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Archive for the ‘Vouchers’ Category

Supreme Court squelches voucher funding; how are those course choice providers gonna ‘sell’ the free classes now?

Posted in BESE, Courts, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Vouchers on May 7, 2013| 16 Comments »

Tuesday’s ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court that taking money from the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) is unconstitutional has thrown a monkey wrench into the plans by the Jindal administration to suck state funding from local school districts to pay for vouchers for private and virtual schools.

The ruling, by a convincing 6-1 majority, also may send more than 40 course providers in the proposed Course Choice program scurrying to find new ways to attract students (read dollars) now that the carrot of free admission may have been removed.

Anyone who still believes that the Louisiana Department of Education’s (DOE) Course Choice program is about educating Louisiana’s school children, and not about the money might wish to take a look at three advertisements currently running on Craigslist.

Actually, only one ad is necessary because the three are identical except for the locations of employment—Central Louisiana, Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

Despite a state district court ruling that found the funding method for Course Choice unconstitutional, Gov. Bobby Jindal and Superintendent of Education John White plunged ahead by allowing more than 40 course choice providers to begin marketing campaigns to attract students.

Forty-two course providers were approved to offer some 1500 online, blended and face-to-face courses through the Course Choice program. Providers included K-12, Inc., Florida Virtual School, Sylvan, five public school districts and every public college and university in Louisiana.

That shouldn’t be too difficult considering there is no cost to the student and students get a free iPad, provided White and Jindal can devise some plan to get past that pesky court ruling last Nov. 30 that said Minimum Foundation Program funds could not be taken from local school districts to finance state-approved vouchers.

An online blurb by Evergreen Education Group of Durango, Colo., a private consulting firm, says that as of March 2013, eligible Louisiana students “now have the opportunity to select their own online and face-to-face courses from a wide range of private providers through the Course Choice program.”

“Act 2 (of the 2012 Legislature) presents a shift in direction for virtual schooling in Louisiana, whose Department of Education has offered supplemental online courses through its Louisiana Virtual School (LVS),” the Evergreen posting says.

Another approved provider is SmartStart Virtual Academy (SVA), a division of SmartStart Education of Raleigh, N.C., the organization that placed the Craigslist ads for sales reps for its course choice curriculum.

That’s right; sales reps, not teachers.

You won’t find the word “teachers” anywhere in the ad and the only reference to education is the line that reads: “Help change the landscape of public education in Louisiana.”

Change the landscape. Nothing about improving education. That wasn’t even an afterthought. It’s all about the money.

“…SVA has been authorized to offer FREE (emphasis theirs) courses to high school students in the state of Louisiana for graduation credit.

“SmartStart Virtual Academy is hiring outside sales representatives to sell these FREE courses to high school students and their parents,” it says.

So, how do you sell something that’s free and how does SVA profit from something that’s free?

Because (drum roll, please)…it’s not free. You, the taxpayers of Louisiana were in line to pay for the courses. Local school boards were in line to take a financial hit of $1200 per student that was to have been taken from the local MFP allocation. That’s your tax money, folks.

It was to be a win-win situation, of course, for all those course choice providers because they were to get one-half their tuition up front, no matter whether the student finished or not (and most do not). The remaining 50 percent would be paid upon the student’s successful completion of the course.

And the determination of “successful completion” would have been left entirely to the discretion of the providers, who are not required to keep attendance records.

Until Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling, that is.

“A motivated candidate (sales rep) could easily make $75,000 (or more) within the next six months,” the pie-in-the-sky ad says. “This is not an exaggeration, but rather a realistic target for the right candidate.”

The “right candidates” must have a tablet (iPad, Kindle Fire, etc.) with a data plan (which would be reimbursed after sales quotas are met).

The “right candidates” must be 18 years of age or older and must have reliable transportation so that they might be able to go door-to-door in high-poverty areas and sell parents on the concept of free courses, free internet, and a free iPad for their children.

And, oh yes, the “right candidates” must be able to pass a background check (no felonies within the past seven years). Felony convictions of eight or more years before apparently will be disregarded when hiring such highly skilled professionals.

But now, with Tuesday’s State Supreme Court ruling, Jindal, White, et al, are going to have to find another way to fund these vouchers for virtual schools, etc.

And it’s going to be interesting to see how many “course providers” become “ex-course providers” when they cut and run after seeing the Golden Goose slain by the state high court.

White, ever the loyal Broad Academy and Teach for America alumnus, kept a stiff upper lip in the wake of the ruling which in reality is a devastating setback for the administration.

“On the most important aspect of the law, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of families,” he said in a prepared statement. “The Scholarship Program will continue, and thousands of Louisiana families will continue to have the final say in where to send their children to school.”

“Nearly 93 percent of Scholarship families report that they love their school.”

We can only hope that 93 percent is not representative of the supporters who turned out at one recent rally in support of vouchers. One of the supporters who identified herself as the mother of a voucher student and who was holding a sign of support for the vouchers was in reality a DOE student worker recruited for the purpose of drumming up support for the department.

Yes, Mr. White, the voucher program may well continue. The Supreme Court, after all, did not address the constitutionality of vouchers. That was never the issue; robbing local school districts to pay for the vouchers was the only issue in question and the Supreme Court certainly made its position clear on that.

“We will work with the legislature to find another funding source to keep parents and kids in these schools.”

“Work with the legislature?”

Right now, the legislature does not appear to be in the mood to work with the administration. As one legislator said to Department of Revenue executive counsel Tim Barfield when he complained on Monday that lawmakers left the administration “out of the loop” after coming up with its own tax reform package: “Now you know how we’ve been feeling.”

“Another funding source?”

We know you’re from New York, Mr. White, so we’ll assume that you may not know that down here in the Deep South, we refer to such pseudo-bravado as whistling past the graveyard.

Oh, and by the way, don’t bother trying to blow smoke up our togas. We still remember the brash statements of this administration after the state district court ruling of last November: “A wrong-headed decision.” “We will prevail on appeal.”

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Did John White lean on LPB to get reporter terminated? Follow the money to Course Choice and Iberville Parish

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Teague, Vouchers on May 5, 2013| 15 Comments »

Blind, unquestioning loyalty has long been a prerequisite for serving in the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Any administrator, of course, expects his appointees to be loyal, and rightfully so. There’s no argument at any level with that basic principle of employment, whether one works for a bicycle shop or the President.

Generally, though, an intelligent CEO will seek candid input from subordinates—even if that input differs from his management philosophy. The free exchange of ideas is, after all, the foundation for growth and progress in any organization.

Except with the Jindal administration.

At least a dozen firings/demotions have documented the belief that if you don’t drink the Jindal Kool-Aid, if you so much as give a flickering thought to dissent, you will be teagued.

Teagued, of course, is the term born of Jindal’s firing of state employees from rank and file workers to state board members to university presidents and cabinet officials and of the demotions of at least four legislators from their committee assignments.

To this point, the firings and demotions have been limited to state employees and legislators.

No longer.

Now there may reason to believe the Jindal retaliation team has reached into the private sector and the perpetrator is none other than Superintendent of Education John White.

The latest victim may be Sue Lincoln, formerly a reporter for Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB), and a veteran of 35-years’ reporting experience.

Lincoln, who lives in Baton Rouge, is careful not to say outright that White had her fired, but the evidence is pretty convincing.

The Southern Education Desk, headquartered in Atlanta, GA., is funded by a multi-million dollar grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and reports on education news from five states—Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana. While Lincoln worked for LPB as a reporter for the Southern Education Desk, her salary was paid from the grant.

It is, or was, a two-year grant administered through Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) and involved eight stations—five National Public Radio and three Public Broadcast System television stations. They included WLPB-TV and WRKF Radio, both Baton Rouge stations.

Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) President Chas Roemer feigned surprise and/or ignorance of reports of manipulations of student test scores by the Department of Education (DOE) during a Senate Education Committee hearing last week but the truth is Lincoln first reported on the department’s suppression of data as early as February 12.

It was that report that most probably ended her reporting tenure with LPB and the Southern Education Desk.

The report cited studies by Mercedes Schneider, Ph.D., a teacher in St. Tammany Parish which called into question dramatic jumps of up to 25 points in high school standardized test scores.

Lincoln noted that Herb Bassett, who holds a master’s degree in mathematics and who teaches in LaSalle Parish, also saw major discrepancies in statistics released by DOE. Bassett is the same one who at last week’s Senate Education Committee accused DOE and White of releasing fraudulent data.

