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Musical chairs game continues in π-yush administration; we need a program to keep up with the players’ newest positions

October 1, 2012 by tomaswell

The ongoing game of musical chairs in the administration of Gov. Piyush Jindal continues with the naming of his third commissioner of administration and at least his third chief of staff in less than five years.

Yet, just like major league baseball managers, the same old retreads keep getting moved around to different teams.

Another analogy could be that appointees are trying to emulate their boss by not staying in one job long enough to learn the names of their subordinates—not that Piyush, with his glowing personality, ever really cared to.

Current Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater has been named Jindal’s chief of staff to succeed Stephen Waguespack who is returning to the private sector.

But the real bombshell was not that Deputy Chief of Staff Kristy Nichols would not be elevated to Waguespack’s position but that she would make the quantum leap to Rainwater’s job.

The commissioner of administration is the governor’s chief budget officer.

Announcement of the appointments, which become effective on Oct. 15, caught the Division of Administration flat-footed and may have some headed for the exits as soon as job interviews can be arranged.

Rainwater will be paid $204,000 per year, the same as he now makes and Nichols will get a $4,000 raise to $167,000, the amount paid Waguespack.

Nichols, like Superintendent of Education John White, appears to possess a certain personality that tends to rub people the wrong way. In White’s case, it simply appears that he is in way over his head in his job. With Nichols, it’s a habit of being both condescending and abrasive in her relationship with others, including her testimony before legislative committees.

Moreover, she was the one who attempted unsuccessfully to steer Jindal’s retirement package through the legislature this year—something state employees probably will not easily forget.

She will become the third commissioner of administration. Angelé Davis, who served as deputy commissioner under former Gov. Mike Foster, was appointed as Jindal’s first commissioner of administration before leaving two years to join Arkel International, a Baton Rouge-based company. She was succeeded by Rainwater.

Rainwater, despite frequent confrontations between LouisianaVoice and the Division of Administration (DOA), has done an admirable job of carrying the water for a governor who more often than not is consumed with either firing people, taking control of the state’s flagship university, traveling out of state or alienating state workers, teachers, legislators and the higher education community in general.

Timmy Teepell, Jindal’s first chief of staff, resigned last October and was replaced by Waguespack. No official reason was given for Waguespack’s departure other than that he was taking advantage of an opportunity in the private sector.

There is some speculation, however, that he may be named as the new general counsel to the LSU System, replacing Ray Lamonica who resigned under pressure last month.

This year alone, Jindal has fired LSU President John Lombardi, LSU Health Care System head Dr. Fred Cerise and the head of the Governor’s Office of Elderly Affairs, reassigned Interim LSU Public Hospital CEO Dr. Roxanne Townsend and demoted, in addition to Lamonica, two legislators from their committee assignments.

Last month Scott Angelle, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, resigned to run for the Public Service Commission in the midst of the crisis of the growing sinkhole at Bayou Corne and continued bubbling in Lake Peigneur, both in Assumption Parish.

It didn’t help Jindal, PR-wise, when he named former executive counsel Tim Barfield as Secretary of the Department of Revenue at a salary of $250,000, more than twice the salary of his predecessor, Cynthia Bridges, who was also fired by Jindal.

In July, Legislative Fiscal Officer H. Gordon Monk, saying the pressures of dealing with infighting among legislative factions, retired after 33 years on the job.

“It appears that the Jindal administration is beginning to implode,” said a Lafayette attorney on Monday.

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office | 8 Comments »

On the eve of the 45th anniversary of Woody Guthries’s death, we reflect on the words of the greatest folk song

September 28, 2012 by tomaswell

Half-a-century ago, in the late fifties, a wave of popular music swept across America that captured the imagination of a nation that was just beginning to morph from national innocence to prolonged skepticism and disillusionment. The catalyst of that transformation was, of course, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The subsequent murders of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and John Lennon only fueled that growing undercurrent of national distrust and resentment that permeates our society even today.

