My original title should have read: "The Louisiana Conspiracy is Not New: The State Once Had a Governor Who Fought the Same Powers that Wrongly Thought They Were."
The great Huey Long, whom I might identify as a left-wing Libertarian (and isn't it funny that his primary enemy was FDR, the same guy who remains a symbol of big government and imperialism to such right-wing LIbertarians as Ron Paul and Alex Jones!), stood on a platform (in Commonwealth terms, launched manifesto) calling for the nation to "Share Our Wealth", and used the slogan "Every Man a King".
So, how does such a platform/manifesto with its profoundly Socialistic ring manage to express a fundamentally Libertarian worldview? It does so by limiting Socialist oppression to major corporate entities (which can easily be defined under law in a manner which avoids the "inflation creep" which, in turn, caused a larger and larger portion of the US population to become liable (under income tax fiction, rather than law) to the Alternative Minimum Tax (originally sold to the US public as a means of recapturing excessive avoidance of income taxation via excessive claims of tax deductions by the rich) ). After all, Thomas Jefferson identified banks, and the corporations which grow around them, as the primary enemies of liberty, so forcing such institutions to fund a decent standard of living for all citizens willing and able to work for a living (with appropriate provision for the relief of those temporarily unemployed, and for those unable to work) is hardly an attack upon liberty, but, rather, a means by which tyrannical corporations can be made to fund a standard of living which will permit the masses sufficient abundance and leisure time to participate fully as citizens of a republic. (Webster Tarpley's proposed 1% Tobin Tax would serve equally well.) As Governor/Senator Long himself said:
"My voice will be the same as it has been. Patronage will not change it. Fear will not change it. Persecution will not change it. It cannot be changed while people suffer. The only way it can be changed is to make the lives of these people decent and respectable. No one will ever hear political opposition out of me when that is done.”
— Huey Long, on the floor of
the U.S. Senate, March 5 1935
(Hey, doesn't he sound like Alex Jones?)
Huey Long's bargain with the oil companies seeking to exploit Louisiana's natural resources resulted in those companies' funding many infrastructural improvements within the State of Louisiana. As his official website (pretty good for a man who died in 1935 to have his own official website, doncha think?) says:
"Huey immediately pushed a number of bills through the legislature to fulfill his campaign promises, including a free textbook program for schoolchildren, night courses for adult literacy, and piping natural gas to New Orleans. He also launched a massive building program of roads, bridges, hospitals, and educational institutions.
"Huey's bills met stiff opposition from many legislators and the state’s newspapers, which were financed by the state’s business interests, but Huey used wily and persuasive methods (see "Long's Political Methods") to win passage of his bills. Huey was in a hurry to get things done and passed scores of laws that enabled him to enact his programs. A legal genius, Huey used the law to his advantage without breaking it. Opponents accused Long's administration of graft and overspending, when in fact he ran a fiscally tight ship. Louisiana had the third-lowest cost of government in the nation while providing unprecedented services to its people.
"As Governor, Huey became an active promoter of Louisiana State University. He expanded the campus, tripled enrollment, and built LSU into one of the best schools in the South and the eleventh largest state university in the country. Huey lowered tuition and instituted scholarship programs that enabled poor students to attend. He also established the LSU medical school to meet the state's desperate need for new doctors. He frequently attended LSU football games, giving locker room pep talks to players and advice to coaches, and he even composed the LSU fight song, “Touchdown for LSU,” which is still played before every football game.
"The public soon began to see the tangible results of a massive building program to modernize Louisiana. As the nation plunged into the Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929, thousands of Louisianians were at work building the state’s new infrastructure. Louisiana employed 22,000 men just to build the roads — ten percent of the nation's highway workers. With greater access to transportation, education and healthcare, the quality of life in Louisiana was on the upswing while the rest of the nation declined.
"To finance these improvements, Huey restructured the tax system, shifting the burden from the poor to large businesses and the state’s wealthiest citizens (see "How Did Long Pay for His Programs?" below). Huey taxed oil operators to finance his free textbook program, provoking the wrath of Standard Oil, which launched an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from office.
"When opponents blocked Huey’s bills in the 1930 legislative session, he responded by running for the U.S. Senate as a referendum on his progams. After his commanding victory, Huey pursued his agenda with renewed strength and formed an uneasy alliance with the “Old Regulars” and their chief, New Olreans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley (nicknamed “Turkey Head” Walmsley by Huey). The alliance guaranteed support for Long’s programs and candidates in exchange for major structural improvements in New Orleans.
How Did Long Pay for His Programs?
"According to historian T. Harry Williams, "Louisiana was known as a state that levied remarkably few taxes ... not enough to support the kind of program Huey envisioned. The most lucrative one, the property tax, bore more heavily on the taxpayer of average or below-average means."
"Long's ambitious road-building program was funded by bond measures that were voter-approved and backed by a gasoline tax. Long's education programs were funded by increasing the severance tax on natural resources extracted from the state by various industries based on quantity, which increased state revenue particularly from the oil industry. The funds for hospitals and other institutions came from taxing carbon black at one-half cent per pound.
"Conversely, Huey slashed personal property taxes and fees, shifting the burden of government financing from the public to industry. Louisiana's total government operating costs (state and local) were $41.97 per capita - third-lowest among the 24 states that kept such records. During Long's governorship, taxes rose 2.2% compared with a national average of 4.7%."
***
So, there! Major business and financial corporations are to be treated differently than natural persons or closely-held corporate entities which are not proprietary major financial institutions, and which are entirely domestic along their entire ownership train.
Or just enact Webster Tarpley's proposed 1% Tobin Tax.
(Note: I'm not attempting to divide our movement via this post. I'm merely trying to enlarge our movement's political "tent" to accommodate those who properly belong in our movement but are turned off by the severe fiscal conservativism advocated by many of our movement's leaders. At this point, we're still a protest movement whose unifying proposition is the restoration of the Constitutional Republic, and nothing I've said here (or ever will say anywhere) contradicts my faith in that proposition.)
