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Archive for the ‘Supriya Jinda Foundation’ Category

PSC member Foster Campbell has 30,500 reasons to oppose Claiborne Electric Co-op’s proposal for rural internet service

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Business, Campaign Contributions, Commissions, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Governor's Office, Grants, Lobbyist, Politicians, Privatization, Senate, Supriya Jinda Foundation, Transparency on November 15, 2018| 7 Comments »

On Monday (Nov. 13), Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell issued a glowing PRESS RELEASE in which he announced what he described as a project to provide high-speed internet service to more than 54,000 homes and businesses in the 24-parish PSC District 5.

Yet, only two months earlier, Campbell had appeared before the Claiborne Parish Police Jury to publicly trash a proposal by Claiborne Electric Cooperative to provide even faster and more comprehensive internet service to an estimated 65,000 homes and businesses in its five-parish service area—at a comparable customer cost.

Campbell, an Elm Grove populist Democrat who lost to John Kennedy in the 2016 U.S. Senate race, who lost to Bobby Jindal in the 2007 governor’s election and who three times ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House from Louisiana’s 4th congressional district, seems to be running for something again but there don’t seem to be any other offices for him to seek.

In September, he presented his timeline of events concerning the approval process for Claiborne’s proposed high-speed broad internet service. One cooperative member who was present for that performance described Campbell’s remarks as “hyperbole,” adding that many of Foster’s claims “were outright wrong.”

“Then when he had his say, for which he caught a lot of flak from citizens in attendance, he promptly left as (Claiborne CEO) Mark Brown was given the opportunity to present his side of the situation,” the member said, pointing out that he is neither an employee nor a board member of Claiborne Electric. He asked that his name not be used.

“There was a marked difference in the points of view with Mr. Brown’s position being a lot more straightforward and fact-based,” he said. “That Campbell made his accusations and factually incorrect statements and then left without hearing Mr. Brown’s EXPLANATION was one of the rudest displays I’ve seen in a public forum.”

In his press release, Campbell said the “Connect America” program of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “is helping fiber, wireless and satellite internet providers meet the need for broadband service in unserved or underserved areas of North Louisiana.”

He said that FCC records indicate that 54,580 homes and businesses in his PSC district are eligible for high-speed internet service funded by Connect America.

That represents just a fraction of almost a million people—325,000 households—in the 24 parishes.

What Campbell describes as “high speed” internet is a download speed of 10 megabytes per second and an upload speed of one megabyte per second at an estimated cost of $60 per month per customer.

Claiborne’s proposal calls for the same $60 monthly rate for 50 megabytes to one gigabyte of service for 10,000 more customers in the five-parishes of Bienville, Claiborne, Lincoln, Union and Webster than for Campbell’s entire 24 parish district.

Campbell claims that if the Claiborne project fails, customers would be on the hook for the costs, ignoring the fact that the proposal calls for a construction phase-in that would allow the project to be scrapped if it did not meet projections.

“Foster Campbell ignores the fact the 69 co-ops around the country have already done projects like that proposed by Claiborne and none of those have failed,” the Homer member said. “He also ignores that about 75 other co-ops around the country are in the process of starting fiber optic systems.”

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

Foster’s behavior is a strange reversal of traditional Democratic support for electric cooperatives begun under the administration of Franklin Roosevelt and championed by such notables as Lyndon Johnson. In fact, Foster’s rhetoric is reminiscent of Bobby Jindal’s REJECTION of that $80 million Commerce Department grant to install high-speed broadband internet for Louisiana’s rural parishes back in 2011.

In that case, Jindal was in lockstep with the AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL (ALEC) which in 2010 had staked out its opposition to federal encroachment onto the turf of private business despite the fact that private business had been painfully slow in responding to the needs of rural America dating back to the early days of electric power and telephone service.

And therefore, since AT&T was a member of ALEC and since AT&T was opposed to the grant, therefore, so was Jindal. In Jindal’s case, AT&T had also made a six-figure contribution to his wife’s charitable foundation, giving Jindal another reason to take up the ALEC banner.

AT&T, in fact, even took the City of Lafayette to court to fight the city’s efforts to construct its own fiber optic high speed broadband internet system. It was a costly fight for both sides but Lafayette eventually emerged victorious despite AT&T’s best efforts.

Foster Campbell, in his press release noted that AT&T would be responsible for $17.2 million, or 79 percent of the FCC-funded broadband expansion into PSC District 5 while CenturyLink of Monroe would have responsibility for $3.9 million (18 percent) of the cost and satellite provider ViaSat would spend $1.5 million (3 percent).

So, why is Campbell now sounding so downright Jindalesque in his opposition to Claiborne Electric?

For that answer, one would have to take the advice FBI agent Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, gave to reporter Bob Woodward during the Washington Post’s investigation of Nixon and Watergate:

Follow the money.

  • CenturyLink made two $1,000 contributions to Campbell’s various state campaign fund in 2011 and 2012, according to Louisiana Ethics Commission records.
  • Glen F. Post, III, of Farmerville in Union Parish, is President of CenturyLink. He personally contributed $11,500 to Campbell between 2003 and 2014.
  • Stacy Goff is Executive Vice-President of CenturyLink. He chipped in another $500 for Campbell in 2005.
  • AT&T gave $10,000 to Campbell in campaign contributions between 2003 and 2010.
  • William G. “Bud” Courson and James W. Nickel of Baton Rouge are registered lobbyists for AT&T. Their firm, Courson Nickel, LLC of Baton Rouge, contributed $2,000 to Campbell from 2002 to 2014.

CENTURYTEL

COURSON NICKEL

Post contributed another $3,000 to Campbell’s unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2016 and Nickel and Courson also contributed $500 and $1,000, respectively, to that campaign, federal campaign finance records show.

Altogether, Foster Campbell had at least 30,500 reasons to oppose Claiborne Electric’s proposal to provide high speed broadband internet service to its members.

Because he indisputably had skin in the game, he should have recused himself from the discussion in order to avoid any conflict of interests.

Therein lies the problem of regulators accepting contributions from those they regulate.

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Iraqiscam only part of the Billy Nungesser story; there is so very much more: what a man, what a legend, what a shame!

Posted in Auditor, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Lawsuits, Politicians, Public Records, Supriya Jinda Foundation on April 18, 2016| 9 Comments »

Iraqi oil scams, critical compliance audits, litigation over the misappropriation of public funds, questionable land deals, botched Wal Mart deal involving Bobby Jindal’s father-in-law.

They’re all just another day at the office for Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser.

When Baton Rouge Advocate reporters Rebekah Allen and Richard Thompson did some good old-fashioned journalistic digging last week to report that hysterical Iraqi oil scam perpetrated by Nungesser and political ally State Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere, it threw LouisianaVoice into a scramble mode. http://theadvocate.com/news/politics/15398751-125/lt-gov-billy-nungesser-gop-chairman-roger-villere-work-to-recruit-unlikely-iraq-to-louisiana-busin

In short order we found that Nungesser and Villere had fallen for a similar con run by the same company (Alexandros, a corporation registered in Delaware), but instead of the State of Louisiana and Nungesser and Villere, the targets were the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and former Baton Rouge Metro Council member Darrell Glasper. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/04/12/louisiana-has-a-new-clown-prince-but-its-egg-not-a-pie-all-over-lt-gov-nungessers-face-after-succession-of-blunders/

But by the time the light came on in Nungesser’s head, Krusty had already been cued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzLHU6S4oic

By then, however, it was too late. He had fired off letters to Secretary of State John Kerry, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones and to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and even issued a press release to (thankfully) only one news outlet, The Washington Post which (again, thankfully) did not run with the story.

Oh, and he also passed himself off as the one man in state government responsible for economic development (quick: someone let Secretary of Economic Development Secretary Donald Pierson know) and he said he was acting on the directive of Gov. John Bel Edwards (he wasn’t).

Sources tell LouisianaVoice that when Edwards heard about the two-man theater of the absurd, he had two state troopers interrupt Nungesser during an address to a group of businessmen and escort him to the governor’s office where he had a little come-to-Jesus meeting with Edwards. We weren’t able to get a confirmation or denial of that story

Nungesser, of course, did the only logical thing: he first blamed his staff, saying the letters should never have reached his desk. He then tried to throw Villere under the bus by saying the state GOP chairman had requested the letters from him. Finally, in an appearance on the Jim Engster radio show, he said the letters were in the middle of a stack of thank-you notes and he didn’t actually read them.

