Go to the youtubes

It's Saturday night at home again.  There's not much most of us can do about anything at the moment. Find something to read or watch.  Hey how about this.

Here is Huey delivering a radio address in 1935. He begins by going after FDR for not moving fast enough or radically enough while poking fun at him for hanging out on the Astors' yacht with the British royal family. Then he moves on to describe the worsening state of wealth inequality while criticizing various media entities who he points out have either had to eat their words on the subject or whose editorialists are often lying about the facts as reported in their own publications. Next he goes on to describe the tenets of the Share Our Wealth program. No one too rich, no one too poor. Everyone is entitled to a free education. Retirees over 60 should live in comfort. Veterans should be supported. (He's a bit off on the "debt" rhetoric.  Just mint the damn coin.)  Finally he lays a series of bible verses on us in support of all of the above.

Anyway it's good stuff if you want to spend half an hour in yesterday's calamity in order to take your mind off today's for a bit. Or maybe it's just a way to refocus.

Snowball

Huey Long's Share Our Wealth radio address 1934: 

But the Scripture says, ladies and gentlemen, that no country can survive, or for a country to survive it is necessary that we keep the wealth scattered among the people, that nothing should keep the wealth scattered among the people, that nothing should be held permanently by any one person, and that 50 years seems to be the year of jubilee in which all property would be scattered about and returned to the sources from which it originally came, and every seventh year debt should be remitted.

Those two things the Almighty said to be necessary—I should say He knew to be necessary, or else He would not have so prescribed that the property would be kept among the general run of the people, and that everyone would continue to share in it; so that no one man would get half of it and hand it down to a son, who takes half of what was left, and that son hand it down to another one, who would take half of what was left, until, like a snowball going downhill, all of the snow was off of the ground except what the snowball had.

The disastrous Republican tax plan being hammered out in Congress now will either repeal or greatly reduce the estate tax.  Here is how that would affect the snowball.

Mother Jones spoke with Americans for Tax Fairness, an advocacy group focused on progressive tax reform, about how these changes to the estate tax will benefit the ultra-wealthy, specifically the top 15 richest Americans, as ranked and reported by Forbes. If the exemptions are doubled, each estate would save $4.4 million for a couple, or $2.2 million for a single person. And if the tax is repealed, that’s where things get interesting: According to numbers crunched by Americans for Tax Fairness, in that scenario, the people who inherit money from this tiny group of people could potentially save more than a whopping $300 billion combined. And the families of GOP-megadonors Charles and David Koch could collectively save nearly $39 billion, while the heirs of Republican kingmaker and moneyman Sheldon Adelson could be looking at $14 billion.

Aaanyway. Here are some photos of a big kitty in the snow today to cheer everyone up. 

It's over

Can pretty much guarantee Les is a goner now.

As speculation swirls about Les Miles’ future at LSU, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has come out to publicly to voice his support for the head football coach.

“(Miles) is a great coach and a better man,” Jindal tweeted Saturday, just hours before LSU takes the field against Texas A&M for its final regular season game. “He is a fantastic ambassador for our state. I hope he remains our coach.”

Oh boy.  This is quite a problem to throw into the lap of the new Governor.  Not only does he have to worry about how he's going to implement Medicaid expansion or criminal justice reform, now he has to figure out what to do about the head football coach.

On the other hand, it's not too much of a stretch to assume this position serves at the Governor's pleasure.  Huey Long seemed to think so, anyway.   Huey even went so far as to have his own plays drawn up and submitted to the coaching staff. Nobody knows how Huey's play "Number 88" was supposed to work, though.

Bobby Jindal likes this one where the quarterback hands the runner a voucher which he then carries off guard toward the faith-based football provider of his choice. Last year, he tried to run a play action which involved a fake tuition hike followed by passing an equally fake tax credit to cancel it out. Not even Les Miles ever tried anything that off-the-wall.  Like most of Jindal's plays, though, it ended up being thrown for a pretty big budgetary loss.

Happy Birthday, Huey Long

120 years old today.



Kingfish restaurant in the Quarter is holding a (campy, perhaps, but what the hay) "lookalike contest" in Huey's honor today. Unfortunately Spud McConnell will probably be there so decide for yourselves if you really want to participate.

Invictus

Here's a bit of Long family trivia for you this afternoon. One popular fact about Huey's taste in literature refers to his fondness for The Count of Monte Cristo. The favorite quote among Huey's biographers is, "The man in that book knew how to hate, and until you learn how to hate, you'll never get anywhere in this world," which is a colorful way of saying Huey, like any master politician, appreciated a good revenge story.

Another often remarked upon Long literary favorite is the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley frequently quoted by Huey and Earl. In Earl of Louisiana, A.J. Liebling refers to it as the "family anthem."

