Slow down for a minute and listen. With their words and actions, Gov. Jeff Landry and conservatives in the Legislature are fanning the winds of change.
They are moving your state back to the 1950s. For some, those were the Good Ole Days. For many, this train is on a frightening pace toward calamity.
As Landry, the conductor of this backward ride, said recently, “I don’t ever move slow.” The question is: Where are you and yorn taking us?
Let’s take some for instances.
The Louisiana GOP is proposing legislation to place the Ten Commandmentsin every classroom. I’m a Christian, but I question what that will do other than appease far-right groups. Maybe the students will look at them after putting down their cell phones.
Hey, did you know there were people in Louisiana, and I guess across the South especially, that prayed the Ten Commandments in church, then went out in the afternoon and held picnics while watching public hangings of Black people?
Let’s get real. These efforts are to win the favor of right-wing groups who score GOP members on just how far right they are. The marks can win or lose their donations.
The Louisiana legislator who is pushing this also won legislation last year to have “In God We Trust” placed in classrooms. I bet “All men are created equal” would be stretched too far for her and her group to go.
While on that 50s stuff, let’s consider that one of them helped pass legislation that lets everybody, even 18-year-olds, have the right to walk around armed without a license and minus any training on how to use the deadly weapon. What about "Thou Shall Not Kill?"
These are the same flag-waving folks who said they didn’t want to accept millions of dollars in federal funds to provide meals for poor children in the summer. Let them eat...well, whatever they can find, I guess. Sounds like the 50s kind of Christians.
The far-righters talk about respect for the American flag. I’m all for that. My dad loved that flag so much that he volunteered for the U.S. Army and went to fight in Korea. He was almost killed there. He returned waving that flag, but couldn’t stay in certain hotels, eat at certain restaurants or apply for certain jobs. Aah, the 50s.
The Legislature is proposing taking millions of dollars from public schools so that rich and well-off kids can attend private and charter schools. So now you create a new kind of old segregation that was welcomed in the 1950s.
And some of those private and charter schools are essentially businesses, so taxpayer dollars will be going to private businesses while draining much-needed money and resources from children in already hard-hit public schools.
It’s like in the 50s when the late civil rights leader Pearl George was arrested for trying to swim in the taxpayer-funded but segregated City Park pool in Baton Rouge.
The GOP is supporting huge rollbacks on taxes for business and industry giants and permission to do what they want. There has even been mention of rolling back the state income tax. How would those lost revenues be replaced?
In the next year or two, even with the huge surplus left by the prior administration, Louisiana may be barreling towards revenue shortfalls, just like with Bobby Jindal, the former two-term emperor who left himself and the state with no clothes.
Landry may never move slow, but sometimes a train loaded with dangerous cargo can travel too fast — and roll off the tracks.