Bobby Jindal’s School Voucher Funding Ruled Unconstitutional By Louisiana Supreme Court

Louisiana’s Supreme Court issued a 6-1 decision on Tuesday that struck down Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) plan to power a private school voucher program with state funds, the AP reports.

With Justice Greg Guidry dissenting, the majority ruled in favor of the Louisiana Association of Educators, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana School Boards Association. Justice John Weimer wrote “the clear, specific and unambiguous language of the constitution” does not allow the state government to divert state funds earmarked for public schools in the state’s Minimum Foundation Program to pay for private or parochial tuition, according to the Times-Picayne, which added that the court did not consider the program on its merits….

….Jindal has been a vocal critic of the American public education system and teachers unions, claiming they give students no alternatives to failing schools. Critics have [correctly] noted that schools accepting voucher money teach to different standards. In some cases, schools were teaching creationism and the existence of the Loch Ness monster, and in others, offered no services to students with special needs or learning disabilities.

Source

Belief in biblical end-times stifling climate change action in U.S.: study

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date.

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change.

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly.

The study, based on data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, uncovered that belief in the “Second Coming” of Jesus reduced the probability of strongly supporting government action on climate change by 12 percent when controlling for a number of demographic and cultural factors. When the effects of party affiliation, political ideology, and media distrust were removed from the analysis, the belief in the “Second Coming” increased this effect by almost 20 percent. (This suggests there is a significant overlap between those three variables and belief in the “Second Coming.”)

“[I]t stands to reason that most nonbelievers would support preserving the Earth for future generations, but that end-times believers would rationally perceive such efforts to be ultimately futile, and hence ill-advised,” Barker and Bearce explained.

That very sentiment has been expressed by federal legislators. Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) said in 2010 that he opposed action on climate change because “the Earth will end only when God declares it to be over.” He is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.

Though the two researchers cautioned their study was not intended to predict future policy outcomes, they said their study suggested it was unlikely the United States would take action on climate change while so many Americans, particularly Republicans, believed in the coming end-times.

“That is, because of institutions such as the Electoral College, the winner-take-all representation mechanism, and the Senate filibuster, as well as the geographic distribution of partisanship to modern partisan polarization, minority interests often successfully block majority preferences,” Barker and Bearce wrote. “Thus, even if the median voter supports policies designed to slow global warming, legislation to effect such change could find itself dead on arrival if the median Republican voter strongly resists public policy environmentalism at least in part because of end-times beliefs.”

(Source: rawstory.com)

Top GOP Consultant Frank Luntz Calls Limbaugh “Problematic”

abaldwin360:

(Mother Jones) - Believing he was speaking privately to the dozens of students present, Luntz proceeded to gripe about conservative talk radio and its impact on political polarization:

And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it’s really problematic. And this is not on the Democratic side. It’s only on the Republican side…[inaudible]. [Democrats have] got everyothersource of news on their side. And so that is a lot of what’s driving it. If you take—Marco Rubio’s getting his ass kicked. Who’s my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He’s getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He’s trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn’t the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio iskillinghim. That’s what’s causing this thing underneath. And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy.

Read more and watch the video

A comment I saw elsewhere captures pretty much how I feel about this:

It’s not like Rush Limbaugh magically appeared in the last few years. The GOP wasn’t complaining about his influence throughout the ’90s or ’00s, when he brought huge amounts of power to the Republican Party. But now that it’s inconvenient, they want him to go away. Sorry Frank, but when you sell your soul to the devil, there’s no take-backs.