Damn that Lincoln: Abe's to blame for Jindal
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Exclusive to Buzzflash.com
by Greg Palast
Damn that Abe Lincoln. When Louisiana and Mississippi seceded from the Union, a sensible president would have sent them a box of chocolates with a note, "Goodbye and good riddance."
Tonight, following Barack Obama's budget presentation to Congress, effectively the president's first State of the Union Address, the Republicans chose to give their party's response, the governor of the state that wanted to leave the Union, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal.
Jindal told us that Barack Obama is a terrible President who passed a stimulus bill "larded with wasteful spending." Where's the lard? All week, Jindal has been screeching that Obama wants to require states like Louisiana to extend unemployment insurance to - get this - the unemployed! (Technically, the federal government would pay 100% of the cost of reforming Louisiana's and Mississippi's Scrooge-sized benefit requirements.)
Jindal, and some other Republican governors, notably Haley Barbour of Mississippi, are actually turning down millions in federal funds for their own state's unemployed out of fear that, four years from now, they may have to maintain full unemployment insurance like the rest of America.
Barbour's excuse, parroted by Jindal, is that the Obama payments to the unemployed of their states would mean, when the economy returns to expansion, that their state would have to increase unemployment insurance taxes and payments to the US average, scaring away new employers. "I mean, we want more jobs," says Barbour. Um, this is the Governor of MISSISSIPPI talking. Exactly what new "jobs" is he talking about? Is Microsoft is based in Gulfport? Is Genentech opening its new headquarters in Moss Point?
As an economist, I can tell you that the only industry Mississippi leads in is deep-fried chicken-dog manufacturing. I will admit that Louisiana and Mississippi can boast of growing employment at several casinos and cathouses spilling across what the locals charmingly call the "Coon-ass Riviera." Jindal's Louisiana is, after all, the state that solved its unemployment problem by sending its unemployed to Texas in FEMA trailers.
And it's true that Jindal's and Barbour's states do lead the nation in a few indicators. Like poverty: Mississippi has America's highest poverty rate. Louisiana is third worst in America.
And how about their commitment to education? Louisiana ranks 5th and Mississippi 2nd worst in school kids' math scores. As Randy Newman notes about the gulf states' education policies, "good ol' boys... from LSU, went in dumb, come out dumb, too."
Jindal himself is a product of a more advanced culture: His parents are Democrats. The Jindals are Hindus who come from the Punjab in India, a state known for its welfare safety net. Jindal, turning away from the successful example of his parents' politics and culture, has gone native, becoming a born-again Christian Republican who doesn't accept Darwinian evolution nor Keynesian economics. (I hear he may complete his redneck makeover next week by marrying his cousin at a tractor pull.)
For over a century, Louisiana and Mississippi have been trying to attract employers by changing their economy from one based on involuntary servitude to one based on voluntary servitude, selling their citizens to the lowest bidder. The results are blindingly visible: Mississippi and Louisiana, under the Barbour/Jindal Republican regime, maintain the lowest per-capita incomes in the nation (50th and 46th respectively). Mississippi and Louisiana infant mortality rates (1st and 3rd in deaths in the USA) would shame Costa Rica.
Years back, when I worked as an economic consultant to New Orleans, the Louisiana State Legislature was about to require that schools teach evolution as merely a theory equal to the Bible's literal creation myth. When asked if this would harm big employers' views of the state, I said, "Not at all: most national employers think of Louisiana as a state filled with Bible-thumping, dumb-bell rednecks. You won't have to worry about changing that impression."
OK, it's easy to make jokes about America's own Third World states. And before I get a zillion complaints, I'll be the first one to note that Louisiana has birthed the extraordinary, including the greatest of America's investigative journalists, the late Ron Ridenhour, jazz, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse and gris-gris. And it was Louisiana that long ago led the nation in social reform, whose governor, in 1932, led the national fight to create a program now known as "unemployment insurance." Really.
