Do NOT Buy A Used Health Care Program from This Man!

I’m going to bring out some information I put out on Bobby Jindal in December of last year so you’ll know exactly how little to pay attention to this man. Jindal is obviously positioning himself for a run at national office which doesn’t surprise me at all, because the guy’s been a bigger job hopper than our current POTUS. It’s evident that anything to be learned from any of those short-lived jobs is lost on him because he never puts facts, people, or effectiveness before ideology. He’s a faith-based ideologue. He’s totally convinced of the ‘rightness’ of his view regardless of what the facts are on the ground. Contrary to his insistence that Louisiana is improving when it isn’t, and contrary to his insistent that he’s cut state bureaucracy when the payrolls have gone up, he’s still just a man that never lets facts get in the way of a good dogmatic speech opportunity. I don’t think the man exactly lies, he just appears to be totally delusional.

I’ve written two things on him. One being his insistence that the state of Louisiana is all hunky dory just cause he’s in office. It’s not, our unemployment statistics are moving up now like the rest of the country because the FEMA and Federal Hurricane monies that were stimulating our economies are running out. We’re getting our dose of recession and it’s not going to improve for us any time soon. Of course, it goes against his ideology to suggest that government funding may have actually helped our state, so he just prefers to take all the credit himself.

He also has been insisting he’s passed these tough ethic laws, which is true, but he conveniently forgets to mention he’s exempted the governor’s office. Ask Jindal about those tickets to see Miley Cyrus at the SuperDome if you’re a reporter and you get a chance.

Governor Bobby Jindal, in the midst of Day 4 of a special session on ethics, is having to deal with a controversy surrounding Disney sensation, Hannah Montana. 9NEWS has learned that Governor Jindal’s chief of staff and several state legislators were able to get tickets for free. WAFB’s Jim Shannon has the story.

Much has been said down at the legislature about free tickets and lavish meals for lawmakers and appointed state employees. Granted, all of that talk is for future legislation. However, the governor’s office is not ignoring the perks that come with being governor. Governor Bobby Jindal’s special session on ethics is moving through the legislature on a fast pace. Amid cries of no more fat cat meals or tickets to sporting events and concerts, the governor is dealing with a ticket controversy within his own office.

So now, he’s up there talking about Bipartisan Health Care. This from the guy who took over Louisiana’s Health Care and immediately turned all the mentally ill on Medicaid out into the streets without even saying boo to their families and called it a quality enhancement.

State Sen. Walter Boasso, D-Arabi, contends the Rhodes scholar made budget cuts at the state Department of Health and Hospitals that show he has a big brain but little heart. Boasso aired a commercial that blames Jindal’s Medicaid cuts for the eviction of a mentally disabled man from a New Orleans nursing home.

Jindal, R-Kenner, responded to the criticism with a commercial featuring a Richland Parish physician who praises him for rescuing a Medicaid program teetering on the brink of collapse from corruption.
Jindal reined in a runaway Medicaid budget and landed a position on Capitol Hill. But it casts a shadow over him as a campaign issue.

He contends he cut Medicaid spending by $300 a person without sacrificing care. His political opponents say that is not possible. Lois Simpson, executive director for The Advocacy Center in New Orleans, said the budget cuts affected people and included “ridiculous” proposals, such as severely limiting Medicaid patients’ prescriptions.
“Thinking back it seems like there were a lot of across-the-board kind of cuts instead of looking at individual needs. It’s very wonkish,” Simpson said.

If you really want to get me started on the worst policy ever, we could talk about his repeal of the Stelly Tax which eliminated the most regressive parts of our sales tax. Just exactly what’s needed during a recession!! Just transfer the tax burden from the wealthy to the poorest of the poor!

The first of 2009 initiates is the Stelly tax repeal. The Stelly Plan eliminates sales tax on food, drugs and household utilities, and replaces them with income tax. The Stelly Plan was approved by voters in 2002. During the 2008 legislative session the Stelly Plan was repealed, which reduced the two highest income brackets to the level they were prior to the implementation of Stelly.

