re: Tell me about Earl K. Long

Lotta misplaced disdain for Huey P in here. He certainly shook things up, and didn’t always do things in the right way, but he was up against the establishment who didn’t fight fair either. He directly had a positive impact on increasing education across the state and making life better for the average person through development (road paving, bridge building, etc).

Would love to hear specifically how he is responsible for the demise of the beautiful state of LA.

There’s a difference between what actually transpired and what could have transpired had his life not been cut short. My views are based upon his actual accomplishments, not where he falls within the political spectrum. He sure ruffled a lot of feathers by challenging long-standing political machine (who were owned by the corporations, Standard Oil for example).

Which of his enacted policies set Louisiana back? Not a loaded question, I’m genuinely curious. By no means am I anywhere near an expert in Long, just read the T Harry Williams book on him a few years ago.

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He was committed to the mental hospital and then fired the state doctor in charge of mental health and the new one he appointed set him free.

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was hoping someone would post this = he then went around bragging that he was the only man in Louisiana that could PROVE he was sane.

what a great time to be alive!!

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I’ve heard that he was committed to a mental institution at one time.

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It was a hospital in North Baton Rouge.

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He was committed to the mental hospital and then fired the state doctor in charge of mental health and the new one he appointed set him free.

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He was later sent to John Sealy in Galveston by his wife and the Louisiana Director of Hospitals so he couldn't get out as easily as he was able to in his home State.

Interesting character.


St. Mary's News Now - "When Earl K. Long's Mental State Made News"

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He was always volatile and hot-headed, but reporters began to publicly hint at the governor’s overuse of alcohol as early as April, when the Associated Press reported the governor’s hijacking of a legislative budget hearing “with his bottle of Tichenor’s antiseptic on the table before him.”

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But things really began to unravel in late May, when Long railed for more than an hour and a half and, the AP said, “poured out scathing criticism” on legislators and political enemies … “as he screamed into the House microphone in a stinging, stump-speaking style.” They noted that he drank from a glass filled with “what appeared to be grape juice” during the tirade.

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Two days later, the governor’s wife, Blanche, announced that Long had been ordered to bed “for several days” and that he was suffering from exhaustion. One of the people helping to make that decision was Jesse Bankston, Louisiana’s director of hospitals, who thought Earl needed more than bed rest at the governor’s mansion.

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He thought Long needed to be confined for psychiatric evaluation and that the confinement needed to be outside Louisiana, so that he could not use his powers as governor.
On Saturday, May 30, Earl was strapped to a gurney, put aboard an Air National Guard airplane, and flown to the John Sealy Hospital in Galveston. The doctors were told that Earl had agreed to be admitted. They soon found out differently. The AP reported that Long “refused to cooperate with hospital authorities.” The Galveston Daily News said his refusal included “a couple of violent episodes.”

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My views are based upon his actual accomplishments, not where he falls within the political spectrum. He sure ruffled a lot of feathers by challenging long-standing political machine (who were owned by the corporations, Standard Oil for example).

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Huey Long, a demagogic populist, accomplished good things for the poor during the depression. He also took big oil's money and put it in his own pocket.

Long wildly enriched himself, his heirs and friends, and normalized the practice of Louisiana politicians running for office to get elected and get rich. Leander Perez and Edwin Edwards are more recent examples most of us know.

Norway's population is similar to ours, and they too have significant oil and gas resources. Public college is free, poverty nearly non existent. Norwegian government invests their oil and gas revenues in a sovereign wealth fund, worth $1.2 trillion today. Think about that for a second.

I realize we're not Norway, and yet they're an example of what's possible when politicians work to better their constituents lives and improve government, instead of wondering what's in it for themselves.

I'm afraid that possibility for us is Long gone, never to exist again. That we voters allow it is the saddest part of all, on both sides of the aisle.

The long opponents opposed progress. They didn't even want a bridge connecting new Orleans to rest of state.

Was a great teaching hospital with a strip club across the parking lot

His ancestors live next door to me

Interesting anecdote about Norway, but using it as a shining example of what Louisiana ‘could have been’ is beyond a stretch…corporate interests from other parts of the US taking advantage of LA’s natural resources and short changing the citizens of LA is not Long’s doing. He fought against that. And I can’t imagine that’s something Norways government as had to contend with, as I imagine a lot of their oil companies are government-owned/sponsored.

Also, there are clear cut example of career politicians around the US enriching themselves through their political machines and their grifting before Long ever got into politics. This was brought to the nations attention in the muck-raking era when Teddy Roosevelt was president.

Now as to why Louisiana is dead last in everything? I attribute much more of that to flight of capital after natural disasters like the flood of 1927 than to any one individual like Huey Long.

The Old Regulars and their planter allies were looting Louisiana long before any of the Longs came on the scene. Huey Long was more efficient at it, but he was hardly unique. And he at least made sure some of the state's wealth trickled down to the common man in the form of schools, roads and hospitals. which was a previously unheard of concept in Louisiana governance.