The NYTimes reports the current Republican twist on doing well by doing “good”:
Louisiana’s biggest corporate players, many with long agendas before the state government, are restricted in making campaign contributions to Gov. Bobby Jindal. But they can give whatever they like to the foundation set up by his wife months after he took office…
__
Mrs. Jindal has won praise — and frequent positive newspaper coverage — as she travels Louisiana passing out free equipment to schools, many in lower-income areas. Her foundation spends almost all of the money it takes in to buy high-tech whiteboards installed so far in 50 schools.
__
A spokesman for the governor said he had not personally intervened to help any of the charity’s corporate donors advance their agendas before the state government. Any suggestion that the foundation is a way to lobby the governor or thank him for a past action is ridiculous, Mr. Jindal’s press secretary said.
__
“It is a completely nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization created by the first lady, who as an engineer and the mother of three children, has a passion for helping our young people learn science and math,” said Kyle Plotkin, the press secretary. “Anything other than this reality has plainly been dreamed up by partisan hacks living in a fantasy land.”
__
Dow Chemical, which has pledged $100,000 to the foundation, is the largest petrochemical company in Louisiana and has had numerous interactions with state officials during the Jindal administration, including an investigation into a July 2009 spill at its St. Charles Parish plant that forced the evacuation of area homes. The state in December 2009 proposed fining the company and its Union Carbide subsidiary for allowing the release of a toxic pollutant and failing to quickly notify state authorities of the leak, but so far no fine has been assessed.
__
Alon USA, an Israeli oil company that has pledged $250,000 to the Jindal Foundation, last year sought permit changes that would allow it to discharge more pollutants at its Krotz Springs refinery. In 2009, state environmental officials also eased requirements for the company to check for spills of oil, ammonia or other contaminants in waterways to twice a month, instead of twice a week, records show…
__
Several of the charity’s major donors are large state contractors, like Acadian Ambulance, or D&J Construction, which alone has received $67.6 million in contracts since 2009, mostly for highways, said a separate report on the foundation being issued this week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Both companies have pledged at least $10,000 to the foundation…
__
The Jindal Foundation, started in July 2008, has spent about $1 million and installed about 170 interactive whiteboards that Mrs. Jindal, trained as a chemical engineer, calls “revolutionized chalkboards for the 21st century,” at a cost of around $6,000 per classroom, including training, about 30 handheld devices for students and a teacher’s laptop.
__
The devices, which allow teachers to download multimedia lesson plans to help teach math or science, are made by a British company, Promethean, and installed by its Louisiana distributor, AXI Education. Other state and federal funds — and donations — have paid for installation of about 13,000 of the whiteboards at schools across the state, said Dale Viola, AXI’s president.
‘Free’, ‘high-tech’ mathnscience devices from “a completely nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization created by… an engineer and the mother of three children” — what kind of Scrooge could deny such largesse to poor kids? Whether such expensive single-use gadgets might be the best use of scarce funding or limited classroom hours… well, how many people complained about Barbara Bush dedicating Katrina charity funds to purchasing educational materials from her son Neil’s Ignite! corporation? The media-friendly PR takeaway is: Noble rich people sharing the largesse!
It’s certainly a prettier visual than the old-fashioned R-Corporate shenanigans Dana Milbanks reports in the Washington Post on “Wednesday’s hearing of the House defense appropriations subcommittee“:
… In his opening statement, [Defense Secretary] Gates fervently appealed for funds requested by Gen. David Petraeus for equipment to protect troops in Afghanistan. The money has been held up because it would come from a project benefiting a major contributor to the committee chairman, Bill Young (R-Fla.).
__
“Mr. Chairman, our troops need this force-protection equipment, and they need it now,” Gates pleaded. “Every day that goes by without this equipment, the lives of our troops are at greater risk.” He urged action “today” on the funds, admonishing: “We should not put American lives at risk to protect specific programs or contractors.”…
__
The first committee member to question Gates, Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.), began with a request that the secretary “forgive me for being a little bit parochial in my questions.” He was upset that a big Pentagon contract had gone to Boeing, and not to a rival that employed “people along America’s Gulf Coast.”…
__
Gates couldn’t get the lawmakers to agree to his urgent – and modest – request to shift $1.2 billion in Pentagon funds to protect soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan. He asked for the money a month ago, but Young’s committee hadn’t acted.
__
Why? Because Young objects to the money being taken away from the Army’s Humvee program. Never mind that the Army has more Humvees than it wants. They are manufactured by AM General – which happens to be Young’s third-largest campaign contributor. Its executives have funneled him more than $80,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
__
Gates told Young in blunt terms that his delay was putting lives at risk, but the gentleman from AM General was unmoved. “We would like to analyze with you in some detail another source of that funding,” he replied, suggesting they talk more about a “helpful way to approach this.”
Xenocrates
Nothing to see here, just move along. In other news, 2+2=5…the absolute shamelessness of the GOP continues unabated. They are all frauds and charlatans, I am beginning to think.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Translation: Say, that’s a nice Army you’ve got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.
Zifnab
Do we have any more of that “heating oil for impoverished people” money left?
Villago Delenda Est
This is business as usual for the Department of Pork.
Actual military requirements are secondary to pork for congresscritters of both parties.
Weapons projects are planned to have subcontractors in as many congressional districts as possible in order to make them “unkillable” in congress.
liberty60
@Villago Delenda Est:
This “foundation” is as bad as they come, and yes, lets go ahead and heap as much outrage as we can on this, but putting too much emphasis on it being a Republican phenomenon will only cause it to be tossed aside once the “Charlie Rangel/ Chris Dodd” chorus starts up.
If I were to draw conclusions from it, I would lay it at the feet of the voracious all-consuming demand for money that drives politics. If you want to run for President, you have raise something like a million dollars a day, or something equally obscene- where does an honest man get that kind of money?
cat48
OT Gov Hosni Koch–Walker is once again threatening the IL Senators with another deadline for layoffs if they’re not back by tomorrow. He looks weaker every time they just ignore him. They’ll say whatever dude! I adore this story b/c I didn’t think the Dems would hold out nor the large protests continue. Just awesome.
freelancer
I don’t think there’s a bigger Clown causus than the House GOP. If anybody missed this segment on Maddow last night, it makes you want to renounce your citizenship, these “leaders” are that embarrassing.
Steeplejack
__
I saw this in the Times earlier today and had two questions, which I wish the Times had followed up on or will follow up on in the future:
1. How much have these companies donated to other worthy education-related charities in Louisiana, in comparison to the Jindal-centric one?
2. Is there an example of a previous politician-related charity in Louisiana, and did its contributions mysteriously dry up after the politician left office? (Footnote: It won’t happen, but I would love for the Times to revisit this after Jindal leaves office and see whether his wife’s charity remains a robust, going concern.)
David Koch
Support the
contributorsTroopsMarkJ
But I bet Rep Young has a “Support our Troops” sticker on his automobile. Ergo, he supports our troops, despite the appearance that he’s willing to let some of them die in order to secure funding for a campaign contributor.
Zifnab
Also,
Didn’t former Alabama Governor Don Don Siegelman go to jail for exactly this kind of shit?
batgirl
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, the military is the biggest jobs “welfare” program run by our government and both parties are responsible.
Zifnab
@liberty60:
You’ve got a pool of 300 million potential donors. And, frankly, if you can’t achieve a certain degree of nationwide appeal you’re not going to get elected anyway.
Obama showed that he could raise massive amounts of cash from both business and individual, donors large and small. The internet has made fund raising far easier than it was fifteen or twenty years ago. If you’ve got the party’s nomination, raising $1 mil / day isn’t as hard as you would think.
basement cat
So that’s why I saw all those ads for Undercover Millionaire on the teevee… the GOP is rolling out its jobs strategy!
Nick
@freelancer:
Is it just me or is this exactly what liberals want Democrats to do? Cause it works.
Frank
It’s sound like someone has watched “Evita” one too many times!
freelancer
@Nick:
This makes zero sense as written.
Intercalation
@freelancer: And not a single mention of “the bully pulpit”. Are you okay, Nick?
kdaug
I feel love
Primigenius
“High-tech whiteboards.” I’m still hyperventilating from this one. Because ‘blackboards” are so… 19th century.
birthmarker
@Zifnab: But he was a dem. ‘Nuff said.
I didn’t read any of the links to this so… Does Mrs. Gov. J. get paid by the foundation for her role?
I know that’s what has been done in Congress. The wife is the fundraiser for the foundation, pockets 35% of the take, then the foundation gives to other like minded (conservative) charities. BTW, who sells the white boards? I believe they are pretty pricey.
Mr. Poppinfresh
“The state in December 2009 proposed fining the company and its Union Carbide subsidiary for allowing the release of a toxic pollutant and failing to quickly notify state authorities of the leak, but so far no fine has been assessed.”
I’m sure the good people of Bhopal are familiar with this song and dance.
AhabTRuler
@Mr. Poppinfresh: Every once in awhile I try to drop this link, which is sorta related to that subject.
Silver
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
Um, buddy, we’re in America. There are no good brown people on the planet, especially not a bunch of ragheads who let kids starve and worship cows and shit.
Get with the program, moran.
(Can you tell I’ve been studying for my citizenship test? I’m going to pass with flying colors!)
trollhattan
@basement cat:
Gaaah, I watched something (the Oscars(tm)?) recently during which they were flogging that…thing and wondered whether it wasn’t an RNC production to prove that, see, it takes Rich People(c) to fix poverty, not meddlesome incompetent gummint.
Fled Baton Rouge
The only thing worse than Jindal’s pandering and creative fundraising schemes is the thought that somehow a janky electronic whiteboard will fix what’s wrong with Louisiana’s apathetic culture. Poor people there have been screwed so long and so hard that they have no fight left. Rich fat white guys own everything, and black churches fleece whatever is left over. Seriously – read the Advocate’s Opinion section some day – it’ll blow your mind.
From the only city between the coasts where I-10 is dumb enough to go down to one lane _on purpose_…
Jastrebljanski
@birthmarker:
Times says Mrs. J. and the rest of the staff are all volunteers. The treasurer of the charity is the gov’s top fundraiser for $112,500 a year. My guess is that AXI Education, the Louisiana distributor of the whiteboards, turns out to be somebody’s Neil Bush–that’s who’s making the money.
Pococurante
I didn’t see in the Jindal story that there is actually undue influence. At best one can infer “thankful donor” syndrome.
Jindal is governor in an energy state. By philosophy and political reality alone he is already inclined to make high dollar deals with Big Energy entities. He raises enough economic and political capital alone from such deals as to make the charity thing simply a sideline, not an actual influencer of deals.