Prospective Jindal-Palin ticket could spell disaster 

by Thomas Mooney, staff writer

 

A few weeks ago, President Barack Obama addressed Congress for the first time of his presidency.

He mainly talked about the recently-passed 2009 stimulus bill. As usual, he did quite well during his speech and was praised by many.

One of those who did not give President Obama too much praise was Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal. In Jindal’s GOP response to President Obama’s speech, he tried picking out flaws in the president’s plan for the economic crisis.

All I could think about while he was talking was the fact that he was basically the Republican Party’s most likely choice to become the face of the party. It then dawned on me how horrible a 2012 Palin-Jindal ticket would be.

I can’t think of anyone who could be worse at public speaking than those two. They’d make former President George W. Bush look like a Martin Luther King Jr. or John F. Kennedy.

Jindal came off as an infomercial salesman trying to sell a flawed product. Let’s just say he isn’t the Shamwow guy.   

He primarily talked about “irresponsible spending” and about the immediate help and rebuilding process of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Both came off as pretty absurd statements and points of argument.

He first talked about all the government help that came after Katrina. Remember, Jindal is the governor of the state and was a senator during the time. While he claims he was there, he must have had his eyes closed the whole time, because I did not see much help.

To add injury to insult, it turns out that his story about former Sheriff Harry Lee yelling into a phone “ Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come arrest him too!” is just that, a story.

What a moving story, two civil servants standing up against the federal bureaucrats in their righteous crusade to help. How shameless is the Republican Party these days? Not only does he praise all the federal government help during the time, but he just flat-out lies about being there. Days later, Jindal had a statement released trying to clarify the story. Apparently, the meeting between Jindal and Lee happened days after the actual incident happened.

Jindal later said, “While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending,” and cited that “$8 billion for high-speed rail projects” as one of those. I’m not sure, but wasn’t it a Republican president who got the United States in a trillion-dollar war?

I don’t think having a high-speed railway system is a horrible idea either. It would do so many things for the people of America. Just thinking locally, how many of us would use a rail system from Lubbock to Levelland every day? I know there are many of us who commute from Lubbock to SPC. It would be both cheaper on everyone and more environment-friendly.

Another point of pointless spending according to Jindal is “$140 million for something called volcano monitoring.” I know this isn’t pointless spending to those who live around active volcanoes such as Mt. St. Helens in Washington or Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii. Maybe Jindal is under the impression that they feed the angry “volcano gods”  the cash.

Near the end, Jindal said, “Now is no time to dismantle the defenses that have protected this country for hundreds of years, or make deep cuts in funding for our troops. America's fighting men and women can do anything.” This kind of statement is just a cheap scare tactic. The United States could cut the defense budget by $557 billion and still spend more than any other country in the world. Jindal makes it seem that cutting costly government contracts to companies such as Lockheed-Martin, KBR, and Blackwater are the signs of the apocalypse. A large percentage of the defense budget is tied to government contracts with private sector corporations that get certain people wealthy. 

Jindal and the Republican Party are trying to scare the American public with comments about not giving the American troops what they need to fight. Give. Me. A. Break.

I’m not sure how anyone could convince me that this money wouldn’t be better spent on education, healthcare, alternative fuels and energy, and transportation.

I know 2012 is a far four years away, but it’s things like this that give me less and less confidence in the Republican Party that has always claimed its philosophy on government is to cut taxes and limit government but has done quite the opposite for many years. This is just another step in that direction.

I’m not in any way saying that President Obama will be defeated in 2012 by any Republican candidate, but there should always be some concern.     

The one thing Jindal is accurate on is the fact that “Americans can do anything.” I just hope they do the right thing. A Palin-Jindal ticket is just a scary proposal for 2012. If that’s the case, let’s all hope the Mayans were right.