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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Jindal had met the enemy and it was himself. Still, he insisted on blaming the federal government.

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 more face time on TV this right for Louisiana. Don't forget that the Vitters' post-prostitute press conference near the New Orleans airport took place just 30 minutes prior what was supposed to be the final, triumphant stop on Jindal's announcement tour for his campaign for governor.

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.

Nullification: Last Refuge of White Supremacists

District 78 Representative Kirk Talbot looks like the mild-mannered junior legislator, but in the wake of passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Talbot has transformed into a champion of the cause of "nullification" in the Legislature — a discredited legal theory that states can somehow override federal laws that they disagree with.

While his leadership on this issue has won him admirers on the right, it has also fixed Talbot squarely in a long line of southerners who defended slavery, championed white supremacy and fought long and hard to defeat the Civil Rights Movement half a century ago. In embracing the legal theories first advanced by South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, Kirk Talbot is also embracing the long sordid history of white supremacists in this state that includes the murderous vigilantism of the Ku Klux Klan and the barely more subtle racist politics of Plaquemines Parish boss Leander Perez, Sr.

Talbot's bill and constitutional amendment to nullify healthcare reform have exposed a side of Republican politics that the party has previously tried to conceal. But, with a Republican governor, the Secretary of Health and Hospitals, Commissioner of Insurance, and the Democratic Attorney General falling all over themselves to support his efforts either directly or through their own channels, the conservative political leadership of the state feels it will pay no price for embracing this tainted legal legacy. While nullification and the racial domination implicit in it have long simmered below the surface of state politics (at least in politic company), it had not seen the light of day since Perez and State Senator Willie Rainach championed Louisiana resistance to desegregation through the formation of White Citizens Councils and other less 'respectable' means in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Until Kirk Talbot brought it out of the shadows this year.

The Politics of Fear and Loathing

Talbot's embrace of nullification has tapped into the fear and disorientation that has gripped segments of the white community since Barack Obama rose to the Democratic nomination for President and then won the election. Upon his inauguration and his decision to tackle health reform, segments of the white community simply became unhinged. There is, in fact, a name for the phenomena: "Obama Derangement Syndrome."

From "birthers" who question whether the President was born in the United States to those who call him alternately a muslim, a radical christian, a marxist and a nazi, clearly large segments of the white community (particularly Republicans and members of the Tea Party) are having a difficult time coming to terms with the very idea of Barack Obama as President. The phenomena is even disturbing to some on the right.

Healthcare reform sent many of these people even further over the edge. The evidence being that anything negative they heard about the President, they believed. Think about the "death panels" nonsense that raged late last summer.

Nullification is an idea that percolated on the fringes of the right as it became clear that the President and Congressional Democrats were going to succeed in passing healthcare reform.

The alleged trigger for this rabid response to reform is federal mandate that individuals buy health insurance which is included in the new law. Ironically, the idea originated with Republicans when Bill Clinton was trying to get his version of healthcare reform passed in the 1990s.

Now, however, in the hands of this Black Democratic President, this Republican-invented mandate somehow constitutes an existential threat to the Republic that must be quashed. Never mind that the state of Massachusetts actually pioneered this approach under the legislation it passed under the administration of Mitt Romney.

The Ride Ain't Free

Nullification carries considerable baggage. It is the legal theory that — at least in part — the Civil War was fought over. It is the legal theory that was behind efforts in the South to defend slavery, then segregation, and other race-based legal schemes championed by long lines of white supremacists who dominated the region's business and political realms between in the 19th and 20th centuries. That control lasted from end of Reconstruction until the late 1960s when the last vestiges of legal segregation were struck down in the courts and by the Congress.

In Louisiana, nullification is the theory that was at the core of the legal and political strategies of Perez and Rainach as they fought desperately to stop African Americans from attaining full citizenship, including the right to vote, equal access to education, and to public accommodations.

But, that was a long time ago — well before this freshman lawmaker, who was educated at Ole Miss, was born. Talbot was a business major. He should have spent a bit more time studying history before he picked up this particular cudgel. It is a tainted tool that has a well-documented history of contaminating those who use it.