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

And so it is with these favorite Longist themes in our mind of well calculated revenge and the importance of remaining the master of one's fate in the fell clutch of circumstance, we invite you to enjoy NOLA Defender regular contributor Dead Huey Long's take on Sean Payton and the Saints' bounty scandal.

Roger Goodell cannot stop the New Orleans Saints with fines, suspensions, and draft picks. Primarily this is because—and here’s a pro-tip from the ol’ Kingfish—the New Orleans Saints have the overwhelming support of the people and Roger Goodell is just another bully.

I'd pull a larger quote but you should just go read it all there.

Huey is the 99%

Vote Long

As in Huey P.

Huey P. Long wants to turn the lights out on DuWayne Bridges’ tenure as Alabama House District 38 representative. Literally.

Long, a former Lee County commissioner and Democrat from Salem, charges that “60 to 70” lights at Interstate 85’s exit 70 generate an estimated monthly power bill of $3,000. Bridges owns the truck stop and boot outlet at the interchange in Cusseta.

“There’s a lot of money wasted in Chambers County,” Long said. “That money could be used for our school systems. This guy needs somebody to get after him. I’m a Hornet missile zeroed in on him. He says he’s against waste in government. That’s a joke.”

Via: The Lens

Bring something back for Saints fans to consume too

My favorite Trend-bucking newspaper is on to something serious as we head into the NFL's opening weekend.

Dome foam gets pricier
by Richard A. Webster Staff Writer


When the Saints' 2009 season kicks off Sunday thirsty fans may notice a slight change in the price of their favorite beverage.

Instead of paying $7 for a 16-ounce bottle of beer, they're going to have to shell out an extra 50 cents.

And if they're in the mood for something stronger, maybe a Grey Goose vodka, it will cost them an additional $1 as cocktails have increased from $8 compared with $7 last year.

But other than that, all other alcohol prices remain the same. The only other item to go up in price is the hot dog, which rises from $3.50 to $4.

"With the recession we're trying to hold the line," said Jeff Tandberg, general manager of Centerplate, the exclusive concessions provider to the Louisiana Superdome and New Orleans Arena. "And as a small-market team, we can't get the pricing that large-market teams with higher per-capita incomes can get."

So Tandberg is telling us that if our local economy hadn't "bucked the trend" so much we might have gotten in on a bigger recession discount or something like that I guess.

I've highlighted the $8 cocktails because this includes the famous Superdome Bloody Marys which were recently named by Gambit readers as among the Best of New Orleans. But this rating is based solely on reputation since, last season, the NFL instructed Superdome concessionaires that they were no longer allowed to sell their "double" sized drinks (which were actually equivalent to a "single" in civilized society). In their heyday (two years ago), the Dome Bloody Doubles were, in fact, among the best available anywhere and were priced at $9. Today Saints fans are paying $8 for a greatly diminished micro-sized imitation of the drink that was once an indispensable element of the Saints gameday experience.

The worst of this is that most of the revenue generated from this fleecing of the football fan bypasses the coffers of the State whose people paid to make its generation possible (not to mention the pockets of the contract employees who dispense the sad watery swill), and goes directly to Tom Benson.

What would Huey say?

Always good to read someone's reflections upon canonical material

Clay reviews the Gospel of Huey.

Where have all the Hueys gone?

Among the observations Christian Roselund makes in this excellent essay about Huey Long's impact on Depression era politics is the disturbing absence of a similar focus of pressure from the left on Obama.

Obama’s presidency is very different from Roosevelt’s not only in that he has already embraced job creation and deficit-spending policies reminiscent of the second New Deal, but also in that there is no significant pressure from the left. There is no Huey Long in America today, nor do radical elements in labor have the power they did in the 1930s. If oppressed groups take action, such as immigrants filling the streets of major cities on May 1, 2006, they typically do so only for a day. This low level of pressure means that Obama's policies will likely be pulled to the right and watered down, as was evidenced in the version of his stimulus package that the Senate produced.

In fact it's far worse than that. The current state of American politics is constructed in such a way that allows for populist insurrection from the right only. Much of it, of course, is "faux populism" generated by talk radio entertainers and then pushed into prominence by an idiotic mainstream media in search of "balance". But the effect on policy is as powerful as what a genuine shit-stirrer like Long could generate, if not more so.

For much of the 20th Century, Louisiana had a proud tradition of producing effective liberal rabble rousers unlike any other place in the country. Today, our most popular politicians appear to be Bobby Jindal and David Vitter. How far have we fallen and why? Of course I have my theories, but those are for another post. I'm trying to lay off of the Dragonslayers and Yuppie Lefties for now... or at least until they start trying to tell me I need to vote for Arnie Fielkow.