On February 23, The Advocate published my Letter to the Editor written in response to an article the paper published asking leaders of the anti-deep water drilling moratorium leaders to explain how tax collections were up and unemployment down in the state and in the markets where the moratorium was predicted to spread economic calamity.
Here's the text of the letter:
Advocate Capitol news bureau reporter Michelle Millhollon’s Feb. 15 article on reality not conforming to the hysteria generated by critics of the deep-water drilling moratorium served a valuable purpose beyond forcing those critics to confront the facts that their scare campaign against the moratorium was a hoax perpetrated against the people of this state.
The oil and gas industry, its lobbyists and public officials dependent on the industry for political funding fanned the anti-moratorium hysteria.
The signs of the hoax can be found in the lawsuit filed to overturn the moratorium a month after it was declared.
When 37 companies joined Hornbeck International in the suit against the moratorium, it looked like an industrywide revolt against the moratorium.
The reality was that those 37 companies were owned or controlled by two prominent Louisiana Republicans, Boysie Bollinger and Gary Chouest. Bollinger controlled 21 of the companies, Chouest 16.
Gov. Bobby Jindal directed state Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to file an amicus brief in the case in which Caldwell and his attorneys lied to Judge Martin Feldman.
On page four of that June 20 brief, in his “Statement of the Case” Caldwell declared: “Because of the moratorium, many thousands of Louisiana workers have lost their employment and many more are at risk of losing it in the near future.”
The only problem with the statement is that it was not true. The Louisiana Workforce Commission weekly reports on new unemployment claims never mentioned the moratorium at any time during the spring and summer of 2010 because thousands of jobs were not lost. In fact, new unemployment claims fell through most of the summer.
Lobbyists such as Don Briggs, of Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, can be forgiven; after all, they are paid to spin stories so as to put their clients in the best light. But those supposedly independent organizations that joined in fanning the fears last summer — Greater New Orleans Inc., the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, the LSU Center for Energy Studies — have had their credibility seriously damaged.
Public officials who were active players in this hoax — Gov. Bobby Jindal, then-interim Lt. Gov. Scott Angelle and Caldwell — must also be held accountable. Either they were knowing participants in this hoax or their industry patrons duped them.
All of this raises the possibility that we might have all been victims of a larger, longer-running hoax.
In light of the moratorium’s failure to cripple our economy, could it be that the economic importance of the offshore oil and gas industry to the state has been vastly overstated all these years?
Who can we now trust to give us an honest answer on this?
Mike Stagg
independent IT consultant
Lafayette
Showing posts with label BP Gulf Gusher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BP Gulf Gusher. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Jindal's Budget Cuts to Kill More Jobs than Drilling Moratorium
In contrast to his previous agitation regarding the possibility of job losses, the Governor seems eerily serene as he prepares to unleash new rounds of state budget cuts that will cut services and cost jobs in both the public and private sector.
In a note to supporters last week, Jindal reiterated his opposition to any form of tax increases. He also took credit for all good news in the state and laid blame for any bad news at the feet of others. That's just the way he rolls.
But a funny thing happened while Jindal was on an out-of-state jaunt: some inconvenient facts escaped into public view.
Turns out that the Governor's plan to close Earl K. Long Medical Center in Baton Rouge will cost about 400 people their jobs. That fact came via testimony from the hospital's CEO before the Louisiana Senate Finance Committee. That number is significant on a couple of scores.
First, according to the LSU Health System's 2008 annual report (PDF — the most recent one available), there were 1,266 full-time employees at the hospital. So, about one-third of the people working at the hospital will lose their job as a result of the shut down. Ostensibly the hospital is being closed to save money, but LSU VP for the Health System, Dr. Fred Cerise has pointed out that the shift of services to private hospitals will actually drive up the cost of Medicaid services in the Baton Rouge area due to higher reimbursement rates the hospitals are being promised by the state to take the increased patient loads resulting from the closure.
The other reason that the job loss number is significant is that it is larger than the actual number of jobs affected by the deep water drilling moratorium. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation was selected to administer a $100 million fund created to help those who lost their jobs as a result of the moratorium.
Fewer that 400 workers applied for the funds.
So, this single example of Jindal's focus on dismantling public institutions will have a larger negative impact on jobs than the moratorium he so passionately excoriated, yet his allies have not rented any large arenas to rally the populace against the extermination of these jobs.
More Job Losses Are Coming
House Speaker Jim Tucker and Jindal don't agree on much these days, but they do still appear to share a desire to dismantle much (if not all) of the state's public hospital system now run by LSU. Three hospitals are run out of the Shreveport Health Sciences Center in Shreveport (Shreveport, Huey P. Long in Pineville, and E.A. Conway in Monroe). The rest of the system is run by the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. The hospitals run there Earl K. Long in Baton Rouge, Bogalusa Medical Center, Leonard Chabert Medical Center in Houma, University Medical Center in Lafayette, Walter O. Moss Regional Medical Center in Lake Charles, the Interim Public Hospital in New Orleans, and Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center in Independence.
The two systems employ about 13,000 doctors, nurses, aides, orderlies, and staff.
In the minds of Jindal and his Republican legislative allies, just about all of those hospitals and most of those jobs are on the cutting table.
Coming on the heels of the most recent session where Jindal successfully pushed for the privatization of three state mental health hospitals, the people running these hospitals feel threatened, particularly those at the smaller hospitals.
Last Friday, State Rep. John Bel Edwards, Sen. Ben Nevers, and Tangipahoa Parish President Gordon Burgess took part in a meeting at the hospital about the facility's future. The hospital handled more than 100,000 cases last year. Beyond the essential healthcare services it provides to its patients, 39 percent of which did not have health insurance last year, Lallie Kemp (like the other hospitals in the LSU system) is an economic engine in that region.
According to Rep. Edwards, Lallie Kemp has a $90 million annual economic impact on Independence and the surrounding area in the Florida Parishes. In the 2008 annual LSU annual report, the hospital was listed as having 400 full-time employees or their equivalent.
Although Rep. Edwards said he knows of no current plan to close or cut back services at the hospital, he said that the planning for a 35 percent cut in state funding Jindal has ordered all departments to plan for could change that dramatically.
The loss in access to care would be devastating to the people in that region. But those losses could pale in comparison to the economic impact on communities closing of Lallie Kemp or any of the other public hospitals in the LSU systems would have.
Still, Jindal insists that no taxes will be raised and that the state will make do with the revenue base it currently has.
The Medicaid Rebellion
Jindal's initial DHH Secretary Alan Levine confected a plan to bring private insurance companies into manage the Medicaid program and to reduce funding for the program but claim that the quality of care would not diminish. Brazenly branded "Making Medicaid Better" the plan has met with fierce opposition from the provider community (doctors, hospitals, ambulance providers, etc.).
Why would providers object to cutting funding for care to the poor? Because Medicaid (like Medicare) works by paying providers to deliver care. That is, the money for these 'public' health programs goes directly to private providers (some also goes to public providers like the LSU hospitals).
Shrinking funding while extending new hands in the till to manage the care delivered will result in reduced funding for providers. You can do the math. Reduced funding for providers results in fewer providers willing to deliver the services which, in turn, results in reduced access to care.
The Medicaid program in Louisiana is huge; in excess of $7 billion flows through the program annually, but the vast majority of the money is federal money as Louisiana has one of the most generous federal match ratios in the country due to the fact that we are a poor state and have had strong champions for the program in the Senate.
