Old White Men at the Louisiana Family Forum Continue to Obsess Over Screwing Gays ⁶

Last week, a House committee effectively killed Austin Badon’s HB 85 , which would have prevented State public employers from firing employees only on the basis of sexual orientation. Currently, Louisiana has some of the worst, most bigoted, and most discriminatory laws against gays, lesbians, and transgendered Americans in the entire country. From The Times-Picayune:

The bill, which would have applied to only employment with the state government, would have provided means for employees who believe they had been discriminated against to appeal to the state Civil Service Commission or file suit.

Those complaints would have been handled in the same way the state currently handles discrimination based on political beliefs, sex or race. That type of discrimination is banned under the state Constitution.

Immediately after he was elected as Governor, Bobby Jindal rescinded an executive order that prohibited discrimination against gay and lesbian state employees. And a few weeks ago, Representative Alan Seabaugh introduced legislation that would effectively prevent wrongfully terminated gay and lesbian employees from accessing the courts. Quoting:

The Shreveport Republican is sponsoring House Bill 402, which a prominent Louisiana LGBT advocacy group characterizes as “a stealth attempt” to ensure that employment protections for LGBT workers in Louisiana do not become the law of this land. The bill even goes so far as to supersede local non-discrimination laws.

Presented as an attempt to unclog the state court system of all those pesky frivolous lawsuits brought by gay people who are fired due to their unimpeachable flair for interior design, Seabaugh’s bill plays from the GOP “voter fraud” playbook: that is, it addresses a “problem” that doesn’t exist because the rep’s real aim is to suppress something he doesn’t like. Black people voting for Democrats, gays and lesbians having employment protections … whatever. As Matthew Patterson, legislative co-coordinator of Equality Louisiana, points out, “State courts do not face an excessive number of frivolous employment discrimination suits, and they are capable of determining which suits have merit.”

“I can’t get a damn thing done because of all these frivolous gay lawsuits!” said no judge ever.

Where Seabaugh’s bill goes from nakedly discriminatory against our gay neighbors and family members and trips headlong into jackbooted bull crappery is its override of local anti-discrimination laws. Several municipalities in the state have such laws on their books, but if Seabaugh’s “I’m secretly gay therefore I’m publicly anti-gay” bill becomes law it would prevent citizens in those jurisdictions from seeking the employment protections afforded them by their own communities.

In simple terms, Bobby Jindal wants to reserve his right to fire anyone and everyone- including career, classified civil servants- merely for being gay, and Seabaugh wants to ensure these decisions are kept out of the court, preventing people from accessing their duly-earned benefits and rights.

Jindal, as some may recall, recently railed against the national Republican Party as “the stupid party” and called for more inclusion and diversity. But, you see, Governor Jindal and his allies in the Louisiana Family Forum desperately want to retain the ability to fire good and decent Americans and Louisiana public servants because of their sexual orientation. It may sound flippant or snarky, but the truth is: The old white men who run the Louisiana Family Forum are obsessed with screwing over gays. Maybe there are some latent, repressed issues at play, but regardless, it is definitively bigoted and increasingly bizarre.

Take, for example, the testimony of LFF employee Dale Hoffpauir (hat tip to Bob Mann):

First, Dale Hoffpauir is an idiot. Let’s make that clear. He claims that he had a gay black friend who is now married to a woman, and the punchline to this sad and doomed story is, “And yet, he is still an African-American.”

You get it? His gay friend got cured by marrying a lady, obviously proving that it was all just a choice for him, whereas being African-American is, obviously, not a choice. Lord knows, once a gay man or a lesbian woman decides to marry someone of the opposite sex, their sexuality is immediately reprogrammed.

But secondly and perhaps more importantly, Dale Hoffpauir is in absolutely no position to lecture anyone else about ethics or morality. His employer, the Louisiana Family Forum, has engaged in a series of ethically questionable activities and appears to have illegally and improperly funded its advocacy arm- the Louisiana Family Forum Action- through tax-deductible donations.

Also, there’s this:

I understand that many sincere people of faith believe that homosexuality is an abomination and a sin, and as stupid and myopic and cognitively dissonant I may find these beliefs, I respect their right to practice their own religion. But for the last few years, Bobby Jindal and the old white guys at the Louisiana Family Forum have attempted to actively and pro-actively discriminate against gay and lesbian Americans, through official state action.

It’s become an obsession. If the Louisiana Family Forum weren’t also advocating against science, it’d be easy to assume that the organization’s entire raison d’etre is the promotion of homophobic policies.

In America, it’s perfectly fine for your religion to be discriminatory. Really. It’s OK. Whatever. Folks don’t have to join your club. But it’s not OK and it never has been OK for the government to actively or even passively discriminate against people simply because of who they are. If your faith tells you that God will punish homosexuals by sending them all to burn in eternal hell, don’t worry: No one is going to force you to relinquish that belief. I know several devout Christians who spend an inordinate amount of their time attempting to argue and justify their beliefs about how and why homosexuality is sinful; they sometimes seem more consumed by fighting this “culture war” than in actually practicing their religion.

Here’s what I know and believe: Fifty or sixty years from now, when I’m dead and gone, I sure hope that people don’t remember me as someone who stood against equality and fairness; I hope that I can spend my remaining time here on earth promoting shared human dignity, the unbelievable potential of knowledge, and the importance of real and substantive empathy. I’ll try my best, but even if I don’t succeed totally, I’m absolutely certain that history will not be kind to those currently standing in the way.

Louisiana College President Joe Aguillard Accused of Fraud, Misappropriation, Criminal Misrepresentation ³

According to an independent investigation conducted by Kinney, Ellinghausen, Richard & DeShazo, a New Orleans-based law firm, Louisiana College President Joe Aguillard “engaged in numerous improprieties and falsities in his representations not only to school donors, but to the (LC) Board of Trustees.” The report, which was published by The Town Talk, reveals that Aguillard has repeatedly and consistently misled the LC Board of Trustees on the purpose of donations pledged by Edgar Cason and the Cason Foundation and that Aguillard misappropriated at least $60,000, including $2,000 for a pair of suits. Quoting from The Town Talk (bold mine):

The firm was hired by Gene Lee, chairman of the LC Board of Trustees, in the wake of whistleblower complaints filed against Aguillard by LC Vice Presidents Charles L. “Chuck” Quarles and Timothy “Tim” Johnson. Copies of the law firm’s report to the trustees, dated March 17, were obtained by The Town Talk.

….

“I am no attorney and I do not claim to have any expertise in federal or state law,” Quarles wrote in his complaint. “However, I fear the actions of the President are not only unethical, but also illegal. In my opinion, they constitute criminal misrepresentation, misappropriation and fraud.”

Earlier today, former LC Professor Rondall Reynoso reported that Louisiana College lost “the largest donor in college history due to the unethical behavior of Joe Aguillard.” Reynoso published a letter from the donor to the Board of Trustees, much of which mirrors the allegations leveled in the independent investigation report. Quoting (bold mine):

We deeply regret that we must now discontinue that support due to actions of President Aguillard which we believe to be unethical and potentially illegal. We disapprove of his use of Caskey funds for LC Tanzania without our permission and consider this to be misappropriation. We have suspected for several months that Dr. Aguillard has been misleading others about our statements and commitments. We believe that Dr. Aguillard has told others about our statements and commitments. We believe that Dr. Aguillard has told others about pledges to the school which we never made. We thought that we could stop the deception by choosing to communicate with Dr. Aguillard in writing but we have reason to believe that Dr. Aguillard has distorted even our written statements.

Although Reynoso redacted the name of the donor, both The Town Talk and the independent investigation report reveal the donor to be Edgar Cason of Coushatta, Louisiana. Cason is the owner of Fairview Trucking and at least 68 acres in the heart of the Haynesville Shale, land that, according to experts, yields more than $1 million a month for Chesapeake Energy. See 92 So.3d 436 (La. App. 2 Cir. 4/11/12).

During the last two and a half years, Cason donated approximately $5 million to Louisiana College with specific instructions for the funds to be used exclusively for the development of the Caskey School of Divinity. According to Reynoso and others, Cason had contemplated eventually donating as much as $60 million to Louisiana College. The independent investigation report reveals that Joe Aguillard repeatedly deceived the Board of Trustees about the purpose and intent of Cason’s donations and pledges, essentially validating everything alleged in Cason’s letter.

Against Cason’s repeated and specific instructions, Aguillard spent approximately $60,000 on expenses related to a trip to Tanzania, where he hoped to build a high school, a project he titled “LC Tanzania.” During a trip to Tanzania in October of 2011, Aguillard spent at least $2,000 of Cason’s donations on two suits, apparently for himself.

The report also reveals that Aguillard repeatedly claimed that a donor, presumably the Casons, had pledged $10 million to pay for the construction of a dual-purpose law school and divinity school building. From the report (bold mine):

Furthermore, there is no evidence to support Dr. Aguillard’s claim that the Casons had donated a $10 million gift in the form of the building to concurrently house the Divinity and Law School on the main campus. Dr. Aguillard’s statement to this fact is in actuality conclusively false. In fact, Edgar Cason made it abundantly clear on several occasions that he had no interest in investing in “brick and mortar.” These statements should have put him on notice that the Cason Foundation was not and would not be contributing for the construction of a new campus building. However, Dr. Aguillard made several statements to the Board of Trustees that this money had been offered to the College for the purpose of a new campus building. During the December 4, 2012 meeting of the Board, Dr. Aguillard made no attempt to correct Mr. Gilbert Little’s presentation concerning the supposed existence of these funds. He later claimed that he simply forgot to tell Mr. Little that these funds were actually not available. It was only through the intervention of Dr. Quarles that the Board was prevented from making a decision.

Dr. Aguillard not only made material representations to the Board of Trustees, but he also misappropriated almost $60,000 from the Cason Foundation to fund LC Tanzania. This was done in spite of specific instructions from Mr. Cason that he had no desire to fund this project. After being confronted about this misappropriation, Dr. Aguillard attempted to mislead his previous action by seeking the Cason’s approval of an undated statement to approve the use of funds for LC Tanzania. Understandably, Mr. Cason refused to sign this statement as he was not willing, and had never been willing to fund this project.

Aguillard, it’s worth noting, refused to be interviewed by the independent investigators, even though they were hired by Gene Lee, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and the Compliance Officer for LC’s Whistleblower Policy. For his part, Aguillard claims that he has already been exonerated by a “special committee” of allegedly hand-selected trustees, including, among others, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

(As a side note: If Tony Perkins was aware of these detailed accusations concerning criminal misrepresentation, misappropriation, and fraud and decided to dismiss them, then this story is going national, and Perkins has some explaining to do).

As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been an outspoken critic of Joe Aguillard for years. I’ve documented, on numerous occasions, the ways in which he has systematically eviscerated the reputation and credibility of Louisiana College. Last year, in late March, I called on him to resign or be fired. I renew that call, though, now, to be honest, it would seem more appropriate for him to be fired, to not even give him the “dignity” of resigning on his own terms, to treat him the same way that he has treated anyone and everyone who has dared to disagree with him. That’d restore at least some balance back to the universe.

The Discovery Institute: Bobby Jindal Doesn’t Understand “Creationism” or the Law ^Reply

Ten days ago, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, in responding to a question about teaching creationism in public school classrooms, publicly confirmed what many of us have been saying for years (skip to 9:45): The true purpose of the controversial Louisiana Science Education Act is to provide a mechanism by which public schools may teach creationism and “intelligent design” as valid science. As I mentioned at the time, by explicitly linking the teaching of creationism and intelligent design with the Louisiana Science Education Act, Bobby Jindal unwittingly exposed the law as facially unconstitutional and violative of the Establishment Clause.

