Legislators have not earned gushing thanks

The groveling behavior of our state’s college and university presidents and chancellors, thanking our legislators for not cutting their funding in next year’s state budget, was indeed quite pitiful.  With the exception of the chancellor of LSU, all resembled a homeless person who was suddenly given some loose change to buy a meal by the very individual responsible for his present condition.

These legislators, that our illustrious educational leaders saw fit to shower with gleeful thank yous, voted repeatedly over the past 7 years to cut higher education funding over $800 million to a level not seen in this state since the 1950’s.  In fact, under the guidance of these same legislators, Louisiana has reduced per-student funding, on an inflation adjusted basis, more than any other state in the nation since 2008.

Yet, the leaders of our state educational institutions saw fit to provide local media outlets with public thanks to our legislators.

A more realistic response would have been NO response at all, or perhaps the simple one liner, ”It’s heartening to see that our legislators finally understand that education institutions in our state can no longer endure more financial funding  reductions.”

The really sad part about this entire undeserved outpouring of thanks is that, in the end, all these leaders will most likely see additional cuts to higher ed and look even more foolish.  The reason being that the present proposed budget doesn’t fully fund Jindal’s privatization of the hospital system in our state.

The major corporations operating these hospitals have clearly stated that, unless they receive their funding requests, they will simply invoke the “opt out” option which was afforded them in their contracts, and cease operation of the regional hospitals.   These hospitals would then resort back to being state run and the national embarrassment for Jindal would be disastrous.

 Jindal is considered by many of the Republican power lords as a “health care wizard”, and this plan is the center piece of Jindal’s legacy.  Its failure would doom any hope of not only a presidential nod, but also any possible vice president, or more realistically, cabinet positon consideration.

It’s all about the politics, for it’s reelection time for most of our state legislators.  Something you’d assume the educational leaders in this state would understand.

My message to all the university and college leaders is, “Keep your mouths shut and start planning for additional funding cuts.”