Feeds:
Posts
Comments

A view from Pea Ridge: interpreting mid-term election

November 20, 2010 by tomaswell

By Judith Howard

My biggest disappointments in the recent mid-term elections were that Senator Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and Congressman Tom Perriello in Virginia lost their seats. Both are men with conviction, and are as clean as politicians can be.

Feingold co-sponsored legislation with McCain on campaign finance laws that our conservative Supreme Court dismantled in January. He voted against the financial reform bill because he said it wasn’t strong enough.

Perriello voted for health insurance reform, for Wall Street reform, and for a cap and trade bill even though he is from a district that went for John McCain in 2008, because he thinks those votes were the right thing to do. In his concession speech he said that Judgment Day was more important than Election Day. I hope both men will run again.

My biggest embarrassment was that David Vitter will once again be Louisiana’s senator. It gets tiresome to be the laughingstock of the country.

According to Republicans congressional leaders, voters in last week’s election sent a message that we want a repeal of healthcare, lower taxes, and smaller government. Of course that’s what they are going to say. That is not what they are going to do.

The Henry K. Kaiser Foundation’s did exit polling to see what the most important thing on voters’ minds was. Their polling found that 29% said jobs and the economy was most important, the deficit/government spending was most important for 9% of voters, and taxes ranked at the bottom with only 5% of voters.

There have been all kinds of interpretations of the election results. The best I’ve seen is this one by Matt Miller:

Voters punished a party they are furious with by giving more power to a party they can’t stand. That sounds about right to me. Capitol Hill Republicans have a 23% approval rating, according to a National Journal poll in October.

Why might voters be furious with Democrats? Because of the unemployment rate. Because we bailed out Wall Street, yet not one banker has done a perp walk for almost taking down the financial system. Because bankers have fraudulently foreclosed on peoples’ houses, yet not one of them has been held to account.

I suspect Democrats underestimate how much the lack of accountability underlies much of the discontent with Washington, especially with people who have lost not just their jobs, but also their homes as a result of being unemployed.
The unemployed and the foreclosed-upon have families and friends who, even though they may still have a job and a home, see how the system has worked for those who don’t, versus how it has worked for bankers.

Plus, corporate America spent anonymous millions to convince voters that Obama raised taxes, even though he didn’t; that health insurance reform is socialism, even though it expanded the market for private insurance companies; and that Nancy Pelosi is the devil incarnate, even though she got legislation passed to benefit the middle class.

In other words, those anonymous millions of dollars created an alternate reality that too many Americans bought into.

In order to show their displeasure with Democrats, people voted for the Party they hate. This makes no sense, but we shouldn’t be surprised by it. Angry behavior is seldom rational behavior.

The election results mean we will probably get watch gridlock for the next two years, because Republicans have no ideas beyond tax cuts, and no interest in governing. What they have is rhetoric—fine-sounding, but insincere words.

Take, for example, repealing health insurance reform. Ain’t gonna happen. Why? One reason is because insurance executives don’t want it to happen. As reported by Reuters, the CEO of Cigna said, “Repealing the new U.S. healthcare law would be a waste of time, but there is room to improve it.”

Insurance CEOs don’t like parts of the law, such as not being able to reject people for pre-existing conditions, but they love the individuate mandate, because it brings them millions of new customers.

Not unsurprisingly, the individual mandate is the only part of the law that voters disapprove of, (where’s all that personal responsibility when you need it?). According to a Henry K. Kaiser Foundation survey last week, other sections of the law received in the neighborhood of a 70% approval rating.

I predict congressional Republicans will engage in all kinds of posturing about trying to repeal health insurance reform in order to placate their Tea Party base. Come 2012, however, the law will still be in place, but Republican governors will try to gum up the works and sabotage the insurance exchanges in whatever ways they can.

The mid-term election has come to an end. Now the 2012 presidential election has begun. Why do I say that? Because rather than groan behind the scenes, some in the Republican establishment have started to publicly turn on Queen Sarah–they do not want her to win the nomination. This could get interesting.

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

Jindal’s lies: making Goebbels proud

November 15, 2010 by tomaswell

It seems it’s come down to this: Gov. Bobby Jindal is either a pathological liar or he is completely disconnected with reality.

Or he’s blithely residing in a parallel universe where myth is truth and truth is only a concept, a suggestion, to be rolled out only when it plays better than the myth. And that ain’t often.

