5/31/2013

Your State Sucks: Louisiana Is Ground Zero for the Failure of Republican Policies:
So let's go through the list of abominations in the state where the Rude Pundit grew up, Louisiana. Everything here is just from this past week:

Guns: In a stunning coincidence, "Louisiana has the highest rate of gun violence in the nation and the weakest gun safety laws, according to a recent national study, and state lawmakers are moving to expand the already permissive statutes." Yep, in addition to the pushing for a bill that nullifies federal laws on semi-automatic weapons, the Legislature also made it a crime to "release or publish" information on concealed carry permit holders because, obviously, in the hierarchy of nutzoid right-wing liberty, the 2nd Amendment trumps the 1st, despite the order that the authors of the Bill of Rights put them in.

According to the Center for American Progress (which is, shockingly, liberal), "Louisiana had more deaths per capita from guns than any other state from 2001 to 2010. The study indicated that Louisiana has the highest gun-homicide rate among residents 19 years old and younger." Now the natural response from gun fetishists is "Yeah, well, what about Chicago with its strict gun laws?" Yeah, see, that's a stupid fucking comparison because Chicago...see if you can follow this logic...is a city. Okay. Now the next part: Louisiana is a state. Illinois is the state that Chicago is in, and neither Illinois nor Indiana, which is very close to Chicago, have much looser gun laws than Chicago. In fact, Illinois' Senate is currently debating a bill to allow for concealed carry. So you'd have to compare Louisiana and Illinois in order to make a rational...oh, fuck, never mind. Logic wins here, but, then, again, you'd have to agree to follow logic. (Also, don't argue about Idaho or any states with loose gun laws and one person every ten miles. Use some goddamn common sense.)

Oh, by the way, just signed into law in Louisiana: lifetime concealed carry permits.

Education
: Long-necked, weak-chinned cartoon character Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, has been all about his voucher program, donating shit-tons of state education money to church-run schools in the name of freedom to be as stupid as stumps. Unfortunately, the standardized tests that are ruining education in the United States also demonstrate that voucher kids at private schools aren't learning shit, with 40% of voucher students scoring at or above grade level, compared with 69% at the hellholes of ignorance and sin, the public schools, taught by public school teachers, those paragons of greed and sloth (except when a school is being shot up and they become heroes we love again). Yeah, apparently, if you go to the Upperroom Bible Church Academy, secular science (or, you know, "science") isn't given much consideration, since, 93% of the students tested got either "Unsatisfactory" or "Approaching Basic" understanding of the subject in 7th grade. Still, it's better than Holy Ghost Elementary where, no joke, 100% of students scored at those levels.

It doesn't help that the state House just won't repeal the unconstitutional-since-1987 Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act because, oh, who knows? Baby Jesus would cry? It doesn't really matter, though, since creationism is allowed to be taught through the Jindal-approved and weirdly named Science Education Act.

Who knew that teaching that The Flintstones was a documentary would have a real-world effect on children?

Terrorism
: The recent threatening ricin-containing, threatening letters sent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Obama were postmarked from Shreveport, Louisiana (even if the current suspect is from Texas).

But that's really about guns. And bad spelling and punctuation, so education, too.