Bobby Jindal GOP Hypocrite of the Week
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| Fri, 02-27-2009 - 9:42am |
Complete piece at....... http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/honors/135
>"After listening to him rail against imaginary earmarks in the stimulus plan Tuesday night, a look at his past revealed a whole different Bobby:
In fiscal year 2008, his last hurrah as a U.S. congressman representing Louisiana before taking over the governor's mansion, Jindal scored big in the pork contest. He, sometimes in concert with other lawmakers, ended up bringing home $97,913,200 in bacon. That put him at the number 14 spot in Taxpayers for Common Sense's annual tally of the most successful appropriators in the House."<
>"And the hypocrisy of that speech didn't end there. Again from our blog:
Jindal's objection over the money going to volcano monitoring sounded like a crafted pop song. He even had a nice hook: "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."
Too bad his factoid wasn't true. ProPublica notes that the $140 billion Jindal was whining about will be spent on "U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities."
But obfuscation wasn't enough for Jindal, so he threw in another batch of hypocrisy.
According to the USGS Web site, "a major goal of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is to reduce the vulnerability of the people and areas most at risk from natural hazards."
So if we take away money for monitoring volcanoes, wouldn't it be fair to cut funding for hurricane watchers as well?
As Pam Spaulding highlights on House Blend, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) pointed out the two-faced move Jindal made when he tried to take all of the stimulus money coming to Louisiana except the money for unemployment assistance. The congresswoman said this on Keith Olbermann's Countdown:
"This is a guy who, while I served with him in Congress, voted for assistance twice, and is certainly willing to take funding from the federal government to help people who are out of a job and out of their home as a result of a hurricane, but not willing to take that assistance when his constituents are out of a job and out of a home as a result of this economic crisis. I'm really not sure what the difference is. A crisis is a crisis.""<




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Op-ed: The Dead Tree Theory
Complete piece at link...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/opinion/26collins.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
I don’t know about you, but my reaction was: Wow, what a great stimulus plan. The most wasteful thing in it is volcano monitoring.
Louisiana has gotten $130 billion in post-Katrina aid. How is it that the stars of the Republican austerity movement come from the states that suck up the most federal money? Taxpayers in New York send way more to Washington than they get back so more can go to places like Alaska and Louisiana. Which is fine, as long as we don’t have to hear their governors bragging about how the folks who elected them want to keep their tax money to themselves. Of course they do! That’s because they’re living off ours.
The waste argument is a perpetual winner because there will always be some. Years ago, when I was a reporter, I remember getting a call from a woman in the Bronx who was screaming: “They’re over on Moshulu Parkway planting dead trees!” Sure enough, a city work crew was digging holes along the side of the street and carefully sticking in brown and dried-up pieces of foliage. The men claimed the trees had simply lost their leaves for the winter — an explanation somewhat undermined by the fact that they were evergreens.
I’m telling you this because on Tuesday I was talking with a high-ranking Obama administration official about the stimulus plan. “There will be a dead tree planted, figuratively speaking,” he said somberly. “That will happen.”
How could it not? Much of the stimulus money is being channeled through state and local governments, through tens of thousands of governors, mayors, county executives, transportation commissioners, parks superintendents and so on. Try to imagine the person in that pyramid with the lowest I.Q., and you’ll understand that there’s a dead-tree planter hidden in there somewhere.
The White House is trying to overcome this problem with a Transparency and Accountability Board, overseen by Vice President Joe Biden.
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When I heard that comment about volcano monitoring I felt like smacking him.
I thought this was pretty funny but then I have been know to have a sick sense of humour. Jindal looks dooky IMO. Yes he must be smart he's a Rhodes Scholar.
Opal posted this on another board.......
See video & hear....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/24/msnbc-cuts-to-jindal-with_n_169697.html
Matthews explains.....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/25/chris-matthews-explains-o_n_169876.html