The Louisiana Hospital Association, fighting proposed budget cuts in 2009, said a $200 million cut in Medicaid funding would cost Louisiana nearly 2,000 healthcare jobs. Although those cuts were staved off at the time, succeeding budget shortfalls have resulted in far more money being cut from Medicaid since that time.
With Jindal's refusal to consider new funding sources and a budget shortfall approaching $2 billion anticipated at the start of the next fiscal year (and with Jindal still not having made good on his pledge to revised the State Constitution to ensure that not all cuts come solely from healthcare and higher education), new cuts in Medicaid are going to result in significant job losses in both the public and private segments of the healthcare delivery system.
Higher Education Remains Targeted
Higher education is the other segment of the state's budgets that are not constitutionally protected. Jindal has been taking heat publicly for his cuts in this area, owing in no small measure for the affection many alums feel for their old schools.
While large segments of our state like to sneer at the 'pointy heads' in academia, higher education has significant economic impact on the communities fortunate enough to have such institutions in their midst. As a native of Eunice, I can tell you that I shudder to think what that city would be like economically today were it not for the presence of the LSU-E campus there.
The University of Louisiana System put together an economic impact fact sheet (PDF) a couple of years ago when Jindal first locked in on his 'no new taxes for any reason' strategy of pursuing his national ambitions.
The economic impact of LSU on the Baton Rouge area is immense and its impact on the entire state through the AgCenter, the LSU Hospital System, and other initiatives is at least as large as the UL system's.
Jindal maintains that the universities are not delivering enough value, that people take too long to graduate, if they do at all. It might do the Governor some good to actually talk to the people who are working their way through college. He would learn about the kind of balancing act they have to do among work, family and school. He might also take a whack at explaining how increasing tuition is going to make those students move through the system faster.
But, as a man with no ties to any higher educational institution in the state, it's all just about numbers to him.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
This summer, Jindal was all about jobs — when he wasn't killing oysters or generally making a nuisance of himself (see page 20) during the BP Gulf Gusher. But the jobs he was worried about were the oilfield service jobs of people employed by his biggest political backers — the Bollingers and the Chouests. His concern, one could convincingly argue, was not about the jobs at all, but about the threat Jindal believed the moratorium posed to his benefactors.
Despite the fact that he is the child of public employees, Jindal exhibits a peculiar disdain for their work and their well being. No doubt his judgment on the worth of these workers and services is clouded by his national Republican ambitions which makes tax increases an anathema, a fact that has been compounded by the rise of the Tea Party wing within the Republican Party.
The complicating factor for Jindal is that 2011 is a statewide election year and his national ambitions cannot be advanced if he cannot get re-elected here.
Democrats are not well positioned now, but neither was the national party in 1991 before Bill Clinton challenged George H.W. Bush (or, 'Bush the Intelligent' compared to his son).
People who value higher education are going to have to step up. Dave Treen is dead and it's doubtful whether another intervention at the Mansion can prevent the new author from pushing ahead with his plans to slash programs.
Jindal was elected, in part, by people who believed that he was a problem solver who understood the value of education and knew how to manage healthcare. He's proven that he is none of the above.
The forces of opposition to his policies are firming. It remains to be seen if someone can step forward and give voice to that opposition in a way that either forces Jindal to change his path — or costs him re-election.
Strange things have a way of happening on the way to coronations in a democracy.
Melancon's Loss Shows Democrats Need to Offer a Choice, Not an Echo
In that book, written as an endorsement of Barry Goldwater's bid to win the Republican nomination for the presidency that year, Schlafly called on her party to return to its conservative roots and declared that the party would find electoral success would only come if it embraced a separate identity from Democrats. Republicans, she said, needed to stop being the 'me, too' party.
Charlie Melancon's crushing defeat on November 2 should send a clear message to Louisiana Democrats. The message is not, as Republican mouthpieces would have us believe, 'drop dead.' It is not that the party and our candidates have no future in Louisiana politics.
The message is that Democrats will not win elections again in Louisiana unless and until our candidates stop runing as though we are the "me, too" party of Louisiana, The road to electoral success for Louisiana Democrats will open up when Louisiana Democrats stop trying to sell ourselves as Republican Lite.
The message from last week's election was clear. Republicans know who their candidates are and they are not going to settle for anything less than the 'real thing' — even when that 'real thing' has a personal history that flies in the face of much of what that party once stood for as David Vitter's personal history and the way he's managed his Senate office do. Republicans know they want that real thing. Only some Democrats (and their consultants) think Republicans are willing to accept imitations.
Charlie Melancon is a good man. He is, in fact, many of the things David Vitter once claimed to be — particularly the part about being a devoted family man. But, Charlie who ran as a Democrat, did everything he could to distance himself from his party and its core constituents of African-Americans and activists who have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness — make that an eagerness — to work on behalf of Democratic candidates who will at least make a modicum of effort to align themselves with the party.
That record speaks for itself in presidential election years where, since 1996, no national Democratic ticket has spent significant money in Louisiana after the nominating convention and yet those activists somehow manage to produce vote totals of 40% and upward. Melancon got 38% of the vote against Vitter. He lost core Democratic voters by running against the party and away from its activist base.
Charlie's campaign never reached out to the party's base in any meaningful way. In fact, his campaign insisted on running away from his president, his party and our signature issue of health care reform via the Affordable Care Act. Those actions were at the core of his defeat. Anyone who paid any attention to the campaign knows that Vitter's campaign focused on tying Melancon to the very things he sought to distance himself from, all of which were things that made Charlie look like a Democrat.
It Started With The Affordable Care Act
Charlie's problems started with healthcare reform, which President Obama signed into law in March of this year as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Melancon wanted nothing to do with it. He stayed away from it as much as possible. He avoided opportunities to speak in support of the issue in 2009, when they bill was being shaped and the opposition to the bill in the form of the Tea Party shouting matches erupted.
There was an opportunity then for leadership in helping define the issue. Senator Mary Landrieu did some work on that then, taking part in a televised forum on healthcare reform organized by the Lafayette Parish Democratic Executive Committee that ran in three markets (Shreveport, Lafayette and Lake Charles). Melancon was invited to participate. He refused.
Senator Landrieu made clear that she opposed the public option that was then still part of the discussion, but spoke in support of other aspects of the legislation such as health insurance exchanges, expansion of Medicaid, and tax credits for small businesses.
Charlie's refusal to engage on the issue was apparent to friends and foes alike. His silence cost him dearly in credibility but the vacuum his silence left was filled by the anti-reform rhetoric of the Tea Partiers that not only distorted the debate, but their disinformation helped radicalize voters and made the streets safe for David Vitter to appear in public — even as troubles related to the management of his Senate office appeared to re-enforce his problems with women.
Once the grandstanding ends and more provisions of the ACA kick in, Louisiana families and businesses (as well as the healthcare provider community) are going to find that there is a lot to like in this law. As this happens, Democrats should be pointing to those positives and reminding people who was feeding the distortions.
The Moratorium Hoax
Like most public officials in Louisiana, Charlie and his campaign tried to find a way to take the Republican position on the deep water drilling moratorium. That the claims about the economic impact of the moratorium were a hoax never crossed his mind. He was intent on trying to win over the oilfield service industry that had at one time supported his runs for Congress. It was never going to happen.