It was that data about which Roemer denied any knowledge but promised he’d “look into it.”

Immediately after we posted Roemer’s denial, Schneider emailed LouisianaVoice to say, “I have a document that proves he (Roemer) is lying.”

She promptly followed that email with a copy of a letter she sent to White and BESE members (including Roemer) on Dec. 1, 2012 in which she called attention to what she said was “scoring bias” in the 2012 school performance scores. (We will elaborate more on the contents to that and other documents in subsequent posts as our coverage of this growing story continues.)

White apparently turned up the heat on Lincoln and her bosses in Atlanta in an effort to kill the story.

He first told Lincoln the story was “too complicated for television” and that “Even the New York Times doesn’t have enough ink and paper to do it justice,” Lincoln said. “He accused me of sucking up to Diane Ravitch.” Ravitch is research professor of education at New York University and a leading opponent of current education reform trends.

“He told me to ‘check with people over you to be sure this is the right thing to do,’” Lincoln said

A series of emails between Lincoln and White is even more revealing.

At 1:28 p.m. on Jan. 23, as White prepared for a weekend in New Orleans with his wife (She has never moved to Louisiana from their New York home, which should say something about White’s long-range plans for remaining in Louisiana), Lincoln emailed him:

“John, thank you for your call and the copy of the letter you sent out. After conferring with my editors here and in Atlanta, they want me to go ahead with the story. Please don’t let it affect your evening with your wife, but I will be coming down to N.O. to interview you at 10 tomorrow morning.

“I’ll give you a statement instead,” White tersely replied six minutes later.

As Lincoln delved further into the questionable data, she sought a comment from White who, instead of addressing the apparent problem, went on the attack.

Two days later, at 8:51 a.m. on Jan. 25, Lincoln emailed White: “Due to an electrical fire at LPB Wednesday night (Jan. 23), we were without video-editing capability for the majority of the day Thursday. As a result, the airing of my story on the 2012 SPS (school performance scores) analysis has been pushed back to Feb. 1.

“Because of this delay, I have to ask again—would you consider going on camera to make a statement?”

Four minutes later, at 8:55 a.m., White, apparently not having read Lincoln’s email asking for an on-camera statement, wrote: “Your source knowingly distorts facts in print, but you are using her as a source on the very issue about which she distorts facts.

“This story is pure innuendo and drama—a fiction—under the guise of investigative reporting.”

Then, 19 minutes later, at 9:14, White, sent another email saying, “Sue, take a look at what your source has written here. First she lies about my experience working in schools. But more than that, she goes out of our (sic) way to assert that my administration created this formula regarding graduation rate bonus points and such.”

Finally, at 9:29 a.m., 38 minutes after Lincoln asked him to appear on camera, White responded: “No thanks. If reported accurately, this is a story of a formula and a calculation by way of that formula. The number and the formula can speak for themselves.”

“I can’t say for certain that the story is the reason I’m no longer reporting for the Southern Education Desk,” Lincoln said. The grant is currently under consideration for renewal but LPB informed Lincoln they were “going in a different direction” should the renewal be approved.

WRKF was not a partner in the initial grant, but has asked to become a partner if there is a third year of funding.

“The Southern Education Desk managing editor at GPB was unfailingly supportive of doing investigative stories,” Lincoln says. “And he was insistent that there needed to be a ‘firewall’ between the financial and political concerns of LPB management and what Southern Education Desk reporters covered.”

So why would LPB crater to White’s demands?

First, there is the factor of Course Choice providers. Described by DOE as “an innovative educational program that provides Louisiana students with access to thousands of high-quality academic and career-oriented courses,” the program simply allows practically any provider to offer online courses to students—on the state’s tab. Not only may just about anyone, private or public sector, offer courses, but they also are free to charge just about whatever they want.

Bottom line: there’s big money for Course Choice providers.

One of the approved providers is Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

Follow the money.

Second, LPB has a contract with the Iberville Parish School Board to provide certain curriculum and instruction to the parish system. Elvis Cavalier is the Iberville curriculum director, or Chief Academic Officer. He also serves as Director of Academies, also known as principal of the little-known Math, Science and Arts (MSA) Academy.

Little is known about the school because it flies under the radar. It does not exist for all practical purposes. It is not listed among Louisiana public schools and its student scores are not reported to DOE or to the federal government.

