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What’s the use in fighting Piyush? New Jindal poetry contest (or ‘Just where’s the poetry in Jindal’s plant for poultry?’)

June 19, 2012 by tomaswell

LouisianaVoice is kicking off a weeklong experiment. We are asking readers to contribute one or two lines to a poem about Gov. Piyush Jindal. It doesn’t have to be a complete poem (although it can be); it can be as few as two lines with the next contributor trying to finish the verse.

We ask that any contribution be no longer than four or five lines like the limerick below. Writers may employ any meter they wish.

Submissions containing profanity or vulgarities will be deleted.

There once was a governor named Jindal;
The state’s retirement he tried to swindle.
He sold out to FARA,
And rolled over Tara,
But then his stock began to dwindle.

Let’s see how creative our readers are.

Posted in Politics | 17 Comments »

The rise of Jane Smith from defeated senate candidate to Secretary of Revenue–and her bizarre mission statement

June 18, 2012 by tomaswell

A few more facts emerged about the sudden rise of former State Rep. Jane Smith (R-Bossier City) from defeated state senate candidate to undersecretary of the Department of Revenue and finally, to the secretary’s office itself.

For those who have been riveted to the NBA playoffs, the College World Series or the reprise of Dallas on network television, what transpired over the past few days was that Gov. Piyush Jindal was alerted to a possible fiscal disaster over a bill he signed into law back in 2009 and decided something had to be done.

Of course, whenever anything occurs in this state that reflects badly on Jindal, it is always someone else who pays the price. That’s just the way the petulant little man does things—like a spoiled toddler pitching a tantrum in Wal-Mart.

As directed by the act signed by Jindal pursuant, incidentally, to a bill authored by Smith herself, Revenue Secretary Cynthia Bridges issued an emergency ruling listing vehicles eligible for tax rebates of up to $3,000 on the purchase of alternative fuel vehicles.

The Legislative Fiscal Office initially projected a five-year cost of $900,000 but upon the introduction of flex fuel vehicles following passage of the act, that estimate soared right into the stratosphere, to $100 million.

The most obvious reaction to this situation was widespread panic which in turn resulted in the only logical solution: throw someone under the bus.
That someone, of course, was Bridges, who has served three different governors over her 12 years as the head of Revenue.

But here’s the real kicker and some really bizarre irony.

Jindal almost immediately named Smith as her successor.

What are Smith’s qualifications for the position? Good question.

She lost her senate race last fall despite a $2,500 contribution from Jindal.

Almost immediately, she was offered the position of deputy secretary of an office for which she had zero background.

And when Bridges “resigned” last Friday, Jindal moved at warp speed in naming Smith to the post, a pretty good indication that she was being groomed to replace Bridges at the first convenient opportunity. The alternative fuel tax credit fiasco gave Jindal that opportunity. The ink was still wet on Jindal’s announcement of Smith’s appointment when Bridges stepped down, no doubt given a hard shove on her way out the door.

Jindal said those who have already received their tax credits will not be penalized but for those whose amended returns are still pending, the jury is still out. One must wonder why there would be any question since the amendments were filed at a time when the law was still on the books.

But back to that appointment of Smith to the $107,500 per year deputy secretary’s post in January, an appointment that rivals several other questionable appointments—most notably that of former State Rep. Noble Ellington (R-Winnsboro) to the second in command position at the Department of Insurance at a salary of $150,000 per year. Even as he was being appointed, Ellington admitted he had no experience or background in insurance.

No matter. Both Smith and Ellington were members in good standing of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Ellington had just completed a year as national president of the model legislation-writing organization. Last August, Ellington hosted ALEC’s national convention in New Orleans at which time the organization awarded Jindal with its coveted Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award for outstanding public service.

After that heady experience, what else could Jindal do but put the two up for fat positions at six-figure salaries while he simultaneously tried to gut retirement benefits for rank and file, in-the-trenches state employees?

Even Smith, it seems, was baffled at her good fortune.

Following her January appointment as deputy secretary of Revenue (remember, it’s Revenue, not Education), she promptly showed up at an education meeting. It wasn’t enough that she presented herself at a function at which her new position had no real authority, but she proceeded to prattle on and on about her lack of qualification and her willingness to help the governor.

“The governor’s office called me back in November and told me a position had opened up in Revenue,” she told bystanders who were understandably aghast.

“I told them I didn’t know a thing about revenue, or taxation, or nothing like that but they said not to worry about that, to come on by and discuss it anyway,” she bubbled.

“I’m standing there thinking, ‘Lady, you need to shut up,'” one observer who witnessed her gushing said.

“So they offered me the job even though I don’t know a thing about revenue,” Smith continued. “So I’m just doing everything I can to assist the governor promote his agenda and that’s why I’m here (at an education meeting) today—to help the governor with his agenda.”

And that apparently is her mission as Secretary of Revenue: to help the governor with his agenda.

And that apparently is also the way things are done in this administration.

They should be very happy together.

Posted in Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Politics, Revenue | 9 Comments »

Former Piyush Jindal associate guilty of insider trading; both worked for consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in 1995

June 17, 2012 by tomaswell

Gov. Piyush Jindal spent all of one year in the private sector during his meteoric career.

That year of proximity to one Rajat Gupta could come back to bite him on the backside as a major political embarrassment.

Back in 1995 when he was 24 and fresh out of college, Jindal worked for the conservative consulting company McKinsey and Co.

It was during his tenure there that McKinsey presented Allstate Insurance with an elaborate plan detailing how Allstate could increase profits by denying fair settlements of home, business and auto claims. Basically, the strategy, according to McKinsey’s plan, was to switch from the “Good Hands” treatment to the “Boxing Gloves” treatment if claimants persisted in seeking equitable settlements.

It was a strategy that would serve Allstate well in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as its profits soared from $82 million per year to more than $2 billion per year.

The consulting firm had other low water marks it would probably just as soon forget:

• McKinsey, in 1980, advised AT&T that cellular phones would be a niche market at best.

• The consulting company advised Swissair to gobble up small airline services instead of entering into cooperative agreements with them. Swissair followed that sage counsel and 12 years later entered into bankruptcy.

• McKinsey recommended to the Minneapolis Public School System that it could cut costs by eliminating teacher health care. In what has become an increasingly familiar trend, the firm also recommended converting 25 percent of schools that scored the lowest on standardized tests to privatized charter schools.

• Enron was one of McKinsey’s biggest clients before it went belly-up, costing hundreds of employees their jobs, their pensions and their health care benefits. Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison as a result of Enron’s collapse, was formerly a partner at McKinsey.

In 1994 Rajat Gupta was named to head up McKinsey. During his tenure, the firm quickly expanded its global influence as it moved aggressively into the emerging markets of India and China.

It was in 1995, a year after Gupta took over the helm of McKinsey, that young Piyush was brought on board putting Gupta in position to be something of a mentor to his fellow Indian-American.

Last Friday, June 15, Gupta, also a former Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble board member, was found guilty of passing insider information about Goldman Sachs to Raj Rajaratnam, manager of the hedge fund Galleon Group.

Gupta was convicted on four of six counts of passing confidential information to Rajaratnam, who was himself convicted earlier and is currently serving an 11-year sentence after raking in more than $50 million on insider trading.

Gupta, who was found guilty of three counts of securities fraud and a single count of conspiracy, is facing 10 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for later this year.

Only two days after Gupta’s conviction, CBS’ 60 Minutes re-ran a story about congressional insider trading.

The segment featured an interview with former Congressman Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who fought unsuccessfully during his 12 years in Congress to pass legislation outlawing insider trading by members of Congress.

Baird pointed out that insider trading is against the law for executives, attorneys, financial consultants and any other warm body in America—except members of Congress, who are, incredulously, exempt.

