Trickle Down Voodoo Economic disaster in Louisiana under "Idiot" Jindal, so says Republican.

While stories like this keep rolling in, the national press doesn't get the connection between every Republican state and those that are tanking economically. Supply side is failing big time. 

Even though it's only one Republican sheriff asking for a reassessment of GOP policies, I'll take it:

Republican Sheriff Newell Normand might be a good ol’ boy from Jefferson Parish in Louisiana, but that didn’t stop him from lobbing a dose of reality at the Metropolitan Crime Commission’s annual awards luncheon on Tuesday. According to a video of the speech posted by WUVE, Normand bad-mouthed the GOP’s Beltway establishment and elected officials, notorious tax cutter Grover Norquist and called former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal an “idiot,” equating him to cult leader Jim Jones.

Normand fully admits that he endorsed and supported Jindal when he ran for governor, but that Jindal’s leadership destroyed the state that Normand holds dear. 

“What a mess. Bobby Jindal was a better cult leader than Jim Jones. We drank the elixir for eight years. We remained in a conscious state. We walked to the edge of the cliff and we jumped off and he watched us and guess what? Unlike Jim Jones he did not swallow the poison. What a shame.

We have to just say no! I’m a Republican but I’m not a hypocrite. We have to look at ourselves critically as a party and figure out where we are and what we’re going to be about. We do not need to face the stupidity of our leadership as it relates to how we’re going to face balancing this budget and talking about these silly issues because we’re worried about what Grover Norquist thinks. To hell with Grover Norquist! I don’t care about Grover Norquist!

We’re worried about the ATR report card. And I have to listen to my Republican counterparts talk about gobbledigook. Blah, blah blah… And I’m so sick and tired of hearing: Obama, Obama, Obama. You know how much intellect it takes to blame something on somebody else? This much! Propose a solution. Work together.” He closed by comparing politics to being married and asked how many people in the audience refuse to compromise in their marriages.

 Here's part of the address by the new Louisiana Democratic Governor, John Bel Edwards with the really bad news:

Like Walker, Brownback and Christie, Jindal's Supply Side failure makes him a perfect pick for President?

The reason Scott Walker is facing a huge projected budget deficit? Supply sides unpaid for tax cuts, the inability to increase any kind of tax due to a think tank pledge, and borrowing. This is getting old.

While Walker blamed others for plagiarizing economic solutions, his own copy of that decade’s old GOP plan is now playing out nationally in Republican states...and failing miserably. It should set off alarms here in Wisconsin. Oddly, each of the Republican governors facing economic failure are promising to bring their plans to the White House.

I've focused in past on Gov. Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Sam Brownback. Today it’s Bobby Jindal’s turn. See if any of the following sounds familiar:

AP: Year after year, Louisiana didn't have enough money to cover its expenses, yet Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to roll back income tax cuts or ever-increasing corporate tax breaks. Instead, he raided reserve funds and sold off state property.

Jindal suggested job growth from his economic development wins would replenish those assets once the recession ended. It hasn't — and money from the lucrative oil industry has taken a nose dive with crude prices. Now, the Republican is running out of short-term patches and is struggling to plug a $1.6 billion budget hole just as he tries to build support for a possible 2016 presidential run.

Yes, that's still not enough to kill a presidential run. If that wasn't enough of a carbon copy of Scott Walker’s current problems (reflected in his cuts to the UW and refusal to expand Medicaid), look at what Jindal is doing: 

Funding for higher education and health care services will almost certainly be subject to cuts deeper than what they already have endured in recent years, and Jindal's successor will have to repay a string of debts and IOUs. As for Jindal, he said in a recent interview that the shortfall isn't his fault, and he dodged any talk of his temporary fixes.

"They've used all the smoke that was in the can and all the mirrors that they could buy and now they're out of tricks. Their solution is to gut higher education like a fish," said Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy.

The same old bullshit:

More than $1 billion of the shortfall can be tied to Jindal's refusal to match the state's spending to its yearly revenue over his two terms in office, as he also steadfastly refused to consider tax increases. When Jindal took office in 2008, he decried budget shell games akin to "using your credit card to pay your mortgage." It didn't take long to ditch that rhetoric.

Republicans come to their own rescue…isn't that getting old.

"Our budget has been full of sleights of hand — it's almost a Ponzi scheme of moving moneys around, one-time money around, to serve recurring needs," said Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, one of the Republicans vying to be Louisiana's next governor.

 One solution; cutting jobs?

The governor has successfully trimmed some spending by cutting more than 30,000 full-time state employees. He's reduced the state's vehicle fleet, privatized much of the Medicaid program, turned over the state's charity hospitals to outside managers … Jindal's short-term solutions leave a string of debts for Louisiana's next governor to pay off. Economic development deals will cost the next governor at least $340 million over his first four years.

New money hasn't rolled in. The escalating price tag for tax breaks has only made things worse. Jindal signed off on the largest individual income tax cut in Louisiana history, stripping hundreds of millions from the state treasury at the same time the national recession hit.

The Dumb-ass Supply Side Solution...again: If the tax and spending cuts fail, cut spending and taxes even more? 

