Being John Milkovich

Please watch and enjoy the video.

State Sen. John Milkovich, D-Shreveport, made the case for teaching creationism in schools Tuesday night (March 29).

"Scientific research and developments and advances in the last 100 years -- particularly the last 15, 20, 10 years -- have validated the biblical story of creation," the freshman state senator said.

Milkovich, who is the vice chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said archeologists and scientists have verified the origin story of the Christian Bible. He said archeologists had found the remnants of Noah's ark recently. A study of rocks had verified that the earth was created in a week, Milkovich said.

The LSEA is still a terrible law

Lamar White and Scott Eric Kaufman writing in Salon:

For Klinghoffer and his colleagues at the Discovery Institute, the Louisiana statute is crystal clear — it cannot be used to promote religion, only to allow public school science teachers the ability to facilitate an “open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

To do so, the law allows teachers the ability to introduce supplementary materials. That all may sound perfectly reasonable, until you consider that “the origins of life” and “human cloning” aren’t scientific theories. This should probably cause concern: The statute misdefines the very thing it seeks to regulate. And that’s because this law, the first of its kind passed in the nation, is not and was never about science education.

It is a law written and promoted by a narrow sect of Christian conservatives, new earth creationists, folks who believe that the universe is only 6,000 years old, that Noah saved every species on the planet by building a floating zoo, and that the apocalypse may occur within their lifetimes. To be sure, the statute does include a section recapitulating federal law about prohibiting the promotion of religion, but despite the Discovery Institute’s best propaganda, that particular section is meaningless.

In the early 1980s, Louisiana enacted the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act, which required that any public school teaching evolution must also teach creationism. That law contained the same exact prohibition against promoting religion. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Edwards v. Aguillard, saw through the charade and invalidated the law — there’s no such thing as “creation-science;” it’s just creationism. In fact, in later opinions, courts have said the same thing about “intelligent design” — it too is the same thing as creationism.

The legislative session just ended on Thursday and our terrible creationist law survived another year. When he launches his Presidential campaign in ten days, Bobby Jindal is going to talk about how great he has been for education in Louisiana.  

Louisiana under the Norquist/Duggar Administration

Lamar has a killer article in Salon this morning. In part, it is a Get-To-Know Bobby Jindal story for a national audience just now getting to not know or care about him.

Despite his dismal poll numbers, Jindal still has a (slim.. very unlikely) chance to connect with GOP primary voters... especially in Iowa and especially among evangelicals. To this point in his not-yet campaign, he's done everything he needs to do to make that happen. This doesn't mean that he will gain traction, of course.. only that he is taking the correct steps for a candidate in his position.  Some of us have talked about this before in several spots.

In the Salon article, Lamar concurs with this analysis citing Jindal's prolific work as an opinion columnist as an example of his yeomanlike campaign style.  He also throws in this bit.

Over the last three years, Bobby Jindal has published more opinion columns in national publications than any other politician in the country, most recently a crude and meandering explanation in The New York Times about his opposition to marriage equality. When Time magazine asked one of Jindal’s chief political strategists, Curt Anderson, about the governor’s prolific output, he made a frank on-the-record admission: Bobby Jindal didn’t actually write many of the national columns published under his name; he just signed off on them.

He's kind of the James Patterson of the political op-ed.

After that it gets more interesting as Lamar profiles longtime Jindal braintruster Timmy Teepell.  Teepell's deep affiliation with the national homeschooling movement has been widely known for some time though, curiously, it is rarely talked about as a factor in Jindal's political strategy or his policy formulation.  Lamar might be the first to put it front and center in any high-profile medial account.

Last November, Jindal was a guest on Farris’s “Home School Heartbeat” podcast, which is notable both because the show is obscure to anyone unfamiliar with homeschool advocacy and because Jindal granted Michael Farris more time than he has to any single Louisiana journalist or reporter in the last four years. “I’ve been very, very blessed and fortunate to see homeschoolers come volunteer in my campaigns, as well as other campaigns, and they’re a tremendous asset and they do a phenomenal job,” Jindal tells Farris. When asked about his specific connection to the homeschool movement, Jindal gushes:

One of the first formative experiences for me—one of my closest friends, he’s served in a number of capacities for me, both as chief of staff, as a campaign manager, but more importantly, just a close friend—has been Timmy Teepell. So as Timmy got more involved with my campaigns and my different administrations, whether it was in Congress or here at the state level, I got to know him well. His younger brother Taylor has also worked for me and with me; we’ve spent quite a bit of time. And through his family, as well as through Sarah’s family, we’ve come to meet and know a lot of homeschool children. Many of them have volunteered on our campaigns. Many of them come to work in our administration.

We’ve got several that work at many different levels. We’ve had homeschooled children come and work in our communications shop, in our policy shop, in all different offices here in state government as well as when I was in DC.

It then becomes clear why Timmy Teepell has become so important to Bobby Jindal: Jindal believes Teepell delivers the homeschool movement’s voters, financial support, public relations apparatus, campaign volunteers, and staffers — a tremendous marshaling of human resources, one that has provided the backbone of his political success to date and one that, thus far, has remained completely under the radar.

Most of the press on Jindal, both local and national, treats his aggressive rightward push on religious and social issues as a gawk-worthy pandering freakshow.  Certainly, it is all of that. But it is also a key strategic component of Jindal's electoral success in Louisiana as well as the basis of his signature policy initiatives.

Education policy, especially, bears Teepell's fingerprints as state laws have been written and public funds diverted toward the promotion of anti-science and the dismantling of public schools as we knew them.  Jindal, more than likely, will highlight education reform in his campaign kickoff speech in New Orleans this month. (I've already speculated that he'll speak to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference in town that week but the way things are going he may have to move to an undisclosed location.)

Still, most of the serious criticisms of Jindal shift away from social issues and focus instead on how his strict "no-tax" position has wrecked the state budget. The "Governor Grover Norquist" theory has gotten so far, in fact, that the Legislature is almost taking the notion literally this week.

Eleven legislators are seeking answers about Gov. Bobby Jindal's "no tax" pledge directly from the man who issued it -- Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform in Washington D.C.

State Rep. Joel Robideaux, R-Lafayette, and 10 other Louisiana House members sent Norquist a letter Sunday night, asking Norquist to rethink his approach to Louisiana's budget and the "no tax" pledge.

Lawmakers are struggling with Norquist's restrictions as they enter the final four days of 2015 budget negotiations. They have to send the spending plan to Jindal's desk by Thursday evening.

If we're going with this Norquist Administration premise, Lamar's article suggests to us that it is just as plausible to conceive of a (sort of) Duggar Administration.

Like Timmy Teepell, Nicholas Ducote was also homeschooled as a kid in Louisiana. “I was raised in a religious cult,” Ducote tells me.

His parents were members of the Advanced Training Institute, an evangelical organization led by Bill Gothard. Last year, 34 women accused Gothard of sexual harassment and four others claimed that he had sexually abused them when they were teenagers. Gothard was forced to resign, publicly acknowledging that his actions “crossed the lines of discretion and were wrong.” Gothard reemerged in the spotlight last month after the revelation that Josh Duggar, a director of the Family Research Council and one of the stars of the hit reality show “19 and Counting,” had sexually molested at least five different girls, including his own sisters.

The Duggar family are also members of the Advanced Training Institute and use Gothard’s curricula to homeschool all of their children.

“As a part of the larger Christian homeschooling movement in Louisiana, we were being trained to become culture warriors,” Ducote says. “I didn’t get a ‘real’ high school education. I spent most of my time prepping for debate tournaments.”

Actually for perfect symmetry with the Norquist bit, we'd be better to call it the Michael Farris Administration (Lamar quotes Ducote, “If you want to know what Bobby Jindal’s next move is, then all you need to do is take a page from Timmy and follow Michael Farris on Facebook,”)  but let's see if we can make Duggar stick for now. It's just more fun that way. 

Creationism for thee but not for..

This just in. Bobby Jindal is something of a phony.

Jindal has embraced this academic freedom motif when discussing creationism and the Louisiana Science Education Act. I asked Jindal spokeswoman Shannon Bates about why the governor believed it was appropriate to teach creationism in public schools, and she told me, “We think children should learn every notion with regard to the origin of the universe and mankind—evolution, creationism, Big Bang theory, you name it.” In a discussion with NBC’s Education Nation about the Louisiana Science Education Act, Jindal said, “Let’s teach [our kids] about intelligent design … what are we scared of?”

But what are Jindal’s own children actually learning? Bates told me that “the governor hopes his children are exposed to all kinds of different science and theories.” Whatever the governor may hope, his kids are attending one of the best schools in Louisiana, and they are only being taught evolution. I know, because I had their seventh-grade biology teacher, Catherine Cummins, myself, and she makes a point to emphasize real science.

My working theory is that Bobby Jindal is doing everything he should do in order to perform well in the GOP primaries. (Especially among religious conservatives in Iowa where they are starting to warm up to him.) But this doesn't mean that he's actually going to be successful.  He might be. But he also might not be on account of certain weaknesses. 

The most glaring of those is the fact that.. even though he's getting better at hiding it.. he really can't help oozing the kind of fake smarm that is easy to detect.  If he starts to become a legitimate threat, the thing that is most likely to bring him down will be an opponent who knows how to exploit his obvious little hypocrisies like the one described above.

The purest Christians burn blue

Elbert Guillory presented a lecture on the history of science this week.

According to the Friendly Atheist, State Senator Elbert Guillory (R) was attempting to make the case for teaching “both sides” in the evolution/creationism debate  when he provided a convoluted version of the history of scientific controversies.

“There was a time, sir, when scientists thought that the world was flat. And if you get to the end of it, you’d fall off. There was another time when scientists thought that the sun revolved around the world,” Guillory explained. “And they always thought to ensure that anyone who disagreed with their science was a heretic. People were burned for not believing that the world was flat. People were really badly treated.”

Turn in your books to page 666 where you'll find terrible story of how scientific flat-Earth inquisitors purged recalcitrant clergy by throwing them onto their terrifying Bunsen pyres.  This was, actually, somewhat helpful during the religious wars of the Reformation when it was often difficult to tell an Anabaptist from a Janesenist  without finding out what color flame they produced.

Luckily this practice began to slow down after the invention of the spectrograph although some folks in these parts still rely on even older methods of sorting out what's what.

Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had. He said he thought repealing the act could "lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures."

"Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man -- in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed -- if I had closed him off and just said, 'That's not science. I'm not going to see this doctor,' I would have shut off a very good experience for myself," Guillory said.

Senator Guillory is a candidate for Lieutenant Governor this fall. 

Jindaled

Just selling it all off. It's what he does.

While neither Jindal nor any legislator has dared breathe the word privatization as it regards the state’s colleges and universities, at least one Jindal appointee, Board of Regents Chairman Roy Martin of Alexandria, has broached the subject, speaking he said, strictly as an individual. http://theadvocate.com/news/11716059-123/regents-look-at-privatizing-public

The slashing of higher education budgets appears to be a pattern as governors attempt to wean colleges and universities from dependence on state funding, transitioning their status from state-supported to state-assisted to state-located. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/27/scott-walker-bobby-jindal-aim-to-slash-higher-ed-funding

Privatization of state colleges and universities would, of course, push tuition rates even higher, making a college education cost prohibitive for many. But that dovetails nicely with the ALEC agenda as income disparity continues to widen with ever more generous tax laws that benefit the super-rich while placing growing burdens on lower-income taxpayers. By winnowing out those who can least afford college, privatization necessarily enhances the selection process to serve the elite and at the same time, opens up additional revenue opportunities for those in position to take advantage of privatized services such as book stores, printing, food services, and general maintenance. http://gse.buffalo.edu/FAS/Johnston/privatization.html

There is already a backlog of nearly $2 billion in maintenance projects on state college and university campuses just waiting for some lucky entrepreneur with the right connections.
http://theadvocate.com/home/5997316-125/backlog-of-maintenance

And if you've been paying even the slightest attention to Jindal's privatization of Medicaid, or his handling of the state Office of Group Benefits, or several other items he's placed out on the lawn for sale, you'd probably recognize this pattern by now. 

To say the least, it's been fun.  But before you get too mad, remember he's only done exactly what he said he would do.

When I campaigned for governor seven years ago, I promised to make the government smaller and the economy larger. That’s exactly what I have done. We cut taxes and reduced the size of government. In fact, the government is smaller by more than $9 billion and 30,000 workers.

People fired. Government "smaller" as in, government sold off to cronies and/or left to rust away in limbo.  Sucks to be us, I guess.  But as the GOP primary heats up, don't be too shocked when Jindal starts to get credit for his strong conservative "policy ideas." 

Jindal, an Ivy League-educated conservative known for his policy ideas, has already been in Iowa twice this month and returns Saturday for the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition spring dinner. He has been working hard to court Christian conservatives here, saying at a Des Moines event in January that it's time for the country to "turn back to God."

He's got that God cred too, by the way.  The legislature had his back on that this afternoon.
 

Senate Education votes 4-3 against repealing La. Science Education Act. Chairman Appel cast tie-breaking vote to defer the bill. #lalege
— Melinda Deslatte (@MelindaDeslatte) April 22, 2015

They're only going to do him more favors as the session goes on.

Saturday morning TV

Here's Zack Kopplin on Bill Moyers this week. Go watch.

May God, or perhaps Darwin, bless the "troublemakers"

I can't imagine a more honorable title that could be bestowed upon a person than "Troublemaker of the Year."

Zack Kopplin, the 19-year-old Rice University student and Louisiana native who's spent the last two years advocating for repeal of the Louisiana Science Education Act, was named the inaugural "Troublemaker of the Year" by a private foundation that seeks to honor people in their teens who stir up, well, trouble.

Congratulations to Zack. You can read more about Zack's exploits by consulting most of the internet since he's been speaking out against creationism in science curricula just about everywhere in recent years. Unfortunately the nutty anti-science climate has necessitated his ubiquity.  But if you don't feel like reading the whole internet right now, Mark Moseley has compiled most of it in one column for you right here.

Believe it or not, though, despite Moseley's Herculean effort of Kopplin-ology, there is still one link we can add to the compendium.  In 2012, Zack appeared at the prestigious Rising Tide Conference in New Orleans where he participated in a panel discussion about education reform in Louisiana. You can watch the video here. It lasts about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Thar be dragons

And Loch Ness Monsters and some other such.

Louisiana is preparing to spend over $11 million to send 1,306 students to 19 private schools that teach creationism instead of science as part of Governor Bobby Jindal’s new voucher program. It is time to halt the implementation of this creationist voucher program.

Follow the link for the full taxonomy of mythical beasts.

Update: Because, of course he did. 

Romney opened his comments by encouraging the donors to eat and referred to the meal as "the most expensive lunch you've ever attended."

He also complemented Jindal on his accomplishments in Louisiana, particularly in education.

Also... the usual swells.

Those attending included ship builder Boise Bollinger, Rita Benson Leblanc and New Orleans developer Joseph Canizaro.

Assholes

Recently the creationist assholes in the Louisiana Legislature voted to maintain the backwards law that enshrines creationism in the public school science curriculum.

Baton Rouge -- Senators refused Thursday to get rid of a Louisiana law that allows public school science teachers to use supplemental materials in their classrooms in addition to state-approved textbooks. The science teachers and students pushing repeal of the Louisiana Science Education Act said it creates a way for teachers to challenge evolution and teach creationism in classrooms.

Dambala has collected some video highlights of these assholes in action.

Meanwhile in other news of assholery:

The Tennessee Legislature on Friday sent a bill to Gov. Bill Haslam’s desk that, according to the Tennessean, would require sex-ed classes to “exclusively and emphatically” promote abstinence and ban teachers and outside groups from promoting “gateway sexual activity.”

Unsurprising news item of the day

Attempt to repeal Louisiana's creationism law fails in committee.

Known to crush and crumble schools

Back in the dark ages* when I attended a New Orleans Catholic high school** the math and science curriculum there was pretty high quality. I went off to college with enough grounding to test out of several hours of basic physics and biology requirements. I also had the benefit of pre-calculus instruction from a very strange but PhD qualified teacher. Of all the complaints I could offer you about my high school education, the quality of the science instruction is not among them. (Actually, and this seems odd for a supposedly "religious" education, it was the humanities that suffered with lots of English and history classes taught by people we addressed as "coach".)

Anyway, I'm wondering if Louisiana's religious high schools are still teaching science so well these days when the public schools are so insistent upon teaching religion.


*Tomorrow is my birthday, actually. I will be turning 75 which they're now saying makes me eligible for medicare in fifty years.

** One of the non-beating ones

Going for the record

If you're wondering if the Louisiana legislature has room to squeeze in one last crazy order of business before the session ends, you won't be disappointed.