Jindal, in New York Monday to tout his book Leadership in Crisis, told the nation on Fox and Friends that his administration had “cut taxes, cut spending, and balanced the budget.”

Balanced the budget?

Whatever the governor in absentia has been smoking has apparently ensconced him snugly in his happy place. To say he sees the world through rose-colored glasses during his all-too-frequent appearances in some place other than Louisiana would be to belabor the obvious.

And, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, therein lies the rub. The governor, you see, just isn’t in Louisiana that much these days. First there were the fellow Republican candidates in more than a dozen states who apparently needed his help to get elected to Congress, the Senate, or to various governors’ offices. Then, once the elections were over, it was off on a 10-day national tour to promote his book about some vague perception of leadership.

Following New York, where he was scheduled for the Today Show and Fox and Friends and several interviews, he is scheduled to fly to San Diego for the Republican Governors Association annual conference and on Friday he will attend a fundraiser in support of his gubernatorial reelection campaign in Los Angeles. And just why would anyone in Los Angeles be concerned about a governor’s race in Louisiana anyway? Did either of the California gubernatorial candidates hold any fundraisers in Louisiana this year? I think you can check that box NO.

Then, on Saturday he will speak at the Reagan Ranch in Santa Barbara before traveling to Washington, D.C. later that day to hold media interviews for his book. He will return to Baton Rouge, theoretically, on Tuesday, November 23.

Meanwhile, home-schooled subordinate Timmy Teepel apparently will be solving the state’s financial woes back home in Jindal’s absence now that he is back from working on behalf of southern Republican gubernatorial candidates. Teepel apparently is being groomed as the next Karl Rove to Jindal’s Ronald Reagan. Both comparisons are, of course absurd to the point of cruel parody.

But I digress. Let’s return to the “balanced budget.”

As of this writing, the state budget deficit is $106 million, hardly a “balanced budget.”

Federal stimulus money, approved by Congress in August, earmarked $147 million to Louisiana’s parish school systems with the stipulation that the money go to salaries of teachers, administrators and support staff. No problem: Jindal simply pulled an identical amount from school funding to plug the deficit. Never mind the adverse effect it had on the local school districts who had already factored the stimulus money into their operating budgets.

But wait, there’s more. No sooner had Jindal “balanced the budget” than it was announced by Associated Press on Monday that the state budget underestimated the number of students attending public schools this year by 9,000, creating a $42 million shortfall in the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MPF) which pays schools on a per-student basis.

So much for a “balanced budget.”

Not that State Treasurer John Kennedy hasn’t been trying to tell us this. Kennedy, sounding more and more like a potential challenger to Jindal from within his own party, has been critical all along of the legislature for bloating the state budget from $24.2 billion to $26 billion by using “one-time” money at the time when all signs pointed to lower tax revenues and a looming budget crisis.

Kennedy cited the legislature’s use of $198 million in “rainy day” funds, $242 million from delinquent taxpayers, $1.5 billion in one-time federal funds, $17 million from the settlement of a lawsuit against a drug company and money taken from the state emergency response fund as evidence of legislators’ recklessness and fiscal irresponsibility.

Jindal, in his interview with Fox and Friends, http://video.foxnews.com/, cited the need for the president to have the benefit of the line-item veto.

President Bill Clinton lobbied for and got the line-item veto but it was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. It remains something of a mystery as to why Jindal would call for the presidential line-item veto; as governor, Jindal has the line-item veto but has used it so sparingly during his tenure as to render it all but useless. He has literally allowed the legislature to run amok with embarrassingly wasteful spending bills without so much as a whimper of protest. At least by not invoking the veto more often, he is conserving ink.

Kennedy also has called for the reduction of the number of state civil service employees by attrition, or simply not replacing workers when they quit or retire. Jindal, on the other hand, has opted for sweeping layoffs—the latest round scheduled two weeks after Christmas.

Kennedy may be a demagogue, but much of what he says makes sense.

Jindal, on the other hand, offers gooney-babble about leadership in crisis and his heroic feats of cutting taxes and spending and of balancing the budget. The lies are so ludicrous as to border on pathos—or to invoke outrage among those who know the truth in something other than abstract terms.

But there is one thing to be said about his arrogance, bravado, and outright distortions: he would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Civil Service, Governor's Office, Layoffs, Veto | 2 Comments »

Bobby Jindal: Indian Giver (subtitled: Where’s the leadership?)