You couldn’t dance to that music, so far removed was it from the histrionics of Chuck Berry, Elvis, Gene Vincent and Little Richard, so it was never showcased on American Bandstand but the movement gave birth to some of the most memorable song lyrics ever recorded and it would eventually help fuel the groundswell of protests to the Vietnam War in the ensuing decades of the sixties and seventies and launched the careers of a new crop of singers who would contribute admirably to the genre.

We’re talking about American folk music and the popular but short-lived ABC musical variety show, Hootenanny.

The movement began inconspicuously enough around 1958 with the number-one, Grammy winning Tom Dooley by the Kingston Trio. In short order we had Harry Belafonte with The Banana Boat Song (Day-O), the Brothers Four with Darling Sporting Jenny, and the Highwaymen with Cotton Fields.

Remember the Kingston Trio in their follow up hit, The MTA, quoting Thomas Paine with the opening (spoken) line, “These are the times that try men’s souls”?

How prophetic.

Those performers and those songs opened the door for Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the New Christy Minstrels, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Barry McGuire, Melanie, John Denver, Neil Young, Peter, Paul and Mary, Buffalo Springfield, and Arlo Guthrie, son of arguably the most famous folk singer of them all, Woody Guthrie. Even Shreveport’s Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly, considered himself a folk singer even though record executives tried to market him as blues. He wrote such folk classics as Goodnight Irene, The Rock Island Line, and House of the Rising Sun (Yes, the Animals’ hit was originally a folk song).

Just as the movement was on the wan, the Vietnam War spawned a whole new generation of songs: One Tin Soldier, For What It’s Worth, Eve of Destruction, Running Through the Jungle, Fortunate Son, War (What is it Good For?), Barry’s Boys, and others. One man, Pete Seeger, spanned both eras and performed well into his nineties.

But let us return to the greatest of them all and perhaps the best folk song ever written, one that resonates louder and more clearly and with more tragic irony today than ever. Let us etch the lyrics of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land into our consciousness, grasp the words’ meaning in their totality and never allow the song’s message to wander far from our lips:

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

The last line tells us everything we need to know about this country and a national feeling of shared pride that was somehow lost along the way: This land was made for you and me.

This land does not belong to the James River Corp., the Chesapeake Energy Co. or to the Koch Brothers. It belongs to you and me—to preserve, to hold and to nurture. Not to pillage, rape and squander her bounty. To that end, we could learn a valuable lesson from the Native Americans.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

Politicians and their campaign contributors should not control this land. This land is not owned by Big Pharma or ExxonMobil or Archer Daniels Midland, though you’d never know it by walking the halls of Congress or by strolling down K Street in Washington, D.C., or by examining laws and regulations that were written so as to contribute to the richest one percent or to benefit corporate America at the expense of you and me.

In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office – I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.

How is it that corporations like General Electric can ship jobs overseas where they can exploit cheap labor, rake in record profits, yet pay no corporate income taxes? How is it that this once great land has become a debtor nation with China holding most of the IOU chits? Is this the land we inherited? Is this what politicians and Tea Partiers gush about when they become so misty-eyed while referring longingly to “the American Way?”

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

I’ve roamed and rambled and I’ve followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign there
And that sign said – no tress passin’
But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Attached here are several YouTube videos of various artists performing the song. Perhaps the most poignant is that of the New Christy Minstrels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hSjIDBj5pI&feature=related because it contains disturbing video clips of what this country has become as opposed to what we would wish it to be.

Others include Bruce Springsteen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yuc4BI5NWU&feature=related not because we necessarily prefer his version but because of his spoken observations while introducing the song during one of his concerts.

We include a link to Harry Belafonte’s version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqAyiKaS5uQ simply because he has such a pleasant voice, not laced with anger or outrage.

The Kingston Trio is included http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07spb387Opc because we feel it is the most rousing version and does the best job of capturing the true spirit of the song.