Which brings us back to Piyush Jindal.

Soon after losing his first gubernatorial race to Kathleen Blanco in 2003, Jindal decided to run for Louisiana’s First Congressional District seat then being vacated by David Vitter, who would run successfully for retiring John Breaux’s U.S. Senate seat.

Jindal won that 2004 race and took office in January of 2005. His financial report for 2004 indicated a net worth between $935,000 and $2.7 million, largely on the basis of 73 trades.

One year and 95 investment transactions later, his net worth was given as between $1.2 million and $3.2 million, an increase of between $300,000 and $500,000, according the Center for Responsive Politics.

By 2006, he logged 105 transactions and increased his net worth from a range of $1.5 million to $3.9 million—on a salary of $165,000 per year, another uptick of between $300,000 and $500,000.

The bulk of his transactions were investments made through Legg Mason Asset Management, though he also had investments through Fidelity Growth, Merrill Lynch and other companies as well. There was no indication as to what the specific investments were but each of the firms advertises a full line of investments, including, money markets, mutual funds and separately managed accounts (SMA) and Merrill Lynch and Legg Mason also traded in hedge funds.

Jindal’s trading activity was in all probability legitimate and no one is suggesting otherwise. By its very existence, however, his trading activity might suggest that serious consideration be given to Baird’s efforts to outlaw active trading, particularly insider trading, by members of Congress who, by necessity, have access to sensitive market information that could give them and important edge in investment strategy.

It is a system that remains alluring for those who would abuse it and it should be corrected if, for no other reason, the appearance of propriety.

Posted in Politics | 6 Comments »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

June 16, 2012 by tomaswell

“It will be determined through the process of the proper procedure of rule-making.”

–Gov. Piyush Jindal mouthpiece Kyle Plotkin, trying to explain how the state will deal with pending tax credits for alternative fuel vehicles pursuant to a bill signed into law by Jindal in 2009. Instead of a $1 million cost to the state as originally anticipated, new projections indicate the cost could be as much as $100 million

Posted in Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Revenue, Taxes | 3 Comments »

Excrement hits oscillating air circulation device in flap over alternative fuel tax credit: Revenue Secretary takes the fall

June 16, 2012 by tomaswell

The unlikely scenario reads like something out of a Woody Allen parody (for some reason, Sleeper comes to mind.):

State representative in 2009 introduces House Bill 110 that offers generous tax credits (up to $3,000) to those who purchase certain types of automobiles that operate on clean-burning alternative fuels.

Legislative Fiscal Office in its fiscal notes on the bill, project a total five-year cost to the state of $907,000.

Besides the original sponsor, 83 other House members sign on as co-sponsors of the bill. It passes the house, coincidentally, by a vote of 84-12. In the Senate, the vote is 34-0.

Governor, who never met a tax exemption he didn’t like, signs HB 110 into law as Act 469, creating the Alternative Fuel Tax Credit. Everyone is happy.

Fast forward two years to 2011: House member who authored HB 110 is term limited so she decides to seek a Senate seat, thus circumventing the term limitations law as so many others have done.

She loses her race despite an infusion of $2,500 from the governor himself.

The governor, nonetheless grateful for her no-taxes stance in her doomed Senate campaign, in January of 2012 awards her with a job as the second in command of the state’s Revenue and Taxation Department. This despite the fact that she has zero experience and/or qualifications in matters of revenue and taxation; her background is that of a school teacher who also once completed a course in “school principalship.”

Fast forward to April 30: Secretary of Revenue and Taxation and presumed boss of former representative-now-assistant-secretary-of-revenue-and-taxation issues Declaration of Emergency as a means to adopt a rule to administer the tax credit for conversion of vehicles to alternative fuel usage “as provided under R.S. 47:6035.”

R.S. 47:6035, of course, is the number of the state statute pursuant to the passage of HB 110 and its signing into law by the governor as Act 469 of 2009. The statute (R.S. 47:6035) says so. The statute also says in Section G: “The secretary of the Department of Revenue in consultation with the secretary of the Department of Natural Resources shall promulgate rules and regulations in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act as are necessary to implement the provisions of this Section.”

So, on April 30, the secretary of Revenue issued her Declaration of Emergency in accordance with the statute, written by her under-secretary, passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. The declaration lists 112 models of cars and trucks that qualify, far more than originally anticipated, because of the emergence of “flex fuel” factory vehicles designed with the ability to burn ethanol.

Fast forward to mid-June: The anticipated cost to the state, originally estimated at $907,000 by the Legislative Fiscal Office is now 100 times that, or $100 million, according to the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

The Senate president, who voted for the measure three years before and who kept himself busy in his CPA firm filing tax amendments so his clients could claim the credit, was apparently unaware of the ramifications until after a fellow senator blew the whistle.

That senator, who also voted for the bill in 2009, says he alerted the secretary of the Department of Revenue and the commissioner of administration to the potential costs to the state if the bill were allowed to stand (after, of course, filing for his own $3,000 tax credit for a vehicle he had purchased). But neither informed the governor.

Neither did the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee–not even after he had filed for the $3,000 tax credit on each of the two vehicles he had purchased (does anyone see a trend here?).

As might be expected, the excrement hits the Westinghouse oscillating air circulation device and the governor’s office more closely resembles a chicken house invaded by an unwelcome possum than control central where cooler heads are expected to prevail. There is gnashing of hands and wringing of teeth (they can’t even seem to get that right) as everyone runs around wailing, “The sky is falling! What to do? What to do?”

Suddenly, someone came up with the obvious answer. Too bad the person has to remain anonymous because the solution was so obvious: fire the secretary of the Department of Revenue who was so brazen as to issue such an insane directive—or at least force her to resign—but don’t leave any marks; it must be a clean kill.

Never mind the fact she has served three governors during her tenure and no matter that she was carrying out her job to the letter of the law: somebody’s gotta go and it may as well be her. The governor can then appoint the assistant secretary, his old political crony, to the post—just the way he planned to all along. Let the secretary take the fall. What could be better? Brilliant!

Of course all this leaves a few unanswered questions:

• Why did the senator not go to the governor with his concerns in the first place?

• If the secretary of the Department of Revenue has to go because of her failure to pass the word up the line to the governor, what about the commissioner of administration? Is he not equally complicit or derelict?

• What about all those high-salaried lackeys with whom the governor surrounds himself—his communications director, his chief of staff, his executive counsel? Don’t their jobs include the monitoring of pending legislation and its effects? Where were they when all this was going down?

• And the Senate president should have seen the writing on the wall with all those tax amendments he was filing on behalf of his clients—unless he was too preoccupied with making money from his fees.

• How about the governor himself? He signed the bill creating the law with which his revenue secretary was complying.

None of that matters, of course, in this bizarre script. The revenue secretary must be the scapegoat and fall on her sword.

After all, that’s the way this governor likes to do things.

Name one time he has admitted a mistake—from the ill-conceived berms, to the firing of good public servants (too many to name here as the toll keeps mounting), to the privatization of the Office of Risk Management (a fiasco in its own right), to attempts at public employee retirement reform, to issuing hundreds of vouchers to “schools” that are all but non-existent, to backing Rick Perry for president.

His is the finely-honed practice of accepting credit and assessing blame.

As a final twist to this plot, the governor now says that he can’t promise that any outstanding applications for credit on amended returns from 2009, 2010 and 2011 will be honored, leaving open the possibility of litigation by auto buyers who have filed or will file amendments in good faith in accordance with a law already on the books–that the governor signed.

Sorry, folks. Woody Allen just sent word that he has rejected the script as being far too improbable for any moviegoer to believe.

Posted in Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Revenue, Teague | 7 Comments »

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