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Bayou Corne, bayou corne louisiana, Bobby Jindal, David Gregory, Louisiana, Louisiana budget, Louisiana politics, LSU, Medicaid, National Governors Association, NBC
Bobby Jindal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Robert Mann
NBC says that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will appear on “Meet the Press” Sunday while he’s in Washington for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.
Here are a few questions for Jindal that host David Gregory might consider:
1. You say you are a fiscal conservative. But how do you square that with your habit of cobbling together your state’s budget every year with non-recurring revenue? Didn’t you campaign against such a practice as reckless and fiscally irresponsible?
2. Do you believe that your Republican gubernatorial colleagues in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and North Dakota are reckless in accepting federal funds to expand their state’s Medicaid programs? What do you know that they don’t?
3. Why have you not yet visited the community of Bayou Corne, Louisiana, where hundreds of your constituents have been homeless for months because of a collapsing salt dome?
4. You have fired or forced out a considerable number of staff members, state legislators, university officials and others who disagreed with your policies. Why are you so uncomfortable with dissent or contrary views?
5. You have a biology degree from Brown. Do you believe in evolution? Do you believe that creationism is science?
6. Your administration has slashed higher education funding by more than $400 million in the past several years. The LSU system president, Williams Jenkins, said recently that those budget cuts had harmed LSU and threatened its status as a tier-one university. When was the last time you visited the LSU campus, or any other university campus, to meet with students to discuss the impact of those cuts on their education?
7. Do you believe that sales taxes are inherently regressive and harmful to the poor? Is exempting only groceries, medicine and utilities enough to shield the poor from the impact of a large state sales tax increase?
8. Why would you oppose a 4-cent renewal of your state’s cigarette tax and then propose more than a dollar increase in the same tax? Why was the 4-cent renewal an unacceptable tax increase, but a dollar increase is not?
9. Do you believe that purchasers of guns ought to first be required to undergo a basic background check? Why do you believe people should be allowed to carry guns into churches?
10. You campaigned on transparency. Why do you believe the records of your office should be shielded from public view?
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God, how I wish you were hosting the show. Those question would be certain to make him squirm. Great post.
I just hope they might ask him one tough question and not let him off the hook when he answers with evasions.
I hope you are right, but I’m not optimistic based on his past treatment. Great questions, BTW, that everybody should ask. Thanks.
Seriously, can you get these before David Gregory as suggested queries?
Copied his twitter handle, as well as the Meet the Press handle. @davidgregory
Nice work!
Thanks!
Jindal talks a lot and says nothing. He would “answer” these questions with same gobbledygook claptrap that he spouts now: “new models” of government, free market solutions to social problems, most qualified people in positions of responsibility. He would have the temerity to claim he had improved Louisiana’s economy and is positioning it for the boundless growth that will come by improving the business climate. Don’t you realize? It will be a litany of numbers and statistics, tossed out without context to prove his massive intellectual grasp of the minutiae of government: like the nugget that he won reelection with a mandate of 2/3s vote. It’s the 20% turnout that gets forgotten in that little canard nugget. He is one of the most intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt public figures around.
Yes, I’m afraid you are correct on all points.
Me, too.
Your questions are good, Mr. Mann, but those which are general in nature are likely to get general answers as Mann and JMW seem to agree in this thread. Frankly, I’d like to see some more-specific questions, along the lines of “How much wealth in dollar terms does Exxon produce in Louisiana, and how much of that wealth remains in the state?” (And, in monetary terms, what adverse impacts are felt from the activities of Exxon and other petrochemical industry entities?)
Of course, I do not have figures to fact-check any answer that BJ might produce, assuming that he were able to give actual figures rather than merely opine as to the general value of industrial production as compared with government activity.
However, there is an area where figures are readily available showing fairly well how wealth is extracted (no doubt in my mind) largely from Louisiana residents, and that is the euphemistically-named activity of “gaming”. Here, for example is what may be gleaned from reports available online, as to the continual tapping of cash which in all likelihood winds up benefitting individuals and corporations in other locations (with “outflow” referring to what likely winds up out of state):
Video Gaming, 2012
revenue: $295 million; state’s cut: $88 million; outflow: $207 million
Racetrack Slots, 2012*
revenue: $320 million; state’s cut: $60 million; outflow: $260 million
Riverboats, 2012*
revenue: $1,630 million; state’s cut: $350 million; outflow: $1,280 million
Casino, 2012*
revenue: $163 million; state’s cut: $30 million; outflow: $133 million
overall outflow: $1,880 million
*half-year, doubled
(Source – http://lgcb.dps.louisiana.gov/revenue_reports.html)
I do not mean that gambling is THE problem, but rather that the idea that gambling is beneficial is similar to the concept in other areas of activity in which Louisiana is willing to sacrifice health, wealth, resources, and the environment for a few jobs, or, in the case of gambling, for support of State Police, etc.
Those are amazing and discouraging numbers. Thanks for sharing the info.
I cannot bring myself to watch such a spectacle of mendacity. Just the thought makes me ill.
I retired from LSUHSC Shreveport. If the state needs to save money they should do a serious efficiency study in each dept of the med school & hospital. The waste of materials & productivity is exorbitant.
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Thanks. He really did let him off the hook with softball questions. At least he asked my #3 question. Jindal, of course, didn’t answer it.
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