Nevertheless, Jindal's rejection of funds for his state's own unemployed simply follows a history of local Republican plantation-mentality cruelty. After Hurricane Katrina, I met a young man, Stephen Smith, who was stranded with a family on Highway 10 for four days while George Bush photo-strafed him from overhead. An elderly man with Stephen died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.
I investigated the drowning of New Orleans and the "let'm drown" rescue plans of the Bush Administration. What I found was sickening, heartless and Republican. Marie Antoinette at least offered cake.
Now, once again, the Republican party, by making Jindal the party's official spokesman, is adopting the Barbour-ous refusal to reach out a saving hand to Americans drowning in this economy.
So, let me make a suggestion for Governors Jindal and Barbour. If you cannot join America in accepting our President's call to arms against disaster, if you reject our President's State of the Union - then leave the Union.
As the prescient Phil Ochs sang,
And here's to the government of Mississippi
In the swamp of their bureaucracy they're always bogging down…
…And the speeches of the governor are the ravings of a clown
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of
Amen.
*************
Greg Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight.
Palast, author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is a Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting. Big Easy to Big Empty is available on DVD at the Palast Investigative Fund website.
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Great piece, Greg. I'm from Louisiana, but haven't lived there nearly 20 years now. I think Jindal's a waste of space for reasons that you cite here and many, many others. It gives me chills to think that Jindal is a future superstar of the GOP.
However, a comment on your final point. You write: "If you cannot join America in accepting our President's call to arms against disaster, if you reject our President's State of the Union - then leave the Union."
Well, we can't have this "America, love it or leave it" stance from you. We spent eight years as dissident Americans through the worst administration in our life time; we have to allow others we disagree with to claim their right to dissent, too.
Tom Kenny
Greg Palast -- Japan chapter president
MR.Greg,you had me laughing on reading your article; revealing with
humor some painful history. I remember and actually lived through
Presidents from Truman to the present and it's startiling after 8yrs.
of the former Administration to have a President who 'appears'
"Presidential,"and a man of every day folk. (Hmmm-we'll see)
Even if one dosen't agree with all that Mr. Obama says,("clean coal?"-
whose advising him on that!?) at least Mr. Obama has the ability to
get one to listen.
After 15 seconds of Gov. Jindal I had to turn off my TV. My bias
wish is that Huey Long will revisit,around midnight,the Louisiana
Governors Mansion and alter Mr. Jindal's 'think.'
Peace,MZ
P.S. The following is a quote from a famous General that might appeal
to an investigative reporter like yourself.
"A statesman must be prepared to be contradicted and to listen to the
truth,for otherwise he is unworthy of the name."
'OPPS,' I forgot to include in my previous response to your article
that I wasn't around when "Honest Abe" was holding down the White House.
MZ
Please tell me this column is a joke. You state some facts, but you undermine their credibility with very demeaning stereotypes and insults about these two states and the people who live in them. Suggesting that people who disagree with the president should leave the Union is a notion I doubt anyone against Bush would have ever accepted. Please tell me this column is a joke.
"If you cannot join America in accepting our President's call to arms against disaster, if you reject our President's State of the Union - then leave the Union."
Reminds me of "If you are not with us, then you are against us" type of rhetoric that was expected from BushCo. Why are you trying to stir up tensions? This is hardly objective journalism.
Second, re: the "call to arms against disaster", doesn't it make a little sense to ask what is actually responsible for creating the disaster, and why it was necessary to urgently (suppressing bothersome dissent as well as valid criticisms) push through a stimulus plan which will take more than a couple of years to execute?
Why does it make sense to blindly support a "bank rescue" plan which even the mighty Krugman cannot understand?
Why was Rick Santelli's dissent suppressed from the White House itself? Who is the new Karl Rove behind the curtains? (In case you are ignorant about Santelli, he has been consistently opposed to bailouts for anyone - *including* bankers).
It looks like you have swallowed the dubious neo-Keynesian claims hook, line and sinker. Pay a little attention to Santelli, Schiff, Rogers, Faber and you will see that Obama might be digging himself into a deeper hole by neglecting sound advice.