Known informally as a “shadow school,” scores for its 1200 students are spread out among the other public schools in Iberville Parish. This allows Iberville School Superintendent Ed Cancienne to boast—and he does—that Iberville’s performance score “has grown.” He neglects to add that that growth is primarily the result of infused scores from the “non-existent” MSA Academy.

Lincoln said she began investigating that story and her editors at LPB kept telling her to get additional information. “When I’d get that, they’d want more. It kept on that way until I was finally informed there would be no story,” she said.

Follow the money.

“I can’t prove that I was terminated because of pressure or implied threats from White regarding the Course Choice program or because of the shadow school story,” Lincoln said.

“All I can do is connect the dots.”

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Senate Education Committee vote was a foregone conclusion; charges of DOE test data fraud was huge political bombshell

Posted in BESE, Education, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Recovery School District, RFP, Request for Proposals, RSD, Transparency, Vouchers on May 1, 2013| 17 Comments »

The vote was a foregone conclusion; the minds were made up long before the Senate Education Committee members cast their votes to kill SB 41 by Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe).

The vote that killed the bill was anti-climactic at best. The testimony of a band director and self-proclaimed “highly qualified” math teacher, however, provided the bombshell that Superintendent John White and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) would rather you not know.

His testimony evoked memories of Michelle Rhee’s tumultuous reign in Washington, D.C. and of more recent events in Atlanta.

It was purely academic that only two of the eight committee members would vote in favor of sending the bill to make the Louisiana Superintendent of Education position elective again after nearly two decades of having an appointive superintendent.

And one of those two votes in favor—that of Sen. Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe) was purely for show because (a) he knew the result well in advance, so his vote would not affect the outcome and (b) about 75 percent of those attending the committee meeting were from Ouachita Parish—and they all supported the bill. Walsworth, if nothing else, is at least capable of reading a room.

Walsworth, you may remember, was the senator who last year made a complete ass of himself during a committee hearing on science vs. creationism. A teacher was testifying about how her science students were growing cultures in her classroom when Walsworth asked the stupefyingly inane question of whether the cultures could produce humans.

This is your senator, Ouachita Parish. Be proud.

But enough of Walworth’s political pandering and asinine questions; Herb Bassett of nearby Grayson was the real story because his testimony placed charges on the table that heretofore have only been whispered about in the halls of the Claiborne Building.

Where others within the Department of Education (DOE) have alluded privately to data suppression and manipulation of school performance scores that artificially inflated graduation rates, Bassett, a band director who said he was “highly qualified” to teach math, publicly charged White, BESE and DOE of misrepresenting test scores and then covering up the lie by removing the data from the Louisiana Believes website. “This is data suppression,” Bassett said.

He said he was asked by his principal last October to look into his school’s score so that it could be improved in the future. “My subsequent research revealed deceit, distortion, manipulation of scores and data suppression,” he said.

“In mid-December, I sent you a report documenting the gross inflation of the high school performance scores. The Department covered up the inflation by intentionally mislabeling an important column of data in the initial public release of the scores.”

Bassett clarified that statement later, saying he sent his findings to all 144 state legislators and every school district superintendent and that he received an acknowledgement from the legislative assistant to Sen. Conrad Appel (R-Metairie), chairman of the committee, that Appel had received his report.

“The data, the Transition Baselines, showed that the GEE (Graduation Exit Exam)—which was being phased out—and the new EOC (End of Course) tests were mis-calibrated by 7.5 points. That’s half a letter grade,” Bassett said. “Had it been correctly labeled, the inflation would have been obvious—at least to me.”

Meanwhile, he said, BESE was given a different version of the scores with the Transition Baselines correctly labeled. “This shows intent to deceive,” he said.

LouisianaVoice has received information from several sources inside DOE that corroborate Bassett’s claim but because of DOE’s refusal to provide requested records, little has been written about the claimed deception.

He later provided LouisianaVoice with a copy of the report that he sent to legislators and local school superintendents. We will be expanding on that report in subsequent posts.

Bassett further cited what he claimed was manipulation of scores.

“At Mr. White’s first BESE meeting as State Superintendent, the department recommended a graduation index formula change. The change ensured that scores would only go up or stay the same. This raised the average score another four points.

