“That rebuttal speech will be played over and over and over and over.”
–Loyola University in New Orleans associate political science professor Philip Dynia, commenting on what would likely happen if Gov. Bobby Jindal ran as Mitt Romney’s vice president and the prospects that Jindal’s Republican rebuttal to President Obama’s 2009 State of the Union Address would be resurrected from YouTube.
Posted in Governor's Office, Notable Quotables | 2 Comments »
If someone wanted to write a textbook on how not to run for national office, the first two chapters should be about Bobby Jindal speeches.
It was bad enough when Piyush was chosen by the Republicans to give the rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address in 2009 but he compounded the error when he served as the keynote speaker at last Thursday’s New York Republican state dinner.
He underwhelmed his audience.
Some observers said it appeared that Jindal was auditioning for Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate.
Musing at prospects of Jindal’s being selected to run with Romney, perhaps Philip Dynia, associate political science professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, said it best: “He would be Mitt Romney’s Sarah Palin.”
Dynia, however, wasn’t finished. “If he’s (Romney) going to shake his Etch-a-Sketch and Bobby Jindal comes up, something’s wrong there.”
Perhaps the New York Republicans would have been better advised to have retained Dynia as their speaker.
When you do a Bobby Jindal search on YouTube, that 2009 State-of-the-Union rebuttal is the first result to pop up.
At the time, even Fox News anchor Brit Hume said with a straight face, “This was not Bobby Jindal’s greatest oratorical moment. The speech read a lot better than it sounded.”
If Romney picks Jindal, Dynia said, “That rebuttal speech will be played over and over and over and over.”
But why wait until then? Watch it here now:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-respone-to-o_n_169704.html
Perhaps, though, Dynia is less than objective. He did, after all, contribute $15 to the 2012 Obama campaign and $205 to his 2008 campaign, as some unidentified Jindal spokesman sniffed.
But back to last week’s speech.
Good Lord.
It was bad enough that he opened with one of the lamest jokes out there, one that Henny Youngman would have rejected on his worst day: “My father walked to school. Uphill. Both ways.”
Rim shot. “Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Be sure to tip your wait staff.”
Cue the crickets.
Governor, they said tell a joke, not be a joke.
He should have done his homework. The last time a Louisiana governor told a joke in New York, it met with similar silence.
It was nearly four decades ago, in 1973 and Long Island’s Newsday described Gov. Edwin Edwards in his “electric blue tuxedo” telling a joke that was both racist and sexist.
“There were 12 Polish men,” Edwards said, “who assaulted a German woman. She screamed, ‘Nein, nein!’ and three of the men left.”
Silence.
Jindal did attempt to score some political points—or to at least pay homage to campaign benefactor Aubrey McClendon.
McClendon’s Chesapeake Energy Corp. is the nation’s second largest producer of natural gas and he is fracking up the landscape in the Haynesville Shale field in northwest Louisiana with some 90 billion gallons of water used in the hydraulic fracturing procedure to extract the natural gas beneath the earth’s surface.
Chesapeake Energy also is one of the 300 or so corporate members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which writes laws for friendly state legislators.
One of those laws is Senate Bill 436 by Sen. Gerald Long (R-Natchitoches), also a member of ALEC. SB 436 would make it easier for the Sabine River Authority to sell some 600,000 acre-feet of water per year to a group of investors who are generous Jindal supporters.
McClendon has personally contributed $4,800 to Jindal’s campaign and his company kicked an additional $16,000 for Piyush.
In all, Chesapeake has contributed $64,750 to various Louisiana candidates since 2008. Sixteen of those candidates, including Long, are members of ALEC.
So, it should have come as no surprise when Jindal brought up the subject of hydrofracking for natural gas in his address. The process, he said, has produced jobs and lowered energy costs in Louisiana. “This is clearly an effective technology,” he said.
Oh, it’s not as if Jindal didn’t try to whip the crowd into a frenzied state. He did. But try to imagine, if you will, Piyush trying to stir a crowd with his oratory.
We couldn’t either.
He reminds us of Ferris Bueller’s economics teacher Ben Stein—without the charisma.
“I really only have two complaints about this president,” Jindal thundered, arms waving in a manner more reminiscent of C3P0 than a fiery Louisiana politician. “Number one is that he is the most liberal ideological president since President Jimmy Carter to occupy the White House. My second complaint about this president is that is the most incompetent president to occupy the White House since President Jimmy Carter.”
[This would be where they would normally cue the audience applause.]
Jindal then launched into a lengthy explanation of the Louisiana retirement systems’ unfunded accrued liability as if anyone in New York knew—or cared—what he was talking about.
But talk he did.
For 45 minutes.
It seems we may have found an alternative to water boarding.
How many different ways can you say, “Three things….,” “status quo,” “The fact of the matter is,” “The reality is,” or “bold agenda?”
No wonder private conversations broke out at the tables during his speech.
No wonder New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos got applause when he said, “I’m going to speak a little shorter than the prior speaker.”
No wonder they cheered when Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb said, “My father gave me some great advice, too: be brief and be gone.”
Jindal even had trouble unloading his book Leadership and Crisis—for free.
His team placed copies of the book on the chairs throughout the Sheraton ballroom where he was speaking. Afterward, some in the audience joked about trying to give their copies away.
Take my book….please.
Henny Youngman lives.
Posted in Governor's Office | 5 Comments »
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
–The late actor Peter Finch as newscaster Howard Beale in the 1976 movie Network.
Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Transparency | 18 Comments »
The furtive presence of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) staff members in Louisiana prior to the opening of the 2012 legislative session taints every action of the legislature and every bill endorsed by the administration to this point.
More than that, it calls into question the values of every legislator who is either a member of ALEC or took money from ALEC corporate members, or both.
Heretofore, we have harrumphed and ranted at the direct influence on the agenda of the administration and certain legislators acting as proxy for Gov. Bobby Jindal and ALEC. The aura of ALEC was there but we could not prove it.
We knew, of course, that it had to be more than coincidence that key committees were stacked with members who had taken large contributions—some for the maximum amounts allowable under law—from ALEC or Jindal himself—or both.
We also knew it was more than coincidence that the spate of “reform” bills tracked similar bills filed in virtually every other Republican-controlled statehouse—from Wisconsin to Florida to New Mexico to Arizona to Ohio.
But we could never point to a particular bill or group of bills and say definitively that ALEC was the author or sponsor.
Yes, we knew that ALEC holds regular conclaves, conferences, seminars and annual meetings all over the country to draft legislation to spoon-feed legislators for them to dutifully take back home and regurgitate to their constituents in the name of “reform” and “good government.”
But we could only speculate openly and though such speculation was done with the confidence we were right, it was still speculation.
Until now.
Until Rep. Greg Cromer, the ALEC State Chairman for Louisiana since 2010, resigned from the organization in a huff on Tuesday.
His reason? “It has been brought to my attention that there have been meetings and/or activities with ALEC staff members within the state of Louisiana I have not been privy to,” he wrote in his resignation letter. “As a courtesy I believe I should have been notified as to any activities that ALEC staff were expected to participate in within the state of Louisiana.”
That’s it. ALEC reps met secretly with legislators to go over proposed legislation for the upcoming legislative session. And Cromer was left out.
A freelance writer reported that the meeting was between ALEC staffers, representatives of the conservative State Budget Solutions and the chairmen of the House and Senate retirement committees, Rep. Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell) and Sen. Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas), respectively.
Not so, says Cromer through an intermediary; it was another meeting. But through that same spokesperson he refused, when asked, to identify which meeting it was that piqued him so—not because the meeting was held, mind you, but because he was not informed of the meeting…or invited.
Apparently a clandestine meeting is okay so long as the state ALEC chairman is included and not left out of the loop.
And therein lies the cotton-pickin’ rub, as ol’ Billy Wayne Shakespeare would say if he were around today.
But thanks to Rep. Cromer’s apparent inadvertent outing of ALEC when he alluded to that pre-session meeting of the minds, we now have conclusive evidence of the heavy hand of ALEC in the affairs of the State of Louisiana. The smoking gun, if you will. The ultimate consultant, working for corporate America to better the lives of all the Joe Sixpacks out there in the hinterlands of working class Louisiana.
Now that we know with certainty that ALEC staffers did indeed meet with legislators before the session, whoever those legislators may have been, we can now jump up onto the soap box and cry foul at the top of our collective lungs.
Every living, breathing soul in Louisiana should emulate the late actor Peter Finch in the movie Network and call his or her legislators and repeat that classic line: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Every living, breathing soul in Louisiana should then pose this question to their respective legislators, especially to those have accepted bribes…er, campaign money from ALEC and Jindal: “Why are you not putting the interests of your constituents ahead of those of Piyush ‘ATM’ Jindal and the corporatocracy of the American Legislative Exchange Council?”
And ask your legislators if they are so weak-willed that they cannot ask tough, intelligent questions or challenge the governor? Are they so inept and so disconnected with the people of this state that it has somehow become necessary to allow the corporate members of ALEC, many of whom do not even pay taxes (see Wednesday’s LouisianaVoice post), to determine which laws and policies are best for the State of Louisiana?
Ask them if things are really so muddled up in Baton Rouge that decisions affecting millions of lives in this state must now be made by a series of consultants at contract costs that are draining the state of dollars faster than any of the state pension unfunded accrued liabilities?
And finally, while you’re at it, demand that the legislature go back and undo everything it has done in the name of Piyush and ALEC. All ALEC/Jindal-sponsored bills that have been approved by committees, the House and the Senate should be proclaimed null and void by acclamation. Tell the legislators that everything they have done to this point is tainted by the stain and smell of ALEC.
Send emails, make phone calls and if they don’t respond, you go back, Jack…, and do it again. And again. Keep asking until you get an answer.
As things stand right now, every voter in this state should feel insulted, incensed and infuriated.
And every legislator who accepted ALEC or Piyush “ATM” Jindal money should be ashamed and humiliated and feel more than a little soiled.
Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators | 9 Comments »
“We are not and will not be defined by ideological special interests who would like to eliminate discourse that leads to economic vitality, jobs and fiscal stability for the states.”
–Ron Scheberle, Executive Director of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), in a press release lamenting what he described as a “coordinated and well-funded intimidation campaign against corporate members of ALEC.
“It has been brought to my attention that there have been meetings and/or activities with ALEC staff members within the state of Louisiana that I have not been privy to. As a courtesy I believe I should have been notified as to any activities that ALEC staff were expected to participate in within the state of Louisiana.”
–State Rep. Greg Cromer (R-Slidell), State ALEC Chairman since 2010, in his letter informing legislative colleagues of his resignation from ALEC in protest of his being left out of the loop in secret discussions between ALEC representatives and House and Senate Retirement Committee Chairmen Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell) and Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas), respectively.
Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables | 10 Comments »
