Liberty and Justice for All!

First he signed a bill allowing creationism to be presented in science classrooms. Then he signed a voucher scholarship bill. Now he has cut $2.5 million from Turn on To Learning.

What is Turn on To Learning?

The TOTL program was instituted by Governor Kathleen Blanco as a research project to measure the effectiveness of 1-to-1 laptop initiatives in the 6th grade classroom.  It is the former governor’s dream that the program will prove to be so valuable that schools, school districts, and whole states would wish to join in such a leading-edge project.

I guess Jindal doesn’t see the need for fancy pants technology in the classroom (since his end goal seems to be an elimination of public schools that would use this technology anyway).

Maybe Jindal just didn’t like the fact that the program was Blanco’s. (You know, cause according to all the Blanco haters she didn’t do anything right as Governor).

And while this has nothing to do with education, $100,000 was also cut from Louisiana’s Habitat for Humanity. You know, because Habitat for Humanity hasn’t done anything substantial for Louisiana at all… especially in the last 3 years or so.

Leaders exert their influence beforehand. Leaders do not need others to tell them to do the right thing, they just do it. That is the moral of this story… Bobby Jindal is not a leader. Bobby Jindal is a politician, someone who makes backroom deals to get certain legislation passed (even though such deals violate promises to voters).

Now Jindal will have to deal with an angry legislature that he has now lied to. Had Jindal been ready for prime time, he would have used his approval rating to get whatever legislation he wanted passed and would have never promised the legislature a pay raise that he objected to. An effective leader would have promised the legislature something that he supported already and made them think that it was their idea in the first place.

And Jindal also has to deal with the fact that he succumbed to public pressure and did not do the right thing because he felt it was the right thing to do. Not that he actually felt that he would be recalled (the chance of them averaging over 5200 signatures a day was slim to none). He just couldn’t have a recall attempt hanging over his head while trying to be the keynote speaker at the Republican Convention (or while trying to be McCain’s VEEP candidate).

Update: This Jindal apologistseems to think that Jindal showed all sorts of leadership. It is worth the read for a good laugh.

Update 2: In a recent SMOR poll, over 50% of the voters would have a worse opinion of Jindal had he not vetoed the bill. The poll was released June 30th (the same day Jindal vetoed the bill). Coincidence?

Bobby Jindal said that he made a mistake letting the legislature control the session. He still has no plans to veto the bill.

Pathetic.

On other Jindal news, the unsigned law count is over 100 and counting. Perhaps he is going for the all time record.

Addressing the news media Tuesday at a post-session news conference, Jindal said the unsigned bills are in keeping with his policy of giving the Legislature leeway to pursue its own interests and policies, even if they aren’t in line with his priorities. “They were simply outside the scope of our reform,” Jindal said. He added, “We didn’t think they merited a veto, so we allowed them to become law.”

Who cares if they are “outside the scope of [your] reform”? Do your damned job!

Update: Apparently, Jindal knows how to use a pen and how to veto.

Think Bobby Jindal is spineless for failing to veto the pay raise bill? I used this shirt for the Jindal is Bad website during the campaign for failing to attend debates. Now we can use it to share our opinion on Governor Jindal and his refusal to stand up to the legislators.

Someone is either overconfident, very ambitious, or hopes that this recall effort will cause Jindal to reconsider his stance on using a veto on the pay raise.

I’ll sign it. I will even collect signatures in my neighborhood. I highly doubt it will work. The number of signatures required is far too great.

Update: More information here.

The two would have to collect and then have verified signatures from at least one-third of the registered voters in the state.

With more than 2.8 million registered voters in Louisiana, they would need in excess of 953,000 signatures to trigger a recall election.

Since they have 180 days to complete the collection of signatures, they need an average of 5,295 signatures per day. As I said, it is unlikely that it will happen. It would take an amazing amount of organization between people across the state. You would need to have locations where people could just show up and sign in every city. You would need to have volunteers to man those locations and make sure that every line of information is correct and proper. If it is anything like a petition to get on a ballot as a candidate, you need to put information like ward and precinct (things people don’t usually memorize) so you would have to have some utility that will allow people to look that up at each location. If they get it done, I will be shocked.

John Neely Kennedy*.

He probably felt that he would be able to ride the Republican coat tails of Bobby Jindal by defecting to the Republican party and running against Mary Landrieu. Unfortunately for him, Jindal proved that he had no spine and that he was willing to go against both the will of the people and the promise he made during his campaign.

Yes there are other losers. Jindal lost the respect of many of his fiscal conservative supporters. Several legislators are getting recall petitions submitted against them with more likely to come. The Media is being criticised for not doing their job in the 2007 election. But Kennedy was going for statewide election against a Democrat in a state that is turning redder and redder as we speak. The support of Jindal would have helped him immeasurably. Now, the support of Jindal will likely hurt JNK more than it helps. And while i never actually thought that JNK could win, the likelihood of him winning now is much less. And that, my friends, makes me smile.

* speaking politically only.

Back in March I discussed how the terrorism card has been played far too many times and that eventually it would backfire. I also questioned when the American public would stop being scared by Bush’s comments on terror threats and start realizing that Bush’s policy on terrorism has failed to make us safer.

Now an adviser in John McCain’s camp stated that a terrorist attack would help McCain’s campaign. McCain backed away from the statement (likely because he didn’t want to look like he actually wanted a terrorist attack to happen). However, this line of thinking falls follows the thinking of the previous post.

If a terrorist attack happened, it would not be a sign that we are still unsafe so we need to elect the Republican to keep us safe. It would be a sign that the Republican policy on keeping us safe has failed us and we need to change our way of thinking.

Now, I am not going to speculate on how the American public would actually vote if we got attacked by terrorists again. However, if the American public is foolish enough to believe that electing McCain (who follows Bush’s failed ideas on keeping us safe from terrorism)  after a terrorist attack will make us safer then God help us all.

Cross posted at Obama for President.

During the 2007 campaign for Governor many of us warned the citizens of Louisiana about the kind of Governor that Bobby Jindal would turn out to be. We accurately predicted, via our own research, that any “ethics reform” would not be meaningful and that he would just bring more of the same type of government. His campaign (and his supporters) called us part of the “corrupt crowd” for daring to oppose the so called “reform candidate”. However, we did not oppose reform; we just rejected the idea that Jindal was sincere. The media could have also done that very same research. Instead, the media repeated Jindal campaign propaganda as “news” and never seriously questioned any of Jindal’s claims. The media owes all of us an apology for their blind endorsement of Jindal and for their lack of investigative reporting.

Bobby Jindal is outraged over the Supreme Court decision that deemed Louisiana’s law allowing the death penalty for child rape unconstitutional.

He states:

We will evaluate ways to amend our statute to maintain death as a penalty for this horrific crime.

The Supreme Court said that death is not an appropriate penalty for child rape under the Constitution of the United States. The only change that could be made to alter this is a change to the Constitution. No state level action would be good enough because the ruling would still stand. So does Jindal need to back to school and learn about civics? I’ll get back to that in a second.

Now, Jindal did say this:

The most repugnant crimes deserve the harshest penalties, and nothing is more repugnant than the brutal rape of an eight-year-old child.

I agree. I also agree that the death penalty should be used to punish child rapists. So there you have it, another thing I agree with Jindal on.

However, Jindal needs to understand that there actually are things that the Federal Government gets to trump the State Government on and one of those things is deciding if punishment is cruel and unusual.

So regardless of how much we may disagree with the Supreme Court on the issue, there is nothing that can be done at the state level to allow for the death penalty in child rape cases… period.

I would be tempted to say that Jindal is ignorant of Constitutional law but that probably is not the case. He probably knows full well that no state action will be able to override a ruling by the supreme court. What I think is more likely is that he is playing up to the conservative base who may not realize that Jindal’s disgrace is just a ploy to either distract those conservatives who are angry at him over the pay raise issue or to get more conservative voters behind his possible nomination for V-P.

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Iraq War Cost

Just sayin…