Opposition to the moratorium was immediately political because it threatened the pockets of stalwart Republican financial backers, primarily Donal Bollinger and Gary Chouest and their families and networks of limited liability corporations.
To anyone without direct financial ties to the offshore oil industry, the moratorium (issued a month after the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout occurred and while thousands of barrels of oil were gushing uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico) not only made sense, it was the prudent thing to do during what was predicted to be an active hurricane season.
Instead of showing some leadership and defining the issue, Charlie again opted to pursue the GOP Lite position of passing a resolution calling for the end of the moratorium. It did not work as oil service money flowed into Vitter's coffers almost as freely as BP's oil gushed into the Gulf.
Again, Melancon's intended audience was not falling for the 'lite' take on the issue and he missed an opportunity to display leadership and give Democrats a reason to rally to his banner.
Adding insult to injury, Melancon's campaign then trumpeted his opposition to President Obama on both healthcare and the moratorium in television spots in the campaign's final weeks.
Historical Perspective
As a rule, Democrats are not going to have more money than Republicans in campaigns. When we win races, though, it is through organization, mobilization and focus. All campaigns rely to some extent on volunteers, but Democratic candidates need them more to help offset the financial edge that Republicans tend to have (it is not always the case, as when an incumbent Democrat seeks re-election as Mary Landrieu did in 2008).
But volunteers have to be motivated. They have to be given reasons to believe that the donation of their time and effort is worthwhile. The prospect of victory can be one of those things, but clearly the record of volunteerism in the presidential campaigns demonstrates that is not the prime motivation.
The prime motivation is that the candidate that these volunteers work for reflects their values and will stand up for those values on the campaign trail and fight for them once elected.
Democratic candidates who position themselves as Republican Lite candidates automatically put up a wall between that volunteer base and their campaigns. It is like restricting the oxygen supply to an athlete or to an engine. It will ultimately diminish performance. This is particularly true when a Democrat is challenging an incumbent Republican.
Volunteers make those commitments because they feel (and want to feel) that they can make a difference. They bring a passion and energy to campaigns that cannot be otherwise obtained.
Democrats who cut themselves off from this volunteer base do so at their own peril.
Yes, President Obama is not popular in Louisiana. But, trying to distance himself from the president and his party did not help Charlie Melancon. It did, though, cut him off from the people who might have made a difference in his campaign.
Could they have won it for him, probably not considering the elements in this election cycle. But, in a low turnout campaign (only 43.1% of Louisiana voters bothered to go to the polls last week), an enthusiastic base could have boosted turnout and might have made for at least a more respectable showing. Go to the Secretary of State's Election Results page and use the graphical election results option to get turnout percentages across the state.
Conservative Republicans took Phyllis Schafly's advice to heart in 1964 and began building a conservative movement within their party that produced Ronald Reagan and the conservatism that has ruled that party in recent decades. She said Republicans could succeed only if they offered voters "A Choice, Not an Echo."
Louisiana Democrats can resume winning state elections if we take that message to heart and embrace our party's base and philosophy. The Republicans have their candidates.
With statewide elections looming next year and the Jindal administration promising to continue relentless cuts to healthcare and higher education, Louisiana Democrats need to start looking for candidates who are truly ours.
Voters might actually embrace a choice that would take us off of the current path to disaster.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Fear-Fanned Loathing In Lafayette
Wednesday, July 21, 2010, will go down as the high-water mark of in-state efforts to end the Gulf of Mexico deep water drilling moratorium imposed by the Obama administration in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent blowout.
About 11,000 people turned out at the Lafayette Cajundome for the "Rally for Economic Survival." Getting that many people to turnout for anything other than a sporting event in Louisiana takes some doing. But, the 'doing' that got them there reveals that opponents of the moratorium are engaged in blatant and obvious fear mongering, and have frittered away what little credibility they had on the issue with the lies and distortions included in statements made leading up to and during the event.
Make no mistake about it, what happened in Lafayette on Wednesday was an anti-Obama political rally organized by the oil and gas industry and fronted by Governor Bobby Jindal and his hand-picked interim Lieutenant Governor, Scott Angelle. Angelle was among friends, having run the Department of Natural Resources until Jindal elevated him this spring. Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate Sammy Kershaw provided entertainment (not sure if he just sang or if he read from his federal tax liens, too).
There was steady buildup leading up to the event. In Lafayette, the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce lead the drive to build attendance. Ultimately, all of Lafayette's mainstream media fell in line, becoming virtual (if not outright) partners in the promotion of the event. The Daily Advertiser ran a front page editorial calling for an end of the moratorium on the day of the event. ABC affiliate KATC's station manager delivered an on-air editorial calling for an end to the moratorium. Radio stations did live remotes from the event.
Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
This buildup was based, in fact, on a carefully orchestrated distortion of what the moratorium is, then building a statistical house of cards atop those distortions. The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association (LOGA), and its president Don Briggs, were prime movers in the effort to ramp up the climate of economic crisis that helped produce the turnout in Lafayette. Briggs is a long-time player in the Lafayette business community, serving on the board of the Lafayette Chamber. LOGA and Briggs have long-standing ties with the Lafayette Economic Development Authority (LEDA) and the LSU Center for Energy Studies, both of which produced economic reports painting horrific stories of the potential impact of a six-month moratorium.
The advisory council for the LSU Center for Energy Studies gives the distinct impression that this is an advocacy group hiding inside academia. This must be where the industry gathers when Lafayette's Petroleum Club is booked. It is not surprising that the rally included a presentation from the Center and the picture painted was bleak.
Do you think they would have been allowed to make a presentation that said anything different? No. Only the finest store-bought statistics were allowed at this privately-funded propaganda event.
The premise of all the pre-event propaganda and the presentations made during the rally is that the Obama administration has shutdown all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — not just deep water drilling — and that the moratorium will become permanent. This might be good short-term politics, but it is not supported by the facts.
And while companies like Diamond Drilling have made a big show about moving two rigs out of the Gulf of Mexico to other drilling locales, the fact is that decisions on when and where to drill in permitted waters are made by the big oil companies — not by the drilling companies, not by the service companies, and not by lobbying groups.
What are the big oil companies thinking? They plan to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico once the moratorium is over and new rules are promulgated. That announcement was made on the same day as the rally, but strangely did not get much press coverage in south Louisiana.
The thrust of all of this is that economic ruin will result from the moratorium. To paint this picture, the impact of the oil and gas industry must be inflated and the discrete segments within the industry must be ignored.
Enter the Louisiana Workforce Commission. In a presentation on the rally website (see graphic), the commission includes people who work at "Gasoline Stations" to ramp up the employment numbers of the industry in the state. According to the June employment report issued by the LWC, this adds 18,600 workers to the "industry" payrolls. That means convenience store cashiers and clerks are considered part of the energy industry.
It is also worth noting that, according to the LCW's official job statistics for June (page 8 in the PDF), those 18,600 gasoline station workers out number all of the people engaged in oil and gas drilling and extraction in Louisiana. That is no quirk due to the moratorium. This has been the case in every report this year.
Are gasoline station workers affected by the moratorium? No. But, it heightens the purported importance of the industry of the state's economy and, thus, fits nicely within propaganda objectives of the conference organizers.
Off The Deep End
People say things in unscripted moments that they later sometimes regret. So, in an attempt to provide opponents of the moratorium the kind of fairness they will not provide supporters of the moratorium, this segment will focus on the prepared written statements by Rally organizers which The Daily Advertiser published on the morning of the event.