Land of Opportunism

Only 14% of white Louisiana voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Like Al Gore and John Kerry, Obama did not campaign here after the party's nominating convention and he did not spend significant money here.

Despite those limitations, he got 40% of the total vote.

Republicans, who built their party in the South using campaigns of racial resentment, have abandoned all pretense of subtlety in their opposition to President Obama and his policies. There has been an open effort to undermine the legitimacy of his election and defeat his presidency from the start. It is not so surprising that this effort would be led by people like South Carolina Senator "You Lie" Jim DeMint, the home state of John Calhoun, Strom Thurmond and others.

What is, perhaps, surprising is how unquestioningly some Louisiana Republicans (particularly Bobby Jindal) have embraced this attempt to undermine the Obama presidency with so little regard for the racial element implicit in the effort. Are they tone deaf or just indifferent?

Does it matter?

Where Kirk Talbot Comes From

That Kirk Talbot feels he can pursue this strategy at no political costs is readily understandable when you look at his district. According to the Louisiana Secretary of State's office, 88% of the voters in Talbot's district (which is comprised of a fairly narrow piece of land running from West Esplanade Avenue on the east bank of Jefferson Parish down to Harahan on the Mississippi River) are white.

Only 5.4% of the voters in Talbot's district are African Americans. Another 6.4% are listed as "other" and are probably predominantly Hispanic.

Kirk Talbot and his racial politics are products of the kind of racial gerrymandering approach to reapportionment being championed for the Senate by the Louisiana Family Forum and their front man Senator Elbert Lee Guillory of Opelousas.

Under this kind of approach, African Americans are enticed by the lure of a number of minority majority districts (that is, districts where African American voters constitute a majority of voters). The trade off is that the rest of the districts become whiter — like District 78 — and people like Kirk Talbot get elected.

And, while the Times-Picayune says votes on Talbot's bill and constitutional amendment to make nullification the law of the state puts white Democrats in a tight spot, the fact is that it is also a perilous course for Republicans because of the way it strips away the veneer of refinement of their appeal that has made them a political force here and across the South. The subtle appeals to racial resentment was accepted in polite company. More blatant appeals to the worser angels of our beings carries real risks that Republicans and Tea Party members (is there really a difference worth noting?) run.

This is not a radical state and it is not a radical country. Sending Louisiana lurching back to an era of racial divisiveness that most would rather forget is not a recipe for long-term political success in Louisiana.

Still, white Democrats in the Legislature will be tested on the votes on Talbot's bills. They will be tempted by Talbot and others to make a stand for "states rights" in the face of what is deemed unprecedented federal encroachment. Good ole politics among the good ole boys can be an attractive bandwagon to jump on at times in Baton Rouge.

Still, the fact of the matter is that nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, whatever benefit white Democratic elected officials can derive by switching parties now have been played out. Democrats in the House and Senate carry that party label because it means something to them.

As Kirk Talbot, his fellow Republicans and the Tea Partiers demonstrate every day, the Democratic Party is the only political party in this country that is committed to embracing a multi-racial constituency. Our party and its members have not always lived up to our billing, but we hold these truths to be self-evident: that the content of a person's character is more important that the color of his or her skin; that no race is better than another race; and that our society cannot afford the luxury of racial prejudice and divisiveness if we are going to reach our potential as a our communities, our state and our nation.

Kirk Talbot does not believe in that message. Otherwise, he would not be so fervently champion a legal theory so deeply rooted in the history of white supremacy and the defense of racial oppression in this country and state.

Is there no one in the Republican leadership of this state willing to stand up and speak out against Talbot and his message? Or, has Obama Derangement Syndrome infected them all?

King Tuck: Equal Opportunity Exasperator

When then Governor-elect Bobby Jindal announced his support for Republican Jim Tucker to be Speaker of the House in late 2007 there were guffaws when Jindal said he was doing so as part of his desire to avoid the kind of intense partisanship that had come to plague Washington, D.C., where Jindal had spent a fair amount of time over the previous decade.

Tucker, after all, had been leader of the House Republican Caucus in the previous term where he had a well-earned reputation for ratcheting up partisanship through his opposition to various initiatives of Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco.

That Tucker could somehow shed his partisan skin by ascending to leadership of the full House seemed ludicrous to many.

This week, Tucker proved his doubters wrong as he took up the work of unraveling Jindal’s plan to close budget gaps in the current and next fiscal years with the same enthusiasm and tenacity (obstinacy?) as he did in foiling Blanco’s budget moves four years ago.

Jim Tucker is proving himself to be an equal opportunity disrupter of the well-laid plans of Louisiana governors.

King Tuck Reshapes State Government

In ways unprecedented for a legislative leader, Jim Tucker has had a powerful impact on reshaping state government in Louisiana. In 2009, Tucker led the successful push wrest away control of what will replace ‘Big Charity’ hospital from LSU. He also directed the creation of the Tucker Commission that has proposed a radical reshaping of higher education in the state.

As the recent dustup over the election of a new speaker pro tempore demonstrated, Tucker is perfectly willing to punish anyone who crosses him, regardless of party affiliation.

Tucker won election to the House representing District 86 (a district that includes both the gated community of English Turn and the blue-collar community of Terrytown) in 2001. He is term limited. Tucker is using his stint as speaker to advance some long-standing conservative critiques of Louisiana state government regardless of whose toes get stepped on in the process.

He's had his brush with ethics issues, but that did not stop the "ethics governor" from supporting Tucker's election as speaker.

Tucker and Jindal share a general approach to government — a general dislike of government as a deliverer of services and a strong aversion to tax increases. That shared belief is a significant factor in the state’s current budget crisis. Tucker has repeatedly stated that “the state does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.”

Tucker, even more than Jindal, has had a hand in creating the current crisis, in no small measure thanks to his role as head of the House Republican caucus during Governor Blanco’s tenure. In the final year of Governor Blanco’s term, her push for business tax cuts was at least partially motivated to try to win Republican support (PDF) for increased spending on education, which Republicans (led by Tucker) paid lip service to but generally opposed.

Tucker is not always opposed to increased government spending. In 2008, Tucker supported legislation that would have tripled the pay of legislators. Tucker, who led the fight in the House in support of the pay raise, tried framing the issue in good government terms.

“We want to have good, quality people running for the Legislature, to get a good cross-section of the state," not just the wealthy who can afford to spend time in Baton Rouge for at least one session a year, Tucker said. "I am concerned about the average Joe who can't afford to come here. ... This is not the priesthood where you take a vow of poverty."

No, in Tucker’s view, that vow should be required of public employees. Tucker has led the effort to restructure state employee retirement programs to shift from defined benefit pensions to 401k programs that significantly reduce the state’s liability for those pensions, but also — as has been shown in the private sector — significantly lower the income of those retirees covered.

Calling Jindal’s Bluff

In the current session, Tucker has sought to use his power as Speaker with less hesitancy than in the past, the most public instance being his punishment of those (including Republicans) who voted against Lafayette independent Rep. Joel Robideaux in the election for speaker pro tempore. After a close public vote, Speaker Tucker changed committee assignments for a number of members who he said had not kept their word to him regarding the vote.

The blatant power play sparked alarm from the governor’s office and even among some of Tucker’s most ardent apologists.

If anyone thought the reaction might have tempered Tucker’s approach they were proven wrong this week when Tucker announced that the House would not take up the matter of fixing the $360 million hole in the budget for the current fiscal year until May when there would be only a matter of days left in the fiscal year.

Tucker’s move focused on the element of Jindal’s plan for fixing the hole that appears to have crossed two of the Speaker’s trip wires. The first was taking money set aside to pay a settle a dispute with the federal government over the use of Medicaid funding. The governor may have abandoned his former aversion to using one-time money to fix recurring budget problems, but Tucker has not.

The second trip wire was how Jindal proposed to cover the payment on the settlement, which everyone expects will have to be paid in the state’s 2010-11 fiscal year. Stunningly, Jindal announced that he is counting on President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats being able to win an extension of the economic stimulus program which would mean an additional $300 million or more in federal Medicaid funding for Louisiana. Jindal is not only counting on the money, he declared himself confident that the D.C. Democrats would prevail on the issue.

Tucker apparently recoiled at Jindal’s admission of his dependence on national Democrats to bail the state out of its budget crisis.

This week, Tucker called Jindal’s bluff, saying he would delay the House taking up the proposed fix for the current budget for a couple of weeks to see if Jindal’s political prognosticating was worth banking on. Tucker said he would wait to take up the measure to give congressional Democrats the opportunity to advance their Recovery Act extension.

Tucker’s move puts legislators in a precarious position. They are constitutionally mandated to balance the state budget each year. Waiting until mid- to late-May to fill this hole will mean that whatever solution to the shortfall is implemented, will be rushed into place. With Jindal and Tucker both opposed use of the so-called rainy day fund to close this year’s budget gap (they’d rather use that to plug holes in the next fiscal year budget), and with revenue options non-existent within the already compressed window to deal with the problem, the debate between Tucker and Jindal will be over how to make the use of one-time money appear to look like recurring money.

An Equal Opportunity Exasperator

Jindal, like Blanco before him, is learning that it’s no fun to have Tucker working against you. Tucker was a thorn in Blanco’s side, particularly in the final two years of her term, and that was when he merely headed a caucus. Now, as speaker, Tucker is proving that he is committed to using the powers of his office to advance the approach to government that he believes in.

For Jindal, Tucker’s lesson in the art of the bi-partisanship approach to exasperating is coming at an inopportune time.

With the Senate ready to work with Jindal to close the budget gap now, Tucker has emerged as an obstacle to the governor’s budgetary slight of hand. With bigger budgetary holes to fill in the next fiscal year (and potentially still larger ones to fill the following year), Jindal is using every trick he can muster to stave off the kinds of budget cuts in healthcare and higher education that he knows will do serious damage to the thing that matters most to him — his re-election prospects.

Tucker, on the other hand, won’t be speaker after the 2011 election. He is at the peak of his political power now. There are no guarantees that he can win election to higher office. If he is going to make an impact on the shape of state government, now is his time to do it.

The divergence in the scope and timing of Tucker’s ambitions and Jindal’s are stark.

Jindal’s aspirations are not confined to Louisiana, but they rest on he is re-election as governor next year. His chances of doing that are going to rest in large measure on his ability to address the state’s budget challenges without being perceived to be inflicting lasting damage on the state’s future prospects (something already called into question by supporters of higher education and healthcare in the state). Jindal’s national ambitions also rest on his fidelity to the conservative credo against tax increases. As his admission of his dependence on President Obama’s recovery spending makes clear, Jindal has hit an intellectual dead end on that path.

Tucker, on the other hand, would not be particularly bothered by the prospect of having to make the kinds of cuts in state spending that would put Jindal’s re-election in jeopardy. Tucker is as true a believer in the conservative approach to governance as Jindal is an opportunistic one. This is a clash of style as well as substance.

Tucker Controls Jindal’s Fate

There will likely be two ugly fiscal year budget fights between now and the statewide elections next year — the budget for the next fiscal year that will be decided in the current session and the budget that will be decided in next year’s election year Regular Session. Jindal’s political fate, in large measure, is tied to how those budgets address state needs. Tucker will have as much influence on the final shape of those budgets as will Jindal.

Kathleen Blanco was not running for re-election and found dealing with Tucker exasperating. Jindal prizes re-election more than anything. Tucker is in position to set the price of that prize to an unprecedented extent. Not since Willie Rainach rose to prominence as a leader of White Citizen Councils in the late 1950s and early 1960s has a single legislator had so much power to influence the political fate a governor.

The dance between Jindal and Tucker that plays out over the next few weeks will shape the political terrain for next year’s elections. Tucker's tenure as speaker sunsets with that same election that will determine Jindal's future. In the interim, what transpires in Baton Rouge will revolve around Tucker.

Jindal is in a tight spot. He has hitched his political fate to a pair of political polar opposites: Barack Obama and Jim Tucker.

Can he really be the smartest guy in the room?

Thank you, Robert Adley!!!

Shreveport area State Senator Robert Adley has changed his party registration from Democrat to Republican less than two months after trouncing a Republican in the October primary.

Adley told the Shreveport Times that this was all about serving the interests of his constituents:

Though his party affiliation has changed, Adley said the switch will put him in the best position to continue helping residents.

"I am excited that the new administration is considering some of my proposals as part of its agenda," he said, referring to Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal and his support of the Cyber Command Center at Barksdale Air Force Base.

Sort of flies in the face of Governor-elect Jindal's gospel of bi-partisanship (which the governor-elect himself undercut with the appointment of a Republican Party communications operative to a key position in the Division of Administration).

The Advocate reported that Adley's decision is at least partially linked to the decision of Fourth District Republican Congressman Jim McCrery not to seek another them next year:

Adley’s party change came a few days after veteran U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery, R-Shreveport, announced he would not seek re-election. Adley said he decided to switch to the GOP before he knew of McCrery’s plans.

He said running for the U.S. Congress is “an option.”

Congressional elections are in fall 2008.

I get it! Political opportunism is a constituent service. Now that is innovative thinking.

In The Shreveport Times, Adley portrayed his move as a migration to his ideological home:

"The focus of my efforts in Baton Rouge has always been conservative reform. I'm excited we have a new governor with the same philosophy, and I want be as effective as possible in working with him. Adding another Republican to the Senate will create a more bi-partisan and balanced Senate," Adley said.

Adley did a tremendous public service with one comment he made to The Advocate:

His switch to the GOP will not change the kind of legislator he has always been, Adley said.

“The difference is perception only,” said Adley. “The world has changed. If you have a ‘D’ behind your name, many people don’t think you can speak from a conservative side.”

The fact is that for Adley and a number of other members of the Louisiana House and Senate, being a Democrat doesn't mean anything to them. They carry that "D" behind their name because of political expedience, or because they're too lazy or scared to change their party registration.

There will be votes in the coming year that will reveal these people for who they are.

Those votes will come on issues like healthcare, campaign finance reform (the essential — and thus far, unaddressed — component of ethics reform), climate, energy and environmental issues; and justice issues.

If these Democrats can't distinguish between the interests of Louisianians and the Jindal corporate agenda, then they will need to figure out why they are still in this party. Because on these issues, Democrats will have to re-establish themselves as the party for the rest of us:

• Those of us who understand the value of the social safety net;
• Those of us who understand that you can't eliminate "pay to play" if corporations can still make direct contributions into the coffers of elected officials;
• Those who understand that Louisiana (of all places) must lead the way in adopting policies that reduce our state's contributions to climate change; and, finally,
• Those of us who understand that the challenges this state faces are so great that we do not have the luxury of allowing any form of prejudice to deny us access to the talent and imagination of anyone willing to help us respond effectively to those challenges.

The principles espoused there — particularly knowing which side you are on — is what made the Democratic Party the beacon of hope for this country when our country was, in turn, the beacon of hope to the world.

In order to rebuild the Louisiana Democratic Party (and to make the national Democratic Party relevant), we must return to those principles. We must respond to the call from the citizens of our state for principled leadership — not the siren call to put narrow personal interests ahead of the interests of the greater good.

When you get right down to it, there is no point in Democrats trying to curry favor with the so-called conservatives and their corporate allies — those guys are already getting all the help they need. Who will stand with and for regular people?

If it's not Democrats, then who? If not now, when? If the party can't bring itself to stand with its hisrotical constituencies, then there is no reason for this party to exist.

Thank you, Robert Adley, for making your choice clear and for making clear the choice your colleagues in the Legislature must also make. Democrats need to stand for something or we will fall for anything — or, just fall.