Oh btw, I did notice that you call yourself an economist. Even though you may have been trained as a Keynesian, try to remain skeptical. Even Feynman referred to Samuelson's book as cargo-cult science. So unless you consider yourself smarter than Feynman, do try to find out why economics might actually have some parts which are "faith-based" and pseudo-scientific.
Dear Greg Palast
Thanks a lot. love your work. Grew up in Gulfport. Katrina washed me to Atlanta. john Kerry got 40percent in 2004. We're hidden away down there, without representation.
When Barbour was in Washington he got a provision slipped into the tobacco bill requiring that taxpayers pay the money. When it was discovered no one would admit to doing it.
Thanks again Keep on truckin a fan/ read your books twice
Dear Greg,
Why pretend MS Barbour & LA Jindahl are sole stand outs?
If you add SC plus Sanford, you'll get 3 tops in misery.
Of course such rednecks hate (illegal state) unions, hate living wages & would not want poor people spending money out of poverty.
Sanford and Confederate Sons, not satisfied with mere laws against humanity, put more discriminations into the Constitutions!
2006, outside of the blue town of Charleston where I live, over 80 per cent of all referendum voters denied gays & lesbians the Constitutional right to marry, get any benefit of marriage like visit one another in a hospital or inherit shared property when one dies.
Not even close like H8 in California last year.
It is bigoted religious hate that keeps the top 3 misery states refusing humanity decent living wages.
Every "plantation" here is a tourist trap, not a monument to lifetime death sentences for no wages, but a pride in exploitation.
Women can be fired for taking just one day off for getting an abortion, so legislators decided to make them wait an extra day and guaranteed the right of employers to discriminate in the capitol where Strom Thurmond still rules from bis rapist racist grave.
Bible thumpers, however keep running into little problem solvers called FEDERAL COURTS, at every turn, xian license plates and creationist propaganda are denied their theocratic & oppressive powers on cars and in schools.
Hell, even an Atheist can run for office now, since Herb Silverman successfully sued in State Courts over godly belief requirements. There is hope.
We're here fighting, just like you said, Huey Long started "share the wealth." We get federal money to grow sweet potatoes & make ethanol AT 5-11 TIMES THE EFFICIENCIES PER ACRE OF CORN OR SWITCH GRASS with more food and chemical by-products to beat the Chinese in this "secret" market, & rural green jobs can lift tens of thousands out of rural poverty.
ADM, Cargill and the bank rollers of Barber, Jindahl with Sanford want to keep secret their switchgrass / corn monopolies.
When we can get money rolling in peoples pockets, not the gentry of religious hate, who divide to conquer us, America may no longer have 3rd world countries within her borders anymore.
Peace, Larry 843-926-1750
Dear Greg:
Is it possible, just possible, that these heartless southern Republican governors are just singing a timeless number from the Dixie songbook, namely low social spending that forces their problems (i.e., people) to head Nawth? After all, if a racist elite exploited a hurricane to depopulate New Orleans, why would it balk at denying the unemployed a few extra bucks if low payments and shortened benefit periods encouraged the inconvenient rabble to leave?
Let's not forget Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who refused federal money for SCHIP because it would give children health insurance. Yep. He won reelection in a 4 way race with 30 percent. The religious fundamentalists keep him in.
In 1964 Phil Ochs wrote the Mississippi song in the middle of several Democrat governorships. Ignorance and ineptitude is not limited to party.
Hi Greg,
Did i read that correctly?? Obama's gonna pay the burdens of the unemployed in all US states? Wow, what a nice guy, but there must a snake underneath the state capitol lawn eh? If the State of Louisiana is accepting the federal unemployed funding, they will then inherit a debt to The Federal Treasury in the same amount, or not?
Instead Obama, the man, should earmark this money for investments, like ehh building a new generation levy in New Orleans, where the order for building should be assigned to Concrete and Construction businesses with homestead in New Orleans (No KBR this time). He could even demand that all the unemployed should be hired and educated by these New Orleans construction businesses.
