Louisiana Senate Finance Committee Restores Most of Jindal’s Budget

Once again the Pinocchios in the Louisiana Senate have missed their chance to cut their puppet strings, become real people, and break free from their puppet master, Geppetto, known to many as Bobby Jindal.

We all should have known something was up when the Louisiana House reworked Jindal’s proposed state budget plan eliminating all ‘one time’ monies and ‘vapor monies’ that were based upon legal settlements and privatization deals that weren’t even finalized, and Jindal remained silent about it all.

In his heart the puppet master knew his Pinocchios in the Senate wouldn’t let him down and would restore his original smoke and mirrors budget.

And while some programs will rejoice because their budgets have been fully restored, and school vouchers will be fully funded, these joyful moments will be short lived because the reality of the situation is the money doesn’t presently exist to do most of these things

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If this action by the Senate's Finance Committee becomes final it will lead to yet another midyear budget deficit, resulting in tremendous cuts made to education and health care services to fund the state for the remainder of the fiscal year.

And just wait until next year, when all the one-time, non-reoccurring funds are gone and ALL programs are cut to levels of a catastrophic nature.

Geppetto may be a lame duck governor, but he is still very much in control of his senators

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There is, however, one last glimmer of hope.  Any Senate budget changes, in reality Jindal’s, must be agreed upon by the House.

However, with the deadline fast approaching for the end of the legislative session and the pattern of  the House’s previous years actions of just caving in to get things over and go home, I suspect our esteemed governor will get HIS budget pretty much the way he originally proposed it.

Just remember at election time, it will be your senators to blame.

U.S. Senators tweak immigration legislation

Maybe the U.S. Senate in their infinite ignorance has inadvertently stumbled upon a way to deal with our problem of drunk drivers.  In formulating the new  immigration legislation for our country, legislators added the requirement that an immigrant’s third drunk driving conviction can result in deportation from our country.

Why stop with just immigrants.  Third DWI and we throw full-blooded, U.S. citizens out of the country!  That would certainly permanently keep the drunks off the road.  Also bet we would lose some of those in congress that support this requirement, another plus.

Sacred Cows in LA

The figures are in for attendance at the 2013 Jazz and Heritage Festival. The good news is the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation reported an attendance figure of approximately 425,000.    The bad news is the state just ‘kissed off’ over 1.1 million dollars in revenue from ticket sales alone that could be used to help offset cuts in health care and educational services in our state.  Thanks to the Jindal administration and our state legislators this organization is exempt from the state sales tax and and consequently charges NO tax on ticket sales.

The Jazz and Heritage Foundation defends this policy by stating that they are trying to keep the ticket prices, this year, $65.00, as low as possible for their fans.  However, no one is suggesting that they pass this sale’s tax cost on to the consumer, and they seem to have no problems with the inflated Ticket Master surcharge.  How many other ‘sacred cows’ exist with such lucrative exemptions?  Time to get the priorities straight in Louisiana.

Priorities of State Legislators Suspect

I am so proud of our fine state legislators that were able to unite to approve legislation concerning ‘gun rights’ bills, which most likely will be declared unconstitutional, while not having a clue as to how to control a state budget billions of dollars in the red. This present action by our legislators is like focusing on a hangnail while dying of cancer.

While health care, the state’s infrastructures, food kitchens for the hungry, and education all continue to be slashed in funding with no united consensus among our legislators on a viable plan to ‘stop the bleeding’,  it’s good to know where their priorities regarding the overall prosperity of the state lay.   

It’s comforting to realize that we can all sleep well at night knowing that no one can place any restrictions on our prized weapons.  However, if the legislators don’t get it together and unite against Governor Jindal, including the necessity of overriding his vetoes, by creating a sound state budgetary plan, everyone may just end up using their guns to guard a ‘junk yard’.

Yet Another Jindal Snake Oil Proposal

As in the old children’s fable, when will Emperor Bobby Jindal realize that he has no clothes on?

His latest proposal for no income tax has been reject by nearly every major organization in this state, some of which seldom agree with each other on many issues.  However, on this one, united they stand.  Jindal’s explanation for this is that they are ALL just ultra-left wing liberal groups out to impede real progress.

However, the very premise of his proposal that it will make Louisiana more attractive for businesses to settle here was just refuted by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry which is involved in process of attracting new businesses by working diligently to improve Louisiana’s working climate.

But Jindal is cleaver and resourceful so don’t be surprised if he tries to use the recent decision by IBM to locate in Baton Rouge as evidence that just submission of his no income tax proposal was responsible for this company’s move.  The facts are this move had been in the works for nearly ten years and has little to do with any actions by the Jindal administration.

And let’s not forget that Jindal keeps changing the statistics to support his plan every time he gets caught fudging on the figures.   When the organization of ministers just found some, his resourceful staff just simply apologized for the errors and came up with some new figures.  They just issued their third revision.  This practice reminds me of one of my favorite t-shirts.   On the front it reads, “When all else fails, manipulate the data”

However, you’ve got to give “Bobby” credit for his perseverance, for basically he maintains the position of “don’t believe the evidence of the masses, I’m the only one with the correct information.”

The scariest part about all this is will our state legislative representatives break with tradition, suddenly growth a part of their anatomy that they have lacked in the past, namely, a spine, and, as in the famous fable, tell the Emperor he is without clothes?  Is the master puppeteer going to finally lose control of his puppets?  To be continued.

Can't Buy Test Scores

RE:  Teachers receive cash rewards for test score gains

In the earlier days of the new educational reform movement in Louisiana, there was a section of the Louisiana Department of Education devoted to monitoring achievement test score gains.   Expected test score gains were calculated based upon the previous year’s test data and if new scores exceeded these projections by a certain statistical amount, the scores were determined to be suspect.

In other word, statistically these gains could not have occurred without some outside interference (cheating).

When such occurrences were discovered a complete audit of the test score documents was done along with interviews of those conducting the testing.  Analyses of the test documents included such techniques as erasure analysis of the number of answers changed from incorrect to correct answers, comparing documents of children seated next to each other, etc.

With the arrival of Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek the test score monitoring function was abolished in the name of departmental reorganization.

So the problem continues with our new new education reform movement that not only factors test score achievement into teachers’ tenure rights but also provides cash rewards to teachers and schools.

Now we are beginning to see tremendous gains in the average test score of classrooms of children from one year to the next.

Just how much gain is too much gain and where is the accountability to determine such?

If our esteemed education leaders would do a little investigation of their own they would find a bundle of research showing that the more heavily test scores are factored into teacher evaluations and rewards, the greater the increase in ’suspect’ test scores.

Assumption Parish Disaster of No Interest to Our Governor

I just finished reading an article on line entitled “Jindal won’t pledge to visit sinkhole”.

The naivety of many Louisiana residents never ceases to amaze me.   Why are Assumption Parish people so upset about Governor Jindal’s reluctance to visit their sinkhole site and show its residents that he is concerned about their troubles?

Such a visit would do little or nothing to strengthen his national image.  He would rather photo-op about bringing new industries to Louisiana, advocate his no income tax plan, and advertise his refusal to accept additional Medicaid funds under The Health Care for America Plan (Obamacare), while at the same time accepting millions of other Federal fund handouts to help balance his proposed state budget for 2013, than show a little respect for the residents of his own state.

Oh, and let’s not forget how fast he jumps into action when a major storm hits the area.  Most think he is doing it out of concern for its residents when, in actuality, it’s really about show casing to the nation that he can expertly handle a major crisis.

It’s too bad that Romney didn’t get elected, if for no other reason than the fact that he might have rewarded Bobby with a cabinet position and taken this political deva away from Louisiana forever.