Don’t do the math!!!

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike occurred in 2008. That’s four years ago. Four years of families striving to rebuild their lives. Four years of businesses and institutions seeking resources to get back to where they once were. Four years of people trying to find ways to protect their property from future storms.

It would seem like any funds the state had to help people, businesses and institutions recover from that storm would have been put in the hands of those who need it by now, that is if you add up the years.

Somehow today in 2012, there is enough of that hurricane recovery money left for Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal to play politics with. Exactly $20,000,000 ($20M) worth of play, if you do the math.

People in the hardest hit areas were supposed to get some of that money to elevate their homes and guard against future storms, but Jindal has a better idea. He wants to use the recovery dollars to repair holes in the state’s preschool program for at-risk students. He must really be concerned about fixing the fiscal damage that some irresponsible, uncaring person did to the budget for these schools.

And just who is the culprit that did the damage that the governor is so desperate to repair? Who has launched the worst fiscal attack on all levels of education in the history of the state just to make rich people richer?

That would be Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal.

Don’t try to do the math, because it does not add up.

It does not add up that all of the money from Gustav and Ike would not have been disbursed four years after the storms. It does not add up that monies that could have helped people storm-proof their homes have been withheld for this long. It amounts to a misappropriation of funds!

It does not add up that the governor declares war on health, education and human services and then tries to plug some of the holes he created with monies, monies that came from the federal government, that should not even be there.

Don’t try to do the math. It will only make you mad.

This article was originally published in the October 1, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper