Every once and a while, you wonder if the Kingfish wasn't right...
Louisiana politicians have been good for only a few things over the last hundred years; providing a very small but useful safety net for the very poor, a very large and sumptuous living for the upper classes, and a great deal of amusement for all the classes in between.
Oh, perhaps it was not their fault really, they were so easily corrupted by big oil money; all you had to do was hold your hand out and another gusher would pay for the grease to the palm. In some cases one man actually ruled a parish, just like a king, with all the rights of any natural man reserved unto himself for an entire generation.
So when, say, Walt Disney came looking for an place that was warm all year for an amusement park, he came to Louisiana and the New Orleans area, and found the locals far too avariscious for his tastes. Instead, he had his people quietly move into an area of Florida and start buying up little parcels of land under various companies... he had learned his lesson here. The Orlando area boomed over the years... and the good ol' boys in Loosyanna were left with empty hands.
They should have learned their lesson, but that big oil money kept coming back; why change when you have a good thing going? Of course, it couldn't last and in the eighties it all busted and the state was left with a lot of rusting equipment, a lot of marginally employed oil-patch workers, a miriad of cuts for work canals through the delta that worsened the massive erosion of the most prolific seafood producing area in the country and way too many politicians too used to feeding at the trough of easy money.
Enter the gambling industry. "Praise the lord, we are saved!", said the politicians. And they did the only thing they knew how to do, they cheated, scheemed and skimmed their way through a new series of legislation that opened the state to yet another interest group that had no interest in the state, other than what they could take out of it.
"Yea!" said the people, "give us the kind of fun we used to have in the good old days! And all those fabulous paying casino jobs! We'll be just like Las Vegas only bigger and better!" And they supported the new laws that should have opened the area up totally to the new masters. But the politicians weren't letting it go that easy, so they kept clipping a bit here and a bit there until it seemed that they had gotten the best of the gambling guys. Of course, they were just lil' stump jumpers and the gambling guys were big players with big pockets; and they knew how to play the game better than these back country hicks with no vision bigger than a new garage for the fancy new car.
Just one smart politician, who wasn't totally self absorbed with his own intrests could have probably brought them all to the table and done some good for the state and still made them all rich enough to satisfy even the most greedy of the bunch. But that didn't happen. We ended up with Federal Prosecutors and an ex-governor in prison instead.
So why the hell didn't we have one of these guys! Well, I'm one of these guys who believes that it's our own damn fault. We didn't elect that guy; yes, sometimes we elected a guy and he turned out to be another scum bag, and after a while you get used to scum bags, but in the end that's no excuse.
You got to keep trying.
This mayor (of New Orleans), seems to be honest and a business guy... our new governor has been around for a long time, but she has a pretty good history, maybe not corrupt. (I so hope so.) Lately, the local police force has come into line, (corruption has started to fade...), and most important, the local neighborhoods have started to come out against the violence and crap that afflicts them every day. They are actually helping to identify people in their neighborhoods that commit violent crimes; this crosses a color barrier and a class barrier and comes straight to the heart of the kind of life people want to live. It's no longer a matter of people being victims of circumstance and history; it's about taking control of the neighborhoods
and making a place to live right. It's about making your own place to live and a place where your children would want to live also.
That's a big first step here in New Orleans. I hope we can make the next few steps as well... And just like a big old river barge, eventually make that turn, and get enough momentum to move in a right direction.
Amen, sisters!
Amen, brothers!
Amen, Ya'll!
durlx, ( who believes in momentum fiercly, as well as he believes in love...).
btw, thanks Tampa Dan, for the comment on the board about my last journal entry... this started out as an answer to that post and jus' grew, hehe....
Louisiana politicians have been good for only a few things over the last hundred years; providing a very small but useful safety net for the very poor, a very large and sumptuous living for the upper classes, and a great deal of amusement for all the classes in between.
Oh, perhaps it was not their fault really, they were so easily corrupted by big oil money; all you had to do was hold your hand out and another gusher would pay for the grease to the palm. In some cases one man actually ruled a parish, just like a king, with all the rights of any natural man reserved unto himself for an entire generation.
So when, say, Walt Disney came looking for an place that was warm all year for an amusement park, he came to Louisiana and the New Orleans area, and found the locals far too avariscious for his tastes. Instead, he had his people quietly move into an area of Florida and start buying up little parcels of land under various companies... he had learned his lesson here. The Orlando area boomed over the years... and the good ol' boys in Loosyanna were left with empty hands.
They should have learned their lesson, but that big oil money kept coming back; why change when you have a good thing going? Of course, it couldn't last and in the eighties it all busted and the state was left with a lot of rusting equipment, a lot of marginally employed oil-patch workers, a miriad of cuts for work canals through the delta that worsened the massive erosion of the most prolific seafood producing area in the country and way too many politicians too used to feeding at the trough of easy money.
Enter the gambling industry. "Praise the lord, we are saved!", said the politicians. And they did the only thing they knew how to do, they cheated, scheemed and skimmed their way through a new series of legislation that opened the state to yet another interest group that had no interest in the state, other than what they could take out of it.
"Yea!" said the people, "give us the kind of fun we used to have in the good old days! And all those fabulous paying casino jobs! We'll be just like Las Vegas only bigger and better!" And they supported the new laws that should have opened the area up totally to the new masters. But the politicians weren't letting it go that easy, so they kept clipping a bit here and a bit there until it seemed that they had gotten the best of the gambling guys. Of course, they were just lil' stump jumpers and the gambling guys were big players with big pockets; and they knew how to play the game better than these back country hicks with no vision bigger than a new garage for the fancy new car.
Just one smart politician, who wasn't totally self absorbed with his own intrests could have probably brought them all to the table and done some good for the state and still made them all rich enough to satisfy even the most greedy of the bunch. But that didn't happen. We ended up with Federal Prosecutors and an ex-governor in prison instead.
So why the hell didn't we have one of these guys! Well, I'm one of these guys who believes that it's our own damn fault. We didn't elect that guy; yes, sometimes we elected a guy and he turned out to be another scum bag, and after a while you get used to scum bags, but in the end that's no excuse.
You got to keep trying.
This mayor (of New Orleans), seems to be honest and a business guy... our new governor has been around for a long time, but she has a pretty good history, maybe not corrupt. (I so hope so.) Lately, the local police force has come into line, (corruption has started to fade...), and most important, the local neighborhoods have started to come out against the violence and crap that afflicts them every day. They are actually helping to identify people in their neighborhoods that commit violent crimes; this crosses a color barrier and a class barrier and comes straight to the heart of the kind of life people want to live. It's no longer a matter of people being victims of circumstance and history; it's about taking control of the neighborhoods
and making a place to live right. It's about making your own place to live and a place where your children would want to live also.
That's a big first step here in New Orleans. I hope we can make the next few steps as well... And just like a big old river barge, eventually make that turn, and get enough momentum to move in a right direction.
Amen, sisters!
Amen, brothers!
Amen, Ya'll!
durlx, ( who believes in momentum fiercly, as well as he believes in love...).
btw, thanks Tampa Dan, for the comment on the board about my last journal entry... this started out as an answer to that post and jus' grew, hehe....
posted by durlx at 11/19/2003 11:43:00 PM
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