Jindal's got nothing. He got tagged as the Republican Obama because he's young and brown-skinned. After Obama's first address as President, they put him up to do their rebuttal. He walked out to this cheap-looking faux-Presidential podium in a smallish room and grinned his way through a bland and pointless speech, coming off as a total lightweight. (The most common comparison at the time was to Kenneth from "30 Rock")
While the tone and his cheesy smile got most of the attention, he failed on a substantive level as well. He tried to make hash about wasteful spending, and managed to completely fail in doing so:
While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government(A), $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland(B), and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring.(C)"
A) Ever wonder how many cars the US Government owns? According to the US General Services Administration, as of 8/3/2008, the number was 642,233. And I'd imagine a lot of those can't be tiny subcompacts. High-security vehicles for VIPs, law enforcement vehicles with some possibly extensive security upgrades. Off-road vehicles for Federal rangers in places where Chelsea tractors just won't do. If that $300M went for cars at an average $20,000 apiece (not a bad price, all things considered,) that would buy 15,000 vehicles, or enough to replace 2.33% of the government's fleet.
B) Presumably he picked "Las Vegas to Disneyland" because it sounds like you're picking up a trainful of kids fresh off of Space Mountain and dropping them off at a brothel, but it's total fabrication. There is no proposed high speed rail line from anywhere in the Los Angeles area to Las Vegas. In fact, the only HSR line proposed anywhere in California is from LA to San Francisco, and is a project that Congressman John Mica (R-FL), who will chair the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has called a project that merits grant money.
C) "Something called 'volcano monitoring'." See, you can argue whether or not Obama is a good President or not, but no one who isn't an idiot bothers to try and claim that the President isn't
smart. I don't think a Governor of a state hit by the most destructive natural disaster in the country's recent history who apparently either doesn't think monitoring for potential natural disasters is a good use of resources
or simply doesn't know what it is is going to be able to make that claim. The really impressive part about this bit of nincompoopery was the timing:
January 30, 2009: Scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) warned that an eruption of Mt. Redoubt, an active volcano located about 110 miles southwest of the city of Anchorage, was imminent, sending experienced Alaskans shopping for protection against a dusty shower of volcanic ash that could descend on south-central Alaska.
January 31, 2009: Volcanic earthquakes increased to several per hour, and a large hole in the glacier on the side of the mountain was spotted. Scientists began to monitor seismic data from the mountain twenty-four hours a day in an effort to warn people in nearby communities. A flyover conducted by the AVO detected "significant steaming from a new melt depression at the mouth of the summit crater near the vent area of the 1989-90 eruption.
February 24, 2009: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal says the above quotation, adding "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."
March 15, 2009: Seismic activity at Redoubt increased. An AVO observation flight reported that a steam and ash plume rose as high as 15,000 feet (4,600 m) above sea level and produced minor ash fall on the upper south flank of Redoubt. On the basis of this change in activity, AVO increased the level of concern and alert level to ORANGE/WATCH.
March 22, 2009: Mt. Redoubt "erupts explosively". Over the next two weeks, the volcano would continue to erupt and spew ash, with the ash cloud on March 26 observed to be as high as 65,000 feet. Tephra particulates from these events would fall on the cities of Anchorage and Valdez.
