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Archive for the ‘Higher Education’ Category

The Jindal paradox: he adores but would never work in the private sector (but he would make a splendid Sheldon sub)

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Campaign Contributions, Civil Service, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, State Agencies, Transparency on February 24, 2013| 12 Comments »

The burning paradox that is Gov. Bobby Jindal comes down to this: for someone who so obviously loves and embraces the private sector, it’s curious that he has never earned his livelihood in it.

Yes, we know that he “worked” for four whole months for McKinsey & Co. in 1994 but that could hardly be considered as the private sector since the firm primarily serves as a training ground for future bureaucrats and elected public servants.

To paraphrase a 1981 line from actor Burt Reynolds at his Friars Club roast, he’d probably like to thank the little people for putting him into office—but he’d never associate with them.

Of course, should he ever decide to re-enter the private sector and if Jim Parsons should decide to leave the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, Jindal could step right into the role of Dr. Sheldon Cooper and never miss a beat.

Sheldon Cooper, in case you are not a regular viewer (you can catch the show on CBS at 7 p.m. Thursdays or reruns on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on TBS), is the glue that holds the popular show together. He is academically brilliant (as most would concede Jindal to be) but completely unable to relate to mere mortals (as all would have to agree is a persona that fits Jindal like a glove).

Sheldon is a fount of book knowledge, possessed of an eidetic memory and able to spout figures, dates and statistics with the comparative ease of reciting one’s ABCs but is unable—or unwilling—to perform the simple task of driving a car.

Jindal is a fount of book knowledge, possessed of an eidetic memory and able to spout figures, dates and statistics with the comparative ease….well you get the picture.

Sheldon is completely and totally devoid of human emotion, is unfeeling and unable to communicate in a normal conversation because he has no empathy for his fellow human being. Even in casual conversation, it is impossible for him to avoid insulting the intelligence of those around him, be they peers or subordinates.

Jindal is similarly lacking in those same qualities and likewise cannot speak without offending—be it civil service employees, department heads or fellow Republicans whom he now publicly refers to as being stupid.

Sheldon, when playing board games or video games with his friends, is prone to make up his own rules as he goes along—much to the consternation of Leonard, Raj and Howard, his three friends on the show.

Jindal also is not above tweaking the rules to his advantage as in his exempting the governor’s office from the state’s public records laws—much to the consternation of the media.

But most striking of all the similarities between the two: Sheldon is stubborn and steadfastly refuses to admit to the prospect that he could ever be wrong—about anything.

Jindal, too, is mulishly stubborn and just as steadfastly refuses to entertain the thought that he might be wrong about anything—a trait that goes at least as far back as middle school, according to a former teacher who described him as unwilling to accept correction even then.

But back to Jindal’s undying devotion to the private sector:

His is a strange relationship indeed.

Visit the home a professor, and you’re likely to find shelves upon shelves of books. Visit a hunter and you will find hunting rifles and mounted deer, elk and moose heads. Same with fishermen and the mounted bass that adorn their den walls.

Visit an aficionado of the private sector like, say, the governor of Louisiana and you’re likely to find…photos of smiling campaign contributors.

But you would never find him putting in a typical 8 to 5 day in a cubicle or toiling away in the workaday world like the rest of us. That is so far beneath him as to be comical to even consider.

No, he would never stoop to such a low level. That is for people who can be manipulated, used and even fired at will—by people like him.

Instead, Jindal chooses to reciprocate the private sector’s political campaign contribution largesse by selling off the state, piece by piece, agency by agency to his corporate benefactors while at the same time, selling out hard-working, dedicated state workers without so much as a second thought or a thank you.

The private sector is Jindal’s benefactor, not his employer. Accordingly, he must pander to the corporate suits like Rupert Murdoch, K12, Dell Computers, Marathon Oil, Wireless Generation, Altria, Hospital Corp. of America, Magellan Health Services, Meridian, CNSI, Information Management Consultants, Innovative Emergency Management, Anheuser-Busch, Corrections Corp. of America, AT&T, Koch Industries, the entire membership of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and most of his appointees to prestigious boards and commissions.

No, Bobby Jindal would never earn—has never earned—his living from the private sector.

But make no mistake about it: he owes his political existence to corporate America and the private sector.

And he believes with equal conviction that he owes nothing to state employees or the public sector.

Yes, he could step right in and fill Jim Parsons’ role as Sheldon and the difference would be negligible—except for the obvious cultural imbalance that would create.

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Surprise! Jindal admits in brief press conference that he ‘doesn’t have a plan’ (clue) on abolishing state income tax

Posted in Broadband, Internet, Charters, Education, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Prison, Privatization, Retirement, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Vouchers on February 15, 2013| 14 Comments »

Whenever Gov. Bobby Jindal speaks, be it on Fox News, CNN, to fellow Republican governors or at a rare press conference such as the one held on Thursday, his threefold purpose always seems to be to inflate weak ideology, obscure poor reasoning and inhibit clarity.

His less-than-masterful tax plan for the state, which he admitted to reporters is like so many of his ill-conceived programs in that it actually remains a non-plan, might well be entitled “The Dynamics of Irrational and Mythical Imperatives of Tax Reform: A Study in Psychic Trans-Relational Fiscal Recovery Modes” (with apologies to Calvin and Hobbes, our all-time favorite comic strip).

It’s not certain what drives him to wade off into these issues (see: hospital and prison closures, higher education cutbacks, charter schools, online courses and vouchers, state employee retirement “reform,” and privatization of efficiently-operating state agencies like the Office of Group Benefits) but his actions are probably precipitated by deeply ingrained biological, psychological and sociological imperatives that have triggered a reduced functionality in the cerebral cortex (Pickles).

Or it could be some depraved attempt to inflict vengeance on society because his two imaginary childhood friends teased him and wouldn’t let him play with them.

And though he insists he has the job he wants, we can’t help but wonder if he isn’t even now casting a covetous sidelong look at the advantages of plundering (Frazz) in case his presidential aspirations fail to materialize.

The reason for all this speculation is brought on by his admission in that ever-so-brief (less than 12 minutes or six question, whichever came first) press conference Thursday that the administration does not have a proposal as yet to eliminate personal and corporate income taxes despite his well-publicized announcement that he wants to scrap state income taxes for individuals and corporations (especially corporations) in a “revenue neutral” way that would most likely involve increased sales taxes.

But he doesn’t have a proposal yet.

Are you listening, legislators? He doesn’t have a proposal yet. That means the onus is going to be on you and if he doesn’t have his way with you (as he has for the past five years—and you can take that any way you please), he’s going public with the blame game.

If everything goes south, you don’t really think he’s going to take the blame, do you?

He doesn’t have a proposal yet. Now we see where State Superintendent John White gets his prompts on running the Department of Education. White has not submitted a completed plan for any project begun at DOE since he took over; everything—vouchers, charters, course choice—is in a constant state of flux. He announces rules, retracts, readjusts, re-evaluates only to lose a lawsuit over the way his boss proposed to fund state vouchers.

Jindal doesn’t have a proposal—for anything. His retirement “reform” package for state employees was a disaster from the get go. Even before he lost yet another court decision on that issue in January, the matter of whether or not the proposed plan for new hires was an IRS-qualified plan—meaning a plan the IRS would accept in lieu of social security—remained unresolved.

He didn’t have a proposal: let’s just do it and see later if the IRS will accept it. Throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.

Remember when he vetoed a bill two years ago to renew a five-cent tax on cigarettes because, he said, he was opposed to new taxes (it was a renewal!)? Well, now he’s considering a $1 tax increase on a pack of cigarettes.

“Everything is on the table,” he said. “That’s the way it should be.”

But isn’t he the same governor who closed hospitals and prisons without so much as a heads-up to legislators in the areas affected.

Isn’t he the same governor who rejected a federal grant to make boardband internet available to rural areas of the state but had no alternative plan for broadband?

Isn’t he the same governor who continues to resist ObamaCare at the cost of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding to provide medical care for the state’s poor?

He said he is looking at different ways to protect low- and middle-income citizens.

By increasing the state sales tax by nearly two cents on the dollar? By rejecting another $50 million federal grant for early childhood development? By shuttering battered women’s shelters and attempting to terminate state funding for hospice? By pushing for more and more tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Louisiana citizens? By appointing former legislators to six-figure state jobs for which they’re wholly unqualified while denying raises to the state’s working stiffs? Yeah, that’ll really protect the low income people of the state.

“It’s way too early to make decisions on what’s in and out of the plan,” he said of the soon-to-be proposed (we assume) income tax re-haul.

Well, Governor, it’s your job to make decisions, to come up with a proposal to present to the legislature so House and Senate members may have sufficient time to debate the issues—unlike your sweeping education package of a year ago.

In your response to President Obama’s State of the Union address this week (not your disastrous response in 2009 in which the Republican Party subjected you to national ridicule), you said, “With four more years in office, he (Obama) needs to step up to the plate and do the job he was elected to do.”