Did he learn his lesson? Apparently not. Even after the Iraqi letter-writing frenzy blew up in his face, he then told another group that Edwards had put him in charge of coastal restoration.

Nice.

Trying to imagine Nungesser sitting at his desk feverishly signing all those thank-you notes, it’s difficult not to visualize Gov. William J. Lepetomane signing a succession of documents handed him by aide Hedley Lamarr in the movie Blazing Saddles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm1Jyusyoqk

Back during those heady days as Plaquemines Parish President, Nungesser decided he’d like to bring a brand spanking new Wal Mart to the lot at the corner of LA. 23 and LA. 406 in Belle Chasse.

The only problem was there was a moratorium on big box stores on the books that the parish council had passed and by the time it expired about a year later, the tide of opinion on the council had turned against Nungesser’s proposal.

The land in question was—and is—owned by several former employees of Freeport McMoRan, one of whom is Jatinder (Jay) Jolly.

Jolly is the father of Supriya Jindal, wife of former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

After the deal collapsed, only a small building owned by Freeport McMoRan sat on the property but now it has been torn down and only a concrete slab remains, leading to speculation that the Wal Mart proposal may be resurrected.

A 2010 compliance AUDIT conducted by the Legislative Auditor’s Office while Nungesser still served as parish president is especially telling.

A compliance audit is different from a routine annual audit in that a compliance audit is an audit for compliance of laws, regulations and other guidelines that a governmental entity is required to follow.

In short, the compliance audit found that:

  • The Parish may have violated the parish Charter and a local ordinance by entering into two contracts pertaining to recovery operations.
  • The Parish Administration may have violated the Local Government Budget Act by not including Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants within the Parish budget.
  • The Parish’s attorney may not be properly approved by the Council as required in the Parish Charter.
  • The Parish President (Nungesser) may have violated the Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics through real estate transactions between his trust and the owners of two Parish vendors.

In that last finding, auditors said in January 2008, the owners of two companies doing business with the parish “were also involved in a private real estate transaction with a trust whose beneficiary is Parish President William Nungesser. These transactions may constitute a violation of the Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics and therefore will be referred to the Board of Ethics for its consideration.”

Since Nungesser was a political ally of Jindal and the Board of Ethics members are appointed by Jindal, nothing came of that referral.

Nungesser, in typical fashion, saw no fault in his actions and fired off a defiant 12-page letter of response to the state auditor in which he painted himself as the savior of a parish devastated by hurricanes and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He even managed to tell auditors what their job was in his response, saying they had “no authority” to second-guess his decision as to when a state of emergency was ended.

If he could find no fault, members of the Plaquemines Parish Council certainly could (with the exception of Council Chairman Kirk Lepine.)

On Oct. 15, just nine days before the Oct. 24 primary election last fall, the Plaquemines Parish Government filed suit against Nungesser in 25th Judicial District Court in Plaquemines Parish.

The lawsuit accuses Nungesser of causing “the misappropriation of public property and public services” by having Plaquemines Parish employees perform work on private property.

The suit says he ordered parish employees of the Heavy Equipment Department to transport limestone, sand aggregate and asphalt belonging to the parish to two private roads in the parish and to cut trees and dig out a drainage ditch prior to installing a drain pipe with an 8-by-20-foot culvert and then backfill on private property on LA. 23 in Belle Chasse.

Now Lepine has offered up a motion for the parish to drop the lawsuit.

Perhaps it’s only coincidence that Lepine’s stepdaughter works for Nungesser.

CLOWN IN CHIEF

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Friends of Jindal weekly update reveals Jindal’s desire to commit even more American dollars to defense spending

Posted in Budget, Congress, Economy, Education, Finances, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Politicians, Revenue, Senate, Supriya Jinda Foundation on December 7, 2014| 15 Comments »

If you think Gov. Bobby Jindal has bankrupted this state with his squirrely economic policies, you need to read this.

If you are the least bit concerned about his decimation of higher education, you need to read this.

If his repetitive patchwork budgets and annual budget cuts alarm you, you need to read this.