Obama could then even see his earmarked funding back as a RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)!
Robert
Hi Greg,
Did i read that correctly? Obama's gonna pay the burdens of the
unemployed in all US states? Wow, what a nice guy, but there must a
snake underneath the state capitol lawn eh? If the State of Louisiana
is accepting the federal unemployed funding, they will then inherit a
debt to The Federal Treasury in the same amount, or not?
Instead Obama, the man, should earmark this money for investments, like
ehh building a new generation levy in New Orleans, where the order for
building should be assigned to Concrete and Construction businesses
with homestead in New Orleans (No KBR this time). He could even demand
that all the unemployed should be hired and educated by these New
Orleans construction businesses.
Obama could then even see his earmarked funding back as a RETURN ON
INVESTMENT (ROI)!
Robert
I guess part of the US really belongs to Southern America. These “redneck elites” in Louisiana and Mississippi remind me of the long-time Presidente of Nicaragua Somoza. He bombed his own capital in the 1970's with fighter jets in order to stifle protest at the way he had embezzled international relief for earthquake victims.
I don't think governors such as Jindal really get elected by a majority of voters in fair elections. But I don't believe even a Latin American Caudillo сould be such an idiot to openly declare he doesn't want his subjects to earn more! I can only say, I share your amazement.
A very well written piece and a pleasure to read!
Most of what you have to say is factually accurate but your attitude is not amusing to people like me who happen to live in Louisiana. Jindal's cruelty and pandering are horrible. You should not forget his conduct in the "Road Home" lending scandal where thousands of people were forced to give back thousands of dollars in money that was lent to them "too hastily," though only a fraction of the money had been lent years after it was authorized by Congress. Surely, Jindal has forgotten the parabel of buried talents, especially when it comes to education which he is cutting at all levels. I'm glad you are paying attention to Jindal's refusal to take unemployment money. The story needs to be told. Flip comments about "red necks," however, are best left to barroom ballads.
Jeez you people need to relax. Its called cynicism, a humor device. Bad news is often a little less bitter served with a laugh. I mean jeez, if i cant pause to laugh about dumb good ol' boys, I might just get too disgusted to finish reading. The essential thing to understand is that the poor people, the lower class are being victimized by the rich, the no class. Mr. Palast isn't poking fun at the poor disenfranchised victims, rather is saying "look at the horrible excuse of governing these good ol' boys have done".
oh and this Love it or Leave it business. Dont you morons get a joke? seriously? DUH, Civil War, it was their idea to leave in the first place over a hundred years ago? get it? irony? its a joke? wouldn't it be ironic if we kicked them out of the union they never wanted to be in?
isn't it ironic they want to destroy unemployment insurance when it was one of the few good ideas LA ever contributed to the Union. (and the other kinda new deal ideas after the flood in 1927)
Dont be pissed at the author you morons! He didn't do anything but maybe make some cracks in what you might think of as bad taste, personally i find it funny.
BE PISSED AT THE HUCKSTERS AND CONS THAT ARE AFTER YOUR SHARE OF THE AMERICAN PIE AND HAVE NO SCRUPLES IN TAKING IT FROM YOU!
Agreed. For anyone posting as a 'HATER' they obviously must be a victim of ill-formed education, and too sensitive to read a joke objectively. For anyone who can't read irony must have been a victim of a school system that couldn't get their kids to commit to deeper reading in grade school. Even as a TEXAN I can read ill words of my own state, and I can still laugh. Our biggest and worst joke yet is Bush, and I despise him like thousands in the other 49 states. To be frank, I hate all presidents because I believe the true and genuine idea of government and its notion to protect and serve selflessly is gone. Long gone. My 2 cents might not be as intricate, but I am fed up with people hating on this type of report. They are defending BLATANT bad decisions. This article was very enlightening only to be surpassed by its wit.
Pissed in South Texas