That’s right, folks. You can’t make up stuff this good. The response is so easy that it’s embarrassing but here goes:

Pot, meet Kettle.

In retrospect, drawing on comic strip for inspiration when writing about Jindal somehow seems entirely appropriate.

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π-yush Gump pens WSJ op-ed contraceptive piece advising National Republican Party that ‘Stupid is as stupid does’

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Campaign Contributions, Courts, Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Recovery School District on December 14, 2012| 9 Comments »

It’s certainly refreshing and reassuring to know that the woes of running a state government laden with the ever-increasing burden of budgetary shortfalls has not distracted Gov. Piyush Jindal from his primary objective of tending to the more pressing needs of advising the national Republican Party on how not to be stupid.

Jindal, in his latest appearance on the national stage, has authored an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he calls for over-the-counter sales of oral contraceptives.

This, by the way, is yet another in a series of instances in which Jindal makes himself available to the national media while ignoring requests for interviews from new media in Louisiana—a somewhat curious pattern of behavior for a man who insists he has the job he wants.

But back to that WSJ piece. Whether or not you agree with him—and on this issue, a case could certainly be made for such a policy—it is puzzling, to say the least, how a devout Catholic such as Jindal can endorse birth control in any form.

The Catholic Church, last time we checked, was unconditionally opposed to birth control and Piyush is such a good Catholic that he once claimed to have performed an exorcism during his student days at Brown University.

“As a conservative Republican,” he says in the piece, “I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptive issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control.”

Well, that’s certainly seizing the high ground. Jindal arbitrarily hijacks the Rodney Dangerfield claim of “no respect” for the national Republican Party. Good move, there Swifty. My grandfather always told me that when I find myself in a hole, quit digging.

Piyush is looking more and more like a politician who was created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) but who now wants to put distance between himself and the right wing Tea Partiers who owe their very existence to ALEC. And he’s still digging.

Yep. Piyush is claiming the middle ground, apparently so as not to appear stupid.

The Boy Blunder has, in the wake of the Mitt Romney loss to President Obama, morphed into the Forrest Gump of political science. Maybe we should henceforth simply refer to him as Piyush Gump: stupid is as stupid does.

He implied that Romney ran a “stupid” campaign—but only after the election. Prior to Nov. 6, Piyush campaigned tirelessly for the Republican nominee with nary a hint of discomfort or embarrassment over any supposed GOP stupidity.

Neither Piyush nor any of his appointees, of course, could ever be accused of doing anything stupid.

After all, it would be stupid to repeatedly hide behind something called the “deliberative process” in an effort to avoid revealing information to the public.

It would be stupid to suggest to subordinates that they use private email accounts for communicating about Medicaid budget cuts.

It would be stupid for Jindal’s education superintendent to approve 315 vouchers for the New Living Word School in Ruston without first learning that the school had no instructors, no desks and no classrooms.

It would be stupid for the education superintendent to send an email to the governor’s office outlining his plans to lie to a legislative committee about New Living Word to “take some air out of the room.”

It would be stupid to attempt implementation of a funding method for school vouchers that is clearly unconstitutional.

It would be stupid to describe the judge who ruled that funding method as unconstitutional as “wrong-headed.”

It would be stupid to ignore a growing hole in Assumption that has swallowed up some eight acres of land while belching toxic gases because campaigning against a judge in Iowa is considered more important.

It would be stupid to close a state prison without at least extending the courtesy of a heads-up to legislators in the area.

It would be stupid to close a state hospital without at least extending the courtesy of a heads-up to legislators in that area.

It would be stupid not to fire—or at least punish—a Recovery School District Superintendent who wrecked a state vehicle on one of his three dozen trips to Chicago on private business, including appearing on a Chicago television station to announce his intention to run for mayor.

It would be stupid to attempt a total takeover of the state’s flagship university by loading up its governing board with campaign contributors—and to coerce that board into firing the president, the university’s legal counsel, and the head of the university’s health care system.

It would be stupid to fire or demote scores of other state employees and elected members of the state legislature whose only sin was to disagree with Pontiff Piyush.

It would be stupid for his commissioner of administration to refuse to release a copy of a consultant’s report on the privatization of the Office of Group Benefits.

It would be stupid for his secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) to refuse to divulge to the senate committee considering his confirmation the identity of the winner of a 10-year, $300 million contract—when it was later learned that the winner was a company for whom the secretary had once worked.

It would be stupid for that same DHH secretary to swear under oath to that same committee that he had established a fire wall between him and his former company and that he had had no communication with the company during the selection process—when in fact, as was subsequently learned, he had been in constant communication with the company during the entire selection process.

It would be stupid for a governor to refuse to return $55,000 in campaign contributions after learning it had been laundered through a bank into his campaign.

And it would be oh, so very stupid to insist on no new taxes or tax increases in the wake of a budget deficit hole rivaling the one in Assumption Parish.

Piyush is not stupid. That’s why he is offering advice to his fellow Republicans.

That’s why he is writing op-ed pieces for the WSJ about the need to sell contraceptives over the counter.

And if that doesn’t work, he can always reprise his Brown experience and perform an exorcism on Republican stupidity in much the same manner he performed his exorcism on the collective courage of certain legislators.

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New round of budget cuts to be announced Friday as π-yush administration grapples with declining state tax revenues

Posted in Charters, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Jobs, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Vouchers on December 12, 2012| 12 Comments »

Fiscal Year 2012-13 is just half over but more deep budget cuts will be announced on Friday and, in the words of one state official, “It ain’t gonna be pretty.”

And the latest fiscal problems haven’t even encountered a looming tax rebate program being offered to encourage financial viability of state charter schools, a centerpiece of the Jindal administration.

With health care and higher education already devastated by previous cuts, it’s anyone’s guess who will suffer in the new round of belt tightening.

Higher education has already been hit with more than $426 million in cuts since 2009—$25 million since June—and Gov. Piyush Jindal has been conducting a fire sale to unload state hospitals and prisons, so it’s difficult to pinpoint where other cuts can be implemented.

The Revenue Estimating Conference will meet on Thursday and the Joint Committee on the Budget will meet on Friday to officially hear the bad news.

Without specifics (because they weren’t available when this was written), that bad news is:

• Personal income tax revenue is below projections;

• Corporate income tax revenue is below projections;

• Severance tax revenue is below projections (because of an unexpected drop in the price of natural gas);

• Sales tax revenue is below projections.

With the bulk of state revenue coming from income taxes and sales taxes, the news, it seems, couldn’t be much worse.

But it might.

Remember the alternative fuel tax credit?

That’s the bill authored by former Rep. Jane Smith (R-Bossier City) that promised a tax credit of up to $3,000 for vehicles that burn “alternative fuel. It was estimated at the time that the tax credit would cost the state $907,000 over five years.

After losing her bid to move up to the Senate in 2011, Jindal rewarded her loyalty (read: dedication to tax breaks) by appointing her as deputy secretary of the Department of Revenue.

The intent of the bill was to encourage the conversion of vehicles to propane but between the passage of Smith’s tax rebate bill and its implementation, flex-fuel vehicles that run on a blend of up to 85 percent ethanol hit the market.

These vehicles immediately qualified for the rebate and the real cost turned out to be more like $200 million, an increase of almost 1,900 percent after then-Revenue Secretary Cynthia Bridges got around to creating rules for the program.

Caught in a potential fiscal crisis over the tax credits, Jindal promptly fired Bridges, promoted Smith (who authored the bill in the first place) to interim secretary and rescinded the tax credits.

Now, a similar scenario may have arisen in the form of last session’s House Bill 969.

HB 969, by Rep. Kirk Talbot (R-Baton Rouge), which was subsequently signed into law by Piyush as Act 25, offers tax rebates to those making contributions to charter schools.

Piyush vetoed a similar bill by Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) that would have given tax rebates of up to $10 million to those making contributions to public schools because, he said, there was no provision in the state budget for the rebates.

The only problem is, the provisions of Act 25 contain no dollar cap which, like the alternative fuel tax, could blow a gaping hole in the state’s budget should a sufficient number of people make contributions to the private scholarship program.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Boy Blunder handles the latest financial crisis since the state is running out of one-time money with which to plug budget holes, thousands of state jobs have already been eliminated, there are few remaining assets that can be sold off, and health care and higher education have already been cut just about as much as they can stand and still function.

Perhaps Piyush might actually see the need to jettison a few six-figure appointive positions handed out to former legislators like Smith, Noble Ellington, Troy Hebert, Lane Carson and numerous others.

That would be a start—a show of good faith, at least.

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After three legal setbacks, the next logical step for π-yush is to follow the lead of Egypt’s Morsi: suspend the court system

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Education, Ethics, Golf Courses, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Judges, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, Prison, Privatization, Retirement, Teague, Toledo Bend, Water Sale on December 6, 2012| 7 Comments »

First it was a federal judge who threw out Piyush Jindal’s voucher plan in Tangipahoa Parish because it posed a major setback to the parish’s current desegregation consent decree.

