly backed down from that hypocritical policy.

“There was a time when liberals in this country believed in debate,” Jindal said. “But that is increasingly not the case for the modern left in America.”

This from a man who tolerates absolutely no dissenting opinion in this oligarchy, er… administration.

All one has to do to understand how open this governor is to debate is go down the Jindal Teague List:

  • Tommy and Melody Teague;
  • William Anker;
  • Cynthia Bridges;
  • Mary Manuel;
  • Raymond Lamonica;
  • John Lombardi;
  • Dr. Fred Cerise;
  • Dr. Roxanne Townsend;
  • Scott Kipper;
  • Murphy Painter;
  • Tammy McDaniel;
  • Jim Champagne;
  • Ann Williamson;
  • Entire State Ethics Board;
  • State Rep. Jim Morris;
  • State Rep. Harold Richie;
  • State Rep. Joe Harrison;
  • State Rep. Cameron Henry

These are people who were either fired or demoted for the unpardonable transgression of disagreeing with Jindal on some level of policy or legislation.

So much for any belief in debate by this administration.

And now Jindal, who never seems to find the time to hold press conferences or to give interviews in his home state, goes traipsing off on yet another out-of-state trip in his quixotic pursuit of the presidency to give yet another speech about how everyone else should think and act as he does.

But did anyone notice that nowhere in that 4,500-word speech did Jindal once mention the word compassion?

Compassion. That’s a word that has been strangely absent from this entire administration.

Where was Jindal’s compassion when he vetoed that $4 million appropriation for the developmentally disabled last year?

Where was his compassion when he refused the expansion of Medicaid, thus depriving adequate health care for hundreds of thousands of Louisiana’s poor?

Where was his compassion when he attempted to “reform” the state’s retirement program that would have cut some state employees’ retirement by tens of thousands of dollars per year?

Where was his Christian compassion when he said the only reason for Louisiana’s public school teachers remaining on the job was the fact that they are breathing?

Where was his compassion when he turned his back on the people of Bayou Corne, refusing to so much as visit the expanding sinkhole for months on end?

And now he’s going to strap on his halo and wings and travel around the country telling anyone who will listen how great he is, how Christian he is, how tolerant he is, how open to debate he is?

Perhaps Gov. Jindal should read 1 John 4:20.

  • “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Never have the words to the song One Tin Soldier been more appropriate than for Jindal and his minions:

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,

Go ahead and cheat a friend;

Do it in the name of heaven,

You can justify it in the end.

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BCBS of Louisiana throws up obstacles to insurance coverage for HIV/AIDS patients; could this be another ploy by Jindal?

Posted in Business, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, OGB, Office of Group Benefits on February 10, 2014| 18 Comments »

First Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to expand the state’s Medicaid program and then he vetoed a $4 million appropriation aimed at shortening a waiting list for home-based services for the developmentally disabled.

And now there is this:

“AIDS patients in Obamacare limbo as insurers reject checks.”

That was the headline on the Reuters story that moved on the Internet at 9:23 a.m. on Saturday. The upshot of the story was that hundreds of HIV/AIDS patients in Louisiana attempting to obtain coverage under the Affordable Care Act are in danger of being rejected by the insurance plan they selected.

Just as significant is the roar of stony silence emanating from the State Capitol’s fourth floor office of Bobby Jindal who, six years ago first swore an oath to uphold the rights of all the citizens of Louisiana—even those several hundred adversely affected by the latest BCBS decision. Some would even speculate that Jindal may have leaned on BCBS, which holds two contracts worth $1.1 billion with the state through the Office of Group Benefits.

Others might even raise the question that if Jindal did influence the decision, did he do so at the behest of the Louisiana Family Forum?

The issue revolves around a dispute over federal subsidies and the interpretation of federal rules about preventing Obamacare fraud

BCBS, the state’s largest carrier, is rejecting checks from a federal program that is specifically designed to assist HIV/AIDS patients in paying for AIDS drugs and for insurance premiums under the Ryan White CARE (Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency) Act.

Ryan White, a hemophiliac from Kokomo, Indiana, was diagnosed with AIDS at age 13 from a contaminated blood transfusion. He and his mother Jeanne White Ginder fought for his right to attend school. He died in 1990 at age 18, a month before his high school graduation and only months before Congress passed the act that bears his name.

The Ryan White Program is the single largest federal program designed specifically for people with HIV and benefits more than half a million patients each year. It provides care and support services to individuals and families affected by the disease, serving as the “payer of last resort” by filling the gaps for those who have no other source of coverage or who face coverage limits.

