Buddy Can't Have it Both Ways

Photo source: Flickr

After reading Sam Hannah’s article last week in the Ouachita Citizen, I had to check to make sure I clicked the right link. I thought that I had somehow gotten to a Buddy Caldwell campaign press release. There was no mistake. I understand opinion editorials, but I was surprised to see that it lacked any pretense of objective journalism.

Apparently, Buddy Caldwell should be applauded for his magnificent leadership in reaching the settlement between the state and BP over the oil spill. The outside lawyers that Buddy hired are only getting $38 million in fees, while firms representing other states are getting close to $700 million. It does seem like a good deal, but hardly anything is as it seems.

No matter how much Mr. Hannah may want to simplify it to cast Buddy in a nice light, there are few facts that I think he and his readers should be reminded.

The reason the lawyers are getting paid $38 million instead of close to a billion has nothing to do with the leadership of Buddy Caldwell. In fact, shortly after the spill, the Attorney General tried his hardest to see that his friends and campaign contributors would be enriched just like the lawyers of those other states.

Since Mr. Hannah didn’t, let me put on my journalistic cap and offer a little background so you can be truly informed. Louisiana law provides that outside lawyers hired by the AG to represent the state be paid on an hourly rate instead of being allowed a contingency on the reward won by the state. But shortly after the BP spill, Buddy teamed with the Senate President to offer SB 731 in the 2010 legislative session. The bill would have allowed the lawyers Buddy hired compensation based on a contingency agreement instead of an hourly rate. Fortunately for us, he wasn’t successful. But had he been, the campaign contributors he hired to represent the state would have made a killing just like those lawyers representing the other Gulf States.

This notion that man should be applauded for something he fought against is ludicrous.

Rhetoric vs Results

Photo source: Bloomberg

Time and time again I hear or read about some Conservative commentator either question the Conservatism of Jeb Bush or outright call him a RINO. But at the same time, I hear or read hardly any of those commentators question Bobby Jindal’s Conservatism, which begs the question, what exactly are we defining Conservatism as based on? Is it rhetoric or results? Is being a Conservative based on governing principles or is it based on a few particular issues and whether one falls on the right or left of those issues?

Anyone being objective has to plainly admit that Jindal has been a colossal failure as Governor of Louisiana. Here is a man that was elected with a mandate in 2007 and an even larger mandate in 2011. Yet I’ve been racking my brain and can’t think of one generational change he has made that substantively places Louisiana in a better place than when he took office. Not a single one!

Granted, he has supposedly changed the culture of corruption and instituted ethical reforms that look good on paper. Yet it is entirely disingenuous to say that it has actually changed things, which is evident by state legislators earmarking tax dollars to their favored NGOs and the Edwineseque pay to play scheme of Buddy Caldwell’s Attorney General office.

Everyone knows that Louisiana has way too many four-year universities which cause our limited resources to be spread too thin in order to prop up colleges that should have been shuttered long ago. Louisiana infrastructure is still underfunded with better days nowhere in sight. We still have an unfair tax structure that is too dependent on business and in particular, the oil and gas industry.

On top of that, Jindal has being using budget gimmicks and one-time money continuously to “balance” the budget. Just look at this past legislative session. All 144 legislators knew they couldn’t do anything to truly fix the finances of this state until the next governor arrives. This is after seven years of “Conservative” Jindal governance! But they went ahead and passed unconstitutional tax increases and what was Bobby’s only concern? It was making sure that it wouldn’t be scored by Grover Norquist as a tax increase, in deference to his campaign for the Presidency. I’m not sure when it became okay for a son of Dixie to have to clear something with a Yankee elitist in regards to his own state but I digress, back to the point. Seven years under this apparently Conservative governor and our budget is more screwed than when he took the reins.

Now Jeb Bush institutes the first voucher program in the country and puts in place tax credits for companies that donate for private school scholarships. He cut taxes in Florida by almost $20 billion and ended affirmative action preferences in universities and state contracting. He enhanced Florida’s concealed carry laws and signed the Stand Your Ground law. It didn’t take a video release and public outcry for him to revoke state contracts with Planned Parenthood. On top of all that, he balanced the budgets and left his successor a rainy day fund of almost $10 billion.

Jindal leaves a pile of crap for the next guy and Bush leaves a huge surplus, so again I ask what are we basing Conservatism on? Is it the actual governing or just the rhetoric about governing? Is Jeb not conservative enough because he thinks there ought to be an avenue for granting legal status to certain segments of the illegal immigrant population and because he supports Common Core? Let us not forget that both David Vitter and Jindal supported Common Core before they flipped. So is Bush less Republican because he has a spine and doesn’t let the polls dictate his positions, whether its immigration or Common Core? Is he less conservative because he doesn’t go around speaking in sound bites of red meat for the base like Jindal?

Granted, Bobby did cut taxes with the repeal of the Stelly tax, even though his support for the repeal was half-hearted at best. But is Bobby simply more conservative because he’s unapologetically pro-life, stands for traditional marriage, and wears his faith on his sleeve? Is he more conservative because pastors have an easier time getting a hold of him than state legislators? Those particular issues are the only strong convictions Jindal apparently has of which he won’t back down from and rightly so, but what about the rest? When he wanted to revamp the tax code and repeal the income tax, where was his conviction then? He folded on the first day of session. When some wanted to take a common sense step of merging SUNO with UNO, the Legislative Black Caucus gives a little push back, and once again, he folds. He’s flipped-flopped on Common Core. He bashed the stimulus while travelling the state for check-granting ceremonies. Is this really conservative governing? All rhetoric but no real results?

Give me a break with all this RINO talk. Bush governed Florida a hell of a lot better than Jindal has in Louisiana. It’s not even close! If Bobby’s Administration is that of a Conservative and Bush’s Administration is that of a RINO, then I for one pray our next governor is a RINO. Maybe then we could actually move forward instead of treading water.

LAGOP Endorses Landry While the Media Plays Gotcha

Last Tuesday, Congressman Jeff Landry received the endorsement of the LAGOP’s State Central Committee to be Louisiana’s next Attorney General. Roger Villere, the Chairman of the LAGOP, touted Jeff’s life-long Conservatism, his history of fighting for Louisiana values, and standing against the radical agenda of Obama Administration.

Flanked by his family and supports, Jeff outlined part of his platform and the qualities that make him the ideal candidate for Conservatives.

But obviously, the reporters in the room weren’t paying attention to the remarks that Villere or Landry made. Instead, they came with their own agenda and a story that they had already written in their minds. Their narrative basically goes that Buddy Caldwell is a centrist senior statesman and the far-right wackos of the LAGOP are too stupid to see how lucky they are to have Buddy.

The first question was about Buddy, so was the second and the third. On and on it went until it seemed as if there was a conspiracy among all the reporters in attendance to play gotcha until they got the answer they were after.

The media loves nothing more than seeing Republicans attack one another but neither the Chairman nor Congressman Landry gave in to their obvious ploy.

As Landry tried to move the conversation back to the reason everyone was gathered, they continued to push the narrative they were after with WAFB’s Chris Meriwether leading the charge. There was no attempt to even try to come off as objective reporters.

Landry touted his record of being honest, hard-working, and ethical. The media took this as an opportunity to accuse Landry of thereby saying Buddy wasn’t any of those things. Landry responds that he’s there to talk about himself and not Buddy and again they ask. The bias was obvious to all.

All the media cared about was their narrative that this endorsement was so unprecedented to the point of being scandalous. They couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that Conservatives wouldn’t roll over and accept a RINO like Buddy as fait accompli.

True enough, the state party hasn’t endorsed a challenger to a Republican incumbent since 1991, but then again, one would be hard-pressed to find such a stark contrast between a legitimate challenger and a Republican incumbent, like the one that exist between Landry and Caldwell, since 1991.

This contrast was also obvious to all in the party and Dan Richey, a member of the state Republican Central Committee, essentially said as much. “Caldwell is a Republican by convenience only, he’s a tool of the plaintiff bar, he’s broken state law repeatedly in order to hook his friends up with lucrative contracts for legal services and all of his political friends are still Democrats.”

At a time when Louisiana values are constantly under assault and the Obama regime continually trampling over State’s rights, the media was more interested in getting Congressman Landry to describe the work ethics of his opponent. Those were the only specifics they cared about. Not the specifics that Landry raised about the bloated budget of Caldwell’s Attorney General’s office in contrast to Jeff who unilaterally streamlined his own Congressional budget to save the taxpayers’ money. Not the specifics of their own media reports outlining the pay to play scheme Buddy has put in place in the Attorney General’s office.

 It was clear what the media was after, a nice sound bite. But Jeff stood firm and refused to play their gotcha game.