Business As Usual in Louisiana
June 25th, 2008
Consider me officially jaded.
Foster… Livingston… Vitter… and now Jindal… they’ve all been huge disappointments to me, and to thousands of other Louisianians. I was actually naive enough to think Bobby was different. No more.
When Republican Bobby Jindal won the Louisiana Governor position by a mandate last year, I actually believed a new day in a state replete with systemic corruption and incompetency had dawned. I actually believed that with his leadership we might stop losing our best and brightest to other states and begin to stop the hemorrhaging small business losses that have racked my home state.
His first accomplishment was a comprehensive overhaul of state ethics laws that actually managed to make things tougher on ethics violators while simultaneously making those very same laws virtually unenforceable. If we do manage to find you guilty of ethics violations, there’s going to be Hell to pay! (But don’t worry too much, it’s next to impossible to prosecute you… it’s really all just for show.)
Next, it was easier to see my own governor fly out to Los Angeles to appear with Jay Leno or read about his being vetted for the vice-presidential nomination than it was to see him in North Louisiana or calling into talk to Moon Griffon. (Both things he did with regularity while campaigning.)
Follow that by his attempt to claim credit somehow for my former high school principal turned State Senator “Buddy” Shaw’s bill to repeal the Stelley Tax and eliminate the state income tax. (That’s a story in and of itself, but I’ll tell that some other time.)
Now, when the representatives and senators we elected not even a year ago, knowing full well what the requirements for the positions and the accompanying pay was, vote themselves a pay raise equal to double their current salaries for a part-time job, and it goes into effect almost immediately, what does our governor do? Keep in mind he said he’d veto any excessive spending or pay raises if elected. Does he veto the pay raises? Does he even threaten to veto the pay raises?
No. He has his press secretary issue a statement saying he’s opposed to the raises.
FAIL!
I live in a state where jobs are being lost to other states with better education systems, better business climates and less taxation. I live in a state that has been a laughing-stock for generations because of populist politicians who make backroom deals to buy elections and fill their pockets. I live in a state where the mayor of the previously largest city in the state failed to evacuate the city in the face of an approaching category 5 hurricane, and when he finally did, he didn’t even follow his own evacuation plan, yet he managed to get re-elected one short year later. I live in a state where the previous governor refused to let National Guard troops and other aid enter the hurricane-hit areas and then blamed FEMA and President Bush for their inaction.
Now I live in a state where even Conservative wunderkinds promise to change the way the state is run, and once elected, cedes control right back to the “Good ol’ boy network” that got us in this mess to begin with. I live in a state where it’s “Business as usual.”
Governor Jindal said in a recent interview that he won’t veto the pay raises because, “I don’t want to give the legislators any excuse to slow down our reforms.”
I have news for you, Governor: If you can’t get them to act fiscally responsible now, in the face of protests unlike any I’ve seen in my lifetime, you’re not going to get any reforms out of them. Another thing: If you don’t veto this, you can say goodbye to a 2nd term.
That’s not a threat; That’s a promise. And unlike you and other “Business as usual” polticians like you, the voters of the State of Louisiana keep their promises.
or