If it bothers you that he has given away state hospitals, raided the reserves of the health plan for public employees and attempted to slash state employees’ retirement benefits while secretly having legislation introduced to augment the retirement of the state police commander by some $55,000 a year, you definitely need to read this.

If you believe he should have stayed at home to tend to the state’s business instead of gallivanting off to Iowa and New Hampshire in pursuit of a Republican presidential nomination, then by all means, you should read this.

In short, if you believe he has been a major disappointment in administering the affairs of a single state—Louisiana—you need to examine his grandiose plans for America, his plans to do to the nation what he has done to our state. You owe that much to yourselves and your children.

You see, an outfit called Friends of Bobby Jindal has a web blog of its own which, of course, is certainly their right. But curiously, in addition to touting the latest pronouncements, op-ed pieces written by Jindal and his appearances on Fox News, the page has a “DONATE” button that allows supporters to contribute to Jindal’s political campaign.

Jindal Weekly Update

But wait. What’s he running for? He is term-limited and cannot run for re-election as governor next year and he has steadfastly refused to divulge whether or he plans to run for President (though there are few who doubt it; his family members were discussing openly during his first inauguration in 2008).

We don’t know how we got on the mailing list, but we’re certainly glad we did. Otherwise, how else could we keep up with the activities of a man on the run like Bobby Jindal?

On the latest mail-out, a “quick recap of the news about the governor’s week,” we have stories about:

  • The First Lady’s travels to Eunice to promote the Supriya Jindal Foundation;
  • Gov. Jindal’s announcement of the expansion of Oxlean Manufacturing in Livingston Parish;
  • Louisiana’s joining other states in suing President Obama over his immigration order;
  • An op-ed piece by (yawn) Jindal criticizing Obama and calling for a repeal of Obamacare;
  • Jindal’s appearance on (yawn again) Fox News where he criticized Obama for trying to redefine the American Dream;
  • Another op-ed criticizing Obama for the president’s apparent failure to believe in American exceptionalism;
  • Jindal’s speech at a foreign policy form in Washington, D.C. in which he called for increased military spending.

It was that last one (actually first on the Friends web blog because we listed them in reverse order) that caught our attention. http://freebeacon.com/national-security/2016-gop-hopefuls-call-for-boost-in-defense-spending/

Our first reaction was: What the hell is he thinking, commenting on foreign policy and military spending when he can’t even balance the budget of a single state? But then we remembered it was Jindal and typically, he panders to the fringe element that adheres to the concept that we are the world’s policeman and that we must impose our will on others despite their resentment of our failure to respect their traditions and cultures. And we’re not just talking about Islam here. Remember Vietnam? For that matter, go back and familiarize yourself with how we took land north of the Rio Grande from Mexico. And to the American Indians (Native Americans, we one insists on political correctness), we are the original illegal immigrants.

Okay, we got off-track and started talking about his American exceptionalism op-ed and while the two issues are interlinked, let’s get back to his advocacy of increased military spending.

First and foremost, it is important to know that America already spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined. President George W. Bush’s defense spending, for example, eclipsed that of the Cold War.

Historian Paul Kennedy, in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, noted that powerful nations have an unsettling habit throughout history of becoming the leading economic and leading military power and then “overreaching with their military ambitions while their economies sputter past their prime.”

Kennedy said that even as the economic strengths are on the decline, growing foreign challenges force greater and greater military expenditures at the sacrifice of productive investment which he said leads to the “downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities and a weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defense.”

He said the U.S. currently runs the risk of “imperial overstretch where our global interests and obligations are larger than our ability to defend them all simultaneously.

Kennedy wrote that back in 1987 but during her run for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Hillary Clinton, like her or not, said if $1 trillion spent in Iraq had been applied instead to domestic programs, it would:

  • Provide healthcare for all 47 million uninsured Americans;
  • Provide quality pre-kindergarten for every American child;
  • Solve the housing crisis once and for all;
  • Make college affordable for every American student, and
  • Provide tax relief to tens of millions of middle-class families.

A classic example of our failure to heed the warning of President Dwight Eisenhower when he warned of the importance of resisting the influence of the “military-industrial complex” is the tar baby this country is stuck to in the Mideast.

Ike warned the country during his farewell address of Jan. 17, 1961, when he said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

Back during the elder Bush’s administration, it was the defense of Kuwait against Saddam Hussein and Iraq—way back in 1991. That’s a quarter-century ago. Later, with Bush II, it was Saddam Hussein and WMD that have yet to be found. No sooner did W announce “Mission accomplished,” than we found ourselves in a conflict that, believe it or not, has now lasted longer than the Vietnam War—with no end in sight. That war has expanded into Afghanistan and now Iran with an invisible enemy called the Islamic State (IS) whom we cannot find, let alone fight.

And how much have those skirmishes cost this country? Click on this link to find out.

http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary

That $4.4 trillion includes not only the immediate $1.7 trillion cost of America’s Mideast policy, but the interest on loans to finance the war, the cost of support bases elsewhere in the world, homeland security, nation building (building infrastructure on the war-torn countries while neglecting our own infrastructure), retirement, disability and medical benefits for war veterans, etc., costs our grandchildren will be paying off after we are long gone.

And just how do we pay for these wars in Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan? World War II was financed by raising taxes or selling war bonds. Not so these modern wars, beginning with Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam; they’re financed almost entirely by borrowing which has raised the U.S. budget deficit (something of which Jindal should have a working knowledge), increased the national debt. The interest alone on Pentagon spending from 2001 through 2013 is approximately $316 billion.

To put expenditures in better perspective, consider that American taxpayers are paying:

  • $312,500 every hour for military action against ISIS (total thus far almost $1.4 billion);
  • $10.17 million per hour for the cost of the war in Afghanistan (nearly $800 million to date);
  • $365,000 per hour for the cost of the war in Iraq ($818 billion so far);
  • $10.54 million per hour for the total cost of wars since 2001 ($1.6 trillion);
  • $58 million per hour for the Department of Defense ($602.7 billion budget);
  • $861,000 per hour for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ($9 billion);
  • $2.12 million per hour for our nuclear weapon arsenal ($22 billion);
  • $37,000 each hour for Tomahawk Cruise Missiles ($385 million);
  • $1.33 million every hour for foreign military assistance ($13.8 billion to date);
  • $8.43 million per hour for Homeland Security ($804.5 billion since 9/11);

By comparison, here are some hourly expenditures by U.S. taxpayers for other services in 2014 (with the year-to-date expenditures in parenthesis):

  • $7.81 million for education ($81.14 billion, and don’t forget, Rick Perry wanted to abolish the Dept. of Education);
  • $3.04 million on the environment ($31.6 billion–ditto Perry on the EPA);
  • $2.71 million on foreign aid ($28.2 billion);
  • $4.9 million on housing assistance ($50.8 billion);
  • $36.91 million for Medicaid and CHIP ($383.6 billion);
  • $13.3 million for nutrition assistance ($138.1 billion).

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/

And Gov. Jindal would have the U.S. commit even more money to the Pentagon, according to a grizzled old reporter a whole year out of college (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill).

Daniel Wiser, writing for something called the Washington Free Beacon (a sister publication to the Hooterville World Guardian of the TV series Green Acres, no doubt), placed Jindal squarely in the same camp as gunslingers John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a couple of veteran Senate saber rattlers.

Wiser said that Jindal released a paper in October calling for allocating 4 percent of the nation’s GDP to defense spending.

Jindal said the U.S. is “in the process of hollowing out our military,” the article said. Jindal added that “The best way for America to lead… is for America to rebuild our tools of hard power.”

It would be bad enough if an otherwise comparatively level-headed candidate like Rick Perry or Rand Paul (everything, after all, is relative) were elected, but if Jindal had a prayer of becoming president, this would be some horrifyingly scary stuff.

The good news is we don’t have to worry about that. Perry or Paul, on the other hand…

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The solution to the federal government shutdown is really quite simple: we should fire all 535 members of Congress

Posted in Congress, Economy, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Supriya Jinda Foundation on October 5, 2013| 32 Comments »

While we normally do not delve into national politics (we have quite enough to do to keep up with the jesters on the fourth floor of the State Capitol), we have decided to offer up our solution to the impasse in Washington, aka the federal government shutdown.

If the board of a larger corporation like, say, Wal-Mart disagrees with the company’s CEO or president, there are no closures of Wal-Mart stores. That would be self-defeating in every respect. Corporate profits would plummet, consumers would buy elsewhere and the stockholders would elect new board members and new officers.

