Monday, March 24, 2008

Gov Bobby Jindal Talks about His Conversion to Christianity On Easter Morning

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana spent Easter Morning at the New Iberia Assembly of God Church talking talking about his conversion from Hindu to Christianity. Bobby became a Catholic in High school after leaving the Hindu faith.

This is nice TV report from the Lafayette station on that has Bobby talking.(Click vid on the upper left)

I went to the Church's web site and their appears to be an audio of Jindals's talk here at 3-23-08 Governor Bobby Jindal. ( I am listening to it now and Bobby Jindal starts talking about 9 minutes in) There appears to not be an extensive archive so one might want to download it because it might go away in a few weeks. I look forward to listening to it tonight

As to the to the tv segment the General Legislative session is mentioned that is coming up. I have to admit I am impressed how Bobby has handled the past two special sessions. This general session will be a real test. I suspect that some will try to get a tad more independent and spread their wings. Which is good.

The legislature will be filing all sorts of bills that the members think are the best things since sliced bread. 1,782 bills had been filed by Friday’s main deadline for proposals to be considered by the 2008 Louisiana Legislature Many of these new legislators are brand new. It is also a session where we start to see the first real affect of term limits.

I am not a big fan of term limits though everyone tells me that they will save the state. I suspect many North Louisiana folks will find out that the lack of seniority will hurt them. When the New Orleans area delegation is bigger than the entire delegation above Alexandria ,I am fearful that our concerns and needs will be heard and acted on less and less. Some North Louisiana Senators and Reps have told me this is their fear too privately, but of course to even mention that to their constituents is well to much of an political ordeal. To do so just has you being called corrupt or part of the "problem".

So if you are from North Louisiana and wonder why more attention and funding is being paid to projects in Lafayette or Baton Rouge instead of lets say our Sparta Aquifer crisis them take a small look at the effect of "term limit" reform.

We have seen a small example of this as to I-49. For years we have talked ourselves blue in the face why I-49 must connect with Arkansas. How it was approaching more of a crisis mode. You can talk about how having it connect to the interstate north of the State line and eventually to the new Kansas City Port will reap benefits for the entire state . However because they don't see it they don't believe it. The result of course not only being loss of commerce revenue, new jobs from Shreveport to New Orleans, but also the cost of that darn 50 miles of construction has more than tripled. Thankfully for now it appears that like Blanco, Governor Jindal will be our advocate and help make up for our loss of seniority and power(which was not a lot to begin with) the next 4 to 8 years.

Also it is good to have people in the legislature that have a "Institutional memory". There are many ideas that sound good but are in fact not good at all. It often helps to have people there that can tell the new guys and gals the unexpected consequences of their "new" great idea on groups and parts of the state that they do not represent . We shall see if my fears about term limits come to be.

No comments: