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Archive for the ‘Health Care’ Category

Bobby is for immunizations but two years ago he discontinued health unit vaccinations for the poor

Posted in Budget, DHH, Economy, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Incentives on February 10, 2015| 19 Comments »

Well, at least Bobby took a stand. Sort of.

As an aside, we have arbitrarily decided to cease referring to Bobby Jindal by his elected title of governor. His behavior far more closely resembles that of his adolescent namesake from The Brady Bunch sitcom than a political leader. So we’ll just refer to him as Bobby from now on.

He repeatedly told us his big lie: that he had the job he wanted, yet he doggedly pursues a much higher prize—that of president. He long ago abdicated any of the responsibilities that go with that title—like performing his duties with the best interest of his constituents as a top priority.

Those duties would include seeing to fiscal well-being of the state. His persistent refusal to seek additional revenue to meet repeated shortfalls in the state budget have created a projected $1.6 billion budget hole for the 2015-2016 fiscal year. To address the problem, he is proposing yet another cut to health care and higher education—cuts that are certain to gut entire academic programs but almost certainly not athletics.

His giving away the state treasury in the form of corporate and industrial tax incentives have not paid off with desperately needed revenue. Quite the reverse has happened as companies have received five-year Enterprise Zone tax credits for locating Wal-Mart stores in affluent areas in open contravention of the EZ program’s intent.

Ten-year property tax exemptions have been granted in wholesale numbers to companies as they implement plant expansions but create no new jobs.

Movie tax credits return about 30 cents to the state for every dollar given in credits, certainly no bargain for Louisiana taxpayers.

There are others, like employee salary rebates and inventory tax rebates, all of which add up to billions of dollars deprived of the state treasury.

The health care of all citizens is another area of considerable responsibility that he has chosen to betray. Bobby’s decision to close Southeast Louisiana Hospital shut off mental health services to low income residents of the state’s most densely populated area. Then he privatized the state’s charity hospitals, a move which resulted in nothing short of personal and financial disaster. Baton Rouge Medical Center Mid-City is closing its emergency room next month because of the overflow from the closure of Earl K. Long Medical Center which will now place an additional strain on Our Lady of the Lake across town.

But while he has been chasing Islamics in Europe and chasing the presidency at home (using the term “home” loosely, as his base now appears to be somewhere in Iowa), Jindal has finally taken a stand in Louisiana, for Louisianans. Sort of.

Earlier this month, he took our collective breath away with his courage in saying he has “no reservations about whether or not it is a good idea and desirable for all children to be vaccinated.”

His courageous stand came out of growing concern over a measles outbreak at Disneyland in California because apparently one or more families who don’t believe in the measles vaccinations took infected children to the park, spreading the disease. A debate immediately followed as to the advisability of immunization because of belief in some quarters that the measles shots can cause more harm than good.

“There is a lot of fear mongering out there on this,” Bobby said, apparently referring to immunization rather than Islamic “no-go” zones in Europe. “I think it is irresponsible for leaders to undermine the public’s confidence in vaccinations that have been tested and proven to protect public health. Science supports them and they keep our children safe from potentially deadly but preventable diseases. Vaccinations are important. I urge every parent to get them. Every one.”

Again, let us stress that he also said “all children.”

But let us now flash back nearly two years to Feb. 22, 2013, when Bobby, acting for a change as governor, submitted his executive budget.

His proposed budget included his announced intentions to cease immunizing the state’s indigent children at parish health units throughout the state.

Instead, he said, private pediatricians would take over the duties of immunizing children under the state’s Vaccines for Children (VFC) program through which vaccines are made available at no charge to enrolled public and private health care providers for eligible children.

“Under the proposed restructuring, children who received immunizations at parish health units would be transitioned to receive immunizations by their private pediatricians or health care providers, where 92 percent of children already receive their immunizations through the program,” said a statement released by the Department of Health and Hospitals at the time.

Bobby’s most recent proclamation in support of immunization seemed more of an effort to set himself apart from the GOP frontrunners than any real concern for the welfare of Louisiana children. After New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky questioned the wisdom of mandated immunization, Bobby’s utterance seemed contrived, almost comical.

But it wasn’t funny. In fact, given the state of critical mass into which the state’s finances have fallen, nothing Bobby does is funny anymore.

The national media have finally caught on with several extremely critical analyses of Bobby’s performance just in the last few days, a couple by usually conservative columnists.

Bobby, we aren’t really all that stupid down here. We well remember glib line of yours: “I have the job I want.” Seriously? You repeated it ad nauseam during your first term. We got sick of hearing it because we knew you were lying.

You lying to us, weren’t you, or do you really have the job you want?

If you were telling us the truth, then for God’s sake stay in Louisiana and do your damned job. If not, get the hell out and let someone who cares do it for you.

Resign, Bobby. Just resign. You quit a long time ago so now just make if official. We’ve grown weary of your adolescent Bobby Brady adventures. Like the sitcom itself, your act has grown stale.

 

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A few numbers, a couple of quotes and a recap of why a desperate political quest may at long last be laid to rest

Posted in Contracts, DEQ, DHH, Economy, Elections, Exemptions, Finances, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Incentives, Office of Group Benefits, OGB, Politicians, Privatization, Revenue, State Agencies, Teague on February 7, 2015| 35 Comments »

  • 676,484: the number of votes received by candidate Bobby Jindal in the 2003 runoff with Kathleen Blanco for the office of Governor. I was one of the 676,484. Jindal lost.
  • 699,275: the number of votes received by Congressman Bobby Jindal in the 2007 primary election for Governor of Louisiana. I was one of the 699,275. Jindal won.
  • 673,239: the number of votes received by incumbent Gov. Bobby Jindal in his successful bid for re-election in the 2011 primary election. I was not one of the 673,239. Jindal won.
  • Betray: bə·trā/ v. to fail or desert especially in time of need; to disappoint the hopes or expectations of; be disloyal to; to be unfaithful in guarding, maintaining, or fulfilling, as in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s refusal to perform the job to which he was elected.
  • Betrayal: be·tray′al n. to abandon or desert; to turn one’s back on another; to delude or take advantage of; One who abandons his convictions or affiliations—as in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s betrayal of the 4.5 million residents of Louisiana.
  • Epitaph: ˈepə·taf/ n. a commemorative inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument about the person buried at that site; a brief statement commemorating or epitomizing a deceased person campaign or something past—as in the political ambitions of Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Some may think it’s too early to bury Jindal’s presidential ambitions just yet, but it is our humble opinion that Roy Orbison summed it up more than 50 years ago with his 1964 hit It’s Over.

What little spark that still burned in his fading presidential hopes has been snuffed out by a fast-paced series of events beginning with his incredibly idiotic rant about the Islamic no-go zones in Europe which then morphed into a tirade by Jindal shill Kyle Plotkin over the tint or lack of, in Jindal’s “official” portrait hanging in the reception area of the governor’s office on the fourth floor of the State Capitol.

Whether or not blogger Lamar White’s comment about Jindal’s “white-out” of his portrait which (a) makes him appear almost anemic or (b) makes him appear as if the anemic version caught a little too much sun at Gulf Shores (depending on which is the “official” portrait), the entire episode quickly descended to the level of ridiculous political theater.

And when the dialogue is reduced to arguments over the shade of color in a portrait Jindal has run out of issues for serious public debate and can no longer be taken seriously.

As a great singer, the late Roy Orbison, crooned back in 1964, It’s over.

And as our favorite writer, Billy Wayne Shakespeare from Denham on Amite would say (with certain literary license):

“Not that I loved Caesar Jindal less, but that I loved Rome Louisiana more. Had you rather Caesar lived Jindal were President and (we) die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead Jindal were forgotten, to live all free men?”

—Brutus Bob, from Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene II.

“I have come here to bury Caesar Jindal, not to praise him. The evil that men do is remembered after their deaths, but the good is often buried with them difficult to find. It might as well be the same with Caesar Jindal. The noble Brutus Bob told you that Caesar Jindal was ambitious. If that’s true, it’s a serious fault, and Caesar Louisiana has paid seriously for it.”

—Marc “T-Boy” Antony, from Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene II

If  there was any lingering doubt, that was erased late Friday (notice the timing) when he released a laundry list of yet another round of budget cuts. As has become his practice, all bad news is announced late on Fridays so the impact will be lessened because people tend not to follow the news on weekends.

Among those cuts:

  • Department of Environmental Quality: $2.5 million;
  • Department of Health and Hospitals: $13 million;
  • Department of Transportation and Development: $16.65 million.

Jindal also some miraculously came up with $42.8 by sweeping several agencies, including $9 million from the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly.

The governor’s office was not spared, of course. Biting the bullet along with everyone else, Jindal’s plan included a reduction of $10,000 in travel expenses for his office.

That’s correct. Health care is taking a $13 million hit while Jindal is sacrificing roughly the cost of one trip to appear on Fox News or to Washington D.C. for something like his recent attack on Common Core at an event sponsored by someone like oh, say the American Principles Project.

He is pulling $9 million from the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly but don’t worry, he will forego a trip to Iowa or New Hampshire.  Yeah, yeah, we know trips to Iowa and New Hampshire are paid out of his campaign fund. But when he takes those political trips, he takes along a detail of state police security personnel whose transportation, lodging, meals and overtime must be borne by the state treasury. It doesn’t take long for just one of those trips to eat through $10,000.

If Jindal is not acutely aware by now that any chance he had to be president has vanished into that $1.6 billion deficit projected for the coming year—a far cry from the $900 million surplus he inherited when he took office seven years ago.

If he does not know by now that his political credentials are shot, he can compare today’s 6.7 percent unemployment rate to the 3.8 percent unemployment when he took office in 2008. That wasn’t supposed to happen after industrial tax incentives increased from a couple hundred million a year to more than $1 billion a year over that same period.

If he is still wondering why his approval rating is lower than President Obama’s, he may want to direct his inquiry to the presidents of Louisiana’s colleges and universities who have seen their budgets cut by $673 million since taking office—and who are now anticipating another $300 million in cuts.

If he still doesn’t get it, he could ask the 250,000 low-income uninsured adults how they could possibly be upset at his decision not to expand Medicaid to cover their health care—all because of his philosophical criticism of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare. And while he’s at it, he might wish to ask Baton Rouge’s low-income uninsured residents in the northern part of East Baton Rouge Parish how they’re going to make out after he closed Earl K. Long Hospital last year which forced those residents to seek emergency care at Baton Rouge General Medical Center-Mid City which announced this past week that it is closing its emergency room because of the financial losses incurred from that overflow from Earl K. Long.

Michael Hiltzik, writing for the Los Angeles Times on Friday (Feb. 6), to say, “Jindal has promoted his plan with a string of distortions about the ACA and the health insurance marketplace that suggest, at best, that he has no idea what he’s talking about.” http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-the-lesson-of-louisiana-20150206-column.html

And if Jindal is still a bit hazy about why his chances of becoming president could make a possum optimistic about making it across a busy interstate highway, he might wish to review his glowing optimism over the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits (OGB) that preceded a drawdown of the agency’s reserve fund from a healthy $500 million built up by former OGB CEO Tommy Teague, whom Jindal fired, to less than half that amount.

After he’s done all that, then maybe he’ll finally understand why Louisiana’s middle income growth was sixth worst in the nation (-4.9 percent, as in a negative growth) in 2013. Maybe, just maybe, it will finally dawn on him that the widening income gap is not good news for the state’s poorest citizens. Perhaps someone will explain to him that the state’s poorest 20 percent of households averaged earning $8,851 in 2013 (that’s household income, not per capita). There may even be a chance that he can explain why the income share of 2.8 percent among the state’s 20 percent poorest was down from 3.2 percent share in 2009 while the wealthiest 20 percent held nearly 52 percent of the state’s income—a figure even higher than the national figure and a dramatic increase from 2009—even as the state’s poverty rate increased.

We’ve been beating this drum steadily for nearly five years now and just when we were beginning to believe no one was listening, no less than three national news organizations (the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico) have jumped into the fray with witheringly harsh stories critical of Jindal and his train wreck of an administration in Louisiana.

And to think, it took an incredibly silly diatribe about Islam in London and a prayer meeting in Baton Rouge sponsored by a fundamentalist fringe element to get the attention of the national media that decided, at long last, it might be time to peel back the layers of righteousness and morality and take a long, hard look at the real Jindal and his actual record.

Funny, isn’t it, how often the big picture is overlooked until someone stumbles onto some little something that sets much bigger events into motion?

And now, at long last, we feel we can safely say it’s over. Done. Kaput. We have witnessed, in the incredibly short span of only a couple of weeks, the complete cratering of a political quest.

Cue Roy Orbison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufgrNRPFJn8&list=RDufgrNRPFJn8#t=0

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State Rep. Jerome ‘Dee’ Richard to offer ambitious bills he says will ‘re-establish’ legislative branch of state goverment

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, DHH, Economy, Exemptions, Incentives, Finances, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, NGOs, Revenue on February 3, 2015| 4 Comments »

State Rep. Jerome “Dee” Richard (I-Thibodaux) has revealed an ambitious set of bills he will be pre-filing preparatory to the 2015 legislative session, a couple or which are almost certain to be vetoed by Gov. Bobby Jindal should they survive both chambers intact.

The 60-day 2015 session convenes at noon on April 13 and will adjourn at 6 p.m. on June 11.

Vetoes are nothing new to Richard and in fact, one of his bills rejected by Jindal last years in hindsight represents a moral victory for Richard and something of an embarrassment for Jindal.

House Bill 142 (HB-142) passed both the House and Senate unanimously last year and was vetoed by Jindal only to see Jindal find it necessary to implement at least part of the bill through an executive order last month.

Passing 84-0 in the House (with 20 members not voting) and 37-0 in the Senate (with two not voting), HB-142 would have provided for a 10 percent reduction of all state professional, personal and consulting service contracts. The bill further provided that the savings from the cuts be deposited into the Higher Education Financing Fund.

State Treasurer John Kennedy, Richard was quick to point out, has been recommending slashing state contracts for several years and has been all but ignored by the administration but now even Jindal has ordered that state contracts be cut but not so higher education could be funded but instead to attempt to plug the growing chasm that is the state budget deficit.

Jindal, for his part, says he will offer legislators “suggested solutions” to ease the budget crisis which now is projecting a deficit of $1.6 million. http://theadvocate.com/sports/preps/11454861-123/jindal-says-hell-suggest-options

First of all, wasn’t that why he hired Alvarez and Marsal (A&M) Consulting for a cool $7 million? We were under the impression that A&M was going to find all these wonderful ways for the state to save money.

Second, the governor is the state’s CEO and as such, is charged with the leadership of the state. After all, Gov. Kathleen Blanco came under withering criticism for the manner in which she handled the crisis of Katrina. Jindal appears no less befuddled and clueless in his approach to the state’s budgetary crisis and now, after seven years of telling lawmakers what he wanted done, he punts to them.

Of course, it’s difficult to fight Islam in Europe, run for president and hold prayer meetings that fail miserably in filling all the seats in the venue while governing the state.

Only yesterday (Monday, Feb. 2), Kennedy broke the news that Moody’s Investors Service had issued a warning that reductions in revenue estimates by the Revenue Estimating Conference constituted a “credit negative for the state” and that the ratings service may downgrade the state’s credit outlook from stable to negative.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7el18uxosj11pi1/Louisiana%20Oil%20Plunge%2002%2002%202015.pdf?dl=0&utm_source=Moody’s+Press+Release++020215&utm_campaign=Moody’s+2-2-15&utm_medium=email

Kennedy said the next procedural step would be a rating downgrade that would make it more difficult for the state borrow money and cost the state higher interest for money it does borrow.

And lest Jindal attempt to blame the latest fiscal woes on the drop in oil prices, Moody’s pointedly noted that the state’s problems pre-date the fall in oil prices—by several years. “As the U.S. economy picked up steam,” the Moody’s analysis said, “Louisiana had muted job growth even before the oil price decline.”

“This is what happens when you spend more than you take in,” Kennedy said. “Moody’s is telling us that we’d better get our fiscal house in order or we are going to be downgraded, which will cost taxpayers dearly in higher interest rates on our bonded indebtedness.”

The Moody’s news comes on top of earlier reports that health care and higher education will probably suffer even deeper cuts than the $180 million in reductions made over the past two months. The state’s colleges and universities have been told to expect at least $300 million in further budget cuts during the next fiscal year even as the Department of Health and Hospitals is expected to have $250 million slashed from its budget.

Jindal has even had to renege on his pledge last year to create a $40 million incentive fund to pay for college programs that provide graduates for high-demand jobs in Louisiana. Once considered one of his highest priorities, he has yanked that money away before the ink was dry on the bill that created the program.

All this has had a cumulative effect leading up to what promises to be a tumultuous legislative session as lawmakers grope for ways to keep from cutting services while at the same time being able to keep the lights on.

One trial balloon, already rejected by Jindal, would be for the state to roll back some of the billions of dollars in corporate and industrial tax breaks but Richard is not ready to accept the governor’s dismissal of that idea just yet.

This year, Richard has an agenda even more ambitious than his across-the-board 10 percent cut in contracts last year. Remember, that bill, HB-142 was passed unanimously in each chamber but vetoed by Jindal because, the governor said, the bill “could hinder the state’s efforts to continue to provide its citizens with timely, high quality services.”

In hindsight, however, it would appear his signing that bill into law would not have hindered the delivery of services nearly so much as not having the funds to pay for the services in the first place. The only thing not hindered by his veto was uninterrupted payments to the contractors.

Among Richard’s bills to “re-establish the legislative branch of government” are bills:

  • For an automatic veto session. Currently, legislators are mailed forms to complete and return indicating whether or not they want to hold a special session to consider overriding the governor’s veto(es). “If a bill passes with a two-thirds vote or better and the governor vetoes it, there would be an automatic veto session convened and legislators wouldn’t have to vote for it,” he said.
  • To eliminate the line item veto. “This will be a hard row to hoe,” Richard admitted. “But the governor has always held the line item veto over legislators’ heads as a means of getting what he wanted. This bill would change that.” Former President Bill Clinton pushed through a bill giving him the line item veto during his administration but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional.
  • To establish a capital outlay oversight committee. “We need to eliminate all NGOs,” he said, referring to the tradition of the legislature appropriating funds for NGOs, or non-government organizations such as baseball parks, golf courses, local court houses, city halls, councils on aging, etc. “These should be financed at the local level. If the local people want these things, they will pass bond issues to pay for them. That should not be the responsibility of the legislature. Before we look at raising more revenue, we need to cut spending,” he said. “John Kennedy has said many times that we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, and he’s correct.”
  • To change the makeup of the House Appropriations Committee. “Appropriations has 27 members. That’s way too many,” he said. Richard said he would like to see it reduced in size to 15 members with three members from each of the five Public Service Districts in the state. “That would guarantee representation from each area of the state,” he said.
  • To eliminate the Homestead Exemption. “We need to get rid of all tax exemptions,” he said. “We give away $2 billion a year in industrial and corporate tax exemptions.”

Richard said he knows his bills will be fought by special interests and by the governor. “But Jindal has done nothing in seven years,” he said. “It’s time the Legislature re-asserted itself as an equal partner in governing this state.”

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Guest columnist calls Kleckley’s criticism of education cuts ‘political theater’; college heads ‘sycophants in leisure suits’

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, State Agencies on January 24, 2015| 9 Comments »

By Dayne Sherman

Special to LouisianaVoice 

Louisiana is Ground Zero for political scandals. From U.S. Rep. Bill Jefferson’s “cold cash” saga to U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy’s unanswered allegations of payroll fraud at LSU, the state knows how to lead the country in at least one statistic: corruption.

One writer devised his own method of ranking states by corruption and guess who was number one?

Here’s a hint: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ranking-the-states-from-most-to-least-corrupt/

Even our new House Whip, Steve Scalise, who describes himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” has become an international disgrace for speaking to a neo-Nazi group 12 years ago while he was a state representative.

A quote attributed to Pericles 2400 years ago is still true: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” Indeed, these political scandals are at the expense of Louisiana citizens. They matter. We pay the price for wayward politicians and their blinding ambition. This lust for power is equal only to their lust for “other things,” as Sen. David Vitter seems to be chief among sinners.

On Jan. 9, Louisiana House Speaker Chuck Kleckley came out like Clint Eastwood in a western flick, standing up tall to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s latest plan to cut $370 million from Louisiana higher education. He says he won’t back the budget plan. But let’s be clear-minded. Kleckley is Jindal’s paramour. He has done and will continue to do whatever the governor tells him to do or he’ll lose his speakership.

This is all political theater, a cruel PR scheme to help Kleckley win election as State Treasurer. Recall, Louisiana higher education has been cut by over $700 million since Jindal took office, the deepest cuts of any state in the country. Other states are investing in colleges and universities post-recession, and we are not.

Kleckley’s recently found courage when the state faces a $300 million deficit this year and 1.4 billion next fiscal year starting July 1, is a fake news story. Jindal’s conservative principles haven’t worked. On the contrary, they’ve been a disaster aided and abetted by lapdogs in the Legislature. Make no mistake, the greatest hypocrite among them is Kleckley.

The bayou budgetary apocalypse is coming. Get ready.

At the same time, President Obama has announced a truly bold new plan to give all Americans two years of free community college. Clearly, the best news of 2015.

Upon hearing this great news, a number of Louisiana’s college and university “leaders” (They’re paid to be leaders but are mostly sycophants in leisure suits.) began to question the details. Why aren’t they excited? Don’t educators want nothing more than to educate? Don’t they need students? Well, their master Jindal is against everything good—or bad—that Obama wants. The “leaders” answer to Jindal. These rascals served as cheerleaders for Jindal’s foolish WISE Fund, a mere pittance, but they became skeptics over the real deal.

How will we fund a community college education for all Americans? I’d say having ended two wars, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan, will do it. We can save trillions by staying out of endless international conflicts. No need to raise taxes. Let’s just stop blowing up other countries and then rebuilding them on the taxpayers’ dime.

I believe nothing could be better for America and the world than investing in Americans. Jindal has shown through $700 million in cuts to Louisiana higher education, and another $370 million before he’s through, that he doesn’t believe investing in our state is good for his long-term political career.

Obama, on the other hand, believes investing in Americans is good for the country. Fortunately, Jindal will never be able to bring to the nation the disasters he’s brought to Louisiana. He’ll never be President.

[Dayne Sherman’s new novel is Zion. Signed first editions available from the author. His political blog is www.TalkAboutTheSouth.com.]

 

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Those who think of Gov. Jindal as delusional, dysfunctional, arrogant, vindictive can now tack ‘fool’ onto the list of labels

Posted in Budget, Finances, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Legislature, Politicians, Revenue on January 19, 2015| 33 Comments »

In the four years of our existence, LouisianaVoice has poked fun at, criticized, questioned and challenged Gov. Bobby Jindal on a number of issues and finally, it has come down to the harsh reality that forces us to say what we have refrained, out of respect for the office, from saying thus far:

Bobby Jindal is a fool.

Of course we’re going to get some push back for making such a disrespectful comment about the man elected—twice—to be the chief executive officer for the State of Louisiana. Yes, we’ve called him silly and an embarrassment in the past, but his performance in London goes far beyond embarrassing.

His little tantrum at the National Governors’ Conference luncheon a year ago was an embarrassment to Louisiana; his performance in London yesterday evoked memories of Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy’s claim in Wheeling, West Virginia on Feb. 9, 1950, that he had a list with the names of more than 200 “known communists” employed by the State Department. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mccarthy-says-communists-are-in-state-department

Jindal seems hell-bent on out-cruzing Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz with his outlandish claim in his speech to the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), named ironically enough, for the late U.S. Sen. Henry Jackson, a Washington Democrat.

A little background on the Henry Jackson Society is in order here.

Created in 2005, HJS purported to offer a forum for those who believed that any form of totalitarianism required a hardline response—either diplomatic or military.

The HJS Associate Director is a man named Douglas Murray, who also is a columnist for The Spectator and Standpoint. The Spectator, a conservative magazine is Britain’s oldest continuous publication, dating back to 1828 and owned by David and Frederick Barclay. The lesser-known Standpoint was founded in 2008.

Much like their Republican counterparts in the colonies, the Barclay brothers, who also own the London Telegraph, have been accused of avoiding taxes by placing their assets under the ownership of offshore companies and controlled through trusts.

But back to HJS Director Murray, who in March of 2013 wrote an article in Standpoint in which he lamented the fact that “white Britons” were in the minority in 23 of London’s 33 boroughs (this is starting to sound eerily familiar). http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/4868/ful

Concern over the growing divisiveness of the strident organization was such that two months later, the Guardian editorialized that Britain’s Labour Party should cut ties with HJS. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/20/labour-cut-ties-henry-jackson-society

Fast forward to January of 2015 and Louisiana’s governor, who has problems back home sufficient to keep him in Baton Rouge, i.e. a budget deficit that grows daily, deep cuts pending for health care and higher education, controversy over the proposed open burning of 15 tons of munitions in Minden, crumbling state infrastructure, looming $180 million bill from Medicaid/Medicare over his hospital privatization deal, and a fast-approaching legislative session at which hard decisions will have to be made. Instead, he chooses to traipse off to London to give an inflammatory speech chock full of inaccuracies and misconceptions.