But no compilation would be complete without two very special versions of the song. The first, by Woody’s son Arlo, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqZ3oNsMVr0&feature=related as he performs (in a tuxedo, if you can believe that) with, of all things, the Boston Pops and finally, by Woody himself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s&feature=related

Next Wednesday, October 3, will mark the 45th anniversary of Woody Guthrie’s death.

Posted in Politics | 13 Comments »

The π-yush nullification whirlwind tour: is Florida next on his judicial revenge itinerary? LouisianaVoice will follow

September 27, 2012 by tomaswell

Piyush Jindal is still on his whirlwind tour of New Hampshire to attend a Republican breakfast and Iowa to campaign against a state supreme court judge who had the audacity to help make unanimous a ruling that the state’s one man-one woman marriage law was unconstitutional but now Jindal may already be planning another jaunt—this time to Florida to take on three more state supreme court judges.

Apparently there are simply no more problems in Louisiana that demand his attention so he is free to look elsewhere. Nice to know everything is under control here.

Though nothing official has come from Jindal’s office, the atmosphere appears favorable for him to charge into the state on his noble steed in concert with David Koch to rescue the state and Gov. Rick Scott from the evil judges who were part of a 5-2 majority that blocked an unconstitutional ballot initiative seeking to nullify the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare).

The Tea Party group Americans for Prosperity, chaired by David Koch of Koch Industries, the driving force behind the American Legislative Exchange Council, joined the Florida Republican Party’s effort to remove the three judges, which would give Gov. Scott, a Tea Party member, control over nearly half the court.

“Many states, like Ohio, gave their citizens the right to vote against the Affordable Care Act,” sniffed the Americans for Prosperity, sounding like a true victim, “but not Florida. Our own supreme court denied our right to choose for ourselves. Shouldn’t our courts protect our rights to choose?”

First of all, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision had nothing to do with denying anyone’s “right to choose.” The decision was to remove the unconstitutional ballot initiative after the initiative’s own defenders admitted that the ballot language was misleading so the court’s decision simply said that voters should be able to understand what they are voting for before they cast ballots.

Even more important, however, is that the Koch group, by supporting the ballot initiative, is also endorsing a questionable constitutional theory known as “nullification.” Because the Constitution provides that duly enacted federal laws “shall be the supreme law of the land,” states do not have the authority to block or supersede an Act of Congress such as the Affordable Care Act, whether through a ballot initiative or otherwise.

Nullification was last in vogue with the nineteenth century slaveholders and Civil Rights era segregationists. But the Tea Partiers have revived the concept and the Florida judges apparently hurt their feelings.

Tea Party self-appointed historian Tom Woods has published a book defending nullification. Of course he also once published an article describing the Confederacy as “Christendom’s Last Stand.”

So now Americans for Prosperity and Koch desire to punish three judges for putting the law above conservative ideology. They are hellbent on turning over Florida’s highest court to the Tea Party governor. If successful, this campaign will send a chilling message to every elected judge in the country (Louisiana’s judges are elected) that they can adhere to the Constitution at their own peril.

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for Piyush. After all, his most recent trips just happen to be in the states where the nation’s first presidential primary and first presidential caucuses are held. And Florida is almost certain to be a swing state in future elections.

Too bad Piyush doesn’t realize that his political fortunes are sinking faster than that big hole in Assumption Parish.

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Campaign Contributions, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians | 7 Comments »

Notable Quotables (In their own words)

September 25, 2012 by tomaswell

“I think a special session would simply cost taxpayers dollars that would be better spent on health care and higher education. So, I don’t think there’s a need for a special session,”

–Gov. Piyush Jindal at his condescending best, saying he believes his administration has been providing lawmakers enough information about the budget cutbacks for the LSU Health Care System hospitals and closures of Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville and J. Levy Dabadie Correctional Center in Pineville as he dismissed the idea of a special session.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

Education loading up with badly needed PR types (at six figures); meanwhile charter school vultures are circling

September 25, 2012 by tomaswell

The scene at the Louisiana Department of Education on Monday and Tuesday could best be described as something slightly less than a feeding frenzy—but barely.

