Can you hear the executioner’s drum roll echo throughout LSU’s campus? It’s coming from Gov. Bobby Jindal’s war drums at the Louisiana State Capitol.
The Republican governor plans to drag a shackled-up Mike the Tiger across the halls of the Capitol Building toward the executioner’s block waiting in the house chambers.
Down comes the ax. Off with Mike’s head and $300 million cut from higher education.
Jindal’s cuts are in response to the $1.4 billion budget shortfall worsened by the low oil and gas prices in the world market. Instead of cutting tax incentives to the film industry or laying off tax breaks given to industries, Jindal cuts higher education.
Like most of the governor’s shoddy policies, the policy’s appearance for the 2016 election is more important than the long-term ramifications.
In The Advocate’s investigative series “Giving Away Louisiana,” Gordon Russell wrote that Louisiana taxpayers provide more funding for the film industry than for the University of New Orleans.
Our taxpayers fund 30 percent of local filming costs for any movie that applies for the government subsidies. Instead of investing in the future of Louisiana’s youth, Jindal is investing in the future of his political career.
Mike the Tiger’s executioner wants to use these big business giveaways as selling points for his inevitable 2016 run for the presidency.
With Jindal hoping the GOP views his corporate giveaways as presidential-like feats, the governor will keep on giving taxpayer dollars away like candy on Halloween.
So how are Louisiana citizens paying for the $1.08 billion in tax incentives as of 2014?
Cuts totalling $700 million to higher education since 2008, and an incoming $300 million in cuts to top it all off provide the answer.
Jindal’s promise not to raise taxes has brought these cuts upon us. James Richardson, the University’s director of the Public Administration Institute, pointed out LSU will have to raise its tuition in order to pay for the budget cuts.
“They are going to take TOPS and say we aren’t going to raise any money,” Richardson said. “We have to double our tuition to those who are not paying TOPS to get them to pay for the people paying TOPS.”
Jindal is not only hurting his own state’s citizens, but he is unloading financial burdens on out-of-state students. Granted the university cannot skyrocket out-of-state tuition in order to remain competitive nationally, they will undoubtedly raise it.
Bob Mann, a mass communication professor at the University’s and columnist for Nola.com | The Times-Picayune, wrote about how thousands of students were outraged when Highland Coffees was fixed to close, but no one rallied in anger when the University’s budget was slashed by Jindal and state legislators in the years prior.
A popular coffee shop threatens to close and students sounded the trumpets of war, sharpened their swords and prepared for battle, successfully keeping the one-stop-shop for a quick caffeine fix open for business.
Can we sound those trumpets of war for a more dire cause? Can we polish our swords and bring them out for battle once more with a nobler issue?
A coffee shop is not at risk this time around. Mike the Tiger is calling for help with Jindal’s axe hovering over his head.
Will you answer the call to battle?
Justin DiCharia is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from Slidell, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.