Generally, when you’ve already made yourself look like an idiot, you
need to stop flapping your gums because you’ll only compound that mistake. But
when you’re trying to salvage political standing, going all in on stupid may be
your best bet.
That’s the situation state Reps. Chris Hazel and Robert Johnson
find themselves in over a political blow they suffered at the hands of Gov. Bobby
Jindal. The governor outflanked Hazel when the representative tried to slip
money into the state’s operating budget to keep open a prison up for closure
that will save a few million dollars, when excess capacity exists across the state.
Jindal thwarted the attempt that would allow Hazel to take credit for what he
seems to think is the purpose of government, directly employing individuals in
his district at the expense of taxpayers, by casting a line item veto to defeat
the end-run.
When that veto first got announced, Hazel ranted about it with all of
the intellectual
persuasiveness of a moron. Not content with looking like a fool once, when contacted
recently Hazel decided to burnish his credentials with another
helping of asinine, if not hypocritical, comments. He said with this the
governor was “paying back campaign contributions from private prisons,” and
that by vetoing the line item he was ignoring the will of the chambers of the
Legislature that had approved of the entire appropriations bill that it had
been in.
I’ll leave it to Hazel to go through the reams of pages of Jindal’s campaign
finance reports to figure out what contributions came from what interests, but I’ll
bet it will be a much more useful exercise to go through his reports to
determine how much money he got from prison employees, their families, and
other interests connected with keeping the prison in question open who profited
off of that. That he lives in a glass house, accusing with no proof that Jindal
was swayed by special interests in this decision when the evidence probably is
far more overwhelming that he was or at least a much higher proportion of his
contributions came from these interests on this issue than Jindal had from the
opposite side on the issue, seems not to deter him from casting stones.
But he more or less has to for political reasons. Having been routed by
Jindal, bawling about it is the only way he can save face in front of those
special interests who wanted the prison kept open, lest they become tempted to
conclude that somebody else in 2015 will do a better job at bringing home the
bacon. Which might be great for the special interests he protects, but not for
the Louisiana taxpayer of whom Jindal represents. So while Hazel gets all
worked about the will of the Legislature, he holds up his index, middle, and
ring fingers to the state’s citizens and tells them to read between the lines.
If it’s will that matters, it’s the people’s that matters more in this
instance, and if the Legislature reflected that more than the governor overwhelmingly
elected by all of the people, a majority of the Legislature would meet in veto
override session and cancel that veto.
Of course, in defense of his wackiness Hazel might try to adopt the
assertion forwarded by another prisons-are-here-primarily-to-employ-constituents
sap, Johnson, that consolidating functions actually costs the state more.
As is his style of offering a not a shred of proof to back up what on the
surface appears to be ludicrous charges, Johnson says the state, despite being
able to lay off dozens of employees and being able to reduce prisoner per diem costs, will end up paying much more
by consolidation because the state will lose revenues from offenders performing
work. And how can we believe this ridiculous assertion when, for example, in
Bossier Parish a comparable
number of prisoners work the fields and save the sheriff all of a few tens
of thousands of dollars a year as a result?
Besides the obvious benefits from greater efficiency (and the
statistics from the Department of Corrections to back it up), note the entire
lack of logic here. The state is desperate to cut costs, so why elevate them?
And what’s to prevent those prisoners transferred to their new locations from
working for the state? And if you try to apply logic to this line of thinking,
you get the absurd: according to Johnson, the state gains net revenue from
prisoners, so if by having fewer you have less money rolling in, you should be
in the business of getting more. Maybe Johnson would feel more comfortable living
in and ideologically more compatible with the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of
Korea, where prisoners are
created for thought crimes and put to work as virtual slaves?
1 comment:
The chutzpah here is so rich. Jeff writes a post on "hypocrisy, idiocy, illogic." Naturally, the post highlights his own hypocrisy and idiocy. But before he gets there he begins on familiar territory - worshiping his personal god Bobby Jindal. He also trots out the prison privatization crap again. Notice that in the months of having major problems with prison privatization raised throughout the local, state, national and international press, and the embarrassing ridicule directed at our state, Jeff takes no time to address any of the issues raised. Instead, since it seems all capitalist to privatize prisons, Jeff is all for it. A few simple references to studies is all he needs to fool himself into thinking his preconceived idea is air tight. Anyway, to the hypocrisy, because that's the richest part of his stupid post. Now he is whining that the private prison-opposition is better suited in North Korea. Setting aside the casual insult that conservatives like Jeff so often hurl without backing it up, Jeff looks down on this guy because in North Korea prisoners are "put to work as virtual slaves." Yet, right here in this backwards state "The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain." Here is a lengthy article for Jeff to avoid that points out exactly how what he is advocating leads to exactly what he insists his enemies are all for. [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/sweatshop-labor-prisoners-penal-labor]. It's moments like these when the pure hypocrisy of this hack comes clear.
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