Liberty and Justice for All!

Clancy Dubos is apparently having some buyers remorse on Bobby Jindal.

 My response to him (in that link) is as follows:

Clancy: You endorsed Bobby Jindal. And not only did you endorse him, but you did so by annointing him with such lavish praise. You have come a long way from

“We think the best way to respond is by electing a governor who will fundamentally change our political culture from top to bottom and present Louisiana in a whole new light to the rest of the world. In our view, Congressman Bobby Jindal will be that kind of governor.” (your words)

and

“More than anything else, Bobby Jindal’s integrity is above reproach.” (your words)

to

“What’s becoming obvious is that Governor Jindal, who promised us a “gold standard,” actually wants to give us a “double standard” — one for himself and his cronies, and another for everybody else.” (your words)

This is not “becoming obvious”. This has BEEN obvious to many of us out here who have known for YEARS that Jindal is a hypocrite and not someone to be trusted to bring meaningful ethics reform.

Perhaps you should apologize to your readers for not doing the appropriate research on the candidate you endorsed. Because all of Jindal’s flaws existed well before to the election to those who wanted to see it.

On my lunch break I called into the Spud show on WWL. Clancy Dubos was on discussing the LA01 race and I decided to call in and add my $0.02. This is when I came up for my new term for the socially conservative springboard from which the three Republican candidates for this election are coming from. From Steve Scalise and his push to ban gay marriages (and gay civil unions) in our state, to Tim Burns plastering his name all over the radio as having a 100% pro-life record, to Ben Morris and his website where he also discusses how he loves “family values” and wants to defend our Judeo-Christian heritage (as if Ben Morris really respected Jews when he supported the lone picture of Jesus in the Slidell courthouse), all of these candidates are basically trying to stand up and proclaim who loves embryos and hates homosexuals more.

So I call in and ask when the LA01 voters are going to stop voting against their best interests. Sure, the three Republican candidates are showing that they are gay hating embryo lovers. However, the family values track has not shown a very good record in LA01. First you have Bob Livingston (who is backing Steve Scalise), whose family values included having an affair. Then you have David “Vitty-Cent” Vitter, whose family values included sins with prostitutes while married. Then you have PBJ, who ran for governor on an ethics package and is now has an ethics investigation no less than 1 month into his term. Finally, all three Republican candidates for Congress won their respective 2007 elections and will not be able to perform their jobs to their best ability because they will be focused on their new campaigns. So again, you have three candidates who are worried about their own gains and ignore the needs of their constituents. It also seems to me that collecting a paycheck for a job you are not doing is not very ethical or fiscally conservative. I guess that point is lost on the voters who happen to be GHEL as well.

Of course, Clancy’s response was pretty much a comment on how Democrats also do the same thing so I should be careful what I wish for. Well, I wish that all politicians (Democrat and Republican) follow the same set of rules and that includes committing to complete the term you are elected to and if you cannot, resign immediately. I hold Democrats to the same standards that I do Republicans.

There is also the issue that Louisiana tends to “zig” when the rest of the country “zags” politically. I brought up the idea that perhaps with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President that it might benefit Louisiana to have more Democratic representatives. Again, Clancy said that I should be careful what I wish for because when the country went to the right and elected Bush and a Republican Congress, we elected Blanco and Landrieu. And if Clancy was trying to point out Louisiana’s folly in those choices at the time, well, perhaps it is time to learn from past folly and now that America is “zigging”, perhaps we should continue to “zig”  as well! That would require us to reelect Mary Landrieu later this year and to perhaps replace the obstructionist Republicans with Democrats who can get the job done for Louisiana.

Surprisingly enough, the Gambit Weakly has called for Bobby Jindal to go after campaign finance reform in the ethics session. One of their suggestions in their recent editorial was:

Include Campaign Finance. Most if not all statements that Jindal has made on the subject of ethics reform have been conspicuously silent on the subject of campaign finance. Cynics would argue that that’s no coincidence ” the new governor raised more than $15 million in his successful campaign last year, so why would he want to tinker with laws that allowed him to do that? We give Jindal the benefit of the doubt ” for now.

Now, I quoted it exactly as it is stated on the website so the punctuation may be a bit confusing. It should read:

Cynics would argue that that’s no coincidence ” the new governor raised more than $15 million in his successful campaign last year, so why would he want to tinker with laws that allowed him to do that?” We give Jindal the benefit of the doubt for now.

Now, that makes more sense. Unfortunately they give him the benefit of the doubt. Many people I know who are demanding campaign finance reform as being something that is required for meaningful ethics reform to take place do not give Jindal the benefit of the doubt. Why? Well, according to the Gambit we are “cynics”. But even the Gambit understands the problem with money and politics when it states:

we want to underscore our point that campaign finance is where many of the dirty deeds are done in Louisiana politics. To some, campaign contributions constitute a legal pathway around bribery laws. If we really want to clean up Louisiana’s image, we have to recognize the old political adage, ‘Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” and then, in Watergate jargon, we must ‘follow the money.” If Jindal is serious about ethics reform, he will put campaign finance reform high on his ‘to-do” list. Do it now, Governor, not later.

And that is what we have been saying this entire time. We view Bobby Jindal’s accepting funds from people who circumvent campaign finance laws and then promoting those people to offices in his administration as one of the problems in ethics laws and while we demand the changes to help fix our state, we have no faith that someone (like Jindal) who would circumvent state bribery laws (as the Gambit put it) will make meaningful campaign finance reform as part of his ethics package. This makes the ethics package an “ethics lite” package and at the end of the day we will still be stuck with the same corrupt system.

Cross posted at jindalisbad.com

Over at Jindalisbad.com, I commented on Jeremy Alford is not drinking the Gambit Kool Aid and how he was actually able to look at the governors race in an objective manner. (I also explained why I refer to it as the Gambit Weakly). He continues his rational view on our Governor Elect in a new Gambit Weakly article.

Bobby Jindal’s honeymoon with the media is over already. His promises of ethical fastidiousness and rapid reform have set the bar so high that every hiccup is major news.

I have a feeling that by June, his honeymoon with the voters will be over as well. Sure, there will always be the die hard blind Jindal supporters who worship him like a god. However, I think those moderates and some Democrats who could ignore Jindal’s social conservatism and who just wanted to believe that the Rhodes Scholar was truely a breath of fresh are are going to be in for a shock when the goods delivered do not live up to the goods promised in the campaign. Buyers remorse will be the word of the day and at that point I will have to design a “We Told You So” t-shirt for Jindalisbad.com.

Until then, we will at least have some quality reporting in the Gamibt Weakly. 

And a thanks to swampwoman for linking to the story.