Jindal: ‘We don’t need no Education!’

Congratulations! Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has made the short list of possible running mates for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But at what cost to Louisiana.

Jindal is the guy, mimicking his apparent idol, George Wallace, standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent the Black, the poor and most other people from getting anything resembling a decent education. He has seen far more success at denying education to students of all races and ages than his role model. Wallace only wished he could have shut down or crippled as many schools as Jindal has.

Jindal has used the state’s K-12 and higher education systems as sort of a Petri dish with two experimental purposes, first to eliminate education for most people who are not wealthy and, second to use the success of the first experiment to catapult him into the national conservative spotlight. In Mitt Romney he may have found the perfect partner because Romney’s vision for education is very similar to Jindal’s. However, like Wallace, Romney has never matched Jindal’s level of accomplishment at destroying educational systems.

When an Ivy-league graduate and Rhodes scholar spends four years gutting an education budget while calling for higher standards, you know something is wrong. The classic Republican argument against “throwing money at education” falters when you start draining the tub dry. Jindal has drained the higher education tub to the tune of about half a billion dollars since he was elected.

This was part of the reason Vic Stelly gave for resigning from the Board of Regents last year. “We’re giving away the store.” Stelly said. He suggested that the state halt many tax exemptions that benefit corporations and individuals as a viable way to fix the budget. Stelly was discouraged by cuts to higher education funding and tuition hikes.

Jindal brags about not raising taxes while forcing schools to raise tuition and fees, which is another way of taxing the population. Had all of his proposed cuts from the last legislative session gone through, most state schools would have had to drastically reduce their staffs and programs. Many would have closed their doors because the weakening of programs combined with the raising of tuitions would draw fewer and fewer students. There has long been talk of plans to dumb-down the population of the United States to make us all easier to control. Jindal’s efforts seem to be right in line with such talk.

Jindal has shown a disturbing determination to do two things. First he is determined to cut taxes for the very rich, no matter how much it hurts the rest of the state. After all it is the very rich who can help him make it to the White House and not the rest of us. Jindal pushes the notion that the tax breaks will create more jobs which has never been proven to happen since he sank the state’s economy with this practice five years ago. What is provable is the harm done to health, education and vital social programs.

Which brings us to the second thing he wants to do: He is determined to defy the constitution of the state and find a way to give public money to private schools. This is what the voucher program is all about. We know that it’s not about education because there is no call for accountability for the private schools. There is literally no penalty or recourse for when these schools fail.

Jindal’s hostility for public education was shown in the recent legislative session when he vetoed a bill that would have given tax breaks for those who donate money to public schools. He gave the weak explanation that it would exceed the MFP funding for these schools, which already happens when they get grants and other gifts. He could not just be honest and say that is against the survival of public schools.

Eliminating public education has been a theme among conservatives for decades. That cry became louder with the election of one Barack Obama as President of the United States. It seems that there is a segment of this society that is willing to sacrifice children of all colors to ensure that racial equality is never realized in the nation. This segment has a champion in Piyush “Bobby” Jindal.

This article originally published in the July 9, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.