We just can’t make this stuff up:

“Gov. Jindal should know better than anyone that funding for studying and monitoring natural disasters is vital to public safety, ” Louisiana Democratic Party spokesman Scott Jordan said.

Others noted that only a fraction of the $140 million Jindal mentioned was actually being spent on volcano monitoring. The rest was going to other projects, including upgrades to the U.S. Geological Survey stream gauges in Louisiana and other states that will provide emergency planners with better real-time information about storm surge heights as hurricanes hit the coast.

Hasquet said only $7.5 million of the $140 million going to the Geological Survey will be spent on upgrading the equipment used to monitor Mount Redoubt and 32 other active volcanoes in Alaska.

So, yeah, a good chunk of that money is going to help Louisiana monitor water levels in the event of flooding and storm surges from hurricanes.

But wait, it gets better.  Jinda’s spokeman, Kyle Plotkin, tried to defend the governor’s comments in an email.

“Governor Jindal referenced the money spent on volcano monitoring to highlight the fact that a bill that was supposed to be about creating jobs ended up being a package that seemed to spend just for the sake of spending, ” Plotkin said in an e-mail response to questions.

Except that that’s not what he said in his address last month:

“While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes … $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.” Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”

The governor and his people seem to forget that we can look up exactly what he said and when he said it.   Keep on truckin’, Bobby!  Someday you might actually say something that makes sense!

Well, I suspect that Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal, must be feeling a little bit like the new village idiot.

Alaska’s Mount Redoubt, which has erupted five times since Sunday, is likely among the sites to benefit from the U.S. stimulus package, with the money going toward monitoring volcanoes, repairing facilities and mapping.

In his official Republican response to President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation last month, Mr. Jindal called volcano monitoring an unnecessary frill in the government’s stimulus package.

“While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending and includes $300-million to buy new cars for the government, $8-billion for high speed rail projects, such as a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140-million for something called volcano monitoring,” Governor Jindal said. “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”

As the scientists who monitor volcanos in Alaska said:

“Without instruments in the ground, we would not have been able to tell you this was coming,” said John Power, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Bobby Jindal is yet another pathetic Reaganite who thinks that government is the problem.  Well, as we can see, in this case, government was the solution.  Volcano monitoring isn’t a profit-making enterprise, and I have an incredibly difficult time imagining that a for-profit corporation would be engaging in it without government grant.

Current Mood:  amused