Landrieu’s Legacy? LA Addicted To Bailout Crack

February 20, 2014 4

Mandeville, LA – “Any government powerful enough to give the people all that they want is also powerful enough to take from the people all that they have.”1 I thought of this as I read the latest fable about Senator Mary Landrieu. This one is the story of how Landrieu strode to the top of the Senate Chamber, snatched the bailout checkbook from the clammy hands of some reticent Republican and then proceeded to write checks to all the good little boys and girls on Landrieu’s “Katrina Klaus” Christmas list. Why, just this week, Landrieu is credited with securing Katrina loan forgiveness to Slidell Memorial Hospital and St Bernard Parish Schools to the tune of $33.3 million. This brings her career total to a whopping $228 million in free bailout cash, showered like crack to bayou-bailout-addicts.

Put in its proper context, this means that Landrieu has been granted $228 million in cash to buy votes. And some wonder why we’re $211 TRILLION in the hole?

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Just like with real drugs though, bailout crack requires willing addicts. After receiving his $28.7 million bailout, the CEO of Slidell Memorial remarked “Had this loan not been forgiven, it could have significantly harmed our financial health.” Someone should ask the CEO why the health of a private entity is attached to the amount of subsidy it can siphon from the public’s credit card?

In 2012, SMH took in over $125 million and boasted net assets of over $170 million. That’s hardly a down on their luck “throw me something mister story” now is it?

Every nickel of the $228 million in bailout crack that Landrieu has “won” for this state’s crony capitalists will be paid back, with interest, by our kids and grandkids and the cycle of the government giving to the wealthy will be completed when it takes all from the middle. Thanks Senator Landrieu, my kids can hardly wait, how about yours?

1. This quote is said to have come from Thomas Jefferson but it is actually found in Ezra Taft Benson’s book An Enemy Hath Done This, p. 222-223, Parliament Publishers, 1969.