So how is it that Congress—America’s corporate board—can shut down company operations because of disagreements among themselves and with the President—the country’s CEO? Is our national company that near bankruptcy, financial collapse, that hysteria is now the order of the day when it comes to running the store?

To borrow a line from the television sitcom Two and a Half Men, our elected representatives appear to have the emotional stability of a sack of rats in a burning meth lab. Come to think of it, the analogy might not be that far off.

When either side of the aisle in Congress, whether Republicans or Democrats, takes it upon itself to hold the entire country hostage over its inability or unwillingness to compromise, drastic measures are in order.

When 535 men and women can cancel services to more than 300 million Americans on a whim, the system is broken and is in immediate need of repair.

When either side of the issue comments that it is “winning” and that it “doesn’t matter” to them how long the shutdown lasts—and please remember that there are cancer patients and wounded veterans who run the risk of not receiving needed medical treatments—then arrogance has supplanted diplomacy and common sense in our nation’s capital and something must be done.

When Rep. Randy Neugegauer (R-TX) can publicly insult a park ranger for doing her job in closing access to the temporarily closed World War II Memorial in Washington because of the government shutdown—a shutdown brought about by congressional stupidity and not by any action of the park ranger—then he, not she, should be ashamed.

And then we have Rep. Lee Terry (R-NEB) who said he cannot afford to give up his salary during the shutdown. He was dismissive of those who are declining their pay, saying, “Whatever gets them good press.” Good press seems the do-all, end-all for elected officials these days but they often miss the mark by a wide margin. “I’ve got a nice house and a kid in college,” Terry sniffed in refusing for relinquish his salary. “Giving our paycheck away when you still worked and earned it? That’s just not going to fly.”

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) expressed similar sentiments, saying he’s keeping his money because he’s “working to earn it.”

Certainly not like those federal employees who also have houses and kids in college and credit card debt and utility and grocery bills but who aren’t working because they were furloughed as a result of increasingly recurring—and tiresome—congressional gridlock and 535 megalomaniacs jockeying for “good press.”

Unfortunately, the solution to this idiocy cannot be implemented overnight; it will take several years.

Nevertheless, here is our solution:

Fire every damned one of them.

That’s right. Put them on the street for a change. Let them struggle to make ends meet each month. In short, put them back in touch with their constituents by making them one of us. We at LouisianaVoice have long felt that if we sent the politicians into battle before sacrificing our young men and women, there well might be fewer unnecessary, foolish, and costly wars like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Syria that benefit only the defense contractors.

So why not take that idea further and whenever federal employees are placed on furlough because of a federal shutdown resulting from sheer pigheadedness and some philosophical point, stop the pay for members of Congress and put them on furlough—permanently.

Constitutionally, it cannot be done in one fell swoop. Senators are elected on a rotating basis—one-third every two years. But in 2014, we could fire 468 of ‘em—all 435 members of the House and one-third, or 33 senators. Two years later, in 2016, send another one-third of the senators home and the final one-third in 2018. (Somewhere along the way, of course, there would be 34 senators up for re-election to account for all 100, but it should be just as easy to fire 34 as 33.)

None are righteous, no not one. All 535 have lost touch with the American people. Witness the shabby way in which 5th District Congressman Rodney Alexander “retired” with little advance notice, all so that (a) Gov. Bobby Jindal could install his choice, State Sen. Neil Riser, into Alexander’s seat and (b) Alexander could be rewarded for opening the door to Jindal’s boy via his appointment as head of the State Department of Veterans Affairs, a position which, incidentally, will bump his state retirement from his tenure in the state legislature before his election to Congress from approximately $7500 to about $82,000 per year.

He’s not alone, of course. Far too many members of Congress have parlayed their time in Washington into small—and not-so-small—fortunes.

Jindal, for example, spent a tad more than three years in Congress and emerged a multi-millionaire, a status he was far from enjoying when he entered.