“Thanks to the Transition Baselines, the switching to the EOC did not affect the growth scores but this (the graduation index formula change) did. There are at least 20 schools that would not have earned top gains status without it. That’s over $160,000 in those big checks passed out in PR campaigns,” he said in reference to recent teacher bonuses passed out by DOE as performance awards.

“And the graduation rate data set that I used to compute this has been removed from the Louisiana Believes website (the DOE website). That is data suppression.”

Bassett said he made a five-minute video explaining the problems with the 2011 and 2012 DOE reports on the Value Added Model (VAM), also known as COMPASS, the department’s teacher evaluation program. He said the problems he found “clearly contradict DOE’s current claim that VAM is stable. “This inconvenient data have been suppressed,” he said.

He said LEAP and iLEAP data files that contain the actual numbers of students at each achievement level have been removed. “Only percentage data are given,” he said. “Meanwhile, the new School Assessment System will award bonus points based on the number or percent—whichever is greater—of non-proficient students who surpass their VAM targets. This biased system more generously awards points to schools with over 100 non-proficient students. Without the (actual) numbers, we will not know which schools disproportionately benefit from it.

“Most of the data I used are gone from the new website,” he said.

He said that White is asking “that we believe that VAM has miraculously become stable since the reports by its creators have disappeared.”

Though Bassett did not elaborate on the latter point, LouisianaVoice also has received information that the creators of VAM later became concerned at the direction the program was taking and sent several emails expressing that apprehension to superiors who ignored the messages.

BESE president Chas Roemer (R-Baton Rouge) was called to the witness table and asked about Bassett’s charges. Roemer said he had heard nothing about Bassett’s claims, but that he would “look into it.”

It would difficult to imagine that the president of BESE would know nothing of claims of manipulation of data by White and DOE in light of cheating scandals in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. In Atlanta, former superintendent Beverly Hall and several public school staff members were recently indicted in an alleged scheme to cheat on Georgia state tests, including the erasure of students’ incorrect answers and replacing them with correct answers.

A similar scandal brought down the administration of former Washington, D.C. superintendent Michelle Rhee, once the national poster child of school reform.

With the negative publicity those two cheating scandals have received, one would think that the president of a state education board would be aware of any hint of a similar event on his watch.

Roemer was asked to look into Bassett’s allegations and to report back to the committee.

If anyone reading this cares to wager that Roemer will ever report back to the committee members, that the committee will ever follow up on Bassett’s embarrassing charges, or that White or BESE will ever take corrective measures, we know several skeptics who will cover the bet—and give you odds.

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Louisiana DOE hires top dollar out-of-state appointees who control kids’ education but who’re not registered LA. voters

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Public Records, RSD, Vouchers on March 13, 2013| 19 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal was adamant during his campaign for governor about stemming the outflow of Louisiana’s brightest college graduates from the state.

To show his commitment to keeping Louisiana talent at home, he promptly brought in several out-of-staters to fill key roles. Most prominent among those was Paul Vallas of Chicago by way of Philadelphia to head up the Recovery School District (RSD) and then as Vallas’s successor, John White of New York.

Jindal subsequently shoved Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek aside in order to promote White to head up the Department of Education (DOE).

So much for that rosy bit of political rhetoric from Jindal.

Now White himself has brought in a host of non-residents whose job it is to decide how nearly 700,000 public school students in Louisiana will be taught, what they will be taught, where they will be taught, when they will be taught and even who will teach them.

And LouisianaVoice has learned that five of those, including his Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, a Deputy Superintendent, and one who, alternately, has been called “Deputy Superintendent,” “Director,” and “Director of the Office of Portfolio,” are not even registered to vote in Louisiana.

A fifth, Hua T. Liang of New Orleans, is an administrator with the Pride College Preparatory Academy in New Orleans, a former charter taken over by RSD. His salary is $110,000 a year.

Chief of Staff Kunjan Narechania, https://louisianavoice.com/2013/02/20/doe-emails-reveal-secretive-programs-ties-to-gates-rupert-murdoch-and-fox-news-network-agency-in-general-disarray/ she of the email to White informing him that Charlotte Danielson of the Danielson Group of Princeton, N.J., was “being a pain again” over DOE’s decision to use only five of 22 components of Danielson’s teacher evaluation system, came to DOE from Chicago but has neither registered to vote here nor has she registered her vehicle, which still carries Illinois plates, in Louisiana, thus depriving the state of vehicle registration fees.

