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Bush Strafes New Orleans
Where is our Huey Long?
by Greg Palast
Friday, September 2, 2005
The National Public Radio news anchor was so excited I thought she’d piss on herself: the President of the United States had flown his plane down to 1700 feet to get a better look at the flood damage! And there was a photo of our Commander-in-Chief taken looking out the window. He looked very serious and concerned.
That was yesterday. Today he played golf. No kidding.
I’m sure the people of New Orleans would have liked to show their appreciation for the official Presidential photo-strafing, but their surface-to-air missiles were wet.
There is nothing new under the sun. In 1927, a Republican President had his photo taken as the Mississippi rolled over New Orleans. Calvin Coolidge, “a little fat man with a notebook in his hand,” promised to rebuild the state. He didn’t. Instead, he left to play golf with Ken Lay or the Ken Lay railroad baron equivalent of his day.
In 1927, the Democratic Party had died and was awaiting burial. As depression approached, the coma-Dems, like Franklin Roosevelt, called for balancing the budget.
Then, as the waters rose, one politician finally said, roughly, “Screw this! They’re lying! The President’s lying! The rich fat cats that are drowning you will do it again and again and again. They lead you into imperialist wars for profit, they take away your schools and your hope and when you complain, they blame Blacks and Jews and immigrants. Then they push your kids under. I say, Kick’m in the ass and take your rightful share!”
Huey Long laid out a plan: a progressive income tax, real money for education, public works to rebuild Louisiana and America, an end to wars for empire, and an end to financial oligarchy. The waters receded, the anger did not, and Huey “Kingfish” Long was elected Governor of Louisiana in 1928.
At the time, Louisiana schools were free, but not the textbooks. Governor Long taxed Big Oil to pay for the books. Rockefeller’s oil companies refused pay the textbook tax, so Long ordered the National Guard to seize Standard Oil’s fields in the Delta.
Huey Long was called a “demagogue” and a “dictator.” Of course. Because it was Huey Long who established the concept that a government of the people must protect the people, school, house, and feed them and give every man or woman a job who needs one.
Government, he said, “We The People,” not plutocrats nor Halliburtons, must build bridges and levies to keep the waters from rising over our heads. All we had to do was share the nation’s wealth we created as a nation. But that meant facing down what he called the “concentrations of monopoly power” to finance the needs of the public.
In other words, Huey Long founded the modern Democratic Party. Franklin Roosevelt and the party establishment, scared senseless of Long’s ineluctable march to the White House, adopted his program, called it the New Deal, and later The New Frontier and the Great Society.
America and the party prospered.
America could use a Democratic Party again and there’s a rumor it’s alive — somewhere.
And now is the moment, as it was in ’27. As the bodies float in the streets of New Orleans, now is not the time for the Democrats to shirk and slink away, bleating they can’t “politicize” this avoidable disaster.
Seventy-six years ago this week, Huey Long was shot down, assassinated at the age of 43. But the legacy of his combat remains, from Social Security to veterans’ mortgage loans.
There is no such thing as a “natural” disaster. Hurricanes happen, but death comes from official neglect, from tax cuts for the rich that cut the heart out of public protection. The corpses in the street are victims of a class war in which only one side has a general.
Where is our Huey Long? America needs just one Kingfish to stand up and say that our nation must rid itself of the scarecrow with the idiot chuckle, who has left America broken and in danger while he plays tinker-toy Napoleon on other continents.
I realize that the middle of a rising flood is a hell of a bad time to give Democrats swimming lessons; but it’s act up now or we all go under.
**********
A pedagogical note: As I travel around the USA, I’m just horrified at America’s stubborn historical amnesia. Americans, as Sam Cooke said, don’t know squat about history. We don’t learn the names of a nation’s capitol until the 82d Airborne lands there. And it doesn’t count if you’ve watched a Ken Burns documentary on PBS.
I suggest starting with this: read “Huey Long” by the late historian Harry T. Williams. If you want to ease into it, get the Randy Newman album inspired by it (Good Old Boys) with the song, “Louisiana 1927.” Listen to part of the song here. Do NOT watch the crappy right-wing agit-prop film, “Huey Long,” by Ken Burns.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his commentaries or view his investigative reports for BBC Television at http://www.GregPalast.com.
SOURCE – http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=453&row=0
(…)
‘Louisiana 1927’
A song and a tragedy
By Todd Leopold
CNN
Thursday, September 1, 2005; Posted: 8:03 a.m. EDT (12:03 GMT)
(CNN) — In 1926 and 1927, the Mississippi River, heavy from months of rain, started bursting its banks.
Land along the river flooded from Illinois on south. Memphis was overrun in the fall of 1926; the waters covered western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana in the months following. Seven hundred thousand people were evacuated or left homeless.
What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it start to rain …
New Orleans watched the Mississippi Valley floodwaters nervously. On a single day in April the city had received 14 inches of rain, which put parts of it were under more than six feet of water; the French Quarter had two feet. If a levee broke, the city would be doomed.
Eventually, fearful townspeople prompted the governor to dynamite a levee south of town to relieve the pressure on New Orleans. The city was spared. Others in the state weren’t so lucky.
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline …
The flood, as chronicled in John M. Barry’s book “Rising Tide,” led to dramatic changes in the United States. It was a factor in the Great Migration of African-Americans to northern industrial cities, and many of the migrants wrote songs and tales about the Great Flood.
Louisiana, Louisiana, they’re tryin’ to wash us ‘way, they’re tryin’ to wash us ‘way
Louisiana, Louisiana, they’re trying to wash us ‘way, they’re tryin’ to wash us ‘way…
I first heard Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927” while growing up in New Orleans. The local radio stations always liked playing songs with Louisiana references: Gary U.S. Bonds’ “New Orleans,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Born on the Bayou,” Arlo Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans,” Louisiana LeRoux’s “New Orleans Ladies.” I don’t now if the radio stations knew the history documented in the song or were completely ignorant of it and just liked the title. Whatever they thought, “Louisiana 1927” created its own mesmerizing power.
The song starts with plaintive strings, something out of the 19th century. Then Newman’s humble voice comes on, singing lyrics at once as basic as a newsreel and as majestic as Homer.
The river rose all day, the river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away all right
New Orleans and I didn’t fit; I left as soon as I could. But my heart breaks as I view the floodwaters lapping at building roofs, the city submerged as far as the eye can see.
The river has busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
My mother drove up ahead of the storm Saturday night. She’s OK. But I worry about the house she left behind, about my old high school friends, about the avenues and architecture, about the people missing and homeless all along the devastated Gulf Coast. And my mind can’t stop playing “Louisiana 1927.”
Louisiana, Louisiana…
Godspeed.
SOURCE – http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/08/31/eye.ent.louisiana/
(…)
“Fuck “Fair and Balanced” Fox!!!
They ain’t, being subtle,
When they go, hard-right,
They harder-right, for rebuttal!
And fuck CNN!!!
“You can’t trust CNN”
Bum-rush, CNN,
Before they lie to us again!
– Black Krishna, “Chokin’ on Chomsky”
(…)
BONUS: Where are we going? (Seriously. We’ve got to find the brakes. Now.)
“Katrina I can’t stop looking in your eyes,
But my words dont come out straight,
I don’t know what to say.
On Monday I tell myself you gotta wait Dave,
Don’t rush it, Don’t anticipate, take it slowly,
It’s ok, It’s ok…”
– David Tao, “Katrina”
Chiggidy-check yo’self…
Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State (2005)
Evil has spread across the land. Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State exposes the high-tech control grid that is being set up across America.
Out of the ashes of the September 11th tragedy, a dark empire of war and tyranny has risen. The Constitution has been shredded and America is now a Police State. This film exposes not just who was behind the 9-11 attacks, but the roots and history of its orchestrators.
Downloaded: 5,152 times
SOURCE – http://www.archive.org/details/MartialLaw911
MARTIAL LAW 911: RISE OF THE POLICE STATE Information Resource Companion Web Site.
SOURCE – http://www.martiallaw911.info/index.htm
P.S. Here’s an example of documentation from the Martial Law website…
SOURCE – http://martiallaw911.info/policestate.htm
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