EDWIN EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT?

Monday, September 30^th, 2024

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

EDWIN EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT?

Some of you older readers may recall the name of South Korean lobbyist Tongsun Park, a flamboyant international lobbyist who died this past week. Back in the 1970s, he was intricately involved in the politics of Louisiana. Then Governor Edwin Edwards was able to persuade Park to arrange for the Korean government to purchase millions of dollars in South Louisiana rice. Some would argue that if it were not for Edwards’ persuasive powers, Louisiana rice farmers would have faced a disastrous year. Instead, they made record profits.

In 1978, Edwin Edwards was at the height of his popularity. He had been easily re-elected to a second term two years earlier. With the price of oil continuing to rise, the coffers of the state treasury were filled, and Governor Edwards faced little controversy. Candidates for office in the 1978 and 1979 elections eagerly sought his endorsement.  The two major challengers for the office of lieutenant governor each had the Governor cut TV spots in their behalf.

Up until then, no Louisiana public official had made any serious attempt to run for the presidency. Huey Long was rumored to be interested, but he was assassinated before he could run against President Franklin D Roosevelt. Governor John McKeithen made a serious effort to be the vice presidential candidate on the Hubert Humphrey ticket in 1968, but Humphrey decided to look elsewhere.

As his second term was winding down, Edwards was obviously looking for new challenges. The Governor and I made a joint appearance in north Louisiana early in 1978, then flew back to Baton Rouge together in the state plane. I was reading a book my father had given me, Marathon, The Pursuit of the Presidency 1972-1976, by Jules Witcover.

 The book presented an account of the 1976 presidential election and went into great detail as to how Jimmy Carter rose from being a little-known Southern governor to getting elected President of the United States. Edwards noticed the book, and I gave him a brief description of the author's explanation showing Carter's effort in putting together a Georgia campaign team that was able to capture the Democratic nomination.

About a week later, I was at my home in Ferriday when the phone rang one evening just before midnight. It was the Governor. "Do you still have that book about Carter getting elected President?" Edwards asked. "Why?" I said. "Are you planning on doing the same thing and challenging him?"  Edwards laughed and told me he was just interested in some bedtime reading. "If Jimmy Carter could pull it off, I would think that I certainly could," he said.

I knew the President and EWE were not close. Edwards had supported the presidential candidacy of Governor Jerry Brown in 1976. Outside of Brown's votes in California, the Louisiana delegation was the only other support he received at the Democratic Convention. The Governor's wife, Elaine, publicly supported Gerald Ford for President in 1976.  President Carter's popularity was at a low ebb in 1979 as Edwin Edwards considered his future plans.

But then the news broke that the wife of Edwards had received a $10,000 cash gift from Tongson Park when she was serving in the United States Senate. Although Edwards popularity stayed high in Louisiana, it took quite a hit on the national level.  Cash money to the wife of the siting governor would surely be a major campaign issue if Edwards had decided to run for president.

About three weeks later, the book came back to me in the mail. It had been my intention for the Governor to keep it. There was no note attached, and he never mentioned the book or the presidency to me again. 

Would Edwards have had a chance if it were not for the Tongsun Park scandal? Stranger things have happened. We will never know because of the intervention in Louisiana politics by someone from South Korea.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RUMP SAYS LOCK UP YOUR DOGS AND CATS!

Wednesday, September 25^rd, 2024

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

TRUMP SAYS LOCK UP YOUR DOGS AND CATS!

So What Happens in Louisiana?

 

It’s a national scandal and a call to arms. Our country is under attack by dog and cat eaters. So says our former president. That’s right.  Donald Trump is saying that in some communities, immigrants are prowling neighborhoods stealing our pets.  “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

Well of course, stealing pets is against the law. But what about eating dogs and cats? Do people even do that?  Yes they do.  In fact, eating these domestic critters is pretty popular in some parts of the world.  An estimated 30 million dogs across Asia are still killed for human consumption every year according to the Humane Society International. The practice is most common in China, South Korea, The Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and India.  Each year in June, the city of Yulin in southern China hosts a dog meat festival, where live dogs and cats are sold specifically for eating and an estimated 10,000 are slaughtered for their meat.

