Start Your Week with the Louisiana Legislature Kicking Bobby Jindal While He's Down

Last year, then-Louisiana Governor and hilariously terrible presidential candidate Bobby Jindal was desperately trying to figure out how to get some more revenue for his cash-strapped state. But the bigger problem was obviously that Jindal, like most craven Republicans, had signed a pledge to unelected powermonger Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform (motto: "Harming the American economy for nearly 30 years and proud of it") not to raise any taxes ever.

To keep Norquist from declaring the pledge broken and harming his (snort) national ambitions, Jindal came up with a convoluted and entirely fantastic (as in "fantasy") tax credit that offset any hikes in revenue, thus making the whole budget revenue neutral and not, in fact, raising any taxes and if you understand any of this and don't want to scream into Grover Norquist's stupid face, you're a better person than the Rude Pundit. The SAVE act, for "Student Assessment for a Valuable Education Credit Program," was a phantom fee hike on student that created a phantom tax credit that...who the hell cares? It was a scam and legislators passed it so that Jindal wouldn't veto a couple of tax hikes.

Now, with Jindal out of office, Chris Broadwater, a Republican from Hammond, who had supported SAVE just to get the budget passed, sponsored a bill in the recently-ended special session of the legislature to repeal SAVE. It passed 95-0 because everyone knew blithering nonsense when they saw it and no longer felt like they were being held hostage to an embarrassing failure's lost dreams.

This would be worthy of little more than passing note except for one beautiful moment that occurred while Broadwater was answering questions from other members of the Louisiana House about the bill.

Democratic Representative Ed Price, from just down the road from Broadwater in Gonzales, Louisiana, facetiously asked, "Did you get permission from Mr. Norquist?" Broadwater could have demurred. He could have let slide that slight against the obeisance of Jindal and Republicans to Norquist's dangerous pledge. Instead, Broadwater did this:

Yep, he took out a puppet of a beloved Sesame Street character and declared, "Grover has made an appearance and is okay with the repeal."

Set up or not, it was a beautiful "Fuck you" to Jindal, whose poisonous, divisive two-term legacy has ended up bringing Democrats and Republicans together to attempt to unfuck the states, at least a little (and only after he was gone and a Democratic governor was elected).