Cross-posted over at Daily Kingfish
With all the attention on the Louisiana Governor's race, I want to highlight the ONLY Democrat, to date, unafraid of taking on "Bobby" Jindal.
His name is Foster Campbell.
Foster is currently the PSC Commisioner for District 5, which encompasses North Louisiana, representing 24 parishes, and nearly 1 million people. Prior to his election as a PSC Commisioner, Foster served as the State Senator for District 36 for 27 years (1976 - 2003). Aight, enough about his resume. Want to know his plans for Louisiana as Governor?
Foster's campaign released a radio ad, you can listen to it here.
Still want to know more? Follow me after the jump!
The most important questions for all of the candidates running for Governor are simple - What is your plan to fix the economy? What is your plan to rein in the insurance industry? What is your plan to start saving our coastline?
Out of all the announced candidates, Foster is the ONLY one offering a plan. The rest of them? They're waiting for the campaign season to unveil them.
For instance, "Bobby" Jindal touts the fact that he introduced a two bills in the House of Representatives dealing with the insurance industry and saving our coastline. I have two questions - first, does Mr. Jindal have the clout to get them passed? And second, as being a law student has taught me oh, so well ... the devil is in the details. What are they, Mr. Jindal?
Foster has announced a policy that promises to save Louisianans and Louisiana businesses a LOT of money. He proposes we get rid of the state income tax, as well as the excise tax, and the severance tax, which only hits Louisianans right now.
In its place, he proposes a 5% tax on all the oil refined in our state. Back in 1921, the Louisiana Legislature passed the severance tax, which taxed all the oil and natural gas coming out of the lands of Louisiana. At that time, this was fine, as 95% of all the oil and natural gas being refined in Louisiana was FROM Louisiana. Today, however, 95% of the oil and natural gas being refined comes from the OPEC states. And they are not paying a dime to Louisiana for the privilege of getting their oil refined here.
Lots of folks question the wisdom of such a tax, asking if the OPEC states would continue to have their oil refined here, and not move their oil to be refined elsewhere. The refineries are operating at 95% capacity in this country. We can't get it fast enough. Sure, they could move some of it to other refineries, but they would still have to come to Louisiana.
And something tells me that if Louisiana were to pass such a tax, the other states with refineries would follow.
Doing this would mean that 5,500,000,000 dollars flood into the state coffers every single year. And yes, that's $5.5 BILLION. And that's 1.75 BILLION more than we collect under our current tax system in Louisiana.
That means more money for our schools.
That means more money to fix up our roads and other critical infrastructure destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
That means more money to put toward saving our coastline.
At press time, Foster has not yet released a plan to solve the insurance crisis facing ordinary Louisianans. But I have no doubt that he will have a plan that makes sense, and sticks up for the working class Louisianan. Why?
Because in the last 4 years as a PSC Commissioner, he has fought Entergy every single step of the way. One such example is when Entergy wanted to raise rates on Louisiana two years ago, Foster pointed out that the raised rates were going to pay for BONUSES to Entergy's top executives. The following all comes from the Times Picayune's Business Section on May 19,2005, in a piece entitled, "PSC Rejects Entergy Rate Increase; Extra cash slated for execs’ bonuses," with the byline belonging to Keith Darcé.
At the PSC hearing, he asked Entergy exectives,"How do you have the courage to charge $5 million in bonuses and put it on the backs of some of the poorest people in the country? I hope you do well, but I don’t want you to take it out of the hides of the people paying electric bills."
In response, Entergy officials pointed out that LSU paid Nick Saban some $2.3 million to coach the LSU Tiger football squad. That comparision is faulty, especially since most of that salary was paid out of the Tiger Athletic Fund, a private foundation that raises money to help with the costs of LSU Athletics.
Foster's response? "Nick Saban didn’t work for a monopoly."
What's Bobby Jindal's plan? Oh, that's right ... he's waiting until campaign season.
Foster's the only politician in Louisiana with the guts to go around the state with a specific plan, rather than offer vague rhetoric promising to change the way things are done in this state.
Foster's campaign released a radio ad, you can listen to it here.