In South Korea, dog meat dishes are so common that they have their own name – Gaegogi. The country has an estimated 17,000 dog farms, according to the Humane Society, where animals are routinely prepared for human consumption.

Of course we in America are appalled that someone would eat a pet. Well, pretty much so. After all, many Americans have adopted a variety of animals as pets.  I would imagine that the former president and a majority of Americans  have no problem eating Porky Pig, Donald Duck, and Bambi. And horsemeat is starting to become more popular throughout the United States. So what’s the big deal about eating Trigger and Mr. Ed? Right? 

Now I live in the deepest of the deep southern states where we eat about anything. Louisiana has been called the Culinary Mecca of America. Folks in this part of the country can take just about anything edible and make it not just good, but quite exceptional. And when we say anything, we mean everything. I had a Cajun friend tell me that “Yeah, we fry everything – if we could stick a bike tire in the right kind of batter, we’d eat it.”

I wrote a cookbook some years ago that includes such delicacies as my “world famous” squirrel stew, venison goulash, possum and chestnuts, rabbit in sour cream, and Louisiana Governor Jimmy Davis’s favorite, fried coon file’.

I was traveling through Cajun country a few years ago, and stopped at a rural general store for a cup of coffee. An old fellow was on the porch cooking up a pot of something that smelled good. “Whatcha’ cookin’?” I asked. “Got me a gumbo,” he replied. I inquired what kind of gumbo, and he told me, “an owl gumbo.” When I asked him what an owl gumbo tasted like, he smiled and said, “Oh, about like a hawk gumbo.” (And by the way, I had a pet owl with a broken wing that I kept for several years until it passed away.)

I know friends that have kept a nutria as a pet. If you don’t know, a nutria is a large rat that is regularly publicized as a tasty dish by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. So, to each his own.

Seeing that our locals regularly eat alligator sauce piquante, and add to a stew or gumbo just about anything else that flies or crawls, it’s hard for many of us to get too worked up over a little horsemeat or any other animal being eaten  I know that many of you readers have a special affection for the majestic horse. But all horses eventually have to be disposed of. And the same horses that would be slaughtered in the U.S. under strict guidelines are now being shipped to other countries and both treated and killed in far more cruel ways.

So go ahead and eat what you want. Just leave me and my dog, cat, horse, owl, deer, peacock, and all my other animal friends alone. Right Mr. President?

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

 

 

 

 

 

IS ELECTION FRAUD RAMPENT ACROSS THE NATION?

Monday, September 16^th, 2024

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

IS ELECTION FRAUD RAMPENT  ACROSS THE NATION?

 

It’s a matter of weeks before the presidential election, and critics are hollering that  the country is experiencing election fraud, both in states across the country as well as an infiltration by unfriendly nations in other parts of the world. Is there any truth to these allegations? In a few instances, yes.  But by and large, despite allegations from critics of the 2020 results, the election system has run smoothly.

 

Now some readers will disagree, particularly because of the onslaught of highly partisan criticisms they have continued over the past four years. I know a little about how the election system works, since I was Louisiana’s chief elections officer for eight  years back in the 1980s. Sure, we had the occasional allegations of vote buying in the Bayou State. Who can forget Governor Earl Long’s plea in his final days. “Oh Lord, when I die, please let me be buried in Louisiana, so I can stay active in politics.”

 

Is there any truth to recent charges that other countries, including Iran and Russia, have been meddling through the internet in the current U.S election process?  Of course there is. And surprise, surprise! Why should it be any new revelation. Our country’s national security apparatus, including the FBI, the Pentagon, the CIA and the NSA, have been interfering in the elections of other countries for the last half century. The US. has been accused of attempting to sway the election results in a number of other countries, including Italy in 1948, the Philippines in 1953, Japan in the 1950s and 1960s Lebanon in 1957, Russia in 1996, and in a number of South American countries in recent years including Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Haiti, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, and Guatemala just to name a few. So why should anyone be surprised that other countries might want to retaliate?

 

The Trump team’s charges, following the 2020 national election of voter fraud, have been exhaustively investigated and litigated with 86 legal challenges rejected by the federal courts, including the US Supreme Court.  Many of the federal judges who rejected the election irregularities were appointed by President Trump.