Then, last Friday, a state district judge, Tim Kelley, whose wife once worked for Piyush, said the method of appropriations to fund the statewide voucher program is unconstitutional.

Fast on the heels of Kelley’s ruling, fellow Baton Rouge District Judge William Morvant refused to throw out a lawsuit challenging the only part of Piyush’s far-reaching retirement reform proposals that survived the legislative session earlier this year.

In case you’re counting, that’s oh-for-three—not a good batting average for the governor who would be president.

Keep in mind that Piyush is the incoming chairman of the National Republican Governors’ Association.

Remember, too, that he thought he would be moving into that position in the hope that it would be the launching pad for his presidential aspirations. To do so, he needed to bring something substantial to the table.

That something was to be sweeping education reform. That was to be the centerpiece of his list of grand accomplishments, the bold-face type on his curriculum vitae.

Now, the status of both education and retirement reform are suddenly in jeopardy.

Suddenly the star of the errand boy of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) doesn’t shine quite so brightly.

What to do?

The obvious answer would be to teague someone. That practice, after all, has served him well in the past. No college president, attorney, doctor, agency head, legislator or rank-and-file state employee will dare rebuke Piyush lest he or she be shown the door.

There was a time when we would have run a recap of those teagued by this peevish little man, but the list has grown so long that it would take up far too much space.

On reflection, however, one must ask just what are Piyush’s alternatives?

Well, normally he could campaign against the re-election of judges Kelley and Morvant—except he already did the anti-judge campaign thingy in Iowa.

He can’t teague the federal judge; he was appointed by the president.

He can’t teague either of the state judges—Kelley or Morvant—because they were elected by voters of the 19th Judicial District.

He can’t teague Jimmy Faircloth, the attorney who so expertly represented the interests of the state in arguing on behalf of the voucher program because Faircloth was working under a contract that ends when all appeals are exhausted—about $100,000 or so down the road.

He can’t teague Angéle Davis, wife of Judge Kelley because she already resigned her position as Commissioner of Administration.

He can’t teague the legislator who introduced the education bills because they were not written by any Louisiana elected official but by the corporate honchos at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

He might consider teaguing Superintendent of Education John White since there are already unconfirmed rumors floating around that he is leaving soon.

But there is a far better option open to Piyush:

He could take a page from the playbook of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

It’s such a simple solution we’re surprised no one has thought of it before.

All he has to do is first invoke that obscure nullification clause which several states unhappy with last month’s presidential election are bantering about—the one that says states can unilaterally ignore a federal law they don’t like. Or even opt out of the union itself. Some in Texas are talking about splitting off and breaking the state into five separate states (pure lunacy, but a philosophy that dovetails nicely with that of the Tea Party).

Then, like Morsi, Jindal can unilaterally decree greater authority for himself, including issuing a declaration that the wrong-headed courts are henceforth barred from challenging his decisions.

(Come to think of it, such a move is not exactly unprecedented. President Andrew Jackson said of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that the state of Georgia could not impose its laws on Cherokee tribal lands, “(Chief Justice) John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”)

After that, he could even take it a step further and, like North Korea’s late Kim Jong-il, bestow upon himself the title of “Dear Leader,” and, again like Kim Jong-il, commission a song of the same name in his honor.

Think about it. If he were to take that action, he could sell prisons, the old insurance building property, hospitals, roads, universities, the Saints and the Zephyrs, not to mention a few state-owned golf courses and state parks.

That water from Toledo Bend Reservoir? Sold. Gone to Texas and a few select political cronies are even richer than before.

And you only think you’ve seen a lot of corporate tax breaks, incentives and exemptions. Once he issues his decree, corporate taxes would disappear into that sink hole in Assumption Parish.

All state employees who aren’t fired outright (to be replaced by telecommuting administrative types from Florida, California, Alabama and elsewhere) would immediately forfeit all health and retirement benefits—except for friendly former legislators who, of course, would be elevated to six-figure salaries with full benefits.

The Department of Civil Service, public schools and the State Ethics Board would become distant memories for the nostalgic among us.

Of course, were he to take such action, he could always say his decision was predicated “by three things: one, to protect needed reform packages; two, to streamline government so at the end of the day, we can do more with less, and three, I have the job I want.”

Opponents could be expected to condemn his decrees as heavy-handed and dictatorial but what else would you expect from those who represent the coalition of the status quo?

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