November 14, 2010 by tomaswell

At the risk of sounding racist, Gov. Bobby Jindal has to be considered as a true Indian giver. More accurately, an Indian giver with no leadership qualities.

There. I’ve said it. Someone had to.

Gov. “I’m not taking and federal stimulus money” Jindal back in September finally acquiesced and made formal application for $147 million in education funding. That was the amount for which Louisiana was deemed eligible from the $26 billion federal stimulus bill that was passed by Congress in August.

State Superintendent of Education Paul—“I didn’t know it was improper to use a state vehicle for dozens of personal trips to Chicago”—Pastorek said the state was making the application for the money because there were “no policy strings attached.”

“No strings” notwithstanding, federal guidelines required that the money go directly to the local school districts and that the money be used to pay salaries and benefits for teachers, school administrators and other staff.

The local school district officials were ecstatic. In some parishes it had already been determined that the local districts could no longer afford to pay substitute teachers when regular teachers were out sick and that the regular teachers would have to pay them out of their own salaries. Suddenly it seemed there was relief for the local officials who worked the infusion of cash into their operating budgets.

Then, just as suddenly, Jindal last week pulled the rug from under the local districts. More precisely, he pulled the money.

He created his own strings, it seems, choosing to commandeer the money to plug the $106 million hole in the administration’s budget and to offset cuts to higher education, an area he has already gutted with earlier cuts. In fact, one might suspect that the political backlash against his higher ed cuts were such that in grasping for an answer, he fell upon the brilliant idea of jerking the $147 from public education. Problem solved or leadership void?

Jindal’s latest misstep lays bare the sad fact that he really has no plan for pulling Louisiana out of the current fiscal morass. He is every bit as lost in facing this crisis as Gov. Kathleen Blanco was in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But give Gov. Blanco her due: her crisis was not self-inflicted, but was a natural disaster with which nearly anyone would have been ill-equipped to deal.

Jindal, on the other hand, had to see this coming. We were warned that the legislature should not be spending one-time money from the hurricane recovery funds in the manner it was. No one listened; not the legislature and certainly not the governor who was loath to use the line item veto at his disposal.

And now, in the middle of a fiscal crisis and with an even bigger one looming next year, what does Jindal do? He scoots off to dozens of states to campaign on behalf of Republican candidates for governor, Congress, and the U.S. Senate, leaving home-schooled subordinates to grapple with the budget deficit. For those not especially good at history, Richard Nixon did the same thing in preparation for his successful 1968 run at the president’s office, except he did it as a private citizen. He lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and then somehow managed to lose the California governor’s election to Pat Brown, prompting his famous line, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any longer.”

Instead, Nixon, not as a sitting governor ignoring responsibilities to his state, began working on behalf of Republican candidates, amassing in the process, a hatful of chits that he was able to redeem in 1968. That’s exactly what Jindal seems to be doing. He was absent so often during the state’s worsening financial crisis, that the president of the LSU student body fired off a letter to a New Hampshire newspaper asking the governor to return home.

Jindal insists he has the job he wants. If that’s true, he should stay home and do that job. Instead of staying home once the November elections were over, however, he now embarks to a tour to tout his book, Leadership and Crisis. That begs the question, “what leadership?” Jindal “presided over Louisiana’s healthcare system at age 24, headed the University of Louisiana system at 27, became a U.S. congressman at 33, and was elected governor of Louisiana at 36,” according to the Amazon.com promotion of his book. Do we see a trend here? The two systems that he headed under former Gov. Mike Foster, higher education and health care, are the two agencies that he appears determined to dismantle.

Again, the question: “what leadership?”

Jindal had his chance. He blew it. He could have slashed away at the Capital Outlay Bill in the session that ended last summer, but he didn’t. He could easily have cut nearly half-a-billion in wasteful spending from the bill, but he didn’t. He could bring himself to cut only $9.4 million. And now he has backed himself into a corner.

Where was the leadership, Gov. Jindal?

Instead of spending millions of dollars purchasing golf courses, the governor could have said no. But he didn’t.

Where was the leadership?

In ordering deeper cuts recently, Jindal told department heads the state needed more leadership and less whining. Immediately after making that brash statement, the state’s leader in abstensia left for Pittsburgh, PA, to campaign for yet another Republican candidate.