 

What about the individual state efforts to investigate voter fraud? In Texas, the governor there has formed and elections integrity unit as he alleges that over one million voters have been purged from the voter rolls since 2021. But elections officials in Texas admit that the removals from the roles were overwhelming people who have died or who no longer living at the registry address. Similar allegations were made in Georgia and North Carolina, but elections officials there found no evidence of illegal voter activity.

 

In Louisiana, there have been a handful of voter fraud convictions in the past ten years, mostly involving vote buying in local elections. Some of you readers may remember the 1979 gubernatorial election when Lieutenant Governor Jimmy Fitz Morris, running for governor in the first primary, swore that he had been denied a runoff spot because of widespread voter fraud. I had just been elected Secretary Of State, and I formed an elections integrity commission to fully investigate any such elections irregularities.  No such significant violations of the law were found.

 

Readers may wonder why in federal elections, particularly in the voting for president, should individual states have different elections procedures.  And yes, procedures do vary from state to state. In Louisiana, the Secretary Of State as the chief elections officer, overseas the printing of the election ballots in every parish. In our neighboring state of Mississippi, ballots are printed and distributed by clerks of court in each individual county. Hours when he polls are open can vary from state to state. In Louisiana, polls in federal elections open up at 6:00 AM. In New Hampshire, some towns start voting at midnight.

 

Why are states allowed to control the elections process? Remember, you do not live in America. You live in the United States of America. Congress, under the 14^th amendment, has allowed each individual state to set the laws and run elections as they see fit, as long as there is no prejudice allowed in the process.

 

The election process across the country is not perfect. But for the time being, it is all we have. Whatever you think of it, just be sure you are registered to vote.  There certainly is a lot of stake. 

 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

 

 

 

 

September 9^th, 2024

Linville, North Carolina

 

TIME FOR LOUISIANA TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP!

 

It’s been a standing joke for a number of years. No matter how bad things get in Louisiana, the state could say at least it’s not Mississippi. Well not anymore. A new national study by Wallethub.com has just been released ranking the Bayou state as America’s worst state to live in. That’s not the only bad listing. U.S. News & World Report puts Louisiana in last place for the second year in a row. When bad news rains, it certainly pours on Louisiana.

 

Both lists cite widespread poverty, violent crime across the state (65% higher than the national average), poor health where 40% of the population is listed as obese, poisonous industrial pollution, and the worst state in the nation when it comes to at risk youth who are unemployed and poverty stricken. And these lists don't touch on the state having the highest and least affordable insurance rates compared to any other state, along with meager educational attainment.  

 

Mississippi has jumped from last to 45^th, making a five state leap, and has made huge strides in educational improvement. The New York Times reported recently that Mississippi “is lifting education outcomes and soaring in the national rankings.” Louisiana’s educational system has become an eyesore from start to finish. Early childhood education is dramatically underfunded. There’s no good news in the elementary and secondary levels were truancy remains high, and parents are not held accountable.  

 

When it comes to higher education, the U.S. News & World Report national rankings were released just last week. The state’s flagship LSU came in with a ranking of 188th. University of Louisiana in Lafayette, that tries continually to keep up with LSU, made the same list at 465^th.  Out of the 10 top public universities, seven are located in California. How does California and Louisiana differ? California has one board of qualified educators that oversees all of higher education. Louisiana has four boards, each that undercut the other for tax dollars. Board members in the Bayou state are generally appointed based on their political connections and campaign contributions rather than having any particular educational expertise.  

 

When it comes to fighting crime, the governor has made no bones about calling out the National Guard to protect the public. However, the protection is in Texas on the Mexican border. The state spends $3 million annually to send the Louisiana National Guard abroad. That $3 million could be a shot in the arm in dealing with crime throughout the state.  We ought to be a lot more concerned about crime in Louisiana rather than what happens 1000 miles away.

 

The Bayou state is so far behind in the national rankings that it calls for dramatic leadership that is not afraid to shake up the system and rub a number of vested interests raw to the bone. I’ll have to hand it to former Governor Buddy Roemer. He beat me in the 1987 gubernatorial race by saying he was going to shut down a number of state agencies that were dramatically underperforming. When he ran for President, he would not accept more than $100 in campaign contributions. Yes, he lost, but he was on the right track a number of years ago.  