Reading these, it becomes clear that truth was among the first casualties in the ramp up for the rally. These otherwise staid community and business leaders have been scared witless by what they have been told about the economic impact of the deep water drilling moratorium. They are spouting gibberish based on lies they've been sold.
The statement by Don Briggs is a clear example of how the facts are conflated and mixed to create a potential outcome that has no basis in reality. Here are the first two paragraphs:
Louisiana's oil and gas industry has a more than $70 billion annual impact. The industry supports more than 15 percent of household income in the state — $12.7 billion annually.
The continuing moratorium on offshore drilling affects many more people than the 320,000 working jobs in Louisiana supported by the oil and gas industry. As a result, it also affects far more than the 58,000 Louisianans working in extraction, refining and pipeline jobs.Reading the first paragraph, one is left with the inescapable conclusion that the deep water drilling moratorium is going to wipe out the oil and gas industry in Louisiana. Someone apparently forgot to tell the industry. According to a chart on LOGA's website, there were 184 active drilling rigs in Louisiana last week. This is almost two months into the moratorium. Baker Hughes, Inc., which provides its own count, said there was more drilling activity in Louisiana last week than there was a month ago.
If anyone knows this, it is Mr. Briggs. After all, it is his job and that of his organization to know the Louisiana oil and gas industry. Drilling activity has surged in the Haynesville Trend area of northwest Louisiana. Yet, Mr. Briggs insists on pretending that the deep water drilling moratorium threatens the entire industry in the state.This fundamental dishonesty undermines legitimate concerns about the economic impact of the moratorium. Yet, this failure to be content with the facts is rampant in the public statements and presentations given in support of the rally and against the moratorium.
Then there is the matter of the jobs. Briggs' second paragraph would lead one to believe that the moratorium on deep water drilling threatens to wipe out, at the very least, all of the jobs related to "extraction, refining and pipeline" work. The Louisiana Workforce Commission's Monthly Employment Bulletin does not break out jobs according to the categories Briggs uses, meaning there is no ready way to verify his numbers other than, you guessed it, relying on the estimates of industry groups like LOGA— a sponsor of the rally and among the leading industry opponents of the moratorium.
Another moratorium opponent given space in The Daily Advertiser is Ovide N. Mercure Jr., Controller of Frederick's Machine and Tool.
Mr. Mercure writes:
Our accidents are tragic and our mistakes are costly, so we work hard to ensure they don't happen. The industry is one of the most heavily regulated in existence. Penalizing an entire industry for the failures of a single company will be catastrophic for your families and neighbors.Actually, the deep water drilling industry was among the least regulated deep water areas of operation in the world. Operating under rules made during the Bush/Cheney years, the industry wrote their own rules in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, many of the safety rules the industry said it did not need to use in the Gulf of Mexico are safety rules they are required to meet in deep water drilling operations in the North Sea and other locales.
We heard two things repeatedly throughout the 85 days that the well gushed uncontrollably into the Gulf: 1) the best minds in the industry were helping BP try to deal with the blowout; and, 2) the various approaches used to try to cap the well had been used successfully in shallow waters but "never before at this depth."
Rob Guidry, President and CEO of the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, claims the win, though, for most outlandish statement when he wrote in The Daily Advertiser, the following:
President Barack Obama has placed economic sanctions on Louisiana, and eventually the United States, beyond those imposed on Iran!
Obama's moratorium on oil and gas drilling is already negatively impacting the jobs of our families and friends. Tens of thousands more jobs will be lost on a daily basis as the irrational moratorium continues.A temporary moratorium on deep water drilling is worse than U.S. sanctions on Iran? Proof please! Have assets been frozen? Have accounts been seized? Have companies been banned from doing business in Louisiana?
Mr. Guidry is a good man, but he's got a head full of bad information.
Some of those ideas might be coming from Mr. Briggs who sits on the Lafayette Chamber's Board of Directors. Or they might have come from David H. Welch, the President and CEO of Stone Energy, and chairman of the Chamber's Board of Directors. According to Forbes magazine, Mr. Welch is a man with deep ties to deep water drilling, BP. He's also got extensive ties with the energy industry as a whole, serving as a director of the National Ocean Industries Association. It's just a simple twist of fate that this year the Lafayette Chamber would be headed by a man with such a deep history with BP and its various North American operations.
Return to Business As Usual ASAP!
What the rally and the push to end the moratorium are about is an attempt by the oil field service industry and the political leaders dependent upon them for campaign financing to get back to business as usual in the Gulf of Mexico just as quickly as possible. Interestingly, organizers did not meet their goal of getting 15,000 people to attend. Some local television stations were predicting 20,000 attendees with spillover being shuffled into the Cajundome Convention Center next door. Didn't happen.
That means getting back to destroying Louisiana's coast at the alarming, but less conspicuous rate of a football field every 38 minutes. The people who are making the push are careful to preface their call with the obligatory nods of acknowledgment to the 11 workers lost in the original explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and the damage all of the resulting gushed oil is causing to the coast, to fisheries, to fishing families, etc.
But, really, what the push is about is saying that their right to wreck the Gulf and our coast trumps the interests of all others. Nothing is more sacred than their right to make money off what is essentially a colonial extractive operation where workers are expendable and the comparable pittance in royalty money and taxes directed to property owners and the state is part of the cost of making people in other parts of the world wealthy.
Oil and natural gas are essential parts of our economy. But, the BP Gulf Gusher is a defining moment that demands that we change the way we live — the way we power our homes, our vehicles, and our way of life. There is no such thing as cheap oil any more. What happened to BP can happen to other companies drilling in such deep water where margins for error are so tight and unforgiving.
The Rally for Economic Survival at the Cajundome was the last gasp of an old order trying with all its might — by hook or by crook; with conflated facts and distorted data — to cling to an era that has ended. The world will never be the same as it was before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.
What has happened since then in terms of economic and ecological damage proves that we cannot — as a state, as a nation, as people who believe we are bound to be responsible stewards of our state and our environment — allow anything approaching a return to business as usual.
As was just demonstrated by the killing of climate control legislation at the federal level, the energy industry will fight policy changes fiercely. But, we can be stronger. Whatever policy they can buy or block in Washington and Baton Rouge, we can circumvent by making changes in our own lives. Getting solar panels. Reducing energy consumption. Getting more efficient vehicles. Riding bikes. Pushing for high-speed rail.
Change has arrived in Louisiana and that the BP Gulf Gusher brought it. The politicians don't get it yet.
But, that's the way it always is.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Waritorium: The Deep Water Moratorium Threatens Two of the State's Republican Oligarchs
Any chance for good cooperation between the federal government and the state of Louisiana in the response to the BP Gulf Gusher died on May 30 when the U.S. Department of the Interior declared a six-month moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the then month-old disaster.
Although the New York Times reported that Governor Bobby Jindal's personal dissatisfaction with the federal response to the disaster had gone public by May 3, the moratorium ratcheted up the pressure in the already tense situation by threatening losses in the industry that had caused the disaster.
The logic of the moratorium was impeccable. Here was an on-going gusher on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico from a well that was owned by one of the major energy companies, BP, and it was out of spewing ever larger quantities of oil into the Gulf. The best minds in the industry were helping BP develop strategies to cap the well, but nothing appeared to be working. And, in fact, nothing has worked yet.
There were published reports of at least one other deep water rig with safety issues. The emergency response plans of the other major operators in the deep water areas open to drilling looked suspiciously like BP's which mentioned the need to protect walruses that might be impacted by a potential spill. Walruses in the Gulf of Mexico, remember?
So, the moratorium looked like the prudent call until the cause of the BP Gulf Gusher could be identified, the well capped, and a new set of safety rules issued based on what was learned from this incident.
But, alarm about the potential impact from the moratorium quickly went up along the coast and from within state government. Tens of thousands of jobs were threatened if the moratorium was allowed to stand. The job loss numbers fluctuated but trended downward in the first weeks after the moratorium was announced.
Jindal assigned his newly minted Lieutenant Governor Scott Angelle the task of heading up the effort to generate public opposition to the moratorium. Angelle formed a coalition and had an online petition created. He traveled across the southern part of the state rallying opposition. He met with federal officials, parroting dire predictions of the impact of the moratorium. He followed Jindal's lead and bashed the President.
"Mr. President, I get the fact that you don't like big oil and gas," said Jindal's recently appointed interim lieutenant governor, Scott Angelle. "But this is not about the stockholders of BP and Shell and Exxon and Chevron. This is about the Cheramises and the Callaises and the Boudreauxs and the Thibodeauxs!"Still, the moratorium stuck.
Oligarchs In The Open
Then Hornbeck Offshore Services, LLC, of Covington, announced its intention to file suit challenging the moratorium. It was assigned to Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans and the rest is history. Feldman overturned the moratorium.
Hornbeck was joined in the challenge by 37 other companies in the challenge, giving the impression that a broad swath of the industry opposed the moratorium. The governor's office filed a brief in support of Hornbeck's claim.
For the relevant corporate documents (PDFs) on each of the Bollinger companies that took part in the challenge, click on the name: Bee Mar-Worker Bee LLC; Bee Mar LLC; Bollinger Algiers, LLC; Bollinger Marine Fabricators, Inc.; Bee Mar-Bayou Bee LLC; Bollinger Amelia Repair, LLC; Bee Mar-Bee Hive, LLC; Bee Mar-Queen Bee, LLC; Bollinger Shipyards, Inc.; Bee-Mar-Honey Bee LLC; Bee Mar-Busy Bee LLC; Bee Mar Crews LLC; Bee Mar-Bumble Bee LLC; Bollinger Texas City, LP; Bollinger Calcasieu, LLC; Bollinger Shipyards Lockport, LLC; Bollinger Quick Repair, LLC; Bollinger Morgan City, LLC; Bollinger Gretna, LLC; Bee Mar-Bee Sting LLC; and Bollinger Fourchon, LLC.
Here are the names of the Chouest companies (click names for corporate details): North American Fabricators, LLC; Offshore Support Services, LLC; Martin Holdings, LLC; Sea Fluids, LLC; C-Port 2, LLC; C-Port, LLC; Fourchon Heavy Lift, LLC; C-Innovation, LLC; Clean Tank, LLC; North American Shipbuilding, LLC; Alpha Marine Services, LLC; Nautical Solutions LLC; Nautical Ventures, LLC; and Reel Pipe LLC. Two other Chouest companies took part in the challenge: Tampa Ship, LLC and Gulf Ship, LLC. Those links take you to pages on the Chouest web site.
The involvement of these 37 companies did not constitute a broad industry response. It was, instead, a shriek of anger at the federal government that had thrown into jeopardy the empires of two of the key members of the new Republican oligarchy that has been ascendant in Louisiana politics in recent years. The Bollingers and the Chouests were reliable heavy hitters for the party and its causes.
In trying to prevent another blowout in the hazardous deep water environment, President Obama had unwittingly delivered would could prove to be a lethal blow to some of some of the wealthiest arch conservative activists in the state. If the President did not realize the full extent of the in-state political implications of the moratorium, it did not take too long to become evident.
Joining the lawsuits either constituted political theater on the part of Bollinger and the Chouests, or significant parts of their compartmentalized empires are in real financial jeopardy if the moratorium stands. Their respective empires are segmented into numerous limited liability corporations which enables the owners to derive significant tax breaks from profitable ventures and to confine losses to under-performing companies in the event of an industry slow down — or a deep water drilling moratorium.
The companies owned by these men and their families generate huge sums of money. They have facilities scattered across south Louisiana. Their customers of their offshore supply vessels are the largest energy companies in the world. Increasingly, the companies compete against one another. Bollinger began as a boat building company and has now gotten into the offshore supply vessel business (the Bee Mar companies listed in the suit are mostly individual companies based on specific boats). Bollinger has built boats for Chouest. Now, Chouest has entered into the ship building business and competes against Bollinger. He's also chasing the deep water expansion getting ready to take place off the coast of Brazil.
Both companies have ventured out beyond the state line, but the bulk of their business is in this state. Chouest became a minority owner in the New Orleans Hornets a couple of years ago and has announced his intention to buy the team. One indicator of the severity of the impact on Chouest operations would be if the already-delayed was pushed further back or called off.
Party Animals
Both Donald Bollinger and Gary Chouest and their families have been major players in the Republican Party in recent years. Chouest was a $100,000 contributor to the Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority back in the 2007 statewide campaign cycle. Bollinger was one of the original contributors to the group and went in for $77,500 over the 2006-07 span. LCRM head Joseph Canizaro named Bollinger to the board of directors of his bank at least in part in recognition of their political work together.
Bollinger also made numerous contributions to individual candidates through his various LLCs. Chouest and his family and various LLCs they control have made large financial contributions to the state Republican Party and to various campaigns and candidates.
In fact, with Bollinger and Chouest leading the way, the southeast Louisiana oil patch has become the money pot for Republican politicians in the state. In state and local elections, in particular, the Bollinger and Chouest method of making maximum legal political contributions through multiple LLCs has enabled them to amplify their influence in political campaigns across the state.
Jindal's 2007 gubernatorial campaign tapped heavily into this means of circumventing the spirit if not the letter of state campaign finance laws. Jindal drew big bucks out of the southeast Louisiana oil services industry during that campaign.
Jindal Gives Something Back
The Chouest family and their companies were solid supporters of candidate Bobby Jindal and all things Republican in the 2007 statewide election cycle, giving Jindal and others in the party more than $132,000.
Governor Bobby Jindal went right to work to repay the Chouests' largesse as soon as he took office.
A Chouest project at the Port of Terrebonne was the first new economic development project to receive funds from the new governor in 2008. First, there was a $10 million grant to the port for a portion of Chouest's LaShip project and immediately added $4 million to that total. The ethical questions raised about the self-proclaimed 'Ethics Governor' giving tax payer dollars to one of his biggest contributors were not the last raised by the project.
The project itself was delayed by ethics questions when one of the Chouest companies (North American Ship) submitted the low bid for a portion of the construction work on the LaShip project. Ethics flags were again raised, with this matter going to the State Board of Ethics, which ruled that giving the bid to Chouest's North American Ship to build a state funded project for Chouest's LaShip would constitute a conflict of interest. Gary Chouest did not see any problem with the original bid.
According to a story in the Houma Courier in 2009, the entire deal was set up so that the Chouest LaShip project had access to about $20 million in state funds through a combination of allocations, grants and low-interest loans. There are local dollars at work on the project as well, according to the Terrebonne Port Commission.