Ostensibly on a state-sponsored economic development trip (meaning taxpayers pick up the tab for his travel, lodging and meals as well as his support staff and state police security detail), he nevertheless manages to squeeze in an address meant to appeal to his rabid right wing supporters back home as he continues his quest to at least show up in David Letterman’s Top Ten List of Why Bobby Jindal Never Shows Up in the Top Ten List of GOP Presidential Hopefuls. The sad truth (for Jindal, that is) is that he doesn’t even rate a mention in any such Letterman list.

So, what, exactly, did he say that registered an 11.2 on the 10-point Richter scale of Political Absurdities?

Only that there were areas in Europe where non-Muslims are not allowed and radical Islamic law is allowed to override local law. He calls them “no-go zones.”

But when he said, “Non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home,” Jindal got it all wrong. When he added, “It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so- called ‘no-go zone,” he got it all wrong.

“I’ve heard from folks here that there are neighborhoods where women don’t feel comfortable going in without veils. That’s wrong. We all know that there are neighborhoods where police are less likely to go into,” Jindal told CNN. “I think that the radical left absolutely wants to pretend like this problem is not here. Pretending it’s not here won’t make it go away.”

http://blogs.theadvocate.com/politicsblog/2015/01/19/bobby-jindal-sticks-no-go-zone-talking-point-london-speech/

He got that all wrong, too.

That’s all wrong as in Joe McCarthy’s outrageous—and unsubstantiated—claims that ultimately hastened his political demise.

When challenged by CNN, Jindal was undaunted: “I think your viewers know absolutely there are places where the police are less likely to go. They absolutely know there are neighborhoods where they wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

When asked by CNN if that was because of crime and not because of a concentration of Muslims, our governor said, “This isn’t a question.” He stuck to his guns, saying the left “wants to make this into an attack on religion and that’s not what this is. It’s absolutely an issue for the UK, absolutely is an issue for America and other European and Western nations.”

He “absolutely” repeated his “no-go zone” claims, throwing in a few more absolutelies in the process, later in the day during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEjlHY2caIs#t=48

Jindal even managed to evoke the “American exceptionalism” claim in the Blitzer interview—while standing on a busy street corner….in London, no less. The only thing absolutely missing was a court jester’s hat for Jindal to wear for the CNN interview.

The problem is he got his information from Faux News which later issued corrections that there was “no credible information” that such “no-go zones” exist in France or Europe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/01/18/fox-news-corrects-apologizes-for-no-go-zone-remarks/

Lest one think his London speech was not “political,” Jindal even managed to slip in attacks on Hillary Clinton, apparently on the supposition that she will be his Democratic opponent in next year’s presidential election (insert chuckles, chortles and guffaws here).

The Democratic National Committee (DNC), fully cognizant of his budget problems back home in Louisiana, was quick to criticize Jindal, saying he was “just embarrassing himself now” and that he is “very interested” in being president but not so much in governing.

But we disagree with the DNC; he long ago transcended embarrassment. He embarrassed himself many years ago when he insisted on dropping his Indian first name (Piyush which, by the way is still his legal name, calling into question the legality of all documents signed as “Bobby”) in favor of adopting the name of a character on The Brady Bunch sitcom. (We still say it was his good luck that he wasn’t a fan of The Beverly Hillbillies: We just don’t believe Jethro Jindal would’ve caught on.)

He embarrassed himself when he wrote an essay for the New Oxford Review entitled “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare” about his supposed exorcism of a female classmate at Brown University.

He embarrassed himself when he gave that awful response to President Obama’s State of the Union address in 2009.

He embarrassed himself when he insisted against all expert engineering advice to the contrary on building those $250 million sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico in an unsuccessful attempt to stem the flow from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill onto the Louisiana coast—unsuccessful because the berms washed away in a matter of days, sinking tens of thousands of dollars of cranes and bulldozers with them.

He embarrassed himself when he, a Roman Catholic, went to all those Protestant churches in north Louisiana during his first term to speak about his “born again” conversion to Christianity—while aides were passing around forms for congregation members to complete with their names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for future political contribution solicitations (it’s illegal to solicit campaign contributions in the church itself).

No, he didn’t embarrass himself this time. Oh, that he had only limited the damage to embarrassment.

Instead, he showed himself to the world to be the fool he really is and in the process, made the citizens of this state who twice elected him, appear as hysterical, hate-mongering David Duke and Joe McCarthy disciples of demagoguery.

And for that, we should all be embarrassed—or worse, humiliated.

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