You are often known by the company you keep and the Louisiana Democratic Party’s response to Gov. Jindal’s address to the state Legislature that opened the 2012 Regular Session reveals a lot about who their pals are.

For the record, this was the first time in memory that an opposing party had ever felt the need to deliver a response to a governor’s opening address. Rep. John Bel Edwards, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said a response was needed because “Never before in history have the (Legislative) plans been so destructive to the working people of Louisiana.”

Apparently there were a few, who I suspect are among the non-working people, that agree with Edwards.

Some of them were gathered in the lobby of the Capitol near where Jindal had delivered his speech in the House Chamber. There they echoed chants like stooges in a second-rate magician’s hypnosis act in opposition to the governor’s education and pension reform initiatives:

These people were with Occupy Baton Rouge, Occupy NOLA and a new group called J.U.I.C.E., which stands for (Louisianians Against) Jindal’s Unjust Intentionally Created Emergency. I wonder who the genius is that came up with that acronym?

Jindal talked about these revolutionary defenders of the status quo and their class warfare rhetoric about 20 minutes earlier in the House Chamber during his speech to urge the Legislator to pass his reforms:

You can decide which “competing philosophy” better represents the American Dream—the one of  individual achievement the governor spoke about or the the one embraced by the occupy movement.

In case you are wondered what the occupy movement wants, here is list of demands they put out a few months back:

We demand a massive public works and public service program with direct government employment at prevailing (union) wages paid for by taxing the rich and corporations, by immediately ending all of America’s wars, and by ending all aid to authoritarian regimes to create 25 million new jobs to:

• Expand education: cut class sizes and provide free university for all;
• Expand healthcare and provide free healthcare for all (single payer system);
• Build housing, guarantee decent housing for all;
• Expand mass transit, provided for free;
• Rebuild the infrastructure—bridges, flood control, roads;
• Research and implement clean energy alternatives; and
• Clean up the environment.
•  These jobs are to be open to all, regardless of documentation/immigration status or criminal record.

Wow, I’m kinda surprised they didn’t demand rainbows and unicorns in the list, which looks as if parts were borrowed from a Democratic Party platform. It’s not surprising that the occupy movement and Democrats often sound alike—they are reading from the same page.

The protesters in the lobby weren’t the only ones mindlessly parroting the words of the occupy playbook. Here are some of the things said by Sen. Pat Green in the Democratic Response against Jindal’s education reforms:

Gov. Jindal’s voucher plan in unrealistic, unconstitutionally funded and would serve a very small percentage of students under the sham of reform. He is taking the hard-earned money you pay in taxes away from our public school classrooms and giving it to private schools that do not have to prove that offer a better education. The plan he offers is a lie to the 99-percent, because only the exclusive one-percent will be served.

The Democrats are so clueless that they think that adopting the 99-percent against the one-percent rhetoric of the occupy movement is going to help them make their case to the people of Louisiana.

Green went on say that Jindal wants to steal our children’s future to curry favor with national Republican “extremists” for a future presidential bid:

Gov. Jindal, I am here to tell you we will not let you rob our children of the future they deserve so you can score points with the national Republican extremist.”

Interestingly enough, Green’s rhetoric was exactly the same as the occupy demonstrators in the Capitol lobby:

So, Republican are the extremist and not the occupiers and Jindal want to steal our kids future?

I think that Green the Baton Rouge Business Report’s Rolfe McCollister had it about right when he called Green a “thief” for robbing generations of children of a better future while defending the status quo while sitting on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and in the Legislature.

Green and other Democrats ignore the reality that the so-called one-percent’s children are already immune to the failure of the Louisiana public schools. The rich folks can send their kids to better performing private schools—it’s the poor folks who suffer the most from the system that the Democrats are linking arms with the occupy movement to protect.

Democrats should keep thinking this way and keep on using the language of the occupy movement—that way they will cement their party’s place in the legislative minority and Republicans will be able to pass needed reforms more easily.