Fellow students, we now stand on the threshold, the precipice, the steep edge overlooking Louisiana’s abysmal future.
Louisiana’s administration has demonstrated time and time again that it has no idea how to handle our money.
For those of you just getting into the story, we’re at the point now that medical professions would call “CTD.” That is to say, we’re “circling the drain.”
Louisiana now stands, or rather recoils, in the face of a massive $1.6 billion budget deficit. The disproportionately high cuts we’ve seen to both Louisiana health care and education are now in the hands of the legislators past and present who have neglected to give these two the seminal importance they deserve.
To make things worse, Gov. Bobby Jindal has used one-time sources of funding — “rainy day” funds and the like — to “balance” our budget in the past. This is the government equivalent of paying off the negative balance on your debit card with your credit card. It may fix the problem for now, but no intelligent person would ever claim this as a solution.
Not only has Jindal already started his exuberant cries of jubilation, he has written a book on how well he has done and toured the U.S. to let everyone know how well we’re doing thanks to him — including his improvements to education.
No, really.
Now, I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to the idea of redemption. I’d be more than willing to forgive Jindal and his boys for some of the worst political moves I’ve seen in Louisiana for some time  — to forgive them for laying off droves of good, hard-working state employees right before Christmas, for doing all of this and then labeling it a wildly successful endeavor, and one to be imitated, if he would
make his due concessions, learned his lesson and changed.
I’m disappointed to say nothing has changed, and our current plan to save Louisiana is, once again, to use one-time, unsustainable funds.
Jindal’s administration has proposed several possible solutions to come up with cash, including selling prisons, handing over state-employee health plans to private groups and getting some amount of lottery proceeds up front.
Interestingly, according to LouisianaLottery.com, 35 percent of all cash going into the lottery is put into the State Treasury, a whopping $1.8 billion dollars since its inception in 1990, according to their site.
That makes the Louisiana Lotto a financially good decision for our state. The concept isn’t hard. If a financial proposition means we’ll have less money in the future, we probably shouldn’t do it.
Enter the infamous Bayou Country Superfest.
The festival aims to bring country-music celebrities to play in Tiger Stadium. Usually, there is $300,000 dollars in love-money from Baton Rouge to help pay for the event because, to be frank, we need money coming in however we can get it.
The festival is a great idea. Not only does it raise culture and pride in our city, but, most importantly, it provides a long-run economic boost to our floundering state.
The Superfest is put on by Festival Productions Inc., a New Orleans-based company, and the concern is if we don’t continue our support for the festival in the way of sponsorship, they’ll leave for another city willing to hand over the dough.
I bet you can already guess where this is going.
The East Baton Rouge Metro Council decided Dec. 8 to strip the mayor’s budget of the $300,000 that was meant to sponsor the festival, according to Scott Dyer, spokesman for East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden’s office.
The funds have been reallocated to fund juvenile services and a substance-abuse center.
I’m going to be a little blunt, LSU. If you can balance your checkbook and have even a basic understanding of what to spend your money on, you’re miles beyond the financially inept goofballs running the show now.
 
Devin Graham is a 21-year-old business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
____
Contact Devin Graham at [email protected]