Jindal’s remarks, not surprisingly, sent off alarms at the Discovery Institute, a creationist lobbying organization that touts the Louisiana Science Education Act as one of its signature legislative accomplishments. Indeed, the LSEA was based, in large part, off of the Discovery Institute’s “model statute.” The blog Sensuous Curmudgeon has been tracking this from the very beginning, and they cut right to the chase. Quoting (bold mine):

The LSEA is the Discovery Institute’s crown jewel, so this admission by Jindal is one of the biggest public relations crises they’ve ever faced. Everyone has always known the real purpose of the LSEA (that’s why it was supported by all those Louisiana legislators who don’t know the difference between science and Voodoo), but the Discoveroids and their useful idiots have always claimed that the law is all about teaching science and it has nothing to do with creationism. Now, to the horror of the Discoveroids, Jindal has flat-out admitted that the law permits teaching creationism.

In response to Jindal’s comments connecting the teaching of creationism to the LSEA, the Discovery Institute published a baffling and hastily concocted blog post titled “Gotcha! Governor Jindal Avoids Lawyering on TV.” According to the Discovery Institute, when Bobby Jindal was speaking about the intent and purpose of a law that he personally signed, a law that his administration has defended in two separate Senate Education Committee meetings, he wasn’t speaking as the Governor, the man responsible for signing, enacting, and enforcing this law; according to the Discovery Institute, Bobby Jindal was speaking personally, as a politician.

Jindal may be an Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar who turned down the opportunity to attend Yale Law School and who has spent the last fifteen years of his life at the highest levels of state and federal government, and yes, Jindal may have served two terms as a United States Congressman in the House of Representatives, which automatically qualifies him as one of the most powerful lawmakers in the country. But according to the Discovery Institute, Bobby Jindal’s comments about the intent of the law he signed shouldn’t be taken seriously, because, well, Bobby Jindal isn’t a lawyer. Quoting from the Discovery Institute (bold mine):

Like the critics of the LSEA, Governor Jindal is not a lawyer. He delivers no legal memo. However, unlike the critics of the LSEA, Governor Jindal is a Rhodes Scholar with a degree in biology, an experienced politician who knows what his role is and when to stick to it.

….

Teaching actual creationism in public schools is not constitutionally acceptable, if that’s even what he meant. It seems more likely that Jindal, like a lot of other people, used the term “creationism” imprecisely.

….

In brief, Jindal was speaking as a politician with an agenda, not as an interpreter of presently existing law.

I imagine the Discovery Institute thought they were doing Jindal a favor– covering for him– by suggesting that he had no idea what he was talking about, but instead, they managed to publish one of the most brutal (and patronizing) critiques ever written about Bobby Jindal, a direct refutation of the image that Jindal has spent nearly two decades attempting to cultivate– Jindal as the brilliant policy wonk, the wunderkind who is fluent and exhaustively informed on every single issue, encyclopedic and authoritative.

According to the Discovery Institute, Bobby Jindal doesn’t know what “creationism” means, and he doesn’t know the law. As vehemently as I disagree with Bobby Jindal on this and many other issues, I’m quite certain: He fully understands what creationism and intelligent design are, and he knows exactly what his law does. The only reason the Discovery Institute is in damage control mode is because they are aware Jindal admitted, openly and perhaps unintentionally, that the Louisiana Science Education Act is unconstitutional. Quoting again:

The TV interview (with Jindal) is not legislative history. It can’t be used by courts to construct the legislative intent behind the statute, for good or bad. Nor does it reveal how the law is actually being implemented.

Without question, the remarks of the Governor who signed the law and is responsible for implementing the law can be used by the courts. Sure, Jindal’s remarks may not speak to legislative history or legislative intent; they’re actually far more important: They indicate how he seeks to use the law. (I don’t know who the Discovery Institute thinks they’re fooling).

The Discovery Institute’s effectiveness relies entirely on its capacity for plausible deniability: They can’t explicitly promote a creationism law, because that’s unconstitutional. As they learned in 2005 in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decision, they also can’t explicitly promote “intelligent design,” because that’s also unconstitutional. So, the Discovery Institute adapted, pardon the pun. Their model statute doesn’t explicitly promote creationism or intelligent design; it even contains a provision about how the law should not be construed to “promote any religious doctrine” or “discriminate” against religious beliefs, a provision that has been grossly misread by Jindal apologists like LSUS Professor Jeff Sadow, who, in a recent comment on NOLA.com, accused critics of never reading the LSEA and then incorrectly claimed that the LSEA actually prohibits the teaching of religion as science. To be clear, the LSEA was designed to facilitate the teaching of religion as science.

Just ask the guy who enacted it.

Bobby Jindal: Let’s Teach Them Creationism. ³

Today, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal finally admitted, for the very first time, that the controversial Louisiana Science Education Act, which he signed into law during his first year in office, was designed and intended to allow public schools the ability to teach creationism as legitimate scientific theory.

Jindal made his comments to NBC News correspondent Hoda Kotb, during tail end of an interview at the Education Nation conference in New Orleans. Kotb asked Jindal, “Should creationism be taught in school?”

Jindal attempted to dodge the question, pivoting to the importance of science education and ensuring Louisiana students were nationally and internationally competitive. “If you’re asking about what should be taught in private schools, in Catholic schools, in independent schools,” Jindal said, “I think parents can make the decisions about where they send their kids to school, about what kinds of values their kids are taught.” Of course, that wasn’t what Kotb was asking.

“So you don’t think that.. so, not in public schools? You don’t think creationism should be taught in public schools?”

Since NBC News hasn’t yet provided an official transcript of Jindal’s remarks, I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing them (bold mine):

Jindal: “We have what’s called the Science Education Act, that says if a teacher wants to supplement those materials, if the school board’s OK with that, if the State school board’s OK with that, they can supplement those materials.

“Bottom line, at the end of the day, we want our kids to be exposed to the best facts. Let’s teach them about the Big Bang theory. Let’s teach them about evolution. Let’s teach them….

“I’ve got no problem if a school board, a local school board, says we want to teach our kids about creationism, that some people have these beliefs as well.

“Let’s teach them about intelligent design.

“I think teach them the best science.

“Let them, give them the tools where they can make up their own mind, not only in science but as they learn and teach about other controversial issues, whether it’s global warming or whether it’s…”

Kotb: “Climate change…”

Jindal: “Climate change or these other issues. What are we scared of?

“Let’s teach our kids the best facts and information that’s out there. Let’s teach them what people believe and let them debate and learn that.

“We shouldn’t be afraid of exposing our kids to more information, more knowledge. Give them critical thinking skills, and as adults they’ll be able to make their own and best decisions.”

The problem with politicians like Bobby Jindal: Too often, their mouths work faster than their brains. In the span of only thirty seconds of frenetic blathering, Bobby Jindal unwittingly exposed the LSEA as an unconstitutional law respecting the establishment of religion. He took the bait- hook, line, and sinker.

You see, the Louisiana Science Education Act relies on an elaborate legal trick. In its first incarnation as the Louisiana Education Freedom Act, the language was explicitly pro-creationist. In fact, its sponsor, State Senator Ben Nevers, said that the bill was about ensuring that “scientific data related to creationism be taught;” Senator Nevers even admitted that he filed the bill at the request of the right-wing religious organization, the Louisiana Family Forum. But there was one major problem: The courts, including the United State Supreme Court, have repeatedly and consistently declared unconstitutional laws that mandate or encourage the teaching of creationism in public school science classrooms.

State Senator Nevers and the Louisiana Family Forum, likely at the urging of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based creationist organization, had to drop any and all references to creationism if they wanted to stand any chance against a constitutional challenge. So, Senator Nevers refiled and renumbered the bill, and borrowing from the Discovery Institute’s model statute, he even included a cute provision about how the law could not establish religion, something, of course, that is already illegal.

The truth is, of course, that the Louisiana Science Education Act is nothing more than a charade; its purpose and intentions are self-evident: The law has nothing to do with “critical thinking;” it’s about ensuring New Earth Creationists have the authority and the ability to indoctrinate public school children; it’s about equivocating a narrowly-held religious belief with empirically-based scientific theory.

That’s why Jindal screwed up: He admitted it. Sure, it was an open secret, but there is a damn good reason that the law was rewritten and scrubbed of any mention of “creationism.” The Discovery Institute, as sneaky and pernicious as I may find them to be, is at least savvy enough to realize that creationism in the classroom is unconstitutional.

In fact, one of their lawyers, Casey Luskin, wrote a lengthy article for the Liberty University Law Review titled “Zeal for Darwin’s House Consumes Them: How Supporters of Evolution Encourage Violations of the Establishment Clause.” Luskin argues, bafflingly, that even if creation “science” and “intelligent design” aren’t actually grounded in empirical, evidenced-based scientific theory, those who critique the scientific validity of creationism and intelligent design in public schools are in violation of the Establishment Clause’s prohibition against “inhibiting religion.”

Quoting:

Courts have consistently held that advocating creationism in public schools is unconstitutional. In this regard, this present author agrees with courts that there are certain core tenets of creationism—namely its adherence to supernatural or divine forces—which make it an unscientific and untestable religious viewpoint that cannot be constitutionally advocated in public schools. That having been said, there is a glaring asymmetry in the law when courts hold on the one hand that creationism cannot be advocated in public schools because it is not science, but on the other hand that it can be disparaged as “scientifically . . . nonsense,” also because it is not science.

Luskin, like most of those employed by the Discovery Institute, claims that he is not a New Earth Creationist, but he argues that creationists should be allowed to have their cake and eat it too. Science teachers should present Christian creation mythology as “alternative” scientific theory, but if they dare to use the scientific method to “critique” creationism, they’re “inhibiting religion” and violating the First Amendment.

Again, the Louisiana Science Education Act has nothing to do with “critical thinking;” it’s actually about protecting the sanctity of a fundamentally unscientific and definitively religious belief.

With all due respect to those who believe in New Earth Creationism as an article of faith, if creationism is introduced in the science classroom and legitimately and thoroughly “critiqued,” it’s immediately invalidated and discarded. Obviously, that’s not what supporters of the LSEA intend. They’d rather their religion be introduced, uncritically, in order to poke holes in science, to reinforce, validate, and reassure the fundamentalist religious beliefs instilled in young, impressionable children by their fundamentalist religious parents, to stifle a meaningful discussion on things that challenge the validity of evangelical Protestantism.

Bobby Jindal wasn’t supposed to say “creationism.” He was only supposed to say “intelligent design.” The constitutionality of the LSEA is constructed, after all, on semantic dishonesty– neologisms and code language. By even casually suggesting that the State of Louisiana should be teaching “creationism,” as provided under the LSEA, Jindal tears down his own rhetorical house of cards.

In a way, I get it. Jindal’s terrified of these white evangelical Protestants, a group blamed for his loss in the 2003 gubernatorial election. He’s spent much of his five years as Governor kowtowing to them, choppering in every other Sunday to one of their church services in the middle of Nowhere, Louisiana. It may be hard to believe, but Bobby Jindal is still only 41 years old. He’s a young Governor whose political career has been determined by old, white, predominantly rural, evangelical Protestant men. After losing the election in 2003, The American Spectator reported:

“If there was a racist backlash against Jindal anywhere, it would be in north Louisiana, in Duke country,” Louisiana political analyst John Maginnis told Rod Dreher of National Review Online after the race.

To some extent, Blanco laid the groundwork for a such a backlash herself. She dusted off her maiden name and campaigned as Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Voters encountered the full name on the ballot, where her opponent was listed as “Bobby” Jindal, complete with quotation marks (Jindal’s given name is Piyush). Appealing to tribal instincts in the only state where Frenchness is still considered a virtue, Blanco’s packaging of herself was designed to make it clear who had the deeper roots in Cajun country.

