Confirming Blanco hypocrisy about teacher pay raises

Let me get this straight – a couple of months ago when Louisiana’s revenues got revised upwards, Gov. Kathleen Blanco argued that this one-time money should not be plowed into teachers’ pay raises and instead we needed to hike taxes on cigarettes to cover such an increase (later revised to we need to hike taxes on cigarettes to pay for health care but then some health care bucks would be shifted over to the raises)?

Now, speaking of another anticipated bonus coming down the line later in the year, Blanco is saying this extra money can be used for these raises. Help me out here, the reasons are the same potentially for the future as they were in May why there’s this “windfall” – higher-than-expected sales tax receipts but mostly oil revenues. So why then was this considered not applicable to recurring spending, but in a few months it will be?

Answer: because then there was a bloated budget out there to be passed, and Blanco did not want to give the impression that certain priorities needed to be shelved, some efficiencies could be wrung out of state government, or that the state did not need to reach deeper into the people’s pockets. Now that this budget awaits her signature, suddenly we hear no cautions about the Blanco Administration about spending this money on a recurring commitment; indeed, we get pledges that it will be.

What makes this hypocrisy almost comical is the intended beneficiaries, teachers who have yet to prove they’re worth what we pay them at current levels, are not enthused with this raise. “We’re concerned somewhat as to the specifics” says one union thug; another says they’ll be disappointed if it’s not meaningful as defined “at the beginning of the legislation [sic] session.”
Once again, the Blanco Administration demonstrates while it is not that serious about pay raises for teachers, it is serious about using teachers as political pawns to swipe more money from the people.