Where was the leadership?

Just in case you may have missed it, Governor, here again is a partial list of inappropriate appropriations that, had they been vetoed on one of the days that you were in the state, the financial mess in which we now find ourselves might have been averted.

That would be real leadership.

So, please read these during your next flight to some other state to promote your leadership book:

• $800,000 for land acquisition for the proposed Allen Parish Reservoir;
• $1.4 million for the proposed Bayou Dechene Reservoir in Caldwell Parish;
• $2.6 million for the Washington Parish Reservoir Commission Feasibility study;
• $17.2 million for Bayou Segnette Festival Park land acquisition and sports complex improvements;
• $28 million for modifications to the Performing Arts Center in Jefferson Parish;
• $2 million for construction of a playground Basketball Gym in Orleans Parish;
• $1.8 million for construction of the Little Theatre of Shreveport;
• $2.6 million for a new Westbank YMCA in Algiers;
• $2 million for the New Orleans Music Hall of Fame;
• $6 million for construction of a new courthouse in Baton Rouge;
• $2.8 million for the Dryades YMCA in New Orleans;
• $5.4 million for the Red River Waterway Commission;
• $7.7 million for the renovation of the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette;
• $2.5 million for improvements to the Coteau Water System in St. Martin and Iberia parishes;
• $2.4 million for the Union Parish Law Enforcement District;
• $1.8 million for construction for the Robinson Film Center in Caddo Parish;
• $12 million for construction of a convention center complex in Shreveport;
• $3.8 million for a new tennis center in Orleans Parish;
• $4.7 million for construction of the Louisiana Artist Guild Arts Incubator in New Orleans;
• $26.5 million for expansion and construction of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Millions more were spent on construction projects that included recreational facilities, councils on aging, courthouses, sheriffs’ offices, jails, drainage projects, work on parish and municipal road and street construction projects, community centers, and water systems.

As if that were not enough, when legislators found extra money lying around, as they always seem to do during each legislative session, the House quickly pushed HB 76 through, appropriating an additional $33 million in local pork projects. Some of those expenditures:

• $150,000 for the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame in Winnfield;
• $500,000 for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities;
• $500,000 to “organizations which assist small towns and rural areas with their water and wastewater systems;”
• $250,000 for construction of an animal shelter in St. Charles Parish;
• $1 million to the Lafayette Parish Consolidated Government for infrastructure construction.

Where was the leadership?

Posted in BESE, Education, Golf Courses, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Revenue, Transparency, Water Reservoirs | Tagged | 2 Comments »

My platform for the 2011 governor’s election

November 11, 2010 by tomaswell

Okay, after much deliberation, soul-searching, and with encouragement from family and friends (and co-workers who just want me go somewhere, anywhere else), it is with tongue planted firmly in cheek that I announce my candidacy for governor of the gret stet of looziana.

I am offering my services with a fairly simple no-frills platform. Some of the individual planks in my platform are certain to offend some very influential people—and that’s a good thing. So, without fanfare, frills or equivocation, and with the promise of no compromise, here is that platform:

No out-of-state campaigning for any Democrat or Republican candidate. My first responsibility will be to the citizens of Louisiana, not some two-faced, lying parasite who has never held a real job. Besides, I’m an independent. Plus, I don’t trust any politician. And no out-of-state travel for book signings, either;

Merge several universities and junior colleges throughout the state and convert some four-year schools to junior college status. Failing that, at least merge some of the programs—such as the law schools at Southern University and LSU in Baton Rouge. With the help of a reluctant legislature, this will cut duplication in athletic scholarships, salaries of coaches and university administrators, and in replicated programs;

Turn over all operations of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security (otherwise known as the Governor’s Patronage Department) to the State Police where it was originally and should be again. If you recall, the administration pushed through a constitutional amendment in October that changed the Office of Homeland Security from classified (civil service) to non-classified (appointive) so that Homeland Security employees may receive any size pay raise the administration deems appropriate. Civil service employees, meanwhile, have their merit raises frozen indefinitely;

Eliminate the lieutenant governor’s office and assign the duties of that office to the secretary of state. Hey, it worked with the elections commission;

Have the Office of Contractual Review do its job by reviewing ALL contracts, including consulting contracts, to determine need;

