Louisiana Voice

The news out of Baton Rouge last week was certainly uplifting insofar as local health care and medical research is concerned, but also fodder for critics of an LSU athletic program already considered bloated with money.

Our Lady of the Lake Medical Center (OLOL) and the Louisiana Children’s Medical Center (LCMC) combined to commit $245 MILLION over the next 10 years to LSU for medical research and treatment.

The biggest single commitment is $85 million to the LSU Athletic Department to be used “to deploy integrated clinical technology, facility improvements, and educational programming to advance student-athlete health and wellness – essential to sustain the vitality of LSU’s thriving athletic programs.”

Facility improvement and education programming? That $28 MILLION FACILITY, complete with sleeping pods, wasn’t enough? Especially when the LSU LIBRARY roof leaks like a sieve, forcing staff to cover books with plastic tarps. LSU already has more than $40 million in DEFERRED MAINTENANCE across its 15 million-square-foot campus.

LSU paid former head football coach Ed Orgeron and his fired staff nearly $27 MILLION to walk away – $17 million of that to Orgeron himself. And that doesn’t count the $100 million, 10-year contract for current head coach Brian Kelly and the $8.2 million for his ASSISTANT COACHES. One of those is quarterbacks coach Joe Sloan ($550,000), formerly the offensive coordinator for a Louisiana Tech team that went 3-9 last year.

The next-largest single allocation in the combined $245 million package is $40 million to “develop an end-to-end healthcare experience within the LSU Student Health Center and provide in-kind care to uninsured and underinsured LSU students.

Now, with some 35,000 students overall and just a couple hundred at most in the athletic program, how is it that $85 million goes to athletics and “only” $40 million to the rest of the student body? Just askin’.

And with all that money floating around for coaches’ salaries (the figures provided earlier included only the football program), it seems only reasonable that the Tiger Athletic Foundation (TAF) could pony up some of the money for deploying “integrated clinical technology, facility improvements, and educational programming to advance student-athlete health and wellness – essential to sustain the vitality of LSU’s thriving athletic programs,” especially those critical “facility improvements and education programming.”

I mean, what possible facility improvements could they be talking about – over and above what the jocks already have. And education programming? Aren’t there others among the 35,000-member student body who might benefit from some education programming?

And didn’t the OLOL Foundation experience a little PROBLEM with some fraud and money-laundering charges with its former PRESIDENT/CEO not too long ago that revealed some off-the-books support for LSU athletics?

Not that this allocation is in any way related to that fiasco, but I can’t help remembering that old adage from my wasted youth: once bitten, twice shy.

And we wonder why medical bills are so high.

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House Resolution 4445 has now passed both the House and Senate and now heads to President Biden’s desk where he is expected to sign it into law.

But the resolution, which eliminates forced arbitration agreements for sexual assault and harassment in the workplace didn’t get the unanimous support of Louisiana’s House delegation.

Despite the resolution’s bipartisan support, Reps. Clay Higgins and Mike Johnson voted against passage.

It passed in the Senate by a voice vote, so it’s a little more difficult to hold senators accountable.

The House approved the measure earlier this week by a 335-97 vote with all votes against it being cast by Repugnantcans. The breakdown of the vote shows that all 222 Democrats and 113 Repugnantcans voted in favor and two Repugnantcans, West Virginia’s Alexander Mooney and Texas’ Jodey Arrington, did not vote.

Both of Louisiana’s nay votes should come as no surprise. Higgins is a known bigot and misogynist and Johnson is steeped in the fundamentalist belief that women are second-class citizens with no right to pursue legal action against men who harass them.

Both would apparently rather keep the current method in place whereby men accused of harassment in the workplace are able to settle cases and silence victims by using the secretive process of arbitration and then move on to the next job.

But with Biden’s signature, women will have the option of suing their abusers in state, tribal, or federal court

“It is an outrage that women and men who are abused cannot seek justice are forced to be quiet, are forced to keep the agony inside themselves, it is outrageous,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “For decades, this forced arbitration has deprived millions of people form the basic right to justice.”

Repugnantcans who have opposed the bill say it’s an overreach by the federal government in workplace matters.

Well, they would.

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Marjorie Taylor-Greene appeared on One America News on Tuesday and accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of using Capitol police as “political pawns” and “sending them into our offices” — referring to a complaint from her colleague Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Tex.). The Capitol Police has rejected Nehls’s claim that a security check of his open office was an illegal investigation, calling it protocol when an unattended office has a door left open.

Greene referenced “Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives.”

Pelosi has yet to comment publicly on the incident, but the apparent mix-up of “gazpacho” and “Gestapo” quickly went viral online — sparking memes and reactions shared by politicians and other prominent figures.

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The Washington Post had an interesting op-ed column on Wednesday. Because The Post has a pay wall, some of you will not be able to access it, so I will summarize.

Basically, it says that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was correct to criticize the Repugnantcan National Committee’s (RNC) censure Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (Illinois) for participating on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Contradicting the RNC’s description of the investigation as a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” McConnell called the attack on the Capitol what it was: a “violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.”