Governor Jindal never met a person needing any government service that he wasn’t willing to kick to the ground (except the Saints Football Team and rich Republican Business interests, oops! that’s probably redundant). Then there’s what he did to our state’s higher education system which was insist on 20% across the board cuts even to those of us that work in universities with growing student populations.

And yet, in the WSJ, he has the audacity of accusing others of ‘lying’. That is the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. This guy excels at believing his own delusions. It’s not even subtle.

Jindal negotiated giving Foster Farms, a private chicken processor, $50 million in taxpayer funds to purchase a chicken processing plant owned by bankrupt Pilgrim’s_Pride allowing Foster Farms to open the plant with less than one half of the employees Pilgrim’s Pride employed. Pilgrim’s Pride founder Lonnie “Bo Pilgrim contributed $2500 to Jindal’s campaign in 2007. Other contributors to Jindal’s campaign who received economic development payments or benefited from economic development spending include Albemarle and the owners of Edison Chouest Offshore.

Let me just restate some information about Jindal that I put out last December.

Jindal is a throwback to the Dark Ages (oh, make that social conservative). The Republicans can be certain of that. The first time he ran for governor against Kathleen Blanco I remember watching their debate and hearing him talk about the most important time in his life was when he became a Catholic Christian while witnessing an exorcism. He’s actually witnessed and written about the topic. ( For those of you cynics: here’s his published article: Jindal, Bobby (December 1994). “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare“. New Oxford Review. “I began to think that the demon would only attack me if I tried to pray or fight back….Did I witness spiritual warfare? I do not have the answers…” )

He is hyperCatholic as only the recently converted can be. He also was brought to the American myth by The Brady Bunch. His name is actually Piyush and much like Obama, he tries to mimic the American experience in a way only those who try to forget their past mimic the American experience. He is definitely in love with the zygote nation–he is for a myriad ‘rights’ for protohumans but is fine with state sanctioned deaths of criminals and zygote-saving deaths of women. He does voice knee-jerk negative reaction to gay Americans (against even civil unions), and support flag burning amendments, human life amendments, and marriage defined as man and wife amendments. But remember, there is supposed to be more to being a Republican than being the country’s leading Christian Cult Leader, let’s look at his record.

I want you to see the actual record before thinking this guy is anything but a religious nut on steroids who is a curiosity because of his ethnic background and charming speech. He can charm people to the point they believe what he says and not what he’s done. In this manner, he is very much like Obama which is why my Puma friends, beware of Republicans offering up Jindal horses.

Before the Republican party became the party of hyperChristianity, it was the party of small government, fiscal conservatism and support of civil liberties outlined in the constitution. (Think Barry Goldwater). Jindal is hyperChristian but he only provides lip service to the other items. The Media Darlings of the Right Wing are very much in love with Jindal the way they used to be in love with Dubya because they believe his rhetoric. But, in this way he is much like Dubya. He’s become an obamafied candidate. Remember, he’s been in office less than a year when you read this and also remember he’s already been in Iowa where the caucuses are just three short years away. Like Obama, Jindal is a job hopper so one complete term as a governor will qualify him as god in his eyes.

Is Jindala a fiscal Conservative or small government Republican?

He is if you listen to the in-love Right Wing Talking heads. Let’s just check the record.

Jindal’s Hiring Freeze to ‘Lower’ the Number of state Employees and ‘save’ money

We’ve had TWO hiring freezes since Jindal got elected (10 months). This I can really speak to since I’ve worked for two universities this year and he just stuck a blanket freeze on the entire state system minutes after he took the oath of office. This was a knee jerk, ideological, poorly thought-out action that didn’t produce the desired results. He killed UNO’s chance at getting some key professorships that needed to be replaced badly. Nearly every University here–most importantly the medical centers–are very short on professionals since Hurricane Katrina. The Med centers are dangerously short of doctors and nurses. UNO is struggling to get qualified folks to teach classes and has been using (in UNO’s case) highly questionable and untalented graduate students in their stead. Since Louisiana ranks 50 now in preparation for Higher Ed which negatively impacts the state’s ability to attract companies, you should be able to deduce this is a really bad move. So now, we’re on our SECOND hiring freeze in less than a year. This is because what he says and what he did, are two different things. Let’s look at what Mr. Small government has done here.