And at least four of our own former congressmen—Sen. John Breaux and congressmen Bob Livingston, Richard Baker and Billy Tauzin—simply retired and moved over to K Street as highly paid lobbyists. There are others, but those come to mind quickly. Tauzin, it should be noted, used his position in Congress to set up his future employer—and himself—in a way we can only dream of. He rammed through a Medicare bill that prohibited the federal government from negotiating the cost of prescription drugs with pharmaceutical companies, meaning that the pharmaceutical companies set the prices—and that was that. And then he resigned and went to work as a lobbyist for (you guessed it) the pharmaceutical industry.

Other members of Congress (and some governors) establish non-profit, tax-exempt foundations that allow well-heeled donors to circumvent laws that limit campaign contributions to $5,000 per election cycle. Donations to foundations such as the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children and Jindal’s Believe in Louisiana, however, have no such restrictions placed on them.

As might be expected, contributions to these foundations from individuals seeking lucrative appointments and corporations seeking favorable legislation tend to spiral out of control.

And there are members of Congress, Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid among them, who use their positions to garner inside information that allows them to anticipate and profit from stock market fluctuations or to make property investments that enrich them personally.

There is less controversy in Congress over the issue of the NSA’s spying on American citizens—an issue that should prompt outrage on the part of the American people.

And now these self-righteous hypocrites beat their breasts as each side waits for the other to blink—all over the issue of ObamaCare which, good or bad, passed Congress and was ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The American people should be asked to tolerate only so much from these miscreants. Our patience should be wearing a bit then with these spoiled brats.

The only reasonable solution, therefore, is to fire them all.

No exceptions.

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Remember that $80M broadband internet grant that Piyush rejected? Well, it seems that John White needs it for DOE

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Broadband, Internet, Education, Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, Higher Education, Regents, Supriya Jinda Foundation on July 12, 2012| 8 Comments »

Remember last year’s incredible fiasco precipitated by Gov. Piyush Jindal when he spurned that $80.6 million Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grant to provide high speed broadband internet to rural areas of Louisiana?

Well, it’s back—perhaps to bite him in the gluteus maximus.

State Superintendent of Education John White has released a report that shows Louisiana public school students and teachers are lacking the technology to enter the digital age.

The Louisiana Technology Footprint report discusses technology guidelines that provide a snapshot of the current state of digital readiness of school districts and campuses in the state.

Louisiana Believes, the highly-touted plan by the department includes, among other goals, one for all schools to be digital-ready by 2014-2015.

The report provides districts with an initial footprint picture of network, bandwidth and device requirements need to fully implement online assessments by the 2014-2015 school year and full digital readiness thereafter.

“Data and technology specifications…indicate school campuses in Louisiana have 197,898 devices available for online testing but only 67,038 (33.9 percent) met new device standards,” the report says.

Only five districts—Ascension, City of Bogalusa, Red River, St. James and FirstLine Schools of New Orleans—meet the minimum device readiness requirements and only two—Ascension and St. James—meet both device and network readiness guidelines for online testing, it said.

It was last Oct. 26 that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Division (NOAA) issued its final termination letter for the grant after repeated efforts to get the state to comply with its request for additional information.

The project, which LouisianaVoice learned was opposed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), would have created 900 miles of cable over 21 rural parishes in Louisiana and would have supported several Louisiana universities with expanded optical fiber networking capacity.

That could have complimented the Board of Regents’ $20 million Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) project, designed to extend high-speed networking capabilities in the state.

But Jindal, whose wife’s charitable foundation received considerable funding from AT&T, apparently preferred that the project be carried out by private companies—such as…oh, say AT&T, for example.

The governor refused to re-apply for the grant because what he termed a “heavy-handed approach from the federal government that would have undermined and taken over private business.”

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu call Jindal’s stated reason “hogwash.” She said the grant would not have interfered with private enterprise and in fact, would have granted money for private companies to lay the cable. “We weren’t trying to create a government broadband system,” she said.

Almost a year before the final rejection of the grant, ALEC, at its annual meeting in San Diego in August of 2010, passed a resolution opposing initiatives targeted at providing universally accessible broadband service because of “the unnecessary, burdensome and economically harmful regulation of broadband internet service companies, including the providers of the infrastructure that supports and enables internet services…”

Looks like someone forgot to tell White about Jindal’s opposition to expanded availability to that evil internet.

In fact, White, in his report, encourages school districts to join a statewide consortium that will aid in consolidated purchasing and contracts as well as providing technology services and support.

Wonder who’ll get the contract to form that consortium?

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