Such tapping of identity politics for ethnic whites is nothing particularly unusual or scandalous. The shamrock incorporated into Irish-American candidates’ names is a staple of local politics across much of the Midwest and Northeast. It would be unfair to suggest that Blanco ran a racist campaign. At the same time, isn’t it worth noting that the usual suspects, to whom unfairness rarely gives pause, haven’t so much as raised an eyebrow?

But it’s time for him to become an adult in this conversation. He’s an Ivy League educated Rhodes Scholar with a degree in Biology. His pandering on creationism is cowardly and intellectually, morally, and ethically dishonest. And I get the impression that he knows it: In his interview with NBC, it was revealing that he attempted to turn the question about creationism in the classroom to the rights of private schools. The LSEA embarrasses Bobby Jindal; it tarnishes his image; it forces him completely off-message. He’s the guy who dared to tell his fellow Republicans to stop being the stupid party, and his own party in Louisiana, the one he, ostensibly, leads, keeps sticking him with stupid. For some reason, perhaps it’s because he’s still young and ambitious and intimidated, Bobby Jindal feels more at ease with lecturing the national Republican Party about their stupidity than confronting people like Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum, who have held hostage the State of Louisiana with their conspiratorial, hateful, and religiously intolerant social agenda.

One final note: In ancient China, during the Zhou Dynasty, the writer Xu Zheng essentially “invented” the creation myth of Pangu. Quoting from Wikipedia:

In the beginning there was nothing in the universe except a formless chaos. However this chaos coalesced into a cosmic egg for about 18,000 years. Within it, the perfectly opposed principles of Yin and Yang became balanced and Pangu emerged (or woke up) from the egg. Pangu is usually depicted as a primitive, hairy giant with horns on his head and clad in furs. Pangu set about the task of creating the world: he separated Yin from Yang with a swing of his giant axe, creating the Earth (murky Yin) and the Sky (clear Yang). To keep them separated, Pangu stood between them and pushed up the Sky. This task took 18,000 years; with each day the sky grew ten feet (3 meters) higher, the Earth ten feet wider, and Pangu ten feet taller. In some versions of the story, Pangu is aided in this task by the four most prominent beasts, namely the Turtle, the Qilin, the Phoenix, and the Dragon.

After the 18,000 years had elapsed, Pangu was laid to rest. His breath became the wind, mist and clouds; his voice the thunder; left eye the sun and right eye the moon; his head became the mountains and extremes of the world; his blood formed rivers; his muscles the fertile lands; his facial hair, the stars and milky way; his fur the bushes and forests; his bones the valuable minerals; his bone marrows sacred diamonds; his sweat fell as rain; and the fleas on his fur carried by the wind became the fish and animals throughout the land. Nüwa the Goddess then used the mud of the water bed to form the shape of humans. These humans were very smart since they were individually crafted. Nüwa then became bored of individually making every human so she started putting a rope in the water bed and letting the drops of mud that fell from it become new humans. These small drops became new humans, not as smart as the first.

Of course, this is all absurd and silly, and even at the time, the Chinese knew it was just a myth: A cosmic egg that gestated for 18,000 years and then became the entire universe?

Guess what?

It’s just as scientifically valid as New Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design.

Jindal’s Unconstitutional “Tim Tebow” Law Proves Louisiana Legislature Cares More About Football Than Education ⁵

In many parts of Texas, high school football isn’t simply a tradition; it’s a religion, a way of life, and a mega-million dollar industry. It’s been the subject of bestselling novels, movies, and at least one hit network television show, Friday Night Lights, based on the novel of the same name. Last year, a high school in Allen, Texas made international headlines after opening a $60 football stadium, a decision that perfectly epitomizes the enormous imbalances in public education funding and financing. When the stadium in Allen was under construction, Texas Governor Rick Perry, along with the state legislature, cut more than $5 billion from public education.

Although Louisiana may not be known for high school football extravagance, football is still a religion for many of us; our NFL team, after all, is the Saints. In fact, for the fourth year in a row, more professional football players (per capita) hail from Louisiana than from any other state. Louisiana high school football may not be as glamorous or as well-funded as our Texan neighbors, but we know how to cultivate talent. And although Louisiana high school football games aren’t played in mega-million dollar stadiums, they still generate significant revenue.

Last year, when Governor Bobby Jindal swept through his education “reform” initiative, which included the most expansive school voucher program in the country, I imagined, perhaps cynically, that financially struggling private schools would be likely to exploit the program and offer a disproportionate number of vouchers to star athletes attending academically struggling public schools.

Take, for example, Evangel Christian Academy in Shreveport, a football powerhouse. During the last twenty years, Evangel has won a dozen high school football championships, a fact made even more impressive when you consider its high school opened in 1990. But in those twenty-three years, Evangel, despite its prowess on the football field, has only graduated two National Merit Scholars. (There were two in my graduating class at a public high school in Alexandria, at least four the year before. In fact, my Louisiana public high school even had a National Merit Scholar in its very first year).

Now, to be fair, I have no way of knowing whether or not Evangel Christian Academy is using the voucher program as a way of recruiting athletes to play for its football team. And unfortunately, neither does Superintendent John White or anyone else in charge, because the State of Louisiana doesn’t actually oversee which students are approved or denied for vouchers; the school does. Currently, there is no way to demonstrate that a private school is exploiting the voucher program to disproportionately recruit star athletes (even when they claim a “lottery” selection process; a lottery, after all, can always be rigged). But we do know this (bold mine):

A mother named Trailais Tillman signed up her son, Aidan, to receive a voucher. Aiden was zoned to go to a public school that is failing. She was thrilled when the lottery resulted in her son receiving a school voucher for a private school called Evangel Christian Academy.

There was a big problem, though. Aiden has autism. Evangel Christian Academy told Trailais Tillman that the school does not have the services that he needs. This means that even through Aiden was selected to receive a school voucher he cannot accept it.

Again, I hate to sound cynical, but Aiden is better off at a public school that is legally obligated to provide him with individualized special education. Either way, his story perfectly demonstrates the problem with Jindal’s voucher program– trapping the most vulnerable students into struggling schools and then reallocating already-scant resources to unaccountable private schools.

Bobby Jindal’s program uses taxpayer dollars to actively discriminate against mentally and physically disabled children. Period.

And guess what? Bobby Jindal doesn’t deny it. The Louisiana Department of Education actually issued a response to the story about Aiden. They claimed their hands were tied because non-public schools weren’t required to adhere to federal laws that protect disabled students. If Governor Jindal wants to provide tens of millions of dollars every year to private schools, then he should be championing an analog of the IDEA Act for Louisiana, instead of cowardly ducking behind it.

His voucher program has very little to do about “saving education.” So-called “school choice” provides conservatives with the ability to do two things they’ve always wanted to do: Monetize public education and eliminate all of the annoying attendant liabilities and obligations– like adequately providing for the disabled or not discriminating against students on the basis of their religion.

This has nothing to do with helping those who are most affected by failing public schools. If the goal is to decimate and further marginalize a struggling inner-city neighborhood or rural community, then one of the best ways is to strip away the funding it needs to maintain and operate its most important civic institutions– its public neighborhood schools, to gut those institutions of all but the most vulnerable, effectively transforming our public schools into federally-mandated special education centers for the mentally and physically disabled and for children who struggle academically.

So, back to football, because, apparently, that is what our legislature really cares about:

During the next month, the legislature will consider three different bills that aim to force the Louisiana High School Athletic Association to reconsider its decision to create two different high school football championships, one for public schools and one that, essentially, is for private schools. Additionally, the State Senate will consider a bill that repeals a series of laws about the LHSAA that the Louisiana State Supreme Court recently declared unconstitutional.

The irony is: Unlike Governor Bobby Jindal or the majority of the Louisiana legislature, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association actually has standards. The LHSAA doesn’t like it when member schools attempt to cheat the system by stealing athletes from other schools. They understand that high school athletics, particularly high school football, can be a cash cow, and as a result, there may be an incentive for some schools to “game” the system.

A couple of months ago, the Jindal Administration’s and the Louisiana legislature’s attempts at coercing the LHSAA were dealt a death blow at the Louisiana State Supreme Court. You can read the case here. It’s a doozy.

But the facts are pretty simple: the Louisiana legislature, at Jindal’s behest, passed a bill that required the LHSAA to allow home school students the ability to participate in their sanctioned events. Basically, home school students would become “free agents” in the lucrative world of high school football. The law violated the LSHAA’s own bylaws, which provide a framework for qualifying schools and students.

Jindal, under the banner of “school choice,” attempted to force the LHSAA, by law, to change its practices, even though neither he nor the legislature attempted to interfere with the bylaws of other, privately-held Christian athletic associations. Moreover, the Jindal administration asked the courts to rule that the LHSAA was a “quasi-public” organization, a distinction that likely made no real difference. The LHSAA was organized as a private non-profit corporation. Labeling it “quasi-public” merely meant the legislative auditor could review its annual financial reports, something already done by the IRS or anyone with a subscription to GuideStar.com.

In their amicus brief to the Louisiana Supreme Court, the Jindal administration spends an inordinate amount of time talking about Tim Tebow. Quoting (bold mine):

Perhaps the most well-known beneficiary of Florida’s Craig Dickinson Act is Tim Tebow. The statute allowed Tebow, who was home-schooled, to play football at Allen D. Nease High School in Ponte Verde, Florida. Tebow’s exploits as a high school football player are the stuff of legend in Florida. It is also common knowledge that Tebow, as the quarterback of the University of Florida football team, won the Heisman Trophy in 2007 — the award given to the most outstanding college football player in the country. Tebow helped lead the University of Florida football team to two college football national championships — one in 2006 and another in 2008. At the end of his college football career, Tebow held the all-time Southeastern Conference records for passing efficiency and rushing touchdowns. As a result of his accomplishments on the football field, Tebow became perhaps the most recognizable ambassador for the University of Florida and currently is a prominent professional quarterback in the National Football League.

It is a bit sobering to realize that if a student athlete like Tebow were residing in Louisiana today, the LHSAA would be opposing legislation that would allow him, as a home-schooled student, to play high school football and perhaps pursue an athletic scholarship to a university like LSU. In other words, if the LHSAA were to prevail here and have Louisiana’s legislation declared unconstitutional, the LHSAA would thwart the development of home-schooled student athletes like Tebow in Louisiana.

No, this is not a joke, though the majority of the Louisiana State Supreme Court may have a different perspective: They were not impressed or convinced by Jindal’s pathetic “Tim Tebow” argument, and not only did they hold the LHSAA is, in fact, a private non-profit organization that is legally allowed to establish its own bylaws, they also struck down the entirety of Jindal’s “Tim Tebow” laws as unconstitutional.

If you want to understand why, exactly, the Louisiana legislature is considering a series of bills that would effectively ban public high schools from participating in LHSAA-sanctioned events, here’s your answer: The Jindal Administration, in its push for “school choice,” has been attempting to chip away at the authority of the LHSAA, an organization primarily comprised of actual educators, because the LHSAA believes its member schools and its participating students should all have to follow the same rules. (In the LHSAA’s brief, they list a series of legislative actions that were specifically undertaken to benefit individual football players).

And that’s what makes the LHSAA’s decision to create a dual high school football championship so genius and so unnerving to Jindal and his supporters. Many of these voucher schools were hoping to make money by recruiting top-notch public school athletes, but if they can’t compete against the teams with the most talent, their “championship” becomes less meaningful and more difficult to commoditize.

There’s less of an incentive to use public dollars for vouchers to build up an athletic program. And that’s exactly why this pending legislation is so important. At the end of this year’s session, Louisiana citizens will have a much better understanding of who cares more about high school football than ensuring a quality education.

State Senator Mike Walsworth: “I’m Not a Scientist” and I “Don’t Know Anything About Science” ¹

In the upcoming weeks, the Louisiana State Senate Education Committee will, once again, consider a bill to repeal the misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act. Last year, during the committee hearing, State Senator Mike Walsworth, a Republican from Ouachita Parish, asked a series of questions that- months later- made him the star of a viral video on YouTube.

And not to brag, but I was actually the first blogger to post this e.coli video, only a few hours after Zack Kopplin had uploaded it onto YouTube. Unfortunately for me, I buried the lede. There were so many absurd things said during last year’s committee meeting, so many different things going on, all at once, I didn’t know where to begin.

So I included the videos in an overwrought personal essay, instead of where they belonged– headlining a post detailing and documenting the willful ignorance of lawmakers who are responsible for making informed decisions on education policy. Thankfully, though, in an interview with Zack on the popular website i09, the Walsworth video clip was given prominent attention and within 24 hours, it and a few others went viral, racking up nearly 700,000 views. Suffice it to say, the video of Walsworth’s questioning a high school biology teacher on the merits of evolution is, perhaps, the most viral video in the history of the legislature.

Shreveport rap star Hurricane Chris will likely be disappointed to learn that his stirring rendition of the song “Halle Barry” isn’t even close. Walsworth’s video has already received twice as many hits as Hurricane Chris’s historic song. For some comic and musical relief:

And as fun and irreverent and (frankly) bizarre as Hurricane Chris’s performance was, I seriously doubt he would have anticipated that his viral video would soon be surpassed by a series of tired questions about science education. Hurricane Chris wasn’t the rock star. State Senator Mike Walsworth was, and by the of end the day, he likely could never appreciate why, months after this testimony had wrapped up, it was suddenly being ridiculed by people all over the world.

But here is the most interesting thing, and it had not been reported in Louisiana. A few months ago, in response to these viral videos and during an interview with Fox News 26 in Houston, Senator Walsworth said, “From the blogs. ‘Hey, you probably don’t know anything about science.’ And they’re probably right.,” he said. “But I was just asking questions. And that’s what debate is supposed to be about. I mean, I’m not a scientist.”

To recap: Mike Walsworth supports the thinly-disguised religious education bill, the Louisiana Science Education Act and then admits to Fox News Houston that those who oppose him are “probably right” and then, finally, concedes that he is not actually a scientist. He continues:

Do I believe that God created the heavens and the earth? Absolutely, I do,” Walsworth told FOX 26 News.

That is, without question, Walsworth’s personal religious beliefs on the origin and the development of the Universe; it’s not science, and it is not even a substitute for science.

They continue: “But the Louisiana legislator points out a paragraph in the law expressly forbidding the promotion of any religious doctrine or “discrimination for or against religion or non-religion.”Senator Walsworth says the purpose of the law was to give teachers and school administrators more flexibility in how they present concepts like evolution, global warming and human cloning. And the lawmaker says the controversy over the Louisiana Science Education Act is overblown.”

I vehemently disagree. This law was conceived with one central goal in mind: To promote Christian creationism as a competing scientific theory. But it’s not a scientific theory; it’s a religious myth. And eventually, it will be held Unconstitutional, despite its efforts to cleverly, serpentine work around the law.

Regardless of how milquetoast the language may seem, the undeniable truth is that by ensuring “flexibility” for teachers to critique valid science, they can, by definition, teach religion as science.

The Act may sparkle and smell like a new car, but if you ride it around the block a few times, parts will begin to fail and fall out; the headlights will break, and within weeks, you’ll realize you bought a lemon. Great on paper. But on the road, a death trap.

It’s worth noting: I don’t know who Mike Walsworth is. Maybe he is a nice man. I know many politicians who regret a vote or two. But he faces a daunting task this cycle: He admits that the scientists were right and that he knows nothing about science education.

Finally, he writes, “The Department of Education, as of – I just talked to them last week. Not one parental complaint. Not one.”

We have more than 70,000 signatures officially complaining, including thousands of Louisiana parents. The repeal effort has been endorsed by 78 Nobel Laureate scientists, dozens and dozens of ministers, priests, and clergy, the largest Science Education groups in the world, Hollywood celebrity comedians like Jason Alexander, Patton Oswalt, Bill Maher, and countless others.

When Gene Mills and Mike Walsworth and company attempt to suggest that no one has complained to anyone, I suggest they come prepared with their checkbooks. Coping the thousands of responses and then tens of thousands of pages will be labor intensive.

Kopplin: Activists Re-Launch Campaign to Repeal Nationally Ridiculed Louisiana Creationism Law ^Reply

Via Zack Kopplin:

Activists Re-Launch Campaign to Repeal Louisiana’s Creationism Law

Since 2008, the Louisiana Science Education Act Has Been the Subject of National and International Criticism and Ridicule

For Immediate Release:

Baton Rouge, LA — (March, 18, 2013) – Senator Karen Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans) recently filed SB 26 to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, Louisiana’s misnamed and misguided creationism law.

Since its passage in 2008, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) has been the subject of national and international criticism and ridicule, and its repeal has been endorsed an overwhelming consensus of scientists and educators and a broad coalition of religious leaders and clergy. This is Senator Peterson’s third attempt at repealing the act.

Previous hearings about the Louisiana Science Education Act were the focus of intense national interest. Videos of the meetings have collectively received more than 680,000 views on YouTube and were covered by national publications including io9 and Slate.

The campaign has been covered both nationally and internationally, including in The Guardian, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, Italian Vogue, MSNBC, and Bill Moyers’s “Moyers and Company.”

Originally conceived as the Louisiana Academic Freedom Act, the LSEA is based on a model statute developed by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that lobbies for legislation promoting creationism in the classroom.

State Senator Ben Nevers, the bill’s original sponsor, explained that he filed the bill at the behest of the Louisiana Family Forum. “They (the Louisiana Family Forum) believe that scientific data related to creationism should be discussed when dealing with Darwin’s theory,” Senator Nevers said.

Nobel laureate chemist Sir Harry Kroto said, “The present situation (the LSEA) should be likened to requiring Louisiana school texts to include the claim that the sun goes round the Earth.”

Three years ago, Sir Harry Kroto was the first Nobel laureate to publicly endorse the act’s repeal. Today, the repeal campaign is endorsed by 78 Nobel laureate scientists, nearly 40% of living Nobel laureate scientists, and numerous other prominent scientists. It has also been endorsed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other major science and educator organizations in Louisiana and the United States.

In addition, thousands of clergy members, who are part of the Clergy Letter Project, have joined the repeal campaign. Reverend Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance, said, “(The repeal effort) represents the best thinking in American science, the best thinking in American religion, and it also reflects the United States Constitution.”

Over 70,000 people from Louisiana and around the country have signed a Change.org petition and other petitions in support of this repeal.

The conservative Thomas Fordham Institute stated the Louisiana Science Education Act creates “anti-evolution pressures (that) continue to threaten state science standards.” In its evaluation of Louisiana’s education system, the Thomas Fordham Institute called the LSEA a “devastating flaw.”

Zack Kopplin, the student who began the campaign against the law said:

“America needs a scientific revolution; a Second Giant Leap for Humankind. Fighting for a repeal of Louisiana’s creationism law is ground zero of this revolution.

“We need a grassroots movement of students who stand up and demand their public officials to support evidence-based science.”

Supporters of the repeal believe they will see a breakthrough this year because Louisiana’s public officials are becoming increasingly pro-science. This spring, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology lifted a boycott of New Orleans (a boycott still remains on the rest of Louisiana), which had begun after the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The boycott was lifted after the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to support the repeal of Louisiana’s creationism law, and the Orleans Parish School Board banned creationism from their classrooms in reaction to the passage of this law.

The bill to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act in 2012 was defeated in committee, by a vote of 2-1.

“We believe that this spring we can muster the votes we need to pass,” Kopplin said.

Bobby Jindal Proposes Largest Tax Increase in Louisiana History, Highest Combined Sales Tax Rate in the US ¹

Less than a year ago, Governor Bobby Jindal vetoed a bill to permanently extend a existing 4-cent tax on a pack of cigarettes. At the time, Jindal explained (emphasis mine), “I have made a commitment to the taxpayers of Louisiana to oppose all attempts to raise taxes.” It was a blatantly disingenuous argument: The bill wasn’t about “raising” taxes any more than they already were; it was a mere formality: Renewing a tax on cigarettes that had already been on the books, and Jindal’s opposition had nothing to do with the merits of the policy itself and everything to do with ensuring his unblemished resume tax on increases. And the timing couldn’t been worse. Jindal, after all, was still angling for a spot on Romney’s Presidential ticket.

At the time, James Gill of The Times-Picayune noted (bold mine):

But smoking is not the issue here. Jindal must figure that taking a few licks now will be worth it if there is a reward down the road, perhaps when he is running for another office. Indeed, when urging his fellow Republicans to uphold his veto of the cigarette tax, he said the issue is “personal” because he made a promise not to raise taxes.

The idea that it is against Jindal’s principles to break a promise no doubt raised a smile on some of the faces present. But this promise is different, because Jindal is mad about ideological purity.

Jindal was so dead-set on not raising ANY taxes, even a perfunctory renewal tax on cigarettes, that he wouldn’t even consider renewing a paltry 4 cent tax on cigarettes, a tax that had already been on the books. He was, after all, a man of principle.

A year later, Bobby Jindal apparently believes that he had hypnotized the entire State of Louisiana into some type of quasi-amnesiac ignorance (And if his college essay about participating in an unsanctioned demonic exorcism maintained even an ounce of credibility, it may seem at least remotely possible, particularly among his most devout believers).

But if you carried any illusion about Governor Jindal’s consistent ideological position, you’re now having to confront an inconvenient truth:

Two days ago, Jindal announced plans to impose the single-largest combined sales tax rate in the country: Under Jindal’s plan, for every ten dollars you spend in anything and everything, you’ll need to spend an additional dollar with the government, Again, a year go, Jindal even refused to renew a tax on cigarettes; now he wants to collect $1.41 more for every pack sold.

Any why? Because Jindal wants some way– any way– to shuffle in big, out-of-state corporations and pillagers- no state income taxes, no corporation taxes, no taxes on risky speculation. Come first; we’ll sort out the details later. The break almost exclusively benefits the wealthy.

But don’t just take my word. From The New York Times: (I don’t do this often, but read the whole thing:)

These regional disparities go back to Reconstruction, when Southern Republicans increased property taxes on defeated white landowners and former slaveholders to pay for the first public services — education, hospitals, roads — ever provided to black citizens. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, conservative Democrats — popularly labeled “the Redeemers” — rolled taxes back to their prewar levels and inserted supermajority clauses into state constitutions to ensure it could never happen again. Property taxes were frozen; income taxes were held down; corporate taxes were almost nonexistent.

Practically the only tax that could rise was the one that hurt the poor the most: the sales tax. And rise it did, throughout the Deep South in the late 19th century, then spreading into the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and the rest of the region in the 1960s and 1970s. Even liberal politicians weren’t able to buck the tide — just ask Bill Clinton, who as governor of Arkansas urgently sought new revenue to improve his state’s ailing schools and found the sales tax was the only politically viable option.

If this were just a history lesson, we could set it aside. It isn’t. In the last 30 years, these trends have only gotten worse. Southern states have steadily increased the tax burden on their poorest citizens by shifting the support of the public sector to sales taxes and fees for public services. After California voters passed Proposition 13, which capped property-tax increases, in 1978, Western states began to move in a similar direction. Sales taxes on clothing and school supplies and fees for bus fare and car registration take up, of course, a far bigger slice of a poor household’s budget than they do from the rich.

Over the same 30-year period, some Northeastern and Midwestern states moved in the opposite direction. They mimicked the federal government by passing their own earned-income tax credits (and making them refundable, as the federal government has done, so that very low-income earners get a check after filing their returns), preserved progressive state income-tax rates, and either exempted food and other basics from sales taxes or gave sales-tax rebates to low-income households. No Southern state provides refunds to its poor citizens through the tax code, no matter how little they earn.

There are many reasons to worry about the growing regional divide. But even leaving aside basic fairness — why should a poor child in the Northeast have greater life chances than one in the South? — the divergence exacerbates poverty itself, driving households deeper into distress and lowering social mobility.

For a book published in 2011, my colleague Rourke L. O’Brien and I analyzed the combined burden of sales tax, state and local income taxes on poor households in 49 states, based on consumer expenditures, from 1982 to 2008. (We omitted Alaska because it offers oil-revenue-related rebates to every household). We looked at the relationship between the total tax burden on a poor family of three and state-level figures for mortality, morbidity, teenage childbearing, dropping out of high school, property crime and violent crime.

The fact is, the more the poor are taxed, the worse off they are, whether they are working or not.

And they continue:

It turns out that after factoring out all other explanations — like racial composition, poverty rates, the amount spent on education or health care, the size of the state’s economy, existing inequality levels, and differences in the cost of living — the relationship between taxing the poor and negative outcomes like premature death persisted. For every $100 increase on taxes at the poverty line, we saw an additional 7 deaths and 78 property crimes per 100,000 people, and a quarter of a percentage point decrease in high school completion.

Southern states have far higher rates of strokes, heart disease and infant mortality than the rest of the country. Students drop out of high school in larger numbers. These outcomes are not just a consequence of a love of fried food or higher poverty levels. Holding all those conditions constant, the poor of the South — and increasingly the West — do worse because their states tax them more heavily. They have less money to buy medication, so their health problems get worse. High sales taxes make meals more expensive, so they shift to cheaper, unhealthy food. If people can’t make ends meet, they may turn to the underground economy or to crime.

This self-defeating pattern has plagued the citizens of the “meaner states,” the ones that tax poor people at a higher rate, for a long time. But it is about to get worse. Governors in fiscally strapped states are hoping to roll back state earned-income tax credits. Some — like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Dave Heineman of Nebraska and Mary Fallin of Oklahoma — are aiming to cut or even eliminate state income and corporate taxes and raise sales taxes. North Carolina lawmakers are considering the same thing.

Proponents say these moves will make their states more economically competitive, bring back jobs, and attract high-income residents. But economists who have studied the impact of raising taxes on residential choices have found that tax rates don’t make much of a difference. Employers represent a different story: they are attracted to low-tax states, particularly if they don’t need high-skilled labor. Accordingly, low-wage job opportunities have grown in the Cotton Belt and the Sun Belt, and shrunk in the Rust Belt. There is something to be said for this, if the goal is to replace the nonworking poor with the working poor. But this is hardly a strategy for eradicating poverty itself.

The fact is, the more the poor are taxed, the worse off they are, whether they are working or not. We all pay a huge price for this shortsightedness. Medicaid payments, food stamps, disability benefits — all of these federal programs swoop in to try to patch up a frayed safety net. Consequently, the Southern states reap more dollars in federal benefits than they pay in taxes (like Mississippi, which saw a net gain of $240 billion between 1990 and 2009), while the wealthier states — which do more to take care of their own — lose out for every dollar they pay (like New Jersey, which handed over a net of $706 billion over that same period). As noble as the federal effort to rescue the poor in the “mean states” may be, it is not enough to reverse the impact of regressive taxation.

There is a better way: increasing taxes on luxury goods; exempting necessities like food, medicine and children’s clothing from sales taxes; and perhaps most important, issuing tax rebates and preserving refundable earned-income tax credits, which put more money in the hands of low-income households. Since poor families tend to spend all of what they take in, these protections would stimulate the economy and preserve, or even expand, the job base.

The states headed in the opposite direction are not only damaging the most vulnerable of their citizens, but exacting a significant toll on Americans in states with more progressive tax policies. We all pay for the damage done when states try to solve their fiscal problems, or score ideological points, on the backs of the poor.

Sound familiar? It should.

On a final note, I highly recommend Tyler Bridge’s commentary on The Lens. Louisiana is so lucky to have him back.

Tom Aswell: Superintendent John White’s Top Employees Aren’t Registered To Vote In Louisiana ⁹

Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White’s Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, Deputy Superintendent, and Director of the Office of Portfolio are not Louisiana voters.

Reposted with permission from LouisianaVoice.com.

Gov. Bobby Jindal was adamant during his campaign for governor about stemming the outflow of Louisiana’s brightest college graduates from the state.

To show his commitment to keeping Louisiana talent at home, he promptly brought in several out-of-staters to fill key roles. Most prominent among those was Paul Vallas of Chicago by way of Philadelphia to head up the Recovery School District (RSD) and then as Vallas’s successor, John White of New York.

Jindal subsequently shoved Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek aside in order to promote White to head up the Department of Education (DOE).

So much for that rosy bit of political rhetoric from Jindal.

Now White himself has brought in a host of non-residents whose job it is to decide how nearly 700,000 public school students in Louisiana will be taught, what they will be taught, where they will be taught, when they will be taught and even who will teach them.

And LouisianaVoice has learned that five of those, including his Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, a Deputy Superintendent, and one who, alternately, has been called “Deputy Superintendent,” “Director,” and “Director of the Office of Portfolio, are not even registered to vote in Louisiana.

A fifth, Hua T. Liang of New Orleans, is an administrator with the Pride College Preparatory Academy in New Orleans, a former charter taken over by RSD. His salary is $110,000 a year.

Chief of Staff Kunjan Narechania, she of the email to White informing him that Charlotte Danielson of the Danielson Group of Princeton, N.J., was “being a pain again” over DOE’s decision to use only five of 22 components of Danielson’s teacher evaluation system, came to DOE from Chicago but has neither registered to vote here nor has she registered her vehicle, which still carries Illinois plates, in Louisiana, thus depriving the state of vehicle registration fees.

Her qualifications for serving as Chief of Staff to the Louisiana Superintendent of Education at a salary of $145,000 include a stint as Vice President of Design, Teacher Support and Development for Teach for America (TFA), the billion-dollar organization bent on taking over public education nationwide and staffing the nation’s schools with teachers with only five weeks’ summer training.

But, hey! That’s a strong recommendation; John White, after all, came from TFA.

Likewise, Deputy Chief of Staff Nicholas Bolt ($104,000), an alumnus of Education Pioneers, came from the New York City Department of Education and resides here now, helping to determine the fate of the state’s education system but, like Narechania, has neither registered to vote nor removed his out-of-state tags in favor of a Louisiana plate.

Then there is Michael Rounds, the Deputy Superintendent who is being paid a cool $170,000 a year. Like his boss, John White, Rounds is a 2010 alumnus of the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy which critics say turns out superintendents who use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of the decision-making process and introduce unproven reform measures.

The academy, founded by billionaire businessman Eli Broad, offers a six-weekend (not week, weekend) course spread over 10 months. There are no qualifications that students have any experience in education—just that they have a bachelor’s degree.

Rounds resigned his Kansas City position a year ago following an investigation by a local television station into bid irregularities involving a $32 million renovation project for Kansas City schools—only to turn up as one of the top officials charged with day-to-day decisions impacting our school children. And he doesn’t even vote here.

But Rounds’ prior employment record pales in comparison to the career track our old friend David “Lefty” Lefkowith of Los Angeles.

No one knows precisely what Lefkowith’s actual title is, but he is paid well for whatever it is he does. He is listed as a Director, but also has been identified as a self-proclaimed Deputy Superintendent and Director of the Office of Portfolio. One of his primary responsibilities is to push DOE’s Course Choice program but he has cut a wide swath through the upper tier of political power in the state of Florida.

Working with the now defunct Enron Corp. several years ago, he attempted, along with an associate of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to corner the water marketing rights in the state. Following that, he became a motivational speaker through his company, The Canyon Group.

He went straight from a $35,000 contract with DOE to his new status as employee.

But Lefkowith is not only a non-voter in Louisiana; he doesn’t even choose to live here.

Unlike Deirdre Finn, a former deputy chief of staff for Jeb Bush, who works as public relations hack for the department—but from her home in Tallahassee, Florida—at $12,000 per month, Lefkowith does work in Baton Rouge but resides in Los Angeles and commutes back and forth, making some wonder how he affords to do that because, even at his $146,000 salary, commuting each weekend to and from Los Angeles by air is a far cry from the short interstate drive from Gonzales or Denham Springs or U.S. 61 from St. Francisville.

But except for Lefkowith, one still might expect the others to at least register to vote here.

That doesn’t seem to be asking too much.

Louisiana Department of Education, Superintendent John White, and Governor Bobby Jindal Double Down on Creationist Voucher Schools ⁴

Superintendent John White Qualifies Six More Creationist Voucher Schools for 2012-2013 School Year, Bringing the Total to 26.

On Tuesday, March 19, the Louisiana State Supreme Court will finally consider whether Bobby Jindal’s school vouchers scheme violates the Louisiana State Constitution. Things aren’t shaping up too well for Team Jindal. Surprisingly (at least to me), District Court Judge Tim Kelley ruled that Jindal’s vouchers scheme was unconstitutional, because it relied entirely on funding through the State’s Minimum Foundation Program, which is specifically established to fund public schools in Louisiana.

Source: http://transparentpiyjay.com/

Despite the fact that Judge Kelly is a well-known conservative who is married to Jindal’s former Commissioner of Administration, Angelle Davis, and who recently received $1,000 in campaign contributions from Jimmy Faircloth, the attorney representing Jindal in the dispute, Kelley issued a remarkably straightforward ruling and thorough analysis of Jindal’s voucher program, carefully assuring some so-called “reformers” that the plan itself may hold up under constitutional scrutiny – at least, abstractly– but that its funding through the MFP was grossly and blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.

Thankfully, for those who care and believe in improving the public system, the facts and the law remain on our side.

Still, regardless, it is impossible to predict how the Court will rule.

But one thing is for sure:

John White is closing applications for school vouchers only four days before the Louisiana State Supreme Court determines their legality and constitutionality. Superintendent White, as he had the previous year, could have provided a more expansive deadline and application process. The wholly, entirely political decision to end applications four days prior to a Louisiana State Supreme Court hearing and subsequent ruling– let’s be honest– is nothing more than crass political theater, needlessly and cynically exploiting dozens of parents and children, a bald-faced effort to “pre-victimize” a class of applicants by hurriedly qualifying and “investing” them to participate in a program that likely violates the Louisiana State Constitution. The Department of Education’s decision, ostensibly acting under the orders of Superintendent John White, isn’t merely gamesmanship; it borders on negligence and coercion.

“But your honor,” they’re scripting themselves to say, “What can we do about the thousands of students?” The most honest answer, in the event that Supreme Court agrees with Judge Kelley is: Blame yourself, and blame John White and his allies.

*****

But here is the real story, a story that, in many ways, is more important than the Louisiana Supreme Court’s pending decision, considering we’re already hearing rumors about Superintendent White’s “contingency plans,” which would either seek to reformulate the MFP program OR would beg already cash-strapped local districts to pony up money for private school vouchers. Make no mistake: Even if he is defeated, Superintendent John White and Governor Jindal will work harder than they ever have in their entire lives to find money for schools. No, not public schools, of course. They need money to subsidize and float unaccountable, largely unaccredited private schools. Quoting from Judge Kelley’s ruling:

“While the Court does not dispute the serious nature of these proceedings nor the impact and potential effects on Louisiana’s educational systems, vital public dollars raised and allocated for public schools through the MFP cannot be lawfully diverted to nonpublic schools or entities,” Kelley wrote in his ruling.

Last summer, Zack Kopplin identified twenty voucher schools, some of whom were set to receive hundreds of t housands of taxpayer dollars every year, that advanced and promoted a series of offensive, racist, and, most commonly, anti-scientific propaganda; these schools were slated to receive millions in tax dollars to help them further indoctrinate children, a clear and unequivocal example of using government money for the sole purpose of establishing religion.

Zack had exposed this story nationally, identifying those 20 creationists voucher schools in Louisiana and then hundreds more across the country. In fairness to Superintendent John White and his spokesman Nicholas Bolt, both men promised a thorough investigation into the curriculum standards of voucher schools.

In December, in response to a question about creationist voucher schools, Bolt told Louisiana Public Broadcasting, “So there’s a couple of different plans of actions around this, this idea. First of all, every school will currently undergo a curriculum review as they do right now to be approved by the State Board. You know, our main concern now is how those students do on the science tests. So, yeah, they will all be tested… and if the curriculum, if the science curriculum is truly bad… then that will be reflected in the science test and in the review of the curriculum as well.”

This may sound all well and good, but it’s complete and total nonsense. Neither Superintendent White nor anyone in his Department actually thoroughly vet the schools they pre-qualify for taxpayer subsidization.By now, that should be abundantly clear: White approved sending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to a school operated by a man who calls himself a “prophet” of God; he approved even more money to a school in Ruston that doesn’t even have adequate facilities, and millions of taxpayer dollars to teach students that scientists are sinful men, that the Lochness Monster is a living dinosaur that disproves evolution, that the KKK was, at one point, a forc e for moral good, that hippies were dirty Satanists, and the list goes on.

John White and his team at the Department of Education, in an effort to demonstrate how the public school system is failing Louisiana school children, are diverting millions in funding every year from public schools in order to enrich some of the worst schools in the United States– religious zealots posing as educators, fly-by-night operators who don’t even have the necessary infrastructure, and bigoted and religiously intolerant “church schools” that specialize in utilizing thoroughly debunked textbooks and materials to stifle dissent, schools that seek to enrich themselves with taxpayer dollars while reserving their right to expel any student on the basis of their perceived sexual orientation or religion.

And despite the international criticism Superintendent White and Governor Jindal have received, largely because of Zack’s exhaustive and insightful research about the ways in which the voucher program subsidized the teaching of creationism in science classrooms, and despite the weakly-worded public statements by people like Nicholas Bolt, not a single creationist voucher school has been removed from qualifying.

In fact, during the last year, Superintendent John White, Governor Bobby Jindal, and their hand-picked team at the Louisiana Department of Education have qualified at least SIX ADDITIONAL creationist voucher schools for the up-coming school year:

21. Hosanna Christian Academy, which teaches “(t)he soon-coming, personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thes. 4:16-18).”

22. Alfred Booker, Jr. Academy, which teaches math like this: “Creation was completed in six (6) days and commemorated on the seventh. Elisha was able to multiply the widow’s oil and Peter was encouraged to forgive ‘seventy times seven.’” And science like this: “By Design is a creation based curriculum showing the craftsmanship of God in the creation of earth. Created to link Science and Faith, By Design shows students how Science actually backs what the Bible says. When properly taught, Science reflects back to the infinite power of God and allows room for inquisitive minds to grow and develop without sacrificing principle.”

23. Riverdale Christian Academy, which uses the aBeka curriculum.

24. Family Community Church School, which has its own detailed laundry list.

25. Westminster Christian Academy, which believes in New Earth Creationism.

And last but not least:

26. Union Christian Academy, which uses the Bob Jones University curriculum.

Zack Kopplin’s Full Interview With Bill Moyers ^Reply

Transcript:

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to this week’s broadcast and the “troublemaker” of the year. That’s right, my guest is the first recipient of a new award that singles out teenagers who are not afraid to speak their minds on major issues, even when everyone else around them disagrees. Not afraid, in other words, to stir up trouble for a good cause. That’s what Zack Kopplin was doing just the other day at a Save Texas Schools rally in Austin, the state capital:

ZACK KOPPLIN: Do we want Texas tax dollars being used to fund private schools teaching creationism? Say no Texas!

ATTENDEES: No!

BILL MOYERS: Zack Kopplin was chosen to receive the first “troublemaker” of the year award because he’s made waves fighting on behalf of science and against laws making it easier to teach creationism in public schools.

Today’s fundamentalists, with political support from the right wing, are more aggressive than ever in crusading to challenge evolution with the dogma of creationism. But they didn’t reckon on Zack Kopplin.

Starting at the grass roots in his home state of Louisiana, he’s become a formidable adversary nationally, speaking, debating, button-holing politicians, and winning the active support of Nobel laureates, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The New Orleans City Council and tens of thousands of students, teachers and others around the country who have signed on to his campaign. Troublemakers all. Zack is now 19 and a history major at Rice University in Houston. He’s with me now. Welcome to the show.

ZACK KOPPLIN: Thank you so much for having me on.

BILL MOYERS: What was it about the Louisiana Science Education Act that you didn’t like?

ZACK KOPPLIN: Well, this law allows supplemental materials into our public school biology classrooms to quote, “critique controversial theories,” like evolution and climate change. Now, evolution and climate change aren’t scientifically controversial, but they are controversial to Louisiana legislators. And basically, everyone who looked at this law knew it was just a backdoor to sneak creationism into public schoolscience classes.

BILL MOYERS: Who was behind it?

ZACK KOPPLIN: Nationally, there’s this group called the Discovery Institute. They’re a creationist think tank that’s been pushing these types of laws all around the country for years and years. They even tried to get one nationally included in George Bush’s No Child Left Behind with the Santorum amendment. And so they wrote this law and they passed it on locally to the Louisiana Family Forum, which is our affiliate of Focus on the Family. Senator Ben Nevers, who sponsored it, said the Louisiana Family Forum suggested the law to him because they wanted creationism discussed when talking about Darwin’s theory. So we know from the horse’s mouth exactly what this law is about.

BILL MOYERS: What’s your understanding now of creationism? What essentially does it hold?

ZACK KOPPLIN: Essentially it’s a denial of evolution, mainly based off a literal interpretation of Genesis.

BILL MOYERS: That God created the earth, a supernatural power intervened, and that’s where we and the universe came from?

ZACK KOPPLIN: Yes. And so there’re some versions that say the earth is less than 10,000 years old. There’re some where they’ve, creationists have adapted and said, “Well, we got in trouble in the court case when we said that, so we’ll say it’s millions of years old. But evolution still doesn’t happen. We were created in our present form.” And that’s intelligent design creationism. Intelligent design creationism is still creationism dressed up to look like it’s scientific, but it’s really not.

BILL MOYERS: When did you collide with this notion?

ZACK KOPPLIN: So the Louisiana Science Education Act passed back in 2008. It was the summer before my sophomore year in high school. And so I knew about it. My dad’s been involved in Louisiana politics my entire life, so it was a dinner conversation. We’d be, like, “We can’t believe this bad law is just, like, it’s passing. But Governor Jindal will never sign it.” We knew Governor Jindal. He’s a very smart man. He’s a Brown University biology major. And so we decided, “Okay, when it gets to him, he’ll veto it.”

BILL MOYERS: He’s also a Rhodes Scholar.

ZACK KOPPLIN: He’s a Rhodes Scholar, yeah. And so it got to Governor Jindal with overwhelming support. And Governor Jindal started voicing his support for intelligent design creationism, he signed the law and he’s defended it ever since. And we were shocked. So for about two years I sort of stewed over this law. I wanted to fight it. I talked to all my friends. And my friends knew I couldn’t stand this law. But I never really knew how to take it on at that point. I was still too young to really recognize I had a voice.

BILL MOYERS: At what point did you say that to yourself, “This is so important to me for my own reasons of conscience, that I’m going to make it my life as a young man.”

ZACK KOPPLIN: So, my senior year of high school, I had to do a senior project. And I had friends who learned how to cook healthy food, learned a new language. And I was just, like, none of that interests me. But you know what? But what got my attention was this law. And so on a whim, I sent an e-mail to Dr. Barbara Forrest, who’s an expert about, an expert on this issue. She—

BILL MOYERS: Teaches philosophy, doesn’t she?

ZACK KOPPLIN: She teaches philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana. So she was an expert witness at the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial, where—

BILL MOYERS: In Pennsylvania.

ZACK KOPPLIN: In Pennsylvania, where intelligent design creationism was ruled unconstitutional. And while it’s not a Supreme Court case and doesn’t have holding across the entire United States, it essentially has put a stop to intelligent design as a serious method of sneaking creationism into the classroom.

But, so she was an expert witness there and she happens to live 30 minutes away from me in Livingston Parish, a local hotbed of creationism. And so I sent an e-mail to her and said, “I’m a student at Baton Rouge Magnet High and I really want to fight this law.” And so she apparently looked me up to make sure I wasn’t a creationist plant and then set up a meeting with me. And we got going from there—

BILL MOYERS: A mole.

ZACK KOPPLIN: Yep. I didn’t really ever expect it to actually take off the way it did. I sent one e-mail, and suddenly this whole campaign began.

BILL MOYERS: Who else helped you?

ZACK KOPPLIN: I set up a meeting with Barbara and I asked her, “who should I talk to locally?” We worked out Senator Karen Carter Peterson, who represents a district in New Orleans. And she was one of the few votes against the law when it first passed. So I got her to agree to sponsor a repeal bill. And that was a great meeting. She just said, “Okay, like, when do we get started?” And that was just her response to me, “When do we get started.” So, I talked to her and I also talked to Barbara about if we wanted to bring some big names on board, who should I, like, who should I talk to? And one of the people she recommended was Sir Harry Kroto, who is a Nobel Laureate chemist at Florida State. And so I sent him an e-mail. And he immediately called, he sent me an e-mail back and said, “Hey, do you have time to talk on the phone, like, on Friday?” And so we set it up where I had written a letter for Nobel Laureate scientists to our state legislature. I talked to him. And I woke up the next morning with him and about ten other Nobel Laureates having signed the letter. And we just started building from there. And so we have 78 Nobel Laureate scientists onboard.

BILL MOYERS: But you haven’t repealed the law. It’s still in place.

ZACK KOPPLIN: I mean, we would, I would’ve liked the law to be repealed two years ago, or even five years ago now. But it’s going to be a long, tough fight. And I think we know that at this point.

BILL MOYERS: You realize that you’re bucking public opinion. The latest findings from Gallup last June are that 46 percent of Americans believe in creationism. 32 percent believe in evolution guided by God. I guess they would call that a form of intelligent design. And 15 percent believe in evolution without God’s help. You’re definitively in the minority.

ZACK KOPPLIN: I would say we’ve got about 54 percent that are in the majority because there’s a difference between intelligent design and what I think that second option about God guided evolutionists, which be theistic evolution. And there’s a lot of people who say that God has caused evolution to happen. But they don’t, that’s not actually intelligent design. Intelligent design specifically rejects evolution, especially on a large scale. Creationists like to break it up into micro, macro evolution. That’s not a legitimate thing. That’s not what scientists do. But that’s how they say, “We can’t accept change over millions of years.” And—

BILL MOYERS: And the theistic theory?

ZACK KOPPLIN: Theistic evolution is to say what the Catholic Church accepts, where Pope John Paul II said there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of faith. And they just say, “We think God started evolution. And it’s run the way scientists say it’s run.”

BILL MOYERS: Do you think the Gallup poll is simplistic?

ZACK KOPPLIN: I think it’s very simplistic.

BILL MOYERS: Doesn’t recognize the varieties of ideas on this subject—

ZACK KOPPLIN: Yes, having said that, the 46 percent who think the earth was formed in the last 10,000 years is a very scary number for me.

BILL MOYERS: Let me play you a clip from Representative Paul Broun of Georgia. He’s a member of Congress. You’ve heard of him, I’m sure. And this was his appearance at an event organized by the Liberty Baptists Church in his own state.

PAUL BROUN: God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that all that stuff I was taught about evolution, and embryology, and big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see there are a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young earth. I don’t believe that the earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the bible says.

BILL MOYERS: Representative Broun is a medical doctor. He is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. If he were sitting here instead of me, what would you say to him?