Use the governor’s line-item veto to cut wasteful spending and to balance the state budget instead of laying off employees who have families to support, college tuition and home mortgages to pay, and who need health insurance;

In lieu of layoffs, offer state employees the option of accepting a pay cut of 7.5 to 10% for those making $50,000 to $100,000; 15% for those making up to $200,000; 20% for salaries of $200,000 to $300,000, and 25% for anyone making more than $300,000. Most employees would opt for a pay cut if it meant saving their jobs but sadly, the present administration has never even considered this option. Legislators would also be required to take a 25% cut. In fact, cut cabinet level salaries altogether;

Sell off all state golf courses. No additional explanation necessary;

Revisit the sacred Homestead Exemption (see? It’s even capitalized.);

Increase tobacco and alcohol taxes to at least the national average. If people are going to kill themselves with their indulgences, at least make ‘em pay for the privilege and make ‘em pay for the use of our charity hospital system when they develop catastrophic illnesses related to their vices;

Pass a constitutional amendment that future budget cuts, when necessary, won’t affect education or health care (someone needs to do this.);

Block computer games and internet access to legislators on Senate and House floors during legislative sessions;

Require all lobbyists to register with the Secretary of State (they already register with the House Speaker, but that’s too close to the center of power) and assess a hefty registration fee for all lobbyists except for non-profits;

Discontinue publishing legislative acts and other legal news in the Baton Rouge newspaper. This practice is cost prohibitive now that we have the free internet;

Enact a tough ethics code with real teeth. Bar any gifts to legislators, including meals, drinks, parties, etc. Any lobbyist violating said act shall be subject to severe fines and shall be barred from all future legislative sessions. Any legislator violating said act shall be subject to heavy fines and forfeiture of legislative pay for duration of his/her term of office.

Consolidate investigative agencies. Louisiana currently has five investigative agencies: the attorney general’s office, the ethics commission, the inspector general, the state police investigation program and the legislative auditor. Total budget for the five agencies: $55 million. Because the present administration has already gutted, stripped, and otherwise neutered the ethics commission. I suggest the state police absorb the auditor’s office, the inspector general, and ethics commission and that any investigations now pending with the latter three agencies be turned over to the state police. You may have noticed that the attorney general was left out of the loop. That’s because the AG is elected and as such, is a politician and not to be trusted with any investigation of state officials.

There you have it: my complete platform. Oh, wait. There is one more: No campaign contributions shall be accepted from any person, organization, foundation, PAC, or lobbyist.

I guess I should go ahead and write my concession speech now.

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Ethics, Golf Courses, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Taxes | 8 Comments »

Jindal: State economy is great but layoffs coming: Merry Christmas

November 11, 2010 by tomaswell

Even as Gov. Bobby Jindal insists that Louisiana’s economy is improving, another round of state layoffs, this one in the Division of Administration, has been announced in Baton Rouge. Scheduled to take effect only two weeks after Christmas, the latest round will impact positions in the Office of Information Technology, Office of Information Services, Office of Computing Services, and Office of Telecommunications Management.

The announcement was made by a Nov. 5 e-mail from Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater through appointing authority Steven Procopio and was sent to managers and supervisors in the Division of Administration. It was the second e-mail notification of layoffs to state employees. Two weeks ago, employees of the Department of Health and Hospitals received similar notification. DHH layoffs, like those in the DOA, are scheduled for early January.

The latest email was sent to department heads with instructions to distribute copies of the notice to employees by e-mail and to post copies on office bulletin boards. It contained the disclaimer that the message was “only for the specified individual or organization,” and that any unauthorized dissemination or copying of the e-mail “is strictly prohibited.”

“These layoffs are being proposed due to $4.1 million in budget cuts facing the Division of Administration and the need for cost savings for Fiscal Year 2010-2011,” it said.

The state is presently facing a budget deficit of $106 million for the current fiscal year and projections are for a $1.6 billion shortfall for FY 2011-2012, according to Jindal.

Jindal announced last month that as many as one-third of the Louisiana Board of Ethics staff would be laid off in efforts to draw down the current budget deficit. On Nov. 4 Jindal said on his web blog that Louisiana had one of the top 10 business climates in the nation and that Louisiana “was the most improved state in the country.” He said his Department of Economic Development “has certainly been able to do more with less.”

Posted in Civil Service, Economy, Ethics, Governor's Office, Layoffs, Politics | 1 Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »