Dayne Sherman is going to a rally at the state capitol in Baton Rouge on April 30.
The people of Louisiana are waking up to Jindal’s war against the common weal.
Now, says Sherman, even the Legislature is turning against Jindal.
Four big issues stir public antipathy:
First, we have to repeal the tax give-aways passed under Jindal. Rep. Jerome “Dee” Richard (I-Thibodaux) has a bill to do this very thing. We now give away an extra 2 billion dollars a year since Jindal took office. This is unsustainable, immoral, and just plain crazy. Make no mistake, if we don’t address the tax credits and corporate welfare, our state is toast.
Second, the federal Medicaid expansion has to begin sooner rather than later. According to the Department of Health and Hospitals, the expansion of Medicaid will grant 577,000 Louisiana citizens insurance coverage.
What if we don’t accept the Medicaid expansion? Your local hospital will struggle or fail, and the state will be in the red for decades to come.
Third, we have to stop selling the state piece by piece. We can’t keep giving away state assets at fire sale prices to plug budget holes. It’s ridiculous, downright goofy.
Fourth, higher education must be fully funded in Fiscal Year 2014. Colleges and universities have been cut $625 million since 2008. More cuts are planned for next year. It has to stop now or we will hamstring the Louisiana economy and harm our children.
Sherman should have added a fifth point: Jindal’s effort to privatize public education and intimidate teachers must stop.
In the United States of America, “the people” always win. We are in big trouble when and if that changes.
Hate to tell you, Linda, but that has already changed, and the oligarchs have pretty much won until we decide to take our country back and it’s not going to be pretty.
For the time being, yes, but I’m voting for the voice of the people in the end. History tells us that the oligarchs often take over after a financial meltdown, when they come in like vultures to take whatever they can. But with recovery comes an awakening of the people and that’s what’s happening now.
It already is changed. Big business is winning and the people are saddled with court systems that ban a perfectly good truck stop tiger who was grandfathered in, let the police department get so corrupt that there is a movement to elect the chief, and destroy the careers of 7,000 state workers from the public hospital system by privatization. And then the government wants to end income tax, paid heavily by the wealthy, and substitute higher sales taxes which will give Louisiana the highest sales tax and lowest property taxes in America. The president tries to make things better while Mitch McConnell grins as he misuses the filibuster. No, right now the people are not winning. Big business is winning. The Koch brothers and ALEC are running things and the teachers and children are as expendable as an undocumented day laborer.
Mr. Sherman does indeed have that 5th point:
http://daynesherman.blogspot.com/2013/04/time-to-scrap-blueprint-for-disaster.html
The people do not always win. They have to fight to win. The other side is at war with us. We must be at war with them or you lose. The people in the U.S. are the most ignorant and sleepy of all. We destroy the world and no one seems to care. The people in Louisianna have the right idea as they do in Chicago with CTU. They understand who the enemy is and are doing something about it. No one is going to save you but yourself.
How are they supposed to save themselves? They have no power, no voice in the media, no clout. There are two political parties and both are trying to destroy education. What are they going to do? Are they going to march? Who cares? Instead of getting depressed about things they can’t change, people should start looking into other job possibilities, or read “The Lord of the Rings” and escape! That is why I do. We are always free in our minds. If you are young, emigrate to a more sensible country..
The Louisiana situation is even worse than you might think. The superintendent of the East Baton Rouge Public Schools, Bernard Taylor, is rearranging some of the schools in order to prevent their takeover by the state. The state run (RSD) schools the parents don’t want to send their children to so they are underpopulated while the Board run schools are crowded. But the RSD won’t turn a building loose to relieve overcrowding. All they have in the building are offices. Now the Teach for America state superintendent and jindalclone, John White, is complaining about EBR trying to sabotage the program (Jindal said he wanted 50% of the Louisiana schools to be charters before he left office) and is trying to make any grade configuration or other changes that would improve test scores—–such as the plan to move a gifted program to an F rated school from a C rated school get approval from BESE, the policy board for the schools. Trouble is, a majority of BESE was handpicked or supported for election by Jindal. So while the school system is trying to protect its assets, the State is trying to steal them.
On top of that there is a push going through the legislature for Southeast Baton Rouge to have its own school system. This would take the housing with the highest property values out of the parish system as well as a huge chunk of the white children, thus resegregating the schools. There are already 3 towns within EBR that have withdrawn and two have among the highest test scores in the state with their predominantly middle class and white populations (Zachary and Central). Baker is not doing as well and does not have as large of a middle class population and very ragged buildings. But Southeast Baton Rouge is not even an incorporated area. It is just a bunch of middle and upper mi class subdivisions along with some apartments that take Section 8 renters. (They pretend that those people are poor like the ones in North Baton Rouge who pay market rate for ghetto housing while people on Section 8 only pay a reasonable portion of their income and get decent places.) They think they have some kind of precedent, but Central had to incorporate before they could abscond the schools. And Zachary cut the lower income areas out of their system. Southeast Baton Rouge is being assisted by the head of the Republican Party in Central, who apparently is a lunatic and puts out a newspaper that might as well be the newsletter of the Louisiana Republican Party. It is that partisan.
So Louisiana remains a mess as the RSD remains a failure and won’t give the schools it has stolen back to local control. Instead they find charter groups, almost all religious, to grind them down completely with their unregulated selves. It’s so bad that a lot of new teachers are going out of state and the veteran teaches are retiring in droves. An elementary in Pointe Coupee parish, a little farther north lost 12 teachers this year! The kindergarten classes are the only ones that have had the same teachers all year.