ZACK KOPPLIN: We need to change that attitude. I mean, we need to be teaching evolution and embryology and the big bang theory because, you know, while he may think they’re lies from the pit of hell, they’re not. They’re good, established science. And if our students don’t learn it, they’re going to be at a disadvantage to the rest of the world, to China, to Britain to France. And we’re not going to do what we need to really make the advances to keep our way of life and ensure the survival of the human race, if we don’t teach our students science.

He has the freedom to be educated and educate his children the way he sees it. But, we have to make a specific distinction. Not in the public schools, not in publicly funded private schools, like voucher schools. And definitely not educating other people’s children.

BILL MOYERS: You’ve taken this fight beyond the Louisiana law into the fight against school vouchers. Why?

ZACK KOPPLIN: I didn’t initially really care about school vouchers because I was fundamentally a science advocate. And I was worried about evolution. And then last summer I got, a friend sent me an article by Alternet that had exposed a school in Louisiana in this voucher program that was apparently using curriculum that taught the Loch Ness Monster disproved evolution, and the Loch Ness Monster was real.

And so it caught my attention. And I said, “Well, let me look into this more.” And so I pulled a list of the voucher schools off our department of education’s website and just started going through them. And I’d look up a school and look up its website. And I’d go find a school that said, “Scientists are sinful men.” And we are—

BILL MOYERS: Sinful?

ZACK KOPPLIN: Sinful. And they rejected the things like theories like the age of the earth and anything else they said anything that, like, that that goes against God’s word is an error. And so I found a school like that. I found a school that put in their student handbook that students had to defend creationism against traditional scientific theory. And so these are schools receiving millions in public money.

BILL MOYERS: Through vouchers—

ZACK KOPPLIN: Through vouchers—

BILL MOYERS: –transferring public funds from public schools to private religious schools.

ZACK KOPPLIN: And recently we, I exposed with MSNBC that over 300 schools in voucher programs in nine states and Washington DC are teaching creationism. We have schools that call evolution the way of the heathen. And so it’s become pretty clear if you create a voucher program, you’re just going to be funding creationism through the back door.

BILL MOYERS: Neal McCluskey at the Cato Institute writes, “Were Kopplin’s argument fundamentally that taxpayers should not have their money taken against their will to schools with which they might disagree, it would be one thing: vouchers do transfer taxpayer money, though they provide far more overall freedom than does public schooling. But Kopplin’s argument, like the arguments of so many people on numerous education issues, isn’t ultimately about freedom. It’s about prohibiting others from learning something he doesn’t like.”

ZACK KOPPLIN: I think Neal McCluskey is forgetting about the First Amendment fundamentally. We have a separation of church and state in this country. And creationism is fundamentally religious. And evolution is just science and is not religious.

And I think as you probably have discussed on the show, the free exercise of religion includes religion and non-religion. So this country is fundamentally secular. And there shouldn’t be, you, we shouldn’t bring in one specific, not even just Christianity, but one specific version of Christianity that would not teach what the Catholics, or the Hindus or the Muslims or the atheists believe in the public schools and teach it instead of established science.

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever wake up in the morning and say, “Hey, I’m only 19. I’ve got Rice, tough school to get out of and get started in my life, in my work. Why am I doing this?”

ZACK KOPPLIN: I don’t think it’s a choice. I think it’s something that has to be done. And I’m the one who’s in the right position to do it, so I’m going to do it.

BILL MOYERS: Well, Zack, I’ve enjoyed this conversation and I wish you well. Thank you for coming.

ZACK KOPPLIN: Thank you so much for having me on.

Jindal’s Moon Shot: An Astronomical Disaster ⁹

A little over a year ago, The Wall Street Journal published a story extolling Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s ambitious plans for education reform, labeling Jindal’s sweeping set of proposals his “moon shot.” The term “moon shot” was intended as a compliment toward Jindal and a slight dig at Newt Gingrich, who was then in the midst of his failed campaign for President and who had just declared his support for a colony on the moon. The Journal was being purposely cheeky. Quoting (bold mine):

Newt Gingrich wants the U.S. to return to the moon, but as challenges go he has nothing on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s school reform plans.

Mr. Jindal wants to create America’s largest school voucher program, broadest parental choice system, and toughest teacher accountability regime—all in one legislative session. Any one of those would be a big win, but all three could make the state the first to effectively dismantle a public education monopoly.

At the time, I noted on my website, in a post titled “Bobby Jindal Is Mooning Louisiana,” that the comparisons between Gingrich’s moon colony and Jindal’s education reform initiative unwittingly reinforced an essential truth: Both plans were irrational, untested, grandiose, and absurd. The Wall Street Journal didn’t get it: As Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal effectively controls the legislature, the speakership, the president of the Senate, and committee membership. It wouldn’t be a “big win” for him to pass through his education “reform” initiative “all in one legislative session;” its passage was a foregone conclusion, and the hype was nothing more than manufactured publicity. “America’s largest school voucher program, broadest parental choice system, and toughest teacher accountability regime” were Jindal’s own disingenuous talking points shamelessly republished under the masthead and with the imprimatur of a once-respected newspaper now owned and controlled by the same man who owns and controls Fox News.

In only two short years, Bobby Jindal has gone from being one of the most popular governors in the country to one of the least popular. According to the most recent PPP poll, Jindal is approved by only 37% of Louisiana voters, plummeting more than 20 points since 2010. The conventional wisdom is that Jindal has damaged himself by spending so much time away from Louisiana, and this, no doubt, is also the explanation that Jindal and his allies must offer in defense of his record, credibility, and relevance. Louisiana voters, the logic goes, only disapprove of Bobby Jindal because they love him so much and just wish he was around more often.

As much as I hate to disabuse Jindal’s defenders of this, the truth is: Jindal’s standing has plummeted in Louisiana because he has spent his years as Governor promoting and pushing through a litany of disastrous and hugely unpopular policies, cynically and cavalierly using Louisiana as the testing grounds for controversial far-right legislation, much of which was cooked up behind the closed doors of powerful conservative lobbying organizations and right-wing think tanks: Privatizing prisons and hospitals, attempting to eliminate state income and business taxes with an exorbitantly high and regressive sales tax, refusing billions in federal funding for health care, high-speed rail, unemployment insurance, and a string of much-needed infrastructure projects. Governor Jindal is no longer popular because Louisiana voters simply want to see him govern more; he’s unpopular because they believe he’s not good at governing. He’s a partisan conservative media personality, more comfortable with being an archetype than in being an effective leader.

Put another way, it’s not that Louisiana voters wish Jindal would be in Baton Rouge more often; it’s that they are finally, collectively realizing a fundamental truth about the Governor they had once deemed their “Boy Wonder”: Bobby Jindal has always cared more about his national political future than his record in Louisiana.

If you require any more proof, then simply review his record on education reform, his “moon shot.”

When running for President, Mitt Romney elevated Jindal as his “point man” on education reform, and recently, Texas State Senator Dan Patrick, in announcing his intention to introduce school voucher legislation, suggested that Texas should be guided by Jindal’s program in Louisiana.

Bobby Jindal’s “bold” and “ambitious” school reform initiatives, to put it kindly, have been a series of embarrassing, unmitigated disasters:

1) UNCONSTITUTIONAL

2) UNCONSTITUTIONAL

3) UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Part II will be published on PolicyMic.com. Stay tuned.

Bill Moyers Highlights Louisiana’s Innovative Progressives: Zack Kopplin and the Lafayette Pro-Fiber Movement ¹

On Friday, legendary PBS host Bill Moyers will sit down with my friend and a young man who is increasingly becoming one of the leading education and science advocates in the nation, Zack Kopplin. In only two short years, Zack has catapulted his activism into international acclaim. Last week, Zack addressed more than 10,000 people at the Save Texas School rally in Austin:

And again, on Friday, he will be interviewed by the Great Bill Moyers on PBS (so set your TIVOs). Here’s a preview:

A couple of weeks ago, Moyers’s show also focused on the innovative and incredible work being done in Lafayette, Louisiana, featuring another one of my dear friends, Stephen Handwerk. It’s a great story, and you should watch it in its entirety.

Former Louisiana College Professor Dr. Scott Culpepper: Fire Joe Aguillard ¹

Dr. Scott Culpepper is currently an Associate Professor of History at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa.

Dr. Culpepper is a graduate of Louisiana College and Baylor University and from 2007 until 2012, he served as an Associate Professor of History at Louisiana College.

Yesterday, he published a stunningly candid open letter to LC’s Board of Trustees.

Republished with permission:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Louisiana College Board of Trustees,

As an alumnus (1996) and a former faculty member (2007-2012) of Louisiana College, I urge you to take decisive action to restore the academic and spiritual integrity of our college by immediately terminating the employment of Joe Aguillard as president of Louisiana College and dismissing all charges against Joshua Breland and all other students involved in this recent fiasco. I do not make either of these requests lightly or without good reason. There are many who would attest to my conservative credentials, but I found that I could no longer serve under Joe Aguillard in good conscience because his leadership contradicts the very core of the scripture he claims to defend. Public and private dishonesty, spiritual manipulation and intimidation, irresponsible anti-intellectualism, and presumptuous attempts to implement poorly conceived pipe dreams rather than responsible planning has characterized life at Louisiana College during Joe Aguillard’s tenure. His recent attempt to penalize students for exercising their First Amendment rights is only the latest in a long series of poor decisions that have compromised the academic and spiritual integrity of Louisiana College.

I was initially a supporter of Joe Aguillard and excited about the new direction of Louisiana College. I had been concerned about issues at Louisiana College as a student and was hopeful that the new direction of the college would provide a fresh start in a positive direction. Even when I started to hear disturbing stories about how the transition had been engineered, I hoped that reconciliation could be achieved and that the college would move forward. None of that happened. As my first year at LC continued, I began to be concerned about the grandiose announcements that were being made regarding the establishment of a law school with no clear plan for funding the venture. I also became aware that many of my colleagues were struggling financially and yet vast amounts were being funneled for the building of a new football stadium. Only the first phase of that project is completed nearly four years later. I told myself that maybe the administration was just operating with the hope that athletics would make money to support academics, but it became increasingly obvious that little fundraising was going on to support the undergraduate program. In fact, the undergraduate program, the traditional core of Louisiana College’s liberal arts program, seemed to be taking a back seat to the dizzying array of proposed graduate ventures that were being advanced by the administration.

I thought I was alone in my concerns for a while and possibly overreacting. As evidence began to accumulate that my impressions were accurate, I started to compare notes with colleagues. I discovered that several of them had similar concerns and also new information to add to what I had observed myself. It also became obvious that there was no forum for faculty to safely speak to the administration about these issues. Conversations I had with Dr. Aguillard about them generally degenerated into attempts on his part to find out who I had been talking with and reminders that we need to be careful of idle gossip. We were told that anyone who went directly to the Board of Trustees without first speaking with Aguillard would be immediately terminated for insubordination.

My first direct encounter with Aguillard’s style of managing subordinates came in the spring of 2009 when I voiced concern, first through a series of e-mail messages and then through a letter sent to leading administrators as well as select faculty members, about comments made by David Barton at the spring commencement. Mr. Barton made several comments at the ceremony that were erroneous. Not only students but faculty members seemed to be taking his false assertions as fact. I had already communicated to the administration before the event Barton’s well known reputation for distorting facts and his nearly universal repudiation by Christian academics. I requested that Aguillard allow us to present the other side of the argument for students and faculty who might be aware of Barton’s factual distortions. The response was bizarre. Dr. Chuck Quarles had also written a letter in which he echoed some of my concerns about Barton’s presentation. Aguillard requested that his personal assistant, Joseph Cole, vet my letter and Dr. Quarles’ for factual accuracy because we probably “misunderstood Bro. Barton.” Cole was a music major with no background in history who had not even completed his undergraduate degree. Aguillard finally called me in for a rather strange conversation in which I tried to convince him with historical evidence that Barton was incorrect, and he responded by continually asserting that I would believe otherwise if I felt the spiritual vibe at Barton’s headquarters in Aledo, TX. The meeting ended with Aguillard saying that he forgave me for my letter. When I tried to diplomatically say that I stood by the letter and was not apologizing for its content, Aguillard said it would be best for my long term future at Louisiana College to forget about Barton. I am still convinced that if Dr. Quarles had not been involved as well and I had not just been selected as Professor of the Year by the student body that spring that my treatment at this time might have mirrored the ordeal that Rondall Reynoso endured two years later.

