Once again, I am struggling to overcome the natural desire to feel that the people of a state are getting exactly what they deserve because of the political decisions that they make.
One state official who spoke on the condition of anonymity compared the fossil fuel industry’s control over [Louisiana] to a traditional “monkey trap,” in which hunters use a gourd with a piece of fruit inside the narrow end to lure a monkey. Because the monkey’s instinct is to reach inside and grab the fruit and not let go, the official explained, he can’t escape even when a hunter approaches to kill him.
“He could have let go of the fruit or turned the gourd over, but he can’t do it.” he said. “The oil industry is Louisiana’s monkey trap. The people can’t let go of that very juicy fruit, and so they trap themselves.”
But then I remind myself that Democratic politicians like Mary Landrieu didn’t even give the voters a choice. Their decision in the most recent Senate race was between two politicians, both of whom were competing to portray themselves as the better friend of the fossil fuel industry.
Then again, there’s really no reason to believe that Landrieu would have done better if she had made an enemy of Big Oil, and plenty of reason to think she would have done even worse.
So, maybe the people of the bayou really are to blame.
Look, the people of Red States make their own beds, so they can lay in them.
In a rational and less bigoted nation, most of the politicians in those state couldn’t be elected to a small town’s board.
Louisiana represents the rest of the red states. These people will not change until they are hit hard in-between the eyes with a 2×4 to get their short attentions. Lots of them run around spouting about Federal Government waste of dollars. The true waste of Federal Dollars is sending Federal funds to states that complain about the cost. Cut the cost by cutting off the funding to the states using their own arguments for doing it against them. See how long it takes before WHAM, that lack of Federal funds in their state hits them in-between the eyes like a 2×4 and listen to them scream loud and hard to their GOP Reps.
I don’t think that this will work. It certainly didn’t work in the days before the New Deal coalition.
Remember: no matter how far down into the abyss of degeneracy the conservative enclaves fall, there will always be enough money to enrich the people at the top of the social ladder — and enough money to buy propaganda and folklore for the people at the second-to-bottom run of the ladder to believe that this is as much as they can ever hope for.
If Russia hasn’t fallen yet, there’s no need to believe that the red states will anytime soon.
Whether they intended to or not, Louisiana voters did cast a majority of their votes for the New Deal.
Louisiana is a strange place. I don’t think you can assume that if Mary Landrieu ($-Fossil Fuels) actually played a populist and acted like one, that she wouldn’t have done better.
Louisiana is the home of Huey Long.
She may not have done better, but at least nobody would have accused her of not giving the voters of LA a real choice. And when the folks there find themselves drowning in a stew of toxic waste with no outside rescuers, the rest of us can hold up great big mirrors for those folks to see who to blame.
and a galaxy far far away.
It’s the same as West Virginia and coal, or ranches on dry land, or overfishing the ocean. Your cousin’s job – or maybe it’s your brother-in-law’s, or your church friend’s, or yours – depend on the oil industry. The economy in your town depends on oil.
There aren’t other jobs. Replacing the oil jobs with something else is like replacing high-skill manufacturing with retail. It’s a big fall. It hits everyone from professional classes (landmen and engineers) to rig workers to restaurants.
So how to you transition to an economy that’s less dependent on oil so you can save the state? Damned if I know. It’s a hard question.
Educate your people?
Diversify the economy?
Other states have been forced to do that without a choice.
Takes some smart dedicated public servants, i.e. not Tea Party conservative Republicans.
Yes, this is the Catch-22.
But the oil jobs aren’t going anywhere. It’s just a question of making the most environmentally destructive industry on earth pay for (or attempt to remedy) its wholesale and thoughtless destruction.
After decades of corrosive “conservative” propaganda posing as “news”, the majority of Louisianans are now useless citizens, serfs to the lying pronouncements of the Dukes of Oil. Their state government exists solely to screw them more, and the idea that the state or federal courts in LA are going to somehow hold BigOil accountable for the environmental devastation of the incredibly unique and beautiful Mississippi delta is laughable, given the “conservative” judges that now pollute our courts everywhere.
Further, I’m sure a majority of Louisianans deny the existence of global warming, even though they live in a state that will (and is!) going to suffer some of its worst effects. Anyway, LA certainly never sent anyone to DC to try to stop the CO2 emissions and warming before it was too late.
Louisianans have been told that these oil and gas jobs could somehow disappear if they don’t do proper fealty to the Dukes of Fossil Fuel, or if their state “government” actually acted on the behalf of the citizens (and environment and wildlife) and properly regulated this almost unbelievably destructive industry. The reality is that physical geography requires BigOil to operate their refineries and rigs in LA—that’s where the oil is and that’s where it has to go to be shipped and transported. That’s why the Keystone pipeline is set up to dump all its shit in LA.
BigOil can’t move these massive oil works and facilities somewhere else, they are locked in place–for as long as oil and gas is manufactured. And we’ll be manufacturing it for a long time. Thus, the oil jobs will always be there, it’s just a matter of how massive the profits are to the Dukes and how few crumbs the serfs are to receive. The LA coastline and environment, of course, has no advocates or protectors.
But of course, it supposedly does. Sweeping federal environmental laws were passed in the early 1970s that would have allowed the federal government to step in and protect this unique coastal ecosystem from being destroyed by the rapacious oil and gas industry. The EPA (and the Congress) could have regulated this vile mess and very likely prevented the destruction that has now engulfed Louisiana and will destroy the entire gulf. Obviously, however, no meaningful steps were taken to challenge BigOil’s destruction of this American treasure, because oil and cars and wasteful gas guzzling and Freeeeedum!
So yes, most Louisianans are now cowering serfs, begging for scraps from the Dukes and Earls of Exxon, and their useless state government and hapless “democracy” could never have been expected to stand up to the Lords that rule them. And the useless courts won’t save them now. But it is the crappiness of ALL Americans which forever destroyed the pristine world of the Mississippi delta and gulf coast, wrecked it for wildlife and humans alike, and who now are watching it all melt away into the sea. We just don’t care. We can find trillions(!) for trumped-up Oil wars to Liberate Iraq’s oil from Saddam, but not a stinking $10 billion (according to the article) to perhaps save what’s left of this irreplaceable environmental jewel. That’s America.
One would think that Louisianans would have been the first to appreciate and protect what they have and likely cherish more than anyone—their incredible piece of the planet, unlike literally anywhere in the world. But no, that was too much to expect of them, I guess. And us as a nation as well. I never saw the delta and I can see there’s no use seeing it now. But we are all watching the very last wisps of the pristine and primordial earth vanish into the ether, and no one in the future will ever really know what the earth was. And hilariously, they won’t have any jobs, jobs, jobs, either….