Superintendent Makes Controversial Hire, Obama And Drilling – Wingin’ It Wednesday

On this edition of “Wingin’ It Wednesday” panelist Mike Stagg, Warren Caudle joined “Mornings with Ken and Bernie” while Carol Ross called in over the phone. The panelists discussed Lafayette Parish's schoolboard Superintendent's recent controversial hire as well as the Obama Administration's stance on energy production.

Here’s what the panel had to say:

1. What do you think of Lafayette Parish School Superintendent Pat Cooper's hiring of someone to help him maintain parish schools who does not have a high school diploma or a GED?

Carol Ross started us off:

This controversy has not reflected well on anyone I'm my opinion, and we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes that the average person doesn't know about. The superintendent should have negotiated and let the school board members know, "I have confidence in this man, I'm going to bring him in, he's going to get his GED, and we'll solve this problem that way." Instead he actually got into a shouting match on the air. This has not brought a level of confidence of from the people watching the situation. There's something going on that's fundamentally wrong in our school system and we need to get to the bottom of it.

Mike Stagg added:

There is nothing fundamentally wrong here except school board members overstepping their bounds because some of their buddies didn't get the jobs they wanted. If you've attended school board meetings, you know things are actually getting done. He does his job. That's the complaint, that it's not one of their cronies that got the job.
Superintendent Cooper has exactly the right idea, that you can't continue expelling kids from school and expect to have a school system that produces results or a community you can live in. Getting these kids out of the education system is not that answer. He's working to bring in councilors and bring in programs that can help these kids get the help they need.
The school board members need to realize it's a new era, they don't have the power to hire and fire anymore, and they need to let the superintendent do the job he was hired to do.

Warren Caudle countered:

There's two sides to things, one is that you've got rules in place for a reason. Normally there needs to be a real reason to change or waiver the rules. I understand the guy came from where Cooper is originally from and Cooper has the utmost respect for him.
The other side is that we've got so many problems with education we don't know where to start.  The biggest problem is that we just throw money at the problem and nobody evaluates where the money is going and is it helping or is it hurting? As long as we throw money at it it's fine.
Go back and look at this thing on Youtube that of all people Dan Rather did called Detroit Public Schools: A National Disgrace and you can see exactly where our schools are and where they're headed.

2. President Obama has boasted that energy production is up but a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office refutes his claims. Through his first interior secretary, the President has chosen to withdraw tracts of federal land that had already been cleared for oil and gas development.  Do you think the President is pushing "green energy" on the nation whether it wants it or not?

Warren commented:

There is no question about energy production. Oil and natural gas has been way up in the last few years and it is true that most of that has taken place on private lands. However, I think it's also worth noting that most of that, especially the natural gas has been done not off shore. We just have a small amount of federal waters that's open to off shore exploration. That's one of the reasons why you've got this huge increase that's come out of private land. Federal land, you've always got this big argument about what's open and what's closed.
The problem you get into is that the oil companies are a good target to beat on. Both sides have beat on them. It's not just the Democrats. Under Bush Sr the oil companies basically left the United States. The expiration in the Gulf of Mexico went to almost zero.
The problem is that there is these ongoing battles, and these battles drive up the cost of energy.

Mike responded:

As we recall from last year with Bill Clinton, Republicans have an arithmetic problem. What you have basically is a massive increase of overall energy production. The fact that there's a small percentage drop in barrels a day, this is nothing.
Domestic energy production is up, and it's up on mostly private lands. It's up in places like Pennsylvania, New York, and north west Louisiana. There's not story here.

Carol surmised:

Well, domestic production would be far higher if it weren't for the Obama administration. Right now the production in federal lands, the area under Obama's control is off - way off. If you remember a federal judge ordered him to lift the off shore drilling moratorium. He absolutely ignored the judge's order.
Going forward is the problem because about 43% of domestic oil crude reserves are on federal land. If they don't lift these moratoriums it's going to be a continuing problem. It just shows the president's continued antipathy towards fossil fuels.

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Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.