In show business, the auditioning for acting roles is referred to a cattle call. For Louisiana charter school wannabes, it’s called a request for applications and after the July 31 deadline for applications, applicant interviews were scheduled for Sept. 24-25—Monday and Tuesday of this week.

But you would never know that by making an inquiry of the department’s public information department.

When asked about the beehive of activity in the building on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the public information office allowed as he had no knowledge of what was going on.

Perhaps that is why State Superintendent of Education John White is paying $12,000 per month for a part time communications manager for the department—even though he already has a full time press secretary.

Just in case your math is a little rusty, that computes to $144,000 per year, although Deirdre Finn, the former deputy chief of staff for former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, is being contracted for only four months, from July 23 to Nov. 30, but may be renewed for up to three years.

She replaces René Greer who was paid $110,000.

And get this: She will be working part time, dividing her duties between Baton Rouge and Tallahassee.

All while, the Baton Rouge Advocate noted Monday, state aid to public education has been frozen for four years and public school districts have been forced to lay off teachers.

Does the word arrogant carry a special meaning here?

That, of course, begs the question of whether she will obtain a Louisiana license plate for her vehicle. She will probably follow the example of Carol Steckel, chief of the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) Center for Health Care Innovation and Technology who says she maintains her primary residence in Alabama and does not intend to remain in Louisiana. In other words, it’s a virtual (DOE loves that word) certainty that she will not register her car in this state; ergo, no Louisiana license plate, no tax revenue from high-priced, out-of-state workers who were hired because there obviously was no one in Louisiana qualified to churn out PR flak.

(We would love to do a story about the number of out-of-state types have been hired at six-figure salaries and to give their individual and cumulative salaries but that would take some serious digging in all the state agencies.)

Jindal policy director Stafford Palmieri and DHH chief technology officer Zachary Jiwa are two other administration hires who neglected to pay taxes in Louisiana by obtaining state license plates for their vehicles.

The same question may well be asked of Heather Cope of Seattle who has been hired as the new executive director of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) at $125,000 per year.

One of her first tasks will be the hiring of a counterpart to Finn for BESE, a move that is unprecedented for the board at a time when state civil service employees have gone without a pay raise for more than three years.

The proposed hiring also has caught the attention of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Fannin (D-Jonesboro), who said the proposed hiring of public relations employees may warrant attention from his committee. “If they have those extra dollars, they may have more money than they need in their budget,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense to me,” he added.

When asked about the part-time status of Finn and of her splitting her time between Baton Rouge and Tallahassee, the same public information spokesperson said, “We don’t have a problem with that. She’s always available when we need her.”

Well, so are those 900 phone number operators. Of course, we hear they charge by the minute and that they’re pretty expensive, too.

We’ve heard of working from home, but when that home is in another state…?

While Jindal and his minions continue hell bent on their objective to hire at least one executive from each of the other 49 states, the charter school vultures were circling the department Monday and Tuesday.

Word was every available room in the Claiborne Building was being used for interviews with charter school applicants.

The guard desk in the building foyer contained a temporary sign instructing charter applicants to sign in as a group (not as individuals) and to wait until called for interviews.

Throughout the foyer, groups of proposed charter schools milled and talked among themselves and inside the cafeteria nearly every table was occupied with charter school representatives waiting for their turn for interviews.

Many of these were church-affiliated charter schools that will be subjected to none of the accountability required of public schools. Others were for-profit schools. All of them were casting greedy eyes at funding that will be ripped from local school boards to finance their schools.

And we haven’t even mentioned the online computer courses for which other vultures are circling or the vouchers that will further decimate public education.

In fact, the department has been saying for weeks that it will have names and social security numbers for students given vouchers so that local school districts the voucher students leave can cross-check them against students they know are attending the public schools.

The last word two weeks ago was that State Superintendent John White told the school districts he would have the information in a week. But as yet—nothing.

The times, they are a-changing but not necessarily for the better.

Just what is the arrogance saturation level for this state?

Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Health Care, Layoffs | 6 Comments »

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