The Spin: Jindal cuts jobs. The truth: Jindal cut jobs before he added jobs. Jindal has said repeatedly in press conferences that he cut 1,000 state employee since taking office. Recent questioning by legislators of Jindal’s commission of administration has painted a different story. The state has actually added 2,400 employees. Not only that but, state payrolls are up. Way up. (See infamous Louisiana muckraker C.B. Forgotston’s “Wake up! and I mean fast!” at the monthly satirical paper The New Orleans Levee: we don’t hold anything back; December edition which isn’t up on the site yet as of this posting but should be shortly). Since the initial Jindal freeze, the state payroll has gone from $169 million every four weeks to $176 million every four weeks. It seems Jindal’s hiring freeze may actually be the reason why the state of Louisiana has one of the lower unemployment rates. It’s really unfortunate that they come and go and disrupt the state agencies that really need the employees from getting the folks they need when they are available. Btw, state spending in the current budget increased by $1 billion from the prior fiscal year under Governor Blanco.

AP writer Melinda Deslatte had this to say about Jindal and Louisiana’s overall spending in her Nov. 30 column. Here’s Piyush taking credit for a decrease in the state budget that isn’t exactly of his making. Does this remind Pumas of Obama or what?

Some of the rhetoric bandied about by Gov. Bobby Jindal hasn’t helped matters, particularly about overall spending. Jindal and other administration leaders have talked repeatedly of a multibillion dollar decrease in the current 2008-09 budget.

That’s not false, but it also has nothing to do with the actions of the Legislature and governor. The shrinkage is tied to the loss of one-time federal recovery aid after the hurricanes of 2005, a decrease in the budget that lawmakers did not control.

I’ve been going after Jindal in my economics classes since he first came into office saying he was going to blanket the state with rebate checks and get rid of the income tax system. This was because there was such a huge surplus when he took the oath of office. (The latest estimate we’ve heard this year is there’s about to be a $1.3 billion shortfall in the state budget.) The windfall was the result of all those folks replacing stuff they’d lost in Katrina and paying sales taxes on it as well as the monies coming in from the feds. Jindal, however, wanted to spread the money to even the northern portions of the state while everything below I-12 is pretty much a pile of damaged infrastructure and they are the source of the funds. Can you imagine where the state would be if that money hadn’t landed in the rainy day fund? This is the brainiac trustee of the Reagan Legacy? Well, he may subscribe to voodoo economics, but he certainly has done it without use of a synapse.

This man is dangerously ideological and appears to disarm people with his personal story and his education. Every one is charmed by his personal story then ignores the facts on the ground. (Sound familiar?) I think my die hard Republican Dad even realizes my governor is a fast-talking empty suit now. Many of the folks that voted for him are now realizing what a huge mistake he is. My hope is that the MSM will actually do some research on this guy instead of taking every thing he says at face value.

Today’s WSJ piece is just another attempt to put a reasonable face on an unreasonable ideological scheme. It suggests ‘reforming’ existing institutions (like insurance companies) which are the primary source of the market failure. And, how about this one?

•Refundable tax credits. Low-income working Americans without health insurance should get help in buying private coverage through a refundable tax credit. This is preferable to building a separate, government-run health-care plan.

Let me get this straight. You’re low income, struggling to make ends meet, you barely pay taxes, and yet magically a tax credit is going to solve everything for you! If you believe that, I got some swampland right back here to sell you. This guy doesn’t deserve a national platform, he needs to experience what life is like because of the lousy decisions he’s made. Ask any student going to University here! Ask any poor person that is seeing their grocery bills increase by 9% every time they go to the store! Ask any one who need mental health services, especially if they are on Medicaid (if you can find them out there on the street or in the prisons!) Jindal’s been a disaster for Louisiana. He would be a disaster for the United States. Please, stop giving him a platform to do so!

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