My second direct encounter occurred in the early summer of 2010. I had become increasingly aware of the deteriorating infrastructure on campus. The information technology services were and continue to be an embarrassment. The dorms and library were rotting even then. I had just returned to my office after teaching a May term class. My students in the class were upset because they had not been able to access e-mail for days; they were unable to read primary sources for the class that day because the blackboard server was down; several of them had major registration issues, and the classroom computers did not function that day. As I sat contemplating all these frustrations, the melodic strains of “Home on the Range” wafted over Alexandria Hall from the sparkling new chimes that had been installed in our dilapidated headquarters through the generosity of an anonymous donor. Sick and tired of the complete cloak of silence imposed by the administration on any hint of a statement that sounded like a critique or criticism, I placed a statement on my Facebook page expressing my frustration that we had money to install bells to play American folk anthems on the hour, but none to provide an adequate infrastructure for our students. Several students and faculty members responded with their own frustrations. Joe’s response was immediate. He called me and two other faculty members to his office with no warning.

In my meeting with him, he claimed that the donor was very upset and that the donor had specified which songs he wanted played. “Home on the Range” was supposedly one of them. I am guessing he liked “The Wizard of Oz” as well because we often heard other triumphant songs to advance the Kingdom of God such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I was very open and honest with Aguillard at this meeting. I told him that I wanted to trust him but that I had serious questions about the direction of the college and his leadership. He responded by giving me a trite illustrative story on gossip printed from one of those web sites that provides cribbed illustrations for sermons. When I said that there were others who shared my concerns, Aguillard responded, “Who? I want to know all their names!” When I refused to provide him with names, he accused me of lying about there being other concerned parties. When he asked why I did not think that the administration was working to raise money to care for the campus, I indicated that the library roof was in disrepair, the dorms were falling apart, and the information technology infrastructure was shot. When I mentioned the library roof, Aguillard shouted, “That is a lie! You have been a pastor and you are lying about the state of our campus!” I later learned that a crew was brought in just a few weeks later to examine the roof. Two years later, I learned from a student that both a donor and the Board of Trustees were going around campus asking questions but not about the condition of the campus. They were asking questions about me. To this day none of them, including the donor, has ever approached me or asked me anything about my reasons for expressing those concerns. I am convinced again that it was only my good record and the verbal support of many students that protected me. I am also convinced that this was the moment that the administration decided to make Rondall Reynoso the scapegoat for faculty dissent. Rondall was only one individual involved in the Facebook posts, but as an Art professor with a small cohort who was unknown to many students on campus, he was easier to slander than the rest of us. He also was known to challenge the administration on ethical issues when they were in the wrong. Aguillard directly called Rondall poison in our meeting that day and said I needed to “pray about the influences on my life.”

While these two encounters represent occasions when I attempted to express concerns directly to Dr. Aguillard, we daily lived in an atmosphere of tension and paranoia. Aguillard and many of his associates routinely acted in ways that were spiritually immature. They made a regular practice of shunning people who displeased them by refusing to acknowledge their presence when they passed them in the hallway. There was an expectation that, in the words of an administrator, “You must love everyone Joe loves and hate everyone Joe hates.” My department chair increasingly put pressure on me to stop allowing people to come to my office who were considered critical of the administration. Information technology personnel who could not keep the campus network operating in the best of circumstances spent an inordinate amount of time monitoring faculty e-mail and Facebook to look for “subversive” activities. A spirit of fear and paranoia pervaded the campus.

We hung our heads in embarrassment as Joe launched a crusade against the “Satanic” Town Talk which dared to print the truth about his administration. I listened to hateful diatribes in chapel and faculty meetings that contradicted everything we were trying to teach our students about developing the mind for God’s glory. We watched as Joe ate worms twice, hired an actor to play a mentally retarded person to make a point about how we needed to be open to admitting people with mental handicaps, listened as he slandered Baylor University as a godless and secular school, and chuckled at the great bat infestation which the administration would never admit happened. I listened to Joe lie repeatedly about the extent of our problems with SACS when I knew the truth and was threatened for sharing it. The entire time my heart broke for my students, some of whom had no idea what they were not getting at Louisiana College and others who endured threats and intimidation because they knew exactly what was happening and would not stand for it. In fact, those who are rightly expressing concern for the students now being repressed should know that there were many before them who were quietly dealt with by the administration and whose cause was not taken up simply because they were not ministerial students. In fact, the Christian Studies department often warned their students to stay away from these students because they were “troublemakers.”

The tactics of the administration reached a new low with the Rondall Reynoso prosecution. I will not retell the entire story because Rondall has told it well himself on several forums. For my part, I was walking a very thin line because of my friendship with Rondall and my obvious agreement with his critique. I was “asked” to recuse myself from his case, the only faculty case ever to reach the Faculty Advisory Committee during my tenure of service, because evidence would be presented about situations in which I had been involved. This directive was sent down despite the fact that Carolyn Spears, a fervent supporter of Aguillard, was allowed to serve on the committee even though she was implicated in evidence that Rondall was presenting in his defense. Aguillard’s “request” was delivered to me by Joseph Cole. Cole walked into an upper-level class and interrupted me mid-lecture to hand-deliver me the document in front of a room full of startled students. In addition to Rondall’s dismissal, another of my colleagues, Beth Overhauser was released from her contract despite the fact that she had been given a promissory notice that her contract would be renewed a month earlier. Beth had testified on Rondall’s behalf, a practice that was permitted by the faculty handbook, and she also dared to suggest to Aguillard that she was concerned that his rhetoric in chapel regarding homosexuality might be tempered with more references to God’s willingness to forgive anyone who would repent. Several faculty members assisted the administration in branding Beth a radical because we had read George Orwell’s 1984in a faculty reading group. They also said she was disparaging Louisiana because we read John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces. This book had been chosen by another member of the group. All other books we read were chosen from a list of acknowledged classics by group consensus. It did not matter. She was given no contract while other faculty members received ours in our boxes during commencement exercises. She had to request a meeting to get face-to-face confirmation from acting president Tim Johnson and Vice President of Academic Affairs Tim Searcy that she was not being renewed..

I could write an entire book chronicling the issues at Louisiana College. Since this document is already longer than I planned, I will close by saying that the examples here could be supported by a ream of other incidents. By God’s grace, He delivered my family from these circumstances last year when we received a call to teach at another private Christian college. While I will not chronicle all of our personal issues due to our LC experience, suffice it to say that it was unbelievably stressful for our entire family. Louisiana College administrators often brought up our families when reminding us that we needed to toe the party line, regardless of the truth. They constantly displayed callousness towards concerns about the welfare of families and other innocents that stood in direct contrast to the compassion Jesus commands us to have for even our enemies.

For these reasons and many others that I have not had time to record, I state once again my impassioned request that you begin the rebuilding of Louisiana College by removing Joe Aguillard from power, rescuing the Christian Studies students he is persecuting currently, and dismantling the network of supports who have enabled his ruthless leadership. This task will not be easy. There are many who would still be at Louisiana College who have been willing instruments in implementing Aguillard’s reign of terror. Others have enabled him through their silence or by reporting on other faculty and students who sought to bring change. Anyone who takes the helm will have to deal with these remaining corrupt elements as well as with a Louisiana Baptist constituency that has no understanding of how to foster a quality conservative Christian education. In other words, you and the future president of Louisiana College have your work cut out for you. But I am praying that you have been sent for this time, to this place, in this role, for such a time as this. May God bless you and Louisiana College!

Sincerely,

Dr. Scott Culpepper

LC Class of 1996

Louisiana College Announces Emergency Board Meeting on February 25th; Here’s the LC Board ⁶

According the website Blow the Whistle, L.C., Louisiana College just announced an unprecedented emergency board meeting, ostensibly to discuss the recent controversies related to President Joe Aguillard’s decision to refuse to extend the contracts of three divinity school professors who allegedly have advanced and espoused a type of Calvinism in their scholarship and his administration’s decision to actively investigate graduate divinity school students for criticizing Aguillard’s decisions, apparently alleging that these students may have violated the Student Handbook, which prohibits students from saying anything and everything that may be perceived to be “disparaging” against the school, an Orwellian and dictatorially broad statement that effectively penalizes and punishes students who dare to speak out.

Commenters on the Save Our LC online forum have reason to be optimistic (quoting):

According to the Whistleblower site, an emergency board meeting will commence next Monday, the 25th. One has to wonder whether this is the end for this administration. What are the chances the board will pay off the prez and send him packing? Might he announce his retirement, effective graduation day? Or, will he somehow politically survive the latest round of accusations of mistreatment of employees and students?

This board must feel “up against it.” Decries from preachers about the Calvinism, from students that their beloved professors have been mistreated. Oh, what a difficult time to be a trustee. These are the yields of less than courageous leadership. This is what unprincipled, political hacketry gets you. Do the right thing, guys/gals. Let him exit with grace, even though he didn’t grant that to others. Renew the contracts. Express support for the students. Find a president from far away who knows a little something about higher ed.

The speculation is, of course, the Louisiana College Board members will finally see the writing that’s been indelibly written on the wall, and remove Joe Aguillard from his Presidency. It remains to be seen whether the Board will muster enough bravery and loyalty needed to oust Joe Aguillard’s fractious and divisive leadership so soon, but it is a good sign.

The Whistle Blower website encouraged students and concerned citizens to contact three specific board members.

I’ll take it a step further: Contact all of them!

Without further delay, here they are, the Trustees of Louisiana College:

1. Roy Davis- North Shreve, Shreveport

2. James Foster- Utility, Jonesville

3. Jim Garlington- Oak Grove, Bentley

4. Michael Moore (no, not that Michael Moore)- Mooringsport, Mooringsport

5. Tommy French- Jefferson, Baton Rouge

6. David Willoughby- Calvary, Monroe

7. Mark Taylor- Cook, Ruston

8. Tony Perkins- Greenwell Springs, Baton Rouge

9. Steve Folma- First, Houma

10. Lonnie Scarborough- Fair Park, West Monroe

11. Jerry Chaddick- Open Door, Moss Bluff

12. Jill Kidder- Istrouma, Baton Rouge

13. Mike Francis- East Bayou, Lafayette

14. Jack Hunter- First, New Orleans

15. Glenn Wilkins- Martin, Coushatta

16. Kris Chenier- Trinity Heights, Shreveport

17. Lyndon Dawson- First, Ruston

18. Ryan Gregory- First, Oak Grove

19. Carlton Vance- Philadelphia, Deville

20. Ray Werfine- Ebenezer, Hammond

21. Glenn George- First, Gillis

22. Sam Camp- First, Covington

23. Blake Cooper- Calvary, Alexandria

24. Clay Crenshaw- First, Bossier City

25. Roxanne West- First, Pine Prairie

26. Larry Allen- Hosston, Hosston

27. Jay Adkins- First, Westwego

28. John Walker- Antioch, Mansfield

29. Barry Bieber- New Prospect, Dry Prong

30. Shawn Thomas- First, Moss Bluff

31. Heath Veuleman- The Gathering Place, Tioga

May 2013
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Apr
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Superintendent John White Qualifies Six More Creationist Voucher Schools for 2012-2013 School Year, Bringing the Total to 26.

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this:

Spread the word

Like this: