http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4963512/?GT1=3391

great googly moogily.

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Well, its like this. I'll try to explain it in such a way that I encompasss the full magnitude of the breadth of leadership in our stae gov.

But first, you need to know that Huey P. Long was the greatest man who ever lived. Well aside from the parts that weren't so great.

Louisiana used to be a farm run by the wealthy planters and shippers living in New Orleans. Most of the state's taxes went to Baton Rouge first and disappeared in NOLA.

Huey was a brilliant, brilliant man. He grew-up in the piney woods of N. Louisiana. In those days everybody in N. Louisiana fit within the spectrum of moderately poor to starving destitution.

For example, my wife's grandmother's folks in the teens couldn't feed their kids and so sent them to be casually adopted by Baptist families across the state. This was not uncommon and it was BEFORE the Great Depression. The Great Depression was just a teenie down-turn in N. Louisiana.

Well, Huey saw that folks were tired of N.O. fatcats living large off their tax dollars and he started a political campaign in which he told people that they didn't have o live like they had been living. That they had the power, through the vote, to put "somebody" into office who had nothing to lose, like them, and would stop at nothing to break their power. Huey was one of the very few white politicians in the south who actually spoke to blacks about their problems and worked (haphazardly, too be sure) to help blacks when it was way popular to be a Kluxer.

It worked. Long went into office and broke the N.O. powerbase and forced tax dollars to be spent on roads, bridges, textbooks, schools, and all of his friends, relatives, and supporters. When I was a kid I grew-up in a town near Winnfield, Huey's hometown. I knew lots of people who knew Huey and loved him, knowing he was a crooked, vindictive and brilliant man. They would alsways say, "but you don't understand how bad it was". And they are right, we don't.

Among the moves Long made on gov was to assume the power to select leadership positions in the legislature down to selection of chairman of legislative committees. The executive brach runs the legislative as a result of Long's moves.

Fast Forward to Fast Eddie, a former governor. Also a smart man. But where Long ws brilliant and ruthless, Edwards was smart and charming. He beguiled rather than coerced. Edwards stacked the legislature his way and slowly unreformed the small measures of reform begun under McKeithen (a Long machine man) and vigorously pursued by Treen.

So what has the legislature got to do with anything? Well, not much. Its really difficult to do anything without the gov's actual support. So the legislature plays games while the gov and chairmen work-out wht's best for us all.

B