A Star Isn't Born

Louisiana Governor Piyush (Bobby) Jindal took on an enormous task last night - he had to provide the Republican response to President Obama's stirring and well-polished speech to the joint session of Congress and America. Obama was forceful, determined, and inspiring. Polls indicated that those who voted for John McCain this past November were nearly as impressed as those who voted for Obama with his address and his approval rating among Republicans improved vastly after the speech.

There are still thousands of people who do not believe in the type of government that Obama is proposing and moving ahead with presently. In fact, one Republican representative took the opportunity to act childishly and scream out "That's right!" when Obama said that the Republicans will browbeat the public that their taxes will be raised to support his ambitious programs. Jindal's job was to support that comment in a more professional way, but he failed miserably.

For those unfamiliar with Governor Jindal, who nicknamed himself Bobby after Mike Lookinland's character in The Brady Bunch, he is a stereotypical Republican except that he is the son of immigrants from India. He opposes same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research and legislation against hate crimes. He supports chemical castration for sex offenders, making the PATRIOT Act permanent and off-shore drilling. But what is most stereotypical about Jindal and several other Republicans is that they rail against big government while enabling government to grow.

Louisiana has about 105,000 people on its payroll with base salaries totaling about $4.6 billion annually. Add retirement and benefit expenses and state supplements for teachers and other local public workers, and the state's overall annual obligation for personnel comes close to $8 billion. Moreover, since Jindal has been in office, state workers with salaries of more than $100,000 grew by $96 million, about one-fourth of this year's state budget shortfall.

Jindal claimed during his rebuttal that government doesn't work and cited the response to Hurricane Katrina as proof. Looking at Louisiana statistics, it is easy to see that his government isn't working - almost 30% of children live below the poverty line, Louisiana ranks 7th in highest violent crime rate occurrence and 1st in murder, and students routinely fall below the national average in reading and math. Now, faced with a $1.3 billion shortfall in the budget, Jindal wants to make cuts to education and health care. Yet, with a straight face, he claims that it is irresponsible to ask future generations to pay for the money we need now. Whether you ask them to pay back a loan or reduce their opportunity to learn, they are still on the hook for this generation's failure.

He bantered about things that never were, like a rail line from Disneyland to Las Vegas, and work that was never done, like Republicans offering ideas outside of more and bigger tax cuts. And he did it in a sneering, condescending manner, as if imploring people to stay dumb and put their faith back in the political party that ran up the debt with nothing to show for it except huge no-bid government contracts and restricted civil liberties.

The only thing that Jindal and I agreed on was that George Bush sucked. He said the Republicans got off track, but I think that the train just finally caught up with them.