Her qualifications for serving as Chief of Staff to the Louisiana Superintendent of Education at a salary of $145,000 include a stint as Vice President of Design, Teacher Support and Development for Teach for America (TFA), the billion-dollar organization bent on taking over public education nationwide and staffing the nation’s schools with teachers with only five weeks’ summer training.

But, hey! That’s a strong recommendation; John White, after all, came from TFA.

Likewise, Deputy Chief of Staff Nicholas Bolt ($104,000), http://www.educationpioneers.org/what-we-do/alumnus-bio?cid=0034000000U6gC4AAJ an alumnus of Education Pioneers, came from the New York City Department of Education and resides here now, helping to determine the fate of the state’s education system but, like Narechania, has neither registered to vote nor removed his out-of-state tags in favor of a Louisiana plate.

Then there is Michael Rounds, the Deputy Superintendent who is being paid a cool $170,000 a year. https://louisianavoice.com/2012/11/06/nothing-but-the-best-for-doe-john-white-hires-170000-deputy-central-to-kansas-city-32-million-bid-controversy/ Like his boss John White, Rounds is a 2010 alumnus of the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy which critics say turns out superintendents who use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of the decision-making process and introduce unproven reform measures.

The academy, founded by billionaire businessman Eli Broad, offers a six-weekend (not week, weekend) course spread over 10 months. There are no qualifications that students have any experience in education—just that they have a bachelor’s degree.

Rounds resigned his Kansas City position a year ago following an investigation by a local television station into bid irregularities involving a $32 million renovation project for Kansas City schools—only to turn up as one of the top officials charged with day-to-day decisions impacting our school children. And he doesn’t even vote here.

But Rounds’ prior employment record pales in comparison to the career track our old friend David “Lefty” Lefkowith of Los Angeles. https://louisianavoice.com/2012/10/10/dave-lefty-lefkowith-more-than-a-motivational-speaker-hes-a-political-operative-looking-for-privatization-dollars/

No one knows precisely what Lefkowith’s actual title is, but he is paid well for whatever it is he does. He is listed as a Director, but also has been identified as a self-proclaimed Deputy Superintendent and Director of the Office of Portfolio. One of his primary responsibilities is to push DOE’s Course Choice program but he has cut a wide swath through the upper tier of political power in the state of Florida.

Working with the now defunct Enron Corp. several years ago, he attempted, along with an associate of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to corner the water marketing rights in the state. Following that, he became a motivational speaker through his company, The Canyon Group.

He went straight from a $35,000 contract with DOE to his new status as employee.

But Lefkowith is not only a non-voter in Louisiana; he doesn’t even choose to live here.

Unlike Deirdre Finn, https://louisianavoice.com/2012/09/25/education-loading-up-with-badly-needed-pr-types-at-six-figures-meanwhile-charter-school-vultures-are-circling/ a former deputy chief of staff for Jeb Bush, who works as public relations hack for the department—but from her home in Tallahassee, Florida—at $12,000 per month, Lefkowith does work in Baton Rouge but resides in Los Angeles and commutes back and forth, making some wonder how he affords to do that because, even at his $146,000 salary, commuting each weekend to and from Los Angeles by air is a far cry from the short interstate drive from Gonzales or Denham Springs or U.S. 61 from St. Francisville.

But except for Lefkowith, one still might expect the others to at least register to vote here.

That doesn’t seem to be asking too much considering the fact that these people have waltzed into Baton Rouge to take over one of the two largest state agencies (DHH being the other) so they can dictate the educational fate of our children—and teachers, many of whom have more years of classroom teaching than these carpetbaggers have been living.

The very fact that they have chosen to ignore this very foundation of democracy reveals their character and their motives. This isn’t about the children or education, never has been; it’s about fortunes to be made from public educaton. Rupert Murdoch said it all when he said public educaton was a $500 billion market waiting to be exploited. http://www.nationofchange.org/rupert-murdoch-us-education-system-1318783996

Still, one would expect that members of an oligarchy would have the decency to at least pretend to be sufficiently civic minded to register to vote in the state they care nothing for but which they’ve taken over by decree.

Yes, one would expect that.

But one would be wrong.

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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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