Other Repugnantcans have voiced their displeasure with the resolution and RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. One of those who voiced his disgust was McDaniel’s uncle, Sen. Mitt Romney, who called the censure “stupid,” helping to underscore, The Post said, the “intellectual dishonesty, moral blindness, and dangerous anti-democratic sentiments that now define the GOP.”

But The Post went a bit further by posing eight soul-searching questions the Repugnantcan Party should address in the face of its “continued defense of violence to overthrow and election.”

The questions are as follows:

• How can a party go on record as condoning a violent uprising and still pretend to defend the U.S. Constitution?
• How can the party take direction from former president Donald Trump, the instigator of the violent insurrection? How can it continue to support his ambitions to run for president in 2024?
• If the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was a violent insurrection, as McConnell acknowledged, was the acquittal of Trump in his second impeachment trial unwise?
• If Trump did instigate a violent insurrection, how is he fit to hold office pursuant to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from serving in public office?
• Should Trump be criminally prosecuted for instigating a violent insurrection?
• How can Republicans criticize the Jan. 6 select committee if it is investigating a violent insurrection? Isn’t this a necessary task?
• Do members of Congress who agree with Trump and the RNC that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a display of “legitimate political discourse” forfeit the right to hold public office?
• Should any official who lent aid to the insurrectionists be disqualified under Section 3?

For Louisiana voters, there is an even bigger question looming as we head into the 2022 midterm elections:

Should five of Louisiana’s seven members of Congress be reelected after they voted on Jan. 6 to overturn the 2020 presidential election?

That’s an important question that should not be taken lightly. These five men – four representatives and a senator – turned their backs on the democratic process on which this country was founded. They spurned the very basis on which our country was founded: free and honest elections.

And make no mistake, the 2020 election has been examined and investigated from every conceivable angle and (count ‘em) 64 separate courts have tossed challenges to the election offered up by Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Many of the judges involved in the dismissals were appointed by Trump or other Repugnantcan presidents.

Not only does the Repugnantcan party need to address those eight questions put forward by The Post, but Louisiana voters need to do some deep soul-searching of their own to determine if they really want to send those five back to Washington next fall.

In case you’re wondering who those five are, they are Reps. Garret Graves, Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise and Sen. John “Foghorn Leghorn” Kennedy.

It’s not certain at this point if the Democrats will even offer a challenger to the representatives or if they will have Repugnantcan opponents but Kennedy that consummate embarrassment to this state, has two Democratic opponents.

We at least have a choice in the Senate race and Louisianans should choose carefully. Do we really want someone who would vote to overturn a legitimate election and turn the keys of the nation back over to an egotistical, self-destructive lunatic?

I’d rather drink weedkiller.

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Yesterday’s announcement by Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley that there were no plans for teachers in Louisiana’s public schools to “indoctrinate” students by teaching them about this country’s history of slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights struggle of the 1960s falls right in line with a LouisianaVoice story of last July 24.

In that story, I quoted State Rep. RAY GAROFALO (R-Chalmette) who said, “There is no reason to make students feel guilty. We should teach the good things about this country.”

To paraphrase the late comic Brother Dave Gardner, “Dear hearts, that ain’t education, that’s propaganda”

I wrote in that July post that Garofalo would forbid the teaching of the Trail of Tears, or that women in this country weren’t allowed to vote until the 20^th century, or that enslaved blacks were considered 3/5 of a person. That last provision, by the way, was embedded in the US Constitution in Article I, Section 2 despite the Declaration of Independence insistence that “all men are created equal.”

That’s the same Constitution, by the way, that Rep. Lauren Boebert seems to think does not EVOLVE.

But back to the issue of what can and cannot be taught in Louisiana’s educational system and how Louisiana ranks in education achievement.

Out of 51 systems – 50 states and the District of Columbia – Louisiana ranks 50^th in quality of education, ahead of only New Mexico, according to a WALLETHUB survey released last July.

WalletHub’s ranking of educated states had up just a nudge at 48^th, ahead of only Mississippi and West Virginia among the 50 states.

Louisiana was 47^th in the percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree (the next three were Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia), and 47^th again in the percentage of graduate or professional degree holders (ahead of Arkansas, West Virginia, and North Dakota). Louisiana ranks 48th for Educational Attainment and 44th for Quality of Education.

The metrics for WalletHub’s rankings included adults 25 and over with a high school diploma; with at least some college; with a bachelor’s degree, and with a graduate or professional degree.

Louisiana has a dropout rate of 21.9 percent despite a per-student expenditure of $11,038. The state’s student to teacher ratio is 14.8:1 And while Massachusetts, the highest-ranked state, has a student to teacher ratio of 13.32:1, which is comparable to Louisiana, that state spends $15,593 per student and has a dropout rate of 11.7, 10 points lower than Louisiana’s.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranks Louisiana 48^th overall of the 51 systems, including the District of Columbia. The only states with lower rankings, in order, are South Carolina, Mississippi and New Mexico.

That survey has Louisiana ranked 48^th in academic performance, 47^th in bachelor degree rates and in high school graduation rates.

So, bottom line, it’s fine for Louisiana to wallow at the bottom of the pile in education attainment so long as we don’t tell students about slavery, genocide of Native Americans, the denial of the right to vote for women and blacks, and probably the Holocaust.

Hell, we may as well burn a few books along the way.

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