When Hornbeck filed their challenge to the deep water moratorium and the various Bollinger and Chouest companies joined in, they were acting on old industry loyalties as well as seeking to stave off potential financial ruin. Bollinger once built barges and boats for both Hornbeck and Chouest. Bollinger had also built boats for Tidewater, Inc., where two officers of Hornbeck had served prior to moving to that company in 1997.
When Jindal's office filed an amicus brief in support of Hornbeck, Bollinger and Chouest, the circle was closed legally and politically. Here was the governor allied with his biggest financial backers and party loyalists lined up in court to fight a drilling moratorium imposed by an administration they all opposed.
Interestingly, despite the public pronouncement of tens of thousands of potential job losses resulting from the moratorium, in their court filing Jindal and Attorney General Buddy Caldwell say the immediate losses would amount to 3,336 Louisiana jobs with an additional loss in support jobs totaling 7,656 jobs within five months. Job losses approaching the range of 20,000 are projected 12-to-18 months out by Jindal's Department of Economic Development, but no basis for that number is provided.
The bottom line is that when confronted with court standards for truth, Jindal had to ratchet down his job loss numbers.
Judge Feldman's court was not the only place the political stars aligned to cast the Louisiana Republican oligarchy in stark relief.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Jindal appeared at an anti-moratorium rally at Port Fourchon on June 10 which, appropriately enough, was held in an Edison Chouest facility at the port. The event was rightly called a rally as that's how it was staged and its focus was purely political. Jindal was in his element. He was on friendly ground, in a facility owned by one of his stalwart patrons. The Governor was preaching to blue collar workers to unite to save their jobs by defending the interests of their common patrons — the Chouests, the Bollingers and the other oil service millionaires whose wealth were built on servicing the industry that is killing Louisiana's coast and fisheries.
Jindal took part in another anti-moratorium rally on June 24, this one in the Port of Terrebonne in Houma, next door to the Chouest LaShip project into which he's poured so many state dollars.
The potential job losses are real and not to be lightly dismissed. But, Jindal and his administration have destroyed as many public sector and healthcare jobs over the past two years than will be lost to the moratorium in the coming months and he exercised those cuts with a certain detachment that failed to indicate that he connected in any way with those workers or the impact of those job losses on their families or their communities.
On the moratorium, though, Jindal is fully engaged because he's got a skin in the game, namely his own. Despite the fact that he's got a fat campaign war chest, he's bored with governing and faces another big budget shortfall next year. His adamant refusal to consider tax increases has locked the state into a pattern of continuing cuts of service that are building a backlash against those policies among some of his base, particularly those in healthcare and those who value higher education.
Even with no Democrat making noises about opposing him, Jindal will have a rough year next year if he decides to stick around. He will need every campaign dollar he can get his hands on in order to convince state voters that his sow's ear policies are actually silk purses.
If the oil service oligarchs are wounded, so too will Jindal's campaign coffers. That explains why he's passionate about fighting the moratorium. His job could well be at stake.
So, too, will be the coffers of Republican candidates down the ballot next year, particularly in legislative races. Although the LCRM is coming to play again, its method in 2007 was to supply nearly over-power media resources to Republican candidates and against Democrats in selected races. They use a lot of direct mail and a lot of radio. If Bollinger, Chouest and other oligarchs are wounded, they might take a more restrained approach to their participation in state elections next year.
That could work to the benefit of Democrats, particularly if Jindal tries to ram through another year of draconian budget cuts.
The BP Gulf Gusher was unexpected and has had a lot of unexpected consequences. That it could have a dramatic impact on the state's political landscape would be another one of those unanticipated consequences. If the moratorium stands either officially or because companies are hesitate to resume drilling because of the regulatory uncertainty, big changes could roll through Louisiana politics in the coming year, courtesy of the gang that could not drill straight and the people who enabled them.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Impunity & Immunity: Governor Jindal out of control on the coast & at the Capitol
Bobby Jindal says he's not running for president. That's probably because he's too busy acting like a king.
It's been a heady couple of weeks for the Governor of a state mired in a deep fiscal crisis largely of his own making and confronting an epic ecological and economic catastrophe that he had a hand in creating.
Jindal swept into Baton Rouge on the Friday before the final day of the legislative session to declare his support for the Senate version of the budget and House conservatives rolled over and gave him what he wanted. He ignored large majorities in both houses and strong public support for transparency in his office by vetoing a bill (HB 37) that would have made all state records relating to the BP Gulf Gusher available under the state's open records act.
Jindal acted with impunity towards the Legislature and the public with his veto of HB 37. In his veto letter (bottom of the page) to Clerk of the House, Alfred Speer, Jindal added insult to injury by giving a completely bogus explanation of his action:
The Deepwater Horizon incident is a man-made event with responsible parties that will create long-term challenges for the State of Louisiana. This bill would allow BP and other parties with potential liability to the state to obtain information retained by any state agency responding to this tragic event. Such access could impair the state’s legal position both in responding to the disaster that is unfolding and in seeking remedies for economic injury and natural resource damage.As was pointed out here, attorneys in lawsuits always petition records from the other party. It's called discovery and the state has no power to shield any records from such a process in a court proceeding. Jindal's veto, though, will keep those records out of the court where he is most vulnerable — the court of public opinion, where his high-handedness and disregard for the opinions and views of those outside his immediate circle have created a backlash against him in both houses of the Legislature.
Another veto prospect is HB 1443 which would require legislative involvement and oversight of the privatization contracts for state mental health hospitals. That bill passed by smaller margins than the Gulf Gusher records bill, but it did have the support of a broad bi-partisan coalition of legislators in both houses. Department of Health & Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine all but promised a veto in an attempt to block passage, but neither body would back down.
Jindal displayed so little regard for the Legislature that some of his allies in the House (at least they were allies before the budget deal) tried to sneak provisions into a Senate-passed bill that would have granted immunity from liability for state and political subdivisions for actions taken in the effort to combat the results of the BP Gulf Gusher. Another House amendment in the bill would have eliminated the need for Jindal to veto the Gulf Gusher records bill by protecting them. Senators caught on to what was happening and killed SB 520 and the sneak attacks contained in them.
The reason Jindal might have sought the immunity provision only became evident after the session ended when the U.S. Department of the Interior shut down dredging for Jindal's pet berms project because the state was violating the terms of the permit issued.
Jindal screamed "bureaucratic red tape." The Department of the Interior responded that the state had been told the dredging was not being carried out in compliance with the permit and had dragged its feet in moving the dredging operation to an approved source of sand. The Time-Picayune summed it up in a story that appeared on Wednesday, June 23, two days after the session ended and three days after the attempt to grant Jindal and Nungesser immunity from liability:
Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser criticized the delay Tuesday and asked the federal government to allow the state to continue dredging from the current site as it prepares to move operations to another sand borrow site a mile farther offshore.Jindal and Nungesser risked destroying the fragile island with their dredging ostensibly in order to save the coast from the oil. It is disturbing but consistent with this project that was never the subject of any scientific review and was rammed down the throats of federal regulators by the fear that Jindal or Nungesser — or both — would stroke out if their request for a permit of some kind was not granted. Having received the permit, the Governor, his parish government sidekick and his hand-picked contractor — the Shaw Group (who happens to be a heavy contributor to the Louisiana Republican Party) — immediately proceeded to ignore the terms of that permit.
But the Obama administration said the state has been unprepared since the beginning, has caused further delay because it did not have the proper pipe available and has continued to ask for more time to shift to the offshore site. According to the Interior Department, it gave the state permission for more than a week to use the closer source of sand while locating the pipe, but that allowing the state to continue dredging could have negative impacts on existing barrier islands.
By the time the dredging was shut down, Jindal had been resisting the federal government's prodding of the state to move its operations for at least a week. That means that Jindal was engaged in resisting the federal government at the very time his liability immunity amendment was inserted on the House side and the attempt was made to sneak it through the Senate.
The senators could not be fooled and Jindal was not able to intimidate the Department of the Interior on the dredging permit, so the work was forced to stop. The immunity question became moot. As is his custom, Jindal ranted and he raved, but the operation was stopped while the dredge was moved.
The New York Times pointed out that Jindal gets petulant when he does not get his way. He's not getting his way much along the coast — nor has he used the tools he's been given to handle the state's portion of the response to the disaster.
For starters, the paper reported, Jindal had gutted the state oil spill coordinator's office — with predictable results.
The state has an oil spill coordinator’s office. Its staff shrank by half over the last decade, and the 17-year-old oil spill research and development program that is associated with the office had its annual $750,000 in financing cut last year. The coordinator is responsible for drawing up and signing off on spill contingency plans with the Coast Guard and a committee of federal, state and local officials.
Some of these plans are rife with omissions, including pages of blank charts that are supposed to detail available supplies of equipment like oil-skimming vessels. A draft action plan for a worst case is among many requirements in the southeast Louisiana proposal listed as “to be developed.”
Initially the state and federal responders worked well together until Jindal started grandstanding.
On May 3, Mr. Jindal went public with his dissatisfaction.Jindal had met the enemy and it was himself. Still, he insisted on blaming the federal government.
“We kept being assured over and over that they had a plan, that there was a detailed plan, that it was coming; we never got that plan,” he said.
But under the law, oil spill experts said, there are only two kinds of government plans pertaining to spills, and the state is partly responsible for both.
More evidence emerged that Jindal's frequent displays of public outrage were coming at the expense of the steps he should have been taking to effectively respond to the catastrophe.
CBS discovered that Jindal has not used all the resources at his disposal to fight the encroachment of oil into coastal waters. Specifically, the network reported that Jindal had not called out all of the National Guardsmen that President Obama had authorized him to use in the clean up.
According to the network, Jindal offered a tart response to that story. As posted at Pro Publica, the response from Jindal's spokesman doe not respond to the point of the CBS story but is filled with continued criticism of the federal government. Jindal apparently believes that the best defense is a good offense.
Jindal has left the business of governing the state to others in Baton Rouge. He's been bounding along the coast from microphone to camera to microphone for almost 60 days. In front of cameras, complaining about the federal government's inability to respond to his every whim, Jindal has felt empowered. He has not had to hassle with legislators or budget holes or people wanting to know what he's really doing besides preening for cameras.
So, he vetoed the spill records law. He'll veto the legislative oversight of his privatization push. But, he's staying on the coast — and near the national spotlight — until the gusher's capped or something really bad results from his berm idea.
The only viable alternative would be for Jindal to turn on the (again) disgraced Senator David Vitter and challenge him in the Republican primary, saying that he has to go to Washington to get
Don't think for a minute that Jindal's forgotten that. And, don't think for a second that he's going to stick around Baton Rouge to deal with a $2 billion budget shortfall next year. Been there; done that.
He's out of here. Like Sarah Palin, his day job is holding Jindal back. A fight with Vitter looks like the most attention-grabbing way out.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
The Kept Speaker: Fiscal conservatives got rolled by the Governor, but Jim Tucker did just fine
When Governor Bobby Jindal swooped into Baton Rouge last Friday to back the Senate version of the state's two budgets (the current fiscal year and the upcoming fiscal year), House Speaker Jim Tucker bemoaned the fact that the Governor had backed two budgets that did not reflect the values of fiscal conservatives.
It's a view Tucker has repeated on a number of occasions since the session ended. It was a frustrating end to the session for Tucker, who spent most of his time frustrating friends and foes alike. The trouble started with his ham-handed handling of the election of Joel Robideaux of Lafayette to the position of Speaker Pro Tempe. Tucker dished out some tough love to people who he said had broken commitments made to him on the vote. A tinge of bitterness stayed in the air for the rest of the session.
But, fate stepped in during April when Governor Bobby Jindal decided to relocated to Plaquemines Parish to lead the state's response to the BP Gulf Gusher. That cat being away gave Tucker room to play and, man, did he have a run.
Tucker took control of the budget process. He doggedly pursued the long-cherished dream of Louisiana conservatives of closing large swaths if not all of the LSU Hospital system (formerly the Charity Hospital System. He chased his plan to consolidate all of the higher education boards in the state only to find that his handling of the Robideaux election and aftermath would deny him success on this score.
He was steadfast in his position on how the state could borrow from and repay money from the so-called Rainy Day Fund. He refused to recognize the final estimate of the state's economists on the size of the hole in the current year budget, thereby setting the stage for a climactic showdown with the Senate and his nemesis Senate President Joel Chaisson II.
All the while, Tucker and his favorite Democratic Representative Jim Fannin went to the four-corners offense on the budget, holding onto to it as long as they possibly could. When the House approved HB-1 with just two weeks left in the session, the bill reflected Tucker's vision of the future of state government.
It pretty much scared the hell out of everyone in the Senate and anyone with a conscience. At a time when the state is giving more than $7 billion in tax breaks to businesses and the well-heeled, Tucker's budget would have shut down four or more LSU Hospitals, forced the closure of several state college campuses, and made yet another round of deep cuts in Medicaid. Total state layoffs including the hospital closings, the campus closings and the other reductions in state payrolls could have reached 10,000. That number does not even address the loss in healthcare jobs in the private sector resulting from the Medicaid cuts.
At a time when Jindal and his allies were running around the state and in federal courtrooms predicting economic Armageddon over the temporary loss of about 3,000 to 5,000 deep water drilling and support jobs, hurling that number of state workers out of their jobs at the same time created something of an appearance issue that even the Governor could not ignore.
Tucker was unfazed. Maybe he knew the drilling job numbers were a sham or maybe he just does not care about the impact of massive job losses on the state economy; either way, Tucker pushed on.
Then Jindal flew in and took away all of Tucker's fun. The Speaker ended up voting against the budget, as did group of other House members. In the end, Tucker found out that Speakers only have power so long as the Governor lets them have it, or if the Governor is preoccupied with other matters.
It is testimony to just how draconian Tucker's budget was that eliminating 3,000 state jobs, cutting $25 million from Medicaid reimbursements, $25 million in cuts for higher education, and guts funding for the arts was considered something of a victory.
Whatever relief might exist could well be short-lived if state revenues continue their downward trend, wrecking the assumptions on which the budget was built. But, if needed, those cuts will be made by the Jindal administration.
On the Sunday, the second-to-last day of the session, Tucker got some help cushioning the blow of his Wiley Coyote-like defeat on the budget. He won legislative approval to have the swank apartment in the Pentagon Barracks that had previously been the realm of the Lieutenant Governor designated as the quarters of the Speaker of the House.
That apartment had been extensively remodeled by Mitch Landrieu when he was Lieutenant Governor. Landrieu spent about $1 million in taxpayer money on the renovation and that drew howls from fiscal conservatives.
So, to the Speaker go those spoils. For Tucker, now a man with a considerable list of foes in the Capitol and the House, the challenge will be to keep that job title that brings the perk heading into the final year of his term.
The perk is his — if he can remain Speaker.
Say Anything: Bobby Jindal's Hypocrisy on Science Gushes in the Gulf
Bobby Jindal's public life can be seen as a marathon wrestling match between his intellect and his political brain. The intellect is evident by the biology degree from Brown and the year-long stint at Oxford. Yet, when Jindal's political brain gains the upper hand, science gets tossed overboard as it did when the Governor signed legislation that allows the teaching of creationism in Louisiana's public schools.
Most of the time, Jindal is able to put enough distance between his intellect and his political brain to keep the differences, if not muted, then in the background. But the strain of dealing with BP Gulf Gusher and its attendant political opportunities sent Jindal into a full bi-polar eruption on science this week that calls into question the governor's mental stability.
The issues that provoked the eruption were two issues where he has staked a lot of political capital. The first issue is the berm building venture that Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser whipped up and that Jindal then rode back into the national spotlight as the 'can-do' governor. The second is the six-month deep water drilling moratorium that the Obama administration ordered in the wake of the BP Gulf Gusher.
Berms — We Don't Need No Stinkin' Science
The berm venture showed Jindal at his political best. Seeing an opportunity and talking about it until incessantly until the issue either died or he got what he wanted. In this case, he got some of what he wanted when Admiral Thad Allen recommended that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approve the construction of six berms along the coast in the hope that they might help stop some of the millions of gallons of oil that continue flowing into the Gulf from what was BP's well.
In the weeks leading up to Allen's recommendation, what is most striking about Jindal's effort on the berms is the fact that there is no hint anywhere that he and Nungesser consulted with any scientist about the project. The Governor certainly did not contact any of the scientists at any of the various coastal and estuary research centers at the state's public and private universities. He did use LUMCON as the backdrop for a press briefing but apparently never responded to an offer from the scientists there to serve as information resources to the Governor on any of the state's response efforts to the Gulf Gusher.
In fact, the only public record of Jindal and Nungesser ever having heard from scientists on the berm plan was at the June 1 meeting to discuss the matter in New Orleans, where scientists attended (at Allen's request, apparently). The fact that anyone would question their brainchild so infuriated Nungesser that he left the meeting and attacked the scientists during an encounter with reporters who met him outside the meeting room. Jindal at least stayed in the meeting but the scientists and their concerns left him unfazed.
There are no verifiable reports that our Governor sat through the meeting with his hands over his ears. There was, though, no indication that anything the Governor heard in the meeting made any impression on him, either. Jindal went into the meeting committed to dredging for berms, regardless of the facts. He maintains that position today.
That is apparently why the dredging has now been shut down. The Department of the Interior ordered it shut down after several days of trying to get the state-hired contractor to carryout the work in the manner defined in the permit and in a way that does not endanger the barrier islands the berms are intended to bolster.
According to the Times-Picayune account of the shutdown:
The state's contractors were told by the Army Corps of Engineers to shut down dredging operations Tuesday evening, after the Interior Department in Washington expressed concerns that if the state continued to dredge in the current location it could pose long-term risks for the current barrier island system. Federal officials said they had already given the state more than a week to get sand from a more distant borrow site, but that contractors have continued to ask for more time.Predictably, Jindal erupted, railing against bureaucracy — and ignoring the science. "Get out of the way; move this bureaucracy out of the way," Jindal was quoted by the Times-Picayune as saying.
Earth to Jindal: It's the science, stupid!
The Times-Picayune explains:
Tom Strickland, assistant Interior Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said that if the department had allowed the state to continue digging where it was digging, officials feared it would approach a "tipping point" with an "impact on that island chain that may never be restored."The problem is that the bureaucrats that Jindal and his pal Nungesser are attacking have based their decision on the hydrology of the barrier island ecosystem. What separates the people at the Department of the Interior from Jindal and Nungesser is an appreciation that the dredging has, all along, carried with it the real possibility of doing more harm to the already ravaged coast than good.
The concern with the current borrow site is that sand circulating in the island system could become trapped in the borrow pit, thus accelerating land loss throughout the Chandeleur chain. According to the federal government, a site a mile farther offshore poses less of a risk.
"We're acting in good faith. We have a good working relationship with the state on so many elements of this," Strickland said. "We are going to continue to work with the state."
Politicians Jindal and Nungesser, having ignored the science throughout their touting of this plan and their dismissal of the science is what led to the temporary closing of their berm building operation.
The dredging for the berms is shut down precisely because Jindal insisted on ignoring what the science was telling the Department of the Interior about the currents around the barrier islands. He did this fully aware of the possible consequences, despite being warned repeatedly that it was critical.
The shutting down of the berming operation falls on Jindal's political brain overriding his intellect on the matter of science.
Moratorium — You Must Listen to the Scientists!
The second issue that runs parallel to the berm issue is the deep water drilling moratorium. Jindal has been opposed to it all along, owing in no small part to the fact that it will heavily affect some of his staunchest financial backers.
When Hornbeck Offshore, Bollinger Shipyards, Edison Chouest and other deep water oil service companies filed suit against the moratorium, Jindal had the state file an amicus brief in support of those companies. The plaintiffs list read like a list of heavy hitters from a Jindal campaign finance report.
When Judge Martin Feldman ruled against the moratorium and in favor of the service companies, Jindal pounced but in so doing revealed a disturbing disconnect in his thinking.
In a press conference on Tuesday afternoon shortly after Feldman's ruling, Jindal — the man who steadfastly rejects the scientific concerns regarding his berm building project — lashed out at the Obama administration for — get this — ignoring what scientists were saying about the safety of deep water drilling.
"Listen to your own scientific experts that met with Secretary Salazar yesterday, to say they never recommended a six-month moratorium," Jindal implored the White House. "Listen to the same experts who said that six month moratorium was not necessary to improve safety in the Gulf,"So, ignore the widely recognized science on the berms, but heed a small group of scientists who were miffed that the Obama administration actually exercised more caution than they recommended on the moratorium.
Do you think that this caution might have something to do with the fact that the Gulf Gusher that prompted their being called in on the issue remains uncapped more than two months after it started? This despite the fact that the best minds in the industry are tackling this problem.
Or, perhaps that the emergency response plans of the other companies paying for drilling in the Gulf looked frighteningly similar to BP's
Unprincipled Certainty In Pursuit of Ambition
Jindal's split personality on science has always been there, but it took the close interweaving of these two issues to bring it into such sharp focus. What it really reveals is that he is a rank opportunist perhaps unrivaled in this state's rich history of rank opportunists.
Clearly, any argument he makes is valid only so long as it works for him. It is a strictly utilitarian, unprincipled approach to truth. It is whatever he says it is. The fact that he can debase the value of science one minute while extolling it the next on a subject related to the first topic puts Jindal well outside the moral certitude crowd of modern day conservatism. The only thing Jindal is certain about is his desire to become president. His own advancement is the only principle he holds dear.
What his bi-polar approach to science demonstrates is that he will say anything so long as it fits his purpose and advances his personal cause. For proof, look no further the fiscal conservatives he just betrayed in the Louisiana Legislature.
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