But now, inexplicably, BCBS says it will no longer accept third-party payments such as those provided by the Ryan White Program.

“In no event will coverage be provided to any subscribers, as of March 1, 2014, unless the premiums are paid by the subscriber (or a relative) unless otherwise required by law,” said BCBS spokesman John Maginnis (no, not the journalist).

The decision stems from a series of communications from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead Obamacare agency. In September, CMS informed insurers that Ryan White funds “may be used to cover the cost of private health insurance premiums, deductibles and co-payments” for Obamacare plans.

But in November, CMS warned care providers and “other commercial entities” that because of the risk of fraud, it had “significant concerns” about their supporting premium payments and assistant Obamacare consumers pay deductibles and other costs.

BCBS seized on that to say it had implemented a policy, “across our individual health insurance market, of not accepting premium payments from any third parties who are not related” to the subscriber, according to Maginnis.

Not so fast, says CMS. “The third-party payer guidance CMS released (in November) does not apply” to the Ryan White programs, it said.

Hundreds of HIV/AIDS patients who are not eligible for Medicaid depend on Ryan White payments for Obamacare. That is because Gov. Bobby Jindal chose not to expand the low-income Medicaid program and Obamacare federal subsidies do not kick in until people are at 100 percent of the federal poverty level.

The only other carrier currently refusing to accept such payments is BCBS of North Dakota, according to a CMS spokesperson but that policy is currently under review.

Jessica Stone, a member of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s staff, in an email to health care advocates, wrote, “BCBS LA told me their decision was not due to the CMS guidance or any confusion (as we thought before) but was in fact due to adverse selection concerns” in an effort by insurers to keep AIDS patients from enrolling in their plans.

Adverse selection refers to the situation where an insurer attracts patients with chronic conditions and expensive care. John Peller, vice president for policy at the AIDS Foundation in Chicago, said the action “sure looks to us like discrimination against sick people.”

BCBS LA denied that. “We welcome all Louisiana residents who chose Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana,” Maginnis said.

One observer said it shouldn’t matter who pays the premiums. “All the insurer should care about is whether the premiums are paid or not. I once loaned money to a friend and had problems getting him to pay me back. His girlfriend finally paid me some of the money. If I had been like BCBS, I would have refused her money, preferring to get it from him—and I would have gotten nothing. This makes no sense whatsoever.”

Perhaps Jindal intends to ignore the 13,400 HIV/AIDS victims served by the program in Louisiana and use the $50.7 million in Ryan White funds the state receives to help plug next year’s all but certain budget deficit.

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Jindal opposition to broadband Internet expansion to rural areas traced to 2002 ALEC telecommunications ‘model act’

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Broadband, Internet, Campaign Contributions, Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Transparency on February 3, 2014| 16 Comments »

Two months ago, when the Federal Communications Commission allotted $8 million to expand broadband Internet access in rural Louisiana areas, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu was quick to praise, perhaps a bit prematurely, the “investment” while Gov. Bobby Jindal remained uncharacteristically silent.

Despite Landrieu’s laudatory claim that the funds would “upgrade the digital infrastructure in rural communities,” the $8 million represented only 10 percent of an $80 million grant for Louisiana that was rescinded in October of 2011 because of Jindal’s aversion to what then Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater deemed a “top-down, government-heavy approach that would compete with and undermine, rather than partner with the private sector…”

What Rainwater—and through him, his boss, Jindal—did not acknowledge is that the Jindal administration’s obsession with protecting the private sector at the expense of broadband Internet service to customers in the rural areas of the central and northeastern parts of the state was part of the 12-year-old official position staked out by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in August of 2002. http://alecexposed.org/w/images/6/6f/9A15-Municipal_Telecommunications_Private_Industry_Safeguards_Act_Exposed.pdf

Also ignored by the Jindal administration—and ALEC—is that broadband service in the U.S. is woefully inadequate when compared with countries like South Korea, Japan and even Portugal and Italy. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/competition-and-the-internet/

And it’s even worse in the country’s rural areas. http://deltafarmpress.com/blog/broadband-service-rural-areas-promise-still-exceeds-reality

No doubt you’ve seen those cute AT&T commercials featuring the man sitting at a table with children. He asks a question and gets feedback from the kids and the commercial ends with, “It’s not complicated.”

Indeed it is not. In 2008, Jindal’s very first year as governor, he signed SB-807 into law as Act 433 over the objections of the Louisiana Municipal and State Police Jury associations. The bill, the Consumer Choice for Television Act, was authored by then-Sen. Ann Duplessis (D-New Orleans). It passed the Senate by a 34-1 vote with only Dale Erdy (R-Livingston) voting no. Absent and not voting were Sens. Robert Adley (R-Benton), Jody Amedee (R-Gonzales) and Sheri Smith Buffington (R-Keithville).

AT&T, which contributed $10,000 to Jindal’s campaign since 2007, supported the bill. AT&T also contributed $250,000 to the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children.

It’s not complicated.

It also passed overwhelmingly in the House by a 94-9 vote. The only members casting no-votes were Reps. James Armes (D-Leesville), Thomas Carmody (R-Shreveport), Greg Cromer (R-Slidell), Jean Doerge (D-Minden), Ricky Hardy (D-Lafayette), Lowell Hazel (R-Pineville), Robert Johnson (D-Marksville), Sam Jones (D-Franklin), and Chris Roy (D-Alexandria). Rep. James Morris (R-Oil City) was absent and did not vote.

The only ALEC member to go against the official doctrine was Carmody. He attended ALEC’s 2010 annual meeting in San Diego at which the organization’s Telecommunications & Information Technology Task Force passed an official resolution in potential opposition to private telephone and cable companies by public bodies such as city councils and parish governments. https://louisianavoice.com/2012/05/09/could-loss-of-that-80-6-million-broadband-internet-federal-grant-last-fall-have-been-deliberately-orchestrated-by-alec/

Other members of the Louisiana Legislature who attended that meeting included Reps. John LaBruzzo (R-Metairie), Robert Johnson (D-Marksville), Tim Burns (R-Mandeville), State Chairman Joe Harrison (R-Gray), Bernard LeBas (D-Ville Platte) and Sen. Yvonne Dorsey (D-Baton Rouge).

Act 433 well may even have been written by AT&T, which is a member of ALEC and a member of ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force. AT&T chipped in $50,000 to the ALEC cause in 2010 and was a member of the Louisiana Host Committee for ALEC’s 2012 annual meeting in New Orleans. Jindal was the recipient of ALEC’s Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award at that 2012 meeting. http://www.alec.org/hundreds-of-state-legislators/

It’s not complicated.

And lest one think that Louisiana’s loss of the $80 million broadband grant in 2011 was the exception, consider this:

  • Early this year, the Kansas Legislature undertook Campaign Stop Google Fiber—and any cities that may wish to invest in broadband network technologies. Included in legislation introduced in the legislature were stipulations that except with regard to unserved areas, a municipality may not themselves offer to provide or lease, construct, maintain or operate any facility for the purpose of allowing a private entity to offer, provide, carry or deliver video, telecommunications or broadband service. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/30/1273848/-Kansas-moves-to-Stop-Broadband-Internet-to-residents?detail=email
  • In February of 2011, the Minnesota Cable Communications Association (MCCA) initiated a public battle with National Public Broadband (NPB) by inundating Lake County with a flurry of public records request designed to slow NPB’s efforts to bring broadband Internet to rural areas of Lake County.

While MCCA correctly asserts that Lake County should act transparently, the barrage of requests submitted by the association makes its intent to protect its own financial interests over those of rural residents of the county is quite apparent. Its monopoly is, after all, being threatened and those cable services that are overpriced and which provide as little speed as possible are fighting back.

Certainly it’s only coincidental that AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Comcast, Excel Communications, Fair Point Communications, Sprint Nextel, Verizon, and Cox Communications are members of ALEC. All but Excel and Fair Point serve on ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations.

It’s not complicated.

So, given Jindal’s cozy relationship with ALEC and given ALEC’s opposition to public participation in expanding broadband Internet service to rural areas in competition with ALEC members, it’s perfectly understandable why Jindal eschewed that “top-down” management of the $80 million grant.

It’s not complicated.

And it is equally apparent that the monopolistic advantage enjoyed by private sector providers be protected at all cost—even at the cost of creating some 900 miles of cable over 21 rural parishes that would support several Louisiana universities with expanded optical fiber networking capacity.

It’s not complicated.

Top-down management apparently is good only when it originates from the fourth floor of the State Capitol. Just ask any legislator, former state employee, or board or commission member who has dared to contradict him on any issue.

It’s not complicated.

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