 

There are way too many “dust bunny” agencies that soak up tax dollars but are completely unnecessary. A board to regulate florists and barbers? Why? Are twenty levy boards operating in Louisiana necessary when much bigger states up and down the Mississippi river only have one?  I could go on and on.

 

Rather than a constitutional convention as some so-called experts are calling for, I think we first need a government efficiency commission, made up of non-politicians bringing in groups like the Public Affairs Research Council, the Council for a Better Louisiana the Bureau of Governmental Research and another similar organizations. Give them the tools to review and shake up state government from top to bottom. No sacred cows. Set in stone for the citizens of Louisiana to decide. Make the choice quite clear. Either get the state off the bottom of the barrel as has been for years and move forward. Or just continue to languish in last place. It’s time to make some hard decisions.

 

Peace and Justice

 

Jim Brown

 

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR-IT’S FALL!

Monday, September 2^nd, 2024

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR-IT’S FALL!

 

OK, Ok, I know it’s just early September.  But to me, autumn is in the air.  Sure it’s still hot in the deep South.  But there is a tinge of lower temperatures, leaves are slightly turning and we are witnessing a finality of harvest.  Yes fall is close at hand. And that means we have a whole host of new beginnings.

 

It’s a new school year for our kids and grandkids where we can share their excitement of new schools, new school books, new teachers, and new discoveries.  What a thrill as a grandparent to witness my grandkids making new encounters and growing in their relationships with both old and new friends. Even though I feel I was a pretty good father to my four children, grandkids give us a second chance.

 

And some brand new beginnings for football, football, and football. We all have high hopes for our favorite teams as the season kicks off.  Unfortunately, our LSU Tigers are off to rough start with a close loss in its opening game.  But there are many more Saturday nights in Tiger Stadium. 

 

Yes, college football is special both here in Louisiana and all over the country. Every school is often unique, with its own pageantry, traditions, cheers and songs, and the rivalries that often go back many years.  No matter how bad the season was for your favorite team last year, it’s a new start and a fresh beginning with high hopes.

 

As a sidenote, let me tell you how insane and moneygrubbing college football has become. This is a real first too. Do you know that some colleges outfit all of the players’ helmets with a QR code where you can point your phone camera at the helmet, click a link, and then send money to a special NIL fund?  So you can sit in a restaurant 1000 miles away, and support your team’s players by pouring in the dollars. Just a new year and a new way to money grub for these players who are no longer amateurs, but have become just as much a pro as the players in the NFL.  Ah, the new world we live in.

 

One thing I miss is the turning of the leaves and the beautiful fall colors you see in other parts of the country. We have a family home up in the North Carolina mountains, and changing of the colors is just spectacular. It’s almost like a painter who takes his brush and paints each leaf a different color all over the mountains, surrounding us by a natural carpet of oranges, purples, yellows and browns.

 

I must admit I’m cold natured, and wear sweaters all year round. But it’s a special treat to put on heavier sweaters and warmer clothes.  And open fires.  Can you beat curling up in front of a roaring fire with a cup of hot chocolate, maybe apple cider or a hot toddy while the young ones roast marshmallows?

 

How about the special seasonal foods? Now I’m a pie guy. I like blueberry, cherry, and most any other kind of pies. But hands-down, at the top of the list, is pumpkin pie. My favorite is baked by my sister-in-law, but I have to admit the pumpkin pies at Costco’s are a close second. Their tasty pumpkin pie is simply orange heaven on a plate. 

 

September arrives and a full, new season begins, I always anticipate the upcoming holidays with our families where we can often spend more time together. I love Halloween, seeing all the kids dressing up in their favorite costumes, and the bobbing of caramel apples. I just cannot back away from those caramelized goodies.

 

Then we come head long into the trilogy of holidays beginning with Thanksgiving, then reaching the Christmas milestone and culminating in New Year’s.  So much crammed into the few short months of autumn. This week, a special time begins. It’s a Southerner's reward for having survived summer. I sure hope you are ready to soak it all in.  So Happy New Year.

 

Peace and Justice

 

Jim Brown

 

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.