Meet the hypocrites: Governor Bobby Jindal

Only eleven days ago, Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) signaled that he wouldn't be taking federal stimulus money allocated to his state, if it didn't meet his criteria of being beneficial to the state. Then Jindal rejected over $90 million in funding that would have benefited nearly 25,000 people in Louisiana. Apparently, Governor Jindal believes that helping the unemployed doesn't benefit Louisiana and he would prefer a higher unemployment rate.

Last week, Governor Jindal continued his rant against stimulus spending when he gave the Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress. In that speech, Jindal said the following:

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, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland...

While trying to be cute and smug and making high-speed passenger rail service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas sound like an expensive amusement park ride, Jindal actually showed his ignorance about what magnetic levitation is and how it works. Magnetic levitation isn't the latest Criss Angel illusion, but a successful technology already in operation in other parts of the world.

That proposed project would be powered by magnetic levitation, a technology in which opposing magnetic fields along the track and in the train's undercarriage levitate the train a quarter-inch and propel it forward. "Maglev" trains, currently in use in China and Japan, are frictionless and fast. Proponents say the proposed Anaheim-to-Vegas train would reach 310 miles per hour, zipping passengers between the cities in 80.5 minutes.

But, oh the times they are a changin'. Governor Jindal's transportation department is now looking to build high speed rail service between New Orleans and Louisiana, using the very same federal stimulus funding that the Governor already called wasteful (see above).

Louisiana's transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president's economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night.

The high-speed rail line, a topic of discussion for years, would require $110 million to upgrade existing freight lines and terminals to handle a passenger train operation, said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

[...]

Jindal oversees the state transportation department and appointed its secretary.

Republicans need to make up their minds. Is stimulus funding wasteful and should be rejected? Or is it beneficial and should be accepted? They can't have it both ways, though as with our previous hypocrites they keep trying.