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Jindal continues out-of-state campaign spending binge

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Transparency on October 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Bobby Jindal’s approach to his re-election campaign has about as much finesse as swatting a mosquito with a baseball bat.

First he spends three years visiting north Louisiana Protestant churches to hand out federal money he said he opposed. When he wasn’t garnering face time on television during hurricanes and oil spills, he spent so much time fundraising and book signing in other states that an LSU student found it necessary to travel to New Hampshire in an effort to get the governor to return and address budget issues at home.

He vastly embellished the number of jobs he claims his administration has created during his first term and then he attempted to take full credit for the cleanup of the BP spill. Of course those slick ads about his heroic actions to save the world from BP conveniently overlook his Monty Python-inspired plan to construct those $350 million berms to hold back the oil spill. Remember the aerial photos of the berms eroding away practically overnight (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of earth-moving equipment that sank along with the berms)?

(Just as an aside, consider how that $350 million might have been better spent.)

He even managed to politicize what should have been a magnanimous gesture—the awarding of medals to Louisiana military veterans.

It’s enough to evoke that wonderful quote by an exasperated Joseph Welch who in 1954 asked Sen. Joe McCarthy during the volatile Army-McCarthy hearings, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

But for all his trumpeting about job creation, it’s interesting to note—again, for we visited this subject back in June—that Jindal has a propensity to go after out-of-state talent when trolling for votes.

In June, we reported that since his first run for governor back in 2003, Jindal had spent about $16.5 million on polling, political advertising, printing, direct mail, telephone banks, office rent, automated telephone calls, fundraising expenses, and campaign staff.

Of that amount, $6.2 million, or 37.6 percent of the total, went to pay out-of-state companies for those services.

This time, we decided to narrow expenditures down to a single 12-month period, Oct. 1, 2010 to Oct. 1, 2011.

The results were no less interesting–or disturbing–for this “Let’s keep jobs in Louisiana” governor. In just the past 12 months, he has lavished more than $1.1 million to some 20 out-of-state companies. Some examples:

• Prosper Group of Greenwood, Indiana—six payments totaling $57,100 for telecommunication services;

• Majority Strategies of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida—16 payments totaling $113,500 for political consulting and sign printing;

• Gopshoppe.com of Glen Burnie, Maryland—eight payments totaling $53,300 for sign painting;

• Cold Harbor Films of Alexandria, Virginia—11 payments totaling $68,900 for advertising production;

• Onmessage, Inc. of Alexandria, Virginia—14 payments totaling $167,200 for political consulting, focus groups and travel expenses;

• Southwest Publishing and Mailing Corp. of Topeka, Kansas—four payments totaling $31,400 for design and printing for campaign mailer and mailing expenses;

• Illuminati Research of Englewood, Colorado—one payment of $9,000;

• Praxis List Co. of Austin, Texas—four payments totaling $22,600 for list rental for campaign mailers;

• Grassroots Targeting of Alexandria, Virginia–$46,300 in nine payments for web development and maintenance;

• RL Carriers of Wilmington, Ohio—one payment of $7,900 for shipping;

• MDI Imaging and Mailing of Dulles, Virginia–$19,300 in two payments for data processing for campaign mailer;

• Olsen and Shuvalov of Austin, Texas—twelve payments totaling $66,100 for design and printing for campaign mailers, mailing expenses, and printing expenses;

• Comcast of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania–$24,300 in six payments for advertising;

• Response America of Arlington, Virginia–$15,400 in three payments for design and printing for campaign mailers and for mailing expenses;

• Sage Payment Solutions of McLean, Virginia–$8,600 in five payments for fundraising expenses and processing fees;

• SBR Enterprises of Culpepper, Virginia—one payment of $4,300 for fundraising consulting;

• Capitol Hill Lists of Athens, Georgia—three payments totaling $11,100 for list rental for campaign mailers and for consulting expenses;

• National Media of Alexandria, Virginia—a single payment of $3,600 advertising fee;

Jindal did provide a number of temporary jobs for campaign workers. His campaign made 30 payments over the past 12 months totaling $229,100 in payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

And then there’s Matt Hutson. Hutson, one of those campaign employees for whom Jindal’s campaign paid those payroll taxes. His campaign made 12 payroll payments totaling $25,400 to Hutson.

But Hutson resides in Coweta, Oklahoma.

Could it be no one in Louisiana was qualified to do whatever it was that he did for Jindal’s campaign? But we digress. The point here is not Matt Hutson of Coweta, Oklahoma, though an Oklahoma campaign worker for a Louisiana governor does cause some head-scratching.

The real issue is that while there are numerous direct mail companies, production companies, polling services, telephone banks, advertising agencies, etc., in Louisiana, Jindal seems more than content to go elsewhere to spend all that campaign money.

Still, he continues to drone on ad nauseam with his tired “Louisiana jobs for Louisiana residents” incantation.

Has he no sense of decency at long last? Has he left no sense of decency?

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With re-election all but a certainty, Jindal now turns attention to an ambitious agenda for second term

Posted in Civil Service, Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Privatization, Retirement on October 16, 2011| 4 Comments »

BATON ROUGE (CNS)—With the outcome of this year’s gubernatorial election all but final heading into the last days of the 2011 campaign, it might be good to look ahead at what’s in store as Gov. Bobby Jindal prepares for his second term.

He has already partially unveiled his agenda for the next four years to trusted top staff. And not all staffers—including some cabinet members—are within his circle of trust.

If you think he was a bit ambitious with his agenda to reduce the role of government during his first term, you might want to find something to hold onto during the next four years. It’s going to be quite a ride. That’s provided, of course, he sticks around that long. There’s no guarantee of that because he does harbor national ambitions despite his comforting assurances to the contrary.

Details of Jindal’s plans for the coming four years remain sketchy but there are a few moves that can be predicted with relative ease. Others might be considered improbable if one chooses not to observe what conservative Republican administrations have managed to do in other states.

There is the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB), of course. That’s a no-brainer. It’s an emotional issue and those emotions are not likely to subside as the administration steps up its efforts to sell off what is arguably the most efficient agency in state government. But Jindal and his Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater have already sent signals that privatization of the agency is high on their bucket list.

Opponents point out that OGB currently has an administrative overhead of about three percent. That is because it is not required that the agency turn a profit nor does OGB pay taxes on premiums. A private concern would require an administrative cost of about 15 percent to allow for profits and tax liabilities. That would translate to a substantial premium increase for state employees and retirees.

OGB currently has a surplus of about $500 million but those funds are for the payment of benefits only and are off-limits to the administration. If OGB is sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million to $200 million, however, that money would go straight into the state’s general fund and that’s money Jindal wants desperately.

A recent development is more than a little telling on this issue. OGB has proposed a rate increase of about three percent but the administration has insisted on at least a five percent bump. A bigger premium increase would allow the $500 million surplus to remain intact, thus making the agency far more attractive to potential buyers.

Another nagging issue that Jindal is likely to address is the cost of the various state retirement plans, which currently are saddling the state with an unfunded liability of about $18 billion.

State employees presently have a defined benefit plan as opposed to a defined contribution plan. Look for the administration to take a long, hard look at changing that.

Defined benefits mean that employees pay premiums with the knowledge that their benefits are locked in. That benefit is computed by multiplying the average of an employee’s three highest years of earnings by 2.5 percent by the number of years of service. An employee who earned an average of $60,000 in his three best years over a 30-year career would multiply $60,000 by 2.5 percent, which is comes to $1500. That $1500 is then multiplied by the number of years of service (30) which computes to an annual pension of $45,000.

Under a defined contribution plan, contributions would be set and the money would be invested in much the same way as a 401(K) plan works. There would be no guarantee of benefits because that would depend on market fluctuations. That’s not a change desired by state employees after the recent Wall Street crisis.

State employee sentiments aside, one state legislator, Sen. D.A. “Butch” Gautreaux (D-Morgan City), outgoing chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee, pointed out that should the state convert to a defined contribution system, the state would then be required to begin paying Social Security premiums on state employees. State employees do not presently participate in Social Security.

“Going to a defined contribution system would not save the state any money,” Gautreaux said.

Jindal is almost certain to renew his efforts to privatize several state prisons. He tried earlier this year but backed off those efforts in the face of vocal opposition from prison employees, legislators, and local citizens. With no concerns about being elected to a third term, he is likely to make a harder push next year in an effort to pull in a few million more into the general fund.

Remember Rep. John Schroder (R-Abita Springs)? He’s the legislator who, in 2010, introduced four bills designed to abolish Civil Service and the Civil Service Commission and to give the legislator authority to decide which state employees would receive merit raises.

Those efforts failed and he did not renew his efforts this year, probably because it’s an election year. Those efforts are quite likely to resurface in next year’s legislative session as are attempts by Rep. John LaBruzzo (R-Metairie) to force welfare recipients to undergo drug testing. Previous attempts have never made it out of committee.

Though both measures by Schroder and LaBruzzo have gotten nowhere, consider Gov. Scott Walker who has effectively defanged the state employee union in Wisconsin. And in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott has signed into a law that requires adult welfare recipients to undergo drug screening.

Since day one, Jindal has worked nearly as hard on education reform as he has on political fundraising.

His penchant for replacing public schools with charter schools has incurred the wrath of public school teachers who are forced to accept all comers, to take the bad students with the good. Jindal’s charter schools, they say, have operated under the guise of open admissions when in reality, practicing selective admissions.

The recent school grades released by the State Department of Education would seem to bear that out. All but one of the top performing schools (24 of 25) were schools with selective admissions while 19 of the lowest 25 were alternative schools—those schools into which the poorest performing students are shunted.

Jindal’s efforts to privatize the state’s Medicaid program are likely to continue unabated. The Department of Health and Hospitals already has approved a $300 million contract to CNSI to implement the state’s Medicaid Management Information System. The contract raised eyebrows in the legislature because DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein once worked for CNSI and Greenstein attempted to conceal from a legislative committee the identity of the contract winner.

With only token opposition in Saturday’s election, the only obstacle for Jindal’s agenda is the legislature itself. But with a solid Republican majority in both the House and Senate, any opposition there is likely to no less token.

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The toll mounts for Kennedy’s retire-re-hire practices; the number is now three for the man who would cut positions

Posted in Governor's Office, Retirement, Transparency on October 10, 2011| 4 Comments »

As promised, we have information on the rehire of two other retired employees of Treasury Secretary John Kennedy but no sooner than we made that promise than we received information on two additional such employees who work for Kennedy.

We have made public record requests on the latest two and will post those upon receipt of the needed information.

As something of an aside, perhaps we should mention that while those at Treasury have been extremely cooperative in fulfilling our requests for information, the same cannot be said for the Division of Administration (DOA).

We have information on good authority that two retired DOA employees have been rehired but when we requested information on those individuals we got the old bureaucratic shuffle at which DOA has become so adept.

DOA has been less than cooperative, in fact downright hostile.

David Boggs of the DOA Office of General Counsel responded to our request with a snippy email in which he said, “The Public Records Law does not place an affirmative duty upon the custodian to provide answers to written questions. The Public Records Law requires us to produce records already in existence, not answer questions or generate new records in response to a request.”

The only problem with that response is we never requested that DOA “generate new records.” Accordingly, we re-phrased our request in statement form as opposed to asking questions (Apparently Mr. Boggs is not a fan of Jeopardy!).

Editor’s update: Subsequent to posting the above paragraphs relative to Mr. David Boggs, we received another email from him relative to one of our requests. You will recall he responded to our last request in a somewhat condescending manner so we rephrased our request.

So how did he respond this time? Here is his response:

“We have received your email requesting records related to the employment records of Ray Stockstill. The proper custodian of records for the Division of Administration is the Commissioner of Administration, Paul W. Rainwater. Please address all future requests to him by any of the following methods:

By email: doacommissioner@la.gov
By fax: (225) 342-1057
By US Mail: P.O. Box 94095, Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9095″

He did say, however, that DOA would respond to our request. We’ll see.

In the meantime, if any of our readers have any requests for public records, you have Commissioner Rainwater’s contact information.

Always preface all request with this wording:

Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana, R.S. 44:1 et seq., I respectfully request the following information:

Here is the part of the law that readers probably should know by heart before seeking information.

A custodian who determines a record is not public, must provide written reasons, including the legal basis, within three working days. If a requester is denied a public record by a custodian or if five business days have passed since the initial request and the custodian has not responded, the requester may file a civil suit to enforce his right to access. the custodian bears the burden of proving that the record is not subject to disclosure because of either privacy rights or a specific exemption. The law requires the courts to act expeditiously in such suits and to render a decision “as soon as practicable.”

If the requester prevails in the suit, the court will award reasonable attorney’s fees and other costs. If the requester partially prevails, the court may, at its discretion, award reasonable attorney’s fees or an appropriate portion thereof. (The custodian and the public body may each be held liable for the payment of the requester’s attorney’s fees and other costs of litigation; however, the custodian cannot be held personally liable for these fees and costs if he acted on advice from a lawyer representing the public body.)

The court may also award the requester civil penalties of up to $100 for each day the custodian arbitrarily failed to give a written explanation of the reasons for denying the request. In addition, if the court finds that the custodian arbitrarily or capriciously withheld a public record, it may award actual damages proven by the requester to have resulted from the custodian’s action. (The custodian may be held personally liable for the actual damages unless his denial of the request was based on advice from a lawyer representing the public body.)

In addition to civil remedies, the law also provides criminal penalties. Anyone with custody or control of a public record who violates the law or hinders the inspection of a public record will be fined $100 to $1,000, or imprisoned for one to six months upon first conviction. For a subsequent conviction, the penalty is a fine of $250 to $2,000 or imprisonment from two to six months, or both.

We will advise as to whether or not DOA continues to withhold public information in violation of state law. In the meantime, let’s examine the information we do have as a result of previous requests—the rehire of retired Treasury employees Jama L. Scivicque and Gary K. Hall to unclassified (non-civil service) positions.

Hall retired as a $114,275.20 per year State Treasurer Fiscal Officer on July 22, 2011 with an annual pension of $64,768.92.

Five days after his retirement, on July 27, he was rehired as a “special projects officer” at $54.94 per hour, the same rate as his hourly pay at the time of his retirement.

Because he was re-hired as a part-time employee, however, he was scheduled to work a maximum of 32 hours per week which gave him an annualized salary of $91,420.16.

Scivicque was a State Treasury Fiscal Manager earning $107,078.40 per year when she also retired on July 22 with a yearly pension of $62,161.08. She was re-hired four days later, on July 26, at an hourly rate of $51.48 on the same part-time, 32-hours-per-week basis as Hall, giving her an annualized salary of $85,662.72.

Stephen Stark, deputy general counsel for the Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System (LASERS), noted that R.S. 11:416 provides that if a state employee chooses to continue receiving retirement benefits while re-employed, “the employee is limited by annual earnings, regardless of whether those earnings come from full-time or part-time employment. If their earnings exceed 50 percent of their benefit for that year, the law calls for a reduction of their benefits henceforth to recover the excess earnings,” he said.

Under that law Scivicque could apparently earn up to $31,000 per year without impacting her retirement. Likewise, Hall could earn slightly more than $32,000 without losing retirement benefits.

In the cases of Hall and Scivicque, First Assistant State Treasurer Ron Henson, Kennedy’s second in command, signed off on their offers of employment on Aug. 8, in effect approving their employment retroactively.

“The State Treasury Fiscal Officer and State Treasury Fiscal Manager, who have a combined service of 65 years with Treasury, are retiring effective July 24, 2011,” Henson said in his Request for Unclassified Authority. His July 24 date did not square with Employee Notification Forms which showed that both employees actually retired two days earlier. “Their comprehensive knowledge of statewide fiscal control functions is invaluable to the State operations, particularly as it relates to the 45-day close, the fiscal year close and revenue sharing allocation processes, all of which occur once each fiscal year,” he said. “Because of the complexity and uniqueness associated with the three processes, it could place the state at great risk not to provide for knowledge transfer during the preparation phase and as each process actually occurs.”

In describing their duties, Henson said the positions were needed “to provide assistance to new management in the Office of State Depository Control and to allow a transition period for achieving successful results during the 45-day close in mid-August, the final 2010-11 fiscal year close in late September, and the state’s revenue sharing allocation for FY 2011-12. It would also ensure the accomplishment of essential knowledge transfer of critical state control functions without any disruption in the state’s fiscal services.”

Besides a penchant for run-on sentences, it seems that Henson also has a flair for bureaucratic gooney-babble. The justification for re-hiring these two retirees is just about as vague, meaningless and bureaucratese-filled as it is outrageous to expect a state agency to be so unprepared for the retirement of first one, then three, and now, we learn, five of its employees.

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Jindal plays fast and loose with jobs claim TV campaign ad

Posted in Economy, Governor's Office, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency on September 29, 2011| 9 Comments »

First of all, an explanation is in order for our lack of diligence over the past two months.

We have been under contract to edit a lengthy book manuscript for a publishing company. By lengthy, we mean 250,000 words that had to be boiled down to 130,000 while leaving the story intact. To give some perspective to word count, the 130,000 would translate to about 350 pages of book text.

Now to the issue at hand.

Gov. Bobby Jindal seems to be a virtual lock for re-election. (Still, the Boston Red Sox went into September with a nine-game lead for the wild card spot in the playoffs and promptly went 7-20 and lost the wild card to Tampa on the final day of the season, so in the words of the old Fats Waller song, One Never Know, Do One?)

A similar scenario is not likely in the October 22 election for several reasons. First, and let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: Jindal is smart, as in politically savvy. Never forget that. He’s also brilliant at remembering numbers and statistics and can recite them with little prompting. That also makes him intelligent. No argument there.

Second, he has a commanding advantage in campaign funds—something like $9 million to about $5,000 for Haynesville schoolteacher Tara Hollis, his nearest competitor.

But intelligence, political smarts and money do not a good governor make.

His biggest asset appears to be the manner in which he twists and distorts numbers and cons Protestant church members in north Louisiana when he sets down in his helicopter on Sunday mornings to dispense federal stimulus checks that he was against before he was apparently for them.

And don’t overlook that clever ploy he pulled off awhile back when he duped the legislature into approving the awarding of special pins to Louisiana military veterans. Legislators thought they were going to get in on the act of handing out the medals in their districts but it wasn’t to be. Jindal very politely hijacked that idea, pre-empted the lawmakers and went around the state handing them out to grateful veterans himself.

As if that weren’t enough, now he is exploiting that seemingly magnanimous gesture by incorporating it into his campaign ads. That’s a new low in campaign tactics, if you ask us. If you’re going to recognize our military veterans, governor, then it should be done in a more dignified manner and certainly should not be used for political gain. But then Jindal has shown he is not above any action so long as it reaps political benefits.

He even has one ad that shamelessly sucks up to the NRA, the robust outdoorsman that he is. But we won’t wade off into those murky waters.

Our personal favorite among his TV campaign ads (we can only surmise he has to spend some of that campaign money for appearance sake) is the one in which he touts all the job gains for the state under his administration. Where he plucked his numbers from is literally beyond the scope of our admittedly limited imagination.

In rapid-fire order, the ad flashes names of companies and the number of jobs “created” by his administration. To get all the numbers, one must constantly stop and restart the Youtube video. So we did. In all, the ad names 17 companies across the state, giving the impression that each one is a new company to Louisiana when in fact many are simply companies already domiciled in the state which announced expansions that they quite likely already had on the planning board. Nothing the governor did had any bearing on those expansions. Not that Jindal had any compunction about claiming full credit, mind you.

But it’s the numbers flashed on the screen that bear closer scrutiny. To verify Jindal’s numbers, we simply went online to the companies’ own web pages, the Louisiana Department of Economic Development web page, or online news accounts.

Let’s start with the chicken plant in Farmerville, way up in Union Parish. Farmerville is only a few miles from the Arkansas border as the pullet flies. Jindal’s ad says the $50 million plant (run by one of his campaign contributors, by the way) is responsible for 3,970 jobs. Does Farmerville even have 3,970 people? Probably more but it’s unlikely they all pluck chickens. In fact, Foster Farms’ own web page puts the employment number at only 1,060. That’s about 2,910 short of Jindal’s inflated number. But perhaps he is counting the owners of the broiler houses where the chickens are raised to maturity. Maybe he’s even including the truck drivers who take the birds to the plucking plant. Of course, there’s the U-Fill-Um convenience store where the truckers purchase their diesel fuel. There must be at least three or four employees in that store. And those truck drivers have to eat on the road sometimes, so add the burger flippers at the hamburger joints to the number. Or would that be the servers at the local Foster Farms Crispy Fried Chicken Shack, Used Lumber Emporium, House of Prayer and Snake Farm?

But here’s the real kicker about that chicken plant: no matter what the actual number is, we’re told on pretty good authority that about 60 percent of the plant’s employees reside in Arkansas and drive in the 10 or 15 miles each day.

Here are some others:

• Nucor Steel in St. James Parish—Jindal’s TV ad says 6,050 jobs. The Nucor website says 650. Whoa. A spread of 5,400 is pretty big, even in gut bucket politics;

• Blade Dynamics in New Orleans—Jindal claims 1,570 jobs. Blade Dynamics says 600 on its website;

• Globalstar moving to Covington—Jindal’s ad says 1,300 jobs. Globalstar says the number is closer to 500;

• LaShip in Terrebonne Parish—Jindal says there will be 2,282 new jobs but news accounts put the number at only 1,000. Moreover, LaShip is owned by the Chouest family and the company was the direct beneficiary of Jindal’s $10 million investment of state funds for the Port of Terrebonne in 2008. Jindal received 18 campaign contributions totaling $85,000 from Chouest family members and Chouest businesses;

• DG Foods in Bastrop—was supposed to produce 1,253 jobs instead of 317 actually realized;

• National Electric Warranty—298 jobs touted were unverified;

• CenturyLink—Monroe company simply expanded, producing 1,150 new jobs, not the 1,970 claimed;

• ConAgra—Sweet potato processing plant in Delhi created 500 jobs which was not nearly as sweet as the 1,920 claimed by Jindal;

• Schlumberger—Shreveport oilfield equipment company expanded operations, which only “secured” 120 existing jobs, far short of the 650 new jobs claimed;

• Ronpak—Shreveport fast food packaging company produced 175 jobs, 500 short of Jindal’s boast of 675;

• Northwest Pipe—446 new jobs claimed by Jindal far exceeded 120 actually realized;

• ADA-ES—Red River Parish activated carbon processing facility announcement made no mention of Jindal’s claim of 280 new jobs;

• Zagis USA—Jefferson Davis Parish cotton yarn company claims it will have one of the lowest production costs (read salaries) in America and its 161 jobs is far short of the 805 claimed by Jindal;

• Aeroframe—Expansion of this Chennault Airport facility in Lake Charles will add 300 new jobs, not the 880 hyped in the TV spot;

• Cheniere Energy—Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish produced 148 new jobs and retained 77 as opposed to new 737 jobs claimed by Jindal.

• Northrop Grumman—This donor to Jindal’s wife’s foundation was supposed to produce 339 new jobs with its Lake Charles expansion but in fact created only 80 while retaining the existing 217 positions. Moreover, those numbers were offset with the June announcement that the company had to refund $35 million in economic incentive money to the state when it failed to meet minimum employment totals at its Avondale facility near New Orleans. Somehow, that little factoid didn’t make it into the TV ad.

Bottom line: the ad claims the Jindal administration created 25,425 new jobs through his Department of Economic Development when in fact only 6,729 new jobs were actually created by the 17 new or expanding industries. That number is a whopping 18,696 shortfall from the number claimed in Jindal’s ad–delivered in typical staccato fashion–and only 26.5 percent of the total claimed.

A quarterback who completes only 26.5 percent of his passes quickly finds himself on the bench.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Civil Service, Economy, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Transparency on September 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“The Louisiana Way Forward means that during these tough economic times, we’re pursuing reforms and efficiencies that make govenment do more with less.”

—Gov.Bobby Jindal, in a May 23, 2010 speech to the Louisiana Gas and Oil Association annual meeting in Lake Charles.

“We don’t need whining, we don’t need complaining. We need leaders to provide vision.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal on Oct. 22, 2010, as he cut $35 million from the higher education, $21 million from health cae, and $12 million from social services budgets.

“My number one job is creating jobs. That’s why we’re forcing government to do more with less.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal, in his first re-election ad, in March of this year.

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