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… …
IOKIYAR, “Charity” & Other Funding EditionPost + Comments (28)
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…
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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…
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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.
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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.).
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“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.”…
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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.”…
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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.
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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.
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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.”