But Hurricane Jindal is going to be worse:
THE debate over religious liberty in America presents conservatives and business leaders with a crucial choice.
In Indiana and Arkansas, large corporations recently joined left-wing activists to bully elected officials into backing away from strong protections for religious liberty. It was disappointing to see conservative leaders so hastily retreat on legislation that would simply allow for an individual or business to claim a right to free exercise of religion in a court of law.
Our country was founded on the principle of religious liberty, enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Why shouldn’t an individual or business have the right to cite, in a court proceeding, religious liberty as a reason for not participating in a same-sex marriage ceremony that violates a sincerely held religious belief?
That is what Indiana and Arkansas sought to do. That political leaders in both states quickly cowered amid the shrieks of big business and the radical left should alarm us all.
As the fight for religious liberty moves to Louisiana, I have a clear message for any corporation that contemplates bullying our state: Save your breath.
***If we, as conservatives, are to succeed in advancing the cause of freedom and free enterprise, the business community must stand shoulder to shoulder with those fighting for religious liberty. The left-wing ideologues who oppose religious freedom are the same ones who seek to tax and regulate businesses out of existence. The same people who think that profit making is vulgar believe that religiosity is folly. The fight against this misguided, government-dictating ideology is one fight, not two. Conservative leaders cannot sit idly by and allow large corporations to rip our coalition in half.
Since I became governor in 2008, Louisiana has become one of the best places to do business in America. I made it a priority to cut taxes, reform our ethics laws, invigorate our schools with bold merit-based changes and parental choice, and completely revamp work-force training to better suit businesses.
About the state of Louisiana, after Jindal made the largest tax cuts in history, he kinda had no plan for revenue streams to keep the government funded. As such, the state is in a fiscal crisis, and this is happening:
LSU and many other public colleges in Louisiana might be forced to file for financial exigency, essentially academic bankruptcy, if state higher education funding doesn’t soon take a turn for the better.
Louisiana’s flagship university began putting together the paperwork for declaring financial exigency this week when the Legislature appeared to make little progress on finding a state budget solution, according to F. King Alexander, president and chancellor of LSU.
“We don’t say that to scare people,” he said. “Basically, it is how we are going to survive.”
Moody’s Investors Service also announced this month that it was lowering LSU’s credit outlook from positive to stable based on concerns about the university’s overall financial support. The lowering of LSU’s credit rating makes it more likely the university will have to pay more for its building projects in the future.
Being in a state of financial exigency means a university’s funding situation is so difficult that the viability of the entire institution is threatened. The status makes it easier for public colleges to shut down programs and lay off tenured faculty, but it also tarnishes the school’s reputation, making it harder to recruit faculty and students.
That would basically be the death of public universities in Louisiana, because no one in their right mind would apply to go and fewer would apply to work there. So in the long run, it may not be just the fact that Louisiana is a haven for bigots driving business out of the state, but the fact that there are no Research 1 institutions working in union with business (see what the morons in the NC legislature are trying to do to university system and the impact it will have on the Research Triangle there), but also because there will be no educated workers in the state to handle the jobs businesses will have. And qualified personnel aren’t going to relocate to some remote bigoted outpost.
So yeah, Jindal. Have at it. Enjoy the complimentary education you’re about to get from the free market, you backwoods hick.
Germy Shoemangler
“I made it a priority to cut taxes, reform our ethics laws….”
Reforming a law always sounds to me like scaling it back, or eliminating it. Were excessive ethics a problem?
Gin & Tonic
To be fair, Piyush Jindal (Brown, Oxford) is not a backwoods hick, he has just made a strategic decision that shameless pandering to backwoods hicks will help him get ahead. It won’t, of course.
dmsilev
Unfortunately, he’ll be long gone by the time the state faces the consequences from this particular bit of dip-shittery.
Roger Moore
@Germy Shoemangler:
Ethics rules are always a problem for Republicans.
Brachiator
Very odd. Jindall draws thousands to his prayer ralleys and yet seems content to let LSU sink into mismanaged mediocrity. And the board is all his appointees.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/01/bobby_jindal-headlined_prayer.html
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2015/03/lsu_board_jindal_resign.html
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SiubhanDuinne
I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that this guy holds degrees from Brown University, one of the most academically rigorous schools in the country, and the University of Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. Clearly he’s not stupid. And yet he is.
My great-grandfather would have referred to Jindal as an “educated ignoramus.”
Edit: I see Gin & Tonic got in with much the same observation while I was typing.
srv
There are a lot of pointy heads in those ivory towers. It takes time. Took Ricky a few terms to clean up UT and A&M.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Money and Power trumps all else.
@srv: When I lived in TX, UT was funded by oil revenue. That’s why it was a flagship school that attracted top professors. Has that changed?
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Jindal’s problem is moral, not intellectual.
raven
This even got covered on a Georgia Football blog!
“You’ll never get any more faculty.”
boatboy_srq
@Germy Shoemangler:@Roger Moore: It’s the Reichwing. Ethics are always a problem.
Belafon
You don’t need a college education to listen to a sermon.
Capri
I think you’re wrong that they had no plan to maintain the state’s revenue stream after huge tax cuts. They honestly think that the tax cuts – by themselves- will result in an increased revenue streams. If that doesn’t work, it only means that they weren’t cut enough.
Benw
Why? For the same reason a business can’t cite a sincerely held religious belief to refuse service to minorities or women, you assnapkin.
raven
Senate Confirms Loretta Lynch as Attorney General
Lavocat
He doesn’t care. After this gig, he hits the Wingnut Welfare Circuit & this all can be blamed on those horrible Dems and, of course, the Blahs.
Jindal isn’t stupid; he merely panders to it.
celticdragonchick
Rod Dreher has had screaming fits for the last three weeks over the capitulation of Pence and whoever the fuck in Arkansas.
To read his blog, you would think the ghey Gestapo was getting ready for Krystalnacht and shoveling Christian babies into ovens. (not really much of an exaggeration. He has lurid fantasies of all the really bad parts of Roman repession coming true here in America so he can finally be the martyr he always wanted to be)
No doubt he will be pleased that Jindal is standing firm, hard, and sightly glistening in the afternoon sunlight against the ravening hordes of librul, objectively disordered and ontologically incorrect fellow countrymen he so desperately wants to be hated by.
JustRuss
Friend of mine was on the faculty at LSU about 10 years ago. It was hardly heaven on earth then–imagine the offspring of Southern politics getting together with typical academic infighting, if that sends a shudder down your spine you’re in the ballpark–I can’t imagine what a dystopia it’s about to become.
Germy Shoemangler
After the oil spill I kept seeing commercials promoting tourism.
Maybe he thinks tourists will lift his place into prosperity?
SP
Count the name-calling buzzwords here:
“left-wing activists…bully…radical left…bullying…radical liberals…left-wing ideologues…government-dictating ideology…Hollywood and the media elite…liberal opponents”
I hope he paid the going NYT rates for printing this campaign ad.
Calouste
@SiubhanDuinne: Maybe Oxbridge and the Ivy League aren’t all the are cracked up to be. Maybe they just are the foothills of educational excellence rather than the Himalayas. Maybe there are so many admissions there that came in on the basis of their connections rather than their academic achievements that the level just isn’t as high as it used to be.
Germy Shoemangler
@celticdragonchick: No doubt he will be pleased that Jindal is standing firm, hard, and sightly glistening in the afternoon sunlight against the ravening hordes of librul, objectively disordered and ontologically incorrect fellow countrymen he so desperately wants to be hated by.
Excellent writing
Bobby B
Maybe they’re going for the Mouse That Roared strategy, trying to provoke a US invasion to get aid. I like the first part.
low-tech cyclist
@raven: Note – this quote is from a Georgia football blog raven quoted, not raven him/herself:
Don’t worry, Georgia football fan: Louisiana will surely fund just enough of LSU so that it can pretend to be a university, and continue to field a football team in the SEC.
From the Marx Brothers’ Horsefeathers:
Wagstaff: Where would this college be without football? Have we got a stadium?
Professor One: Yes.
Wagstaff: Have we got a college?
Professor One: Yes.
Wagstaff: Well, we can’t support both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
I think Louisiana is about to take this guidance seriously.
richard mayhew
Is LSU proposing to reduce the number of football scholarships offered? Bringing it down to 70 instead of 85 allowed in D-1 would be a sign that LSU is seriously in trouble; otherwise it is a close the Washington Monument ploy.
kindness
Don’t look now but the LSU program is about to be inundated with Liberty University grads looking for scab labor.
philpm
I’m of the opinion that Jindal, Browback et al are actively trying to run everyone out of their respective states. No services the state needs to provide, no taxes that have to be collected. At this point, it really is one of the few things making sense to me.
RSR
Starving public education–not just for local school systems anymore.
Mandalay
@raven:
So 34 senators opposed her being nominated in the first place, but then nobody actually voted against her? Am I reading that correctly?
Timurid
@SiubhanDuinne:
The term I heard growing up was “book smart and street stupid.”
Calouste
@celticdragonchick: Jindal is going to stand firm and push hard. He is not going to bend over and let gay activists shove marriage down his throat, nor is he going down on his knees and just suck it up. He will just not swallow it. He will show the gays his muscle and cry out to God.
Iowa Old Lady
Undergrads would still apply because out of state tuition is a killer and they don’t know any better. Grad student would go elsewhere.
I really can’t process how any governor thinks this is a good outcome for their state.
srv
@JPL: http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/storming-ivory-tower
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Ted Cruz has gaudy academics and an impressive early legal career, and comes across as rigid and incurious, not to mention cringe-inducing. Sometimes that fancypants education just doesn’t take, like scattering seeds across a WalMart parking lot.
JPL
@srv: Thanks…
gene108
@Germy Shoemangler:
I kind of have this picture of Darth Vader informing Grand Moff Tarken aboard the Death Star, after telling Tarken Obi-Wan is here, that escape is not his plan, with regards to the idea Republicans care about anything other than maintaining power.
Prosperity is not their plan.
Adhering to their ideology is their plan; damn the consequences.
Mandalay
Walmart sent the governor of Arkansas a letter saying “Think again about this law you are planning to pass”, and prevailed.
IBM have sent a similar letter to Jindal:
But in the article linked to in the OP Jindal ups the ante and states: “I have a clear message for any corporation that contemplates bullying our state: Save your breath”.
I’m betting on IBM.
srv
@Iowa Old Lady: 90% of the middle-class and rich white kids in TX (ie, they didn’t make the top 10% cutoff for UT or A&M) are going to: LSU, UA, OU, Mississippi, Bama or Kansas. Some of these states have set up instate tution rate agreements.
You’ll note the kids on that OU SAE bus were from Dallas. As in, elite private school or Highland Park. They weren’t natives.
This is the new norm. Jindal will have an endless supply of students.
Roger Moore
@celticdragonchick:
I think this is a very common characteristic among Christian extremists. Jesus said “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” (Matthew 5:10), so there are plenty of Christians who desperately want to be persecuted in order to qualify. If there’s no real persecution, they’ll make some up, and since they and their friends have never experienced real persecution, they think their petty annoyances and inability to do as they please will certainly qualify.
low-tech cyclist
@philpm:
While I’m quoting Groucho, I think these GOP governors (Walker as well as Jindal and Brownback) could all sing:
If you think this state is bad off now,
just wait ’til I get through with it!
(From Groucho’s opening number in Duck Soup, only with ‘state’ instead of ‘country.’)
Germy Shoemangler
@low-tech cyclist: Professor Wagstaff: “Whatever it is, I’m against it!” early example of cleek’s law?
srv
@JPL: The UT President was finally ousted last year.
Attempts to oust Rick’s regents have failed. They are a majority now.
I believe A&M rolled over a couple years back.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
More like “the level never has been as high as they believed it was”. Those “elite” institutions that concentrated on teach the rich and powerful have never been the academic powerhouses they believe themselves to be. They can talk about the success of their alumni, but that’s mostly inherited success. As long as all the important universities were like that, they could pretend to be high and mighty, but compare them to some institutions that focus on teaching the smartest students rather than the richest- the top state schools, technical schools like the one where Tom Levenson teaches, etc.- and you’ll see the difference.
Germy Shoemangler
@trollhattan: ….like scattering seeds across a WalMart parking lot.
The poetry is strong in Balloon-Juicers today. First-rate writing here.
catclub
@dmsilev:
Maybe he will move to Kansas.
Hal
This was one of the NYT picks in the comments section. I can’t tell if the person who wrote this is joking, or the NYT is joking when flagging this:
celticdragonchick
@Germy Shoemangler:
Thank you :)
I did have to practice quite a bit at Guilford College, even if it was academic writing.
celticdragonchick
@Calouste:
I really didn’t want to visually imagine that as I read it…but I did.
Ewww.
Sherparick
@Iowa Old Lady: Jindal would not give a warm bucket of spit for the State of Louisiana. It and its people are just his instruments to gain access to the Wingnut Welfare Fund.
Sherparick
Of course, Scott Walker is quickly reducing Wisconsin to the same level as Kansas and Louisiana and hopes to bring that “tough, looking out for the taxpayer” mentality to the whole U.S.
Mike in NC
@catclub: Maybe Jindal and Brownback share their moronic ideas via Facebook. It’s not like they have important work to attend to.
BGinCHI
Shakespeare Association of America annual meeting in New Orleans next year (April). Probably near 10K people.
No way will folks go if this all happens. I’m guessing they will move it.
Bummer for NO.
Susan K of the tech support
@Mandalay:
The 99-0 vote was for the trafficking bill that was holding up the L Lynch nomination vote.
The confirmation vote for L Lynch was something along the lines of 56 – 43. (speaking from memory). Only person who didn’t vote is that senator from TX who reminds me of that guy named McCarthy who was before my time.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: In Oxbridge’s defense, there are Oxbridge colleges and there are Oxbridge colleges (Oxford alone has 38): each one has its own standards, and they vary – and one or two vary significantly.
Davis X. Machina
@BGinCHI: Are those Shakespeare people leveraging their core competencies? Are they achieving record revenue growth through dynamic and agile skating to where the puck is going to be? Are they proactively future-proofing themselves?
When’s their IPO?
Didn’t think so. To hell with them.
BGinCHI
@Davis X. Machina: One thing is for sure. The bar tabs are healthy.
Gin & Tonic
@Mandalay: I’m betting on IBM.
Isn’t their army of lawyers known as the Nazgul?
CONGRATULATIONS!
Then, Piyush, you will fail, because the business community knows that the religious psychos are a bunch of broke-ass motherfuckers who only can get money by dubious GoFundMe projects, while the only God the business folks worship is that of the Almighty Motherfucking United States Dollar. As they have already gone to great lengths to demonstrate to you in the states of Indiana and Arkansas.
So they will not be standing “shoulder to shoulder” with you, and you’re going to be standing in the schoolhouse door all by yourself. Good luck with that.
Frankensteinbeck
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The problem with that: Votes still count, and 1% does not a political party make. Without the cultural conservatives, the MBA wing of the Republican Party is screwed. Hell, convincing the cultural conservatives of exactly Jindal’s point above is Reagan’s glorious legacy and why we’re in this economic mess.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
I’ll have you know those suits are charcoal gray, not black. That said, I do remember somebody on Groklaw dubbing Cravath, Swaine & Moore the Nazgul during the SCO mess.
boatboy_srq
@Mandalay: IBM can come and go and Louisiana will never know. Now, if ExxonMobil did that…
Cervantes
@boatboy_srq:
Does New College meet your standards? That’s where Jindal was a Rhodes Scholar.
Tommy
I am a loud and proud LSU guy. I was born in Baton Rouge. Dad got his PhD there. Taught there. I went to grad school there. It was just a foregone conclusion I’d go there. What Jindal is doing to that college is close to crimal.
RaflW
Late getting to this. But indeed, I’ve been following the LSU/Jindal debacle and its pretty shocking. Louisiana isn’t exactly an economic marvel as it is. What possible good would come from trashing the premier university in the state? Likewise for NC and the Research Triangle.
I would think its funny, watching these two states, and Kansas come to think of it, as they collapse from voter-assisted economic suicide, but the casualties make it not funny at all.
madmommy
After living here for almost 20 years, marrying a born-and-raised Metairie boy who will never, ever leave and watching the public school education my kids are getting worse every year, I am just disgusted. It’s completely shameful that the flagship university is in this position. What sort of business is going to want to come here when they will have to pay their employees enough to send their kids to private schools because the public schools have been damn near starved to death? What business will continue to operate in a state where they can’t get qualified employees because the state uni went tits up? My oldest is starting high school next year. He is already making plans to go out of state for college, preferably far north of here. His vague plan is to attend college in a Canadian border state in the hopes of finding a spouse of the Canadian persuasion so he can get the hell out of this country before it collapses.
Cacti
The commentariat will be not be surprised to learn that Bobby Jindal’s current level of support in Louisiana is…
27 percent
J R in WV
I read a huge list of polling questions and answers where the results were divided up by party / race or ethnicity / political identification, etc, etc. It was a 54 page PDF published by CNN, I forget the polling company who did the work, but they got about two thirds of their sample on a land line and the rest on cell phones, somehow.
For answers from the people who identify as Republican, there were no respondents who also identified as Non-White ZERO.
When respondents identifying as Republican (also leans republican) selected a potential R candidate, Jindal got 1% about 60-70% of the time, and 2% a minority of the time. But that 2% is his peak performance. He actually got * or 0 or N/A on some results, like “Represents the future of the Republican party?”
The only Republican candidate that actually came in below Jindal was Carly Fiorina, well-known destroyer of two great companies, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard. But she was newly perceived as a candidate in this race, and may outdo Jindal eventually. Or not.
Of course the mud slinging has started already, mostly Rs spreading lies and distortions about Hillary Clinton. As the Rs haven’t identified a sure winner of their primary process (haven’t identified their primary process, for that matter!) it’s pretty hard for Democratic candidates to launch any kind of opposition project against their eventual opponent.
Cervantes
@madmommy:
Free-thinker, your lad.
Glad to see Metairie did not rub off on him.
low-tech cyclist
@SP:
Reminds me of this 1973 Doonesbury strip where (VietCong terrorist) Phred’s mom says to him, “The imperialist warmonger Thieu has viciously violated the accords! The true Vietnamese people’s government is responding to the aggression of the running dogs!”
And Phred’s thought balloon says, “Man! I’d forgotten we talked like that.”
David Bader
Tourism dollars count big in Louisiana, and a good chunk of the visitors are what Jindal would consider to be heathens. Lots of jobs involved in tourism that will be impacted if they pass the proposed law. Bobby is not drawing much interest up here in Iowa, he even comes off as fake to the bible thumpers.
dp
@richard mayhew: The athletic department is the only part of the university that’s doing well — it’s actually shoveling $7M a year to academics to make up for lost state funding.