"Well, tell me what you want to cut,'" said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Jack Donahue, a Republican. "'Is it higher education? Or is it health care? What university do you want to close?' The truth is, from a political standpoint, that's not possible."

Walker Editorial tries to Shame Justice Department into backing off School Choice Discrimination investigation.

One party could not be this hypocritical...or could they?

For a party that continues to seek out proof Obama messed up Benghazi, might be to blame for the mess in Iraq, possibly faked his birth certificate, and broke the law with signing statements, they’re now crying foul over the Department of Justice’s investigation into possible discrimination against students with disabilities in the school choice programs? Amazing!

And Scott Walker is leading the down-the-rabbit-hole charge by saying that without proof, how can the justice department turn up...proof? It’s like calling off the John Doe investigation to uncover wrong doing because there’s no proof of wrong doing. My head is hurting now.

Along with being one of the dumbest excuses yet, Walker and Jindal seem to think that without parental complaints, laws weren't broken. Basically, we're supposed to believe the word of business. Plus, Walker chose to ignore the fact that school choice had expanded well beyond minority groups:

jsonline: Gov. Scott Walker has co-authored a commentary in Politico Magazine with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal criticizing the Obama Administration for challenging school choice programs in Wisconsin and Louisiana.

In the piece: "Why would the federal Department of Justice cite the Civil Rights Act and the specter of segregation to try and block a school choice program where more than nine in 10 participants come from racial minority groups? Or use the Americans with Disabilities Act to claim another school voucher program discriminates against individuals with disabilities, without so much as a single complaint from a student or parent to prove their case?"

The two governors are citing a National Review commentary co-authored by Rick Esenberg and C.J. Szafir, both of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, criticizing a Department of Justice inquiry into whether private schools in Wisconsin were turning away students with disabilities.

Ellen Canale, public affairs specialist at the Justice Department, said the agency was working to make sure school choice programs are adhering to civil rights laws.

If laws weren't broken, then why is Walker and Jindal opposed to looking into the choice program? After all, the public has a right to know how their money is being spent, right?

UPDATE: I thought this comment was important enough to include in this post:

The Walker/Jindal statement about there being no parent complaints is misleading/untrue on two levels.

Level 1: The fact is that no formal state complaint mechanism exists... in other words, if we do not allow official complaints, then there will be none.

Level 2: But there WERE complaints. In the absence of a state complaint mechanism, families of students with special needs took their charges to Disability Rights Wisconsin and the ACLU. Those two organizations filed a formal complaint in 2011, which in turn led to the very DOJ investigation that the Politico piece is decrying! In other words, it's all ABOUT the family complaints!

A summary of some of those family complaints was published in a Journal Sentinel column in May 2013.

The ACLU has also responded in a July 8 piece of their own.

To me, the most disturbing thing about the Walker/Jindal column is the way it "disappears" families of students with special needs. Their experiences of discrimination, that they documented to DRW and the ACLU, apparently simply don't exist, because they've been declared not to exist. 

An ACLU article highlighted this reason for asking documentation:

"DPI must further ensure that voucher schools, absent a valid ADA defense, do not expel/exit a student with a disability unless the school has first determined, on a case-by-case basis, that there are no reasonable modifications to school policies, practices or procedures that could enhance the school's capacity to serve that student."

Jindal to nation: "People are ready for a Hostile Takeover of Washington D.C.!!!

Besides the title quote, Jindal played up this false premise:

Jindal: "The left is trying to silence us." 

An absurd, impossible idea that oddly makes sense to conservatives. And yet conservatives in Wisconsin are overjoyed by Scott Walker's attempts to silence protesters at the Capitol. Is Walker "trying to silence us?"

Overthrow Alert: It looks like the U.S. is headed for a “hostile takeover.” We're seeing it take shape in the militia movement, the open carry protests, a tea party candidate talking about “Second Amendment remedies,” and the Cliven Bundy lunacy that culminated in the deaths of two policemen in Las Vegas.

Of course Republicans will deny they had anything to do with the consequences of their irresponsible advocacy of lone gunmen revolutionaries. But some like Jindal see these individual uprisings as a beginning to a patriotic movement:

AP: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke at the annual conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, accused President Barack Obama and other Democrats of waging wars against religious liberty and education and said that a rebellion is brewing in the U.S. with people ready for "a hostile takeover" of the nation's capital.

"I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States," Jindal said, "where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren. I am tired of the left. They say they're for tolerance, they say they respect diversity. The reality is this: They respect everybody unless you happen to disagree with them. The left is trying to silence us and I'm tired of it, I won't take it anymore."

A false premise that not just sounds stupid, but doesn't seem possible, unless I missed the FEMA detention camps dotting our nations landscape. It's the conservative world of opposites and contradictions. Take for instance Bobby Jindal’s response to Common Core. Despite his own parties attacks on Obama for usurping congress with executive orders:

Earlier this week, Jindal signed an executive order to block the use of tests tied to Common Core education standards in his state.

So Jindal's call for a revolution or a takeover of our nations Capitol, sounds like the constitutions own definition of treason to me, or sure comes close.