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“When the hell are patriotic Americans..going to rise up and finally say ‘enough is enough’ re: this obnoxious and blatant tyranny and government over-reach?”

From Wikipedia:

[Huey P.] Long was born in the impoverished north of Louisiana in 1893. After working as a traveling salesman and briefly attending three colleges, he was admitted to the bar in Louisiana. Following a short career as an attorney, in which he frequently represented poor plaintiffs, Long was elected to the Louisiana Public Service Commission. As Commissioner, he prosecuted large corporations such as Standard Oil, a lifelong target of his rhetorical attacks. After Long successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice and former president William Howard Taft praised him as “the most brilliant lawyer who ever practiced before the United States Supreme Court”.

After a failed 1924 campaign, Long appealed to the sharp economic, religious, racial, and class divisions in Louisiana to win the 1928 gubernatorial election. Once in office, he expanded social programs, organized massive public works projects, such as a modern highway system and the tallest capitol building in the nation, and proposed a cotton holiday. Through political maneuvering, Long became the political boss of Louisiana. He was impeached in 1929 for abuses of power, but the proceedings collapsed in the State Senate. His opponents argued his policies and methods were unconstitutional and authoritarian. At its climax, political opposition organized a minor insurrection.

Long was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930 but did not assume his seat until 1932.

He proposed the Share Our Wealth plan in 1934. To stimulate the economy, he advocated massive federal spending, a wealth tax, and wealth redistribution. These proposals drew widespread support, with millions joining local Share Our Wealth clubs. Poised for a 1936 presidential bid, Long was assassinated by Carl Weiss inside the Louisiana State Capitol in 1935. His assassin was immediately shot and killed by Long’s bodyguards. Although Long’s movement faded, Roosevelt adopted many of his proposals in the Second New Deal.

[In detail]

He successfully defended from prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917 the state senator who had loaned him the money to complete his legal studies, and later claimed he did not serve because, “I was not mad at anybody over there.” In 1918, Long invested $1,050 (equivalent to $18,066 in 2020) in a well that struck oil. The Standard Oil Company refused to accept any of the oil in its pipelines, costing Long his investment. This episode served as the catalyst for Long’s lifelong hatred of Standard Oil.

Louisiana was essentially a one party state under the Democratic Old Regulars. Holding mock elections in which they invoked the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, the Old Regulars presided over a corrupt government that largely benefited the planter class. Consequently, Louisiana was one of the least developed states: It had just 300 miles of paved roads and the lowest literacy rate.

Long developed novel campaign techniques, including the use of sound trucks and radio commercials. His stance on race was unorthodox. According to T. Harry Williams, Long was “the first Southern mass leader to leave aside race baiting and appeals to the Southern tradition and the Southern past and address himself to the social and economic problems of the present”. The campaign sometimes descended into brutality. When the 60-year-old incumbent governor called Long a liar during a chance encounter in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, Long punched him in the face.

In the Democratic primary election, Long polled 126,842 votes: a plurality of 43.9 percent. His margin was the largest in state history, and no opponent chose to face him in a runoff. After earning the Democratic nomination, he easily defeated the Republican nominee in the general election with 96.1 percent of the vote. At age 35, Long was the youngest person ever elected governor of Louisiana.

Every state employee who depended on Long for a job was expected to pay a portion of their salary at election time directly into his campaign fund.

When an opposing legislator once suggested Long was unfamiliar with the Louisiana Constitution, he declared, “I’m the Constitution around here now.”

One program Long approved was a free textbook program for schoolchildren. Long’s free school books angered Catholics, who usually sent their children to private schools. Long assured them that the books would be granted directly to all children, regardless of whether they attended public school. Yet this assurance was criticized by conservative constitutionalists, who claimed it violated the separation of church and state and sued Long. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Long’s favor.

Irritated by “immoral” gambling dens and brothels in New Orleans, Long sent the National Guard to raid these establishments with orders to “shoot without hesitation”. Gambling equipment was burned, prostitutes were arrested, and over $25,000 (equivalent to $376,793 in 2020) was confiscated for government funds. Local newspapers ran photos of National Guardsmen forcibly searching nude women.

Despite wide disapproval, Long had the Governor’s Mansion, built in 1887, razed by convicts from the State Penitentiary under his personal supervision. In its place, Long had a much larger Georgian mansion built. It bore a strong resemblance to the White House; he reportedly wanted to be familiar with the residence when he became president.

freshman lawmakers Cecil Morgan and Ralph Norman Bauer, introduced an impeachment resolution against Long. Nineteen charges were listed, ranging from blasphemy to subornation of murder. Even Long’s lieutenant governor, Paul Cyr, supported impeachment; he accused Long of nepotism and alleged he had made corrupt deals with a Texas oil company.

Concerned, Long tried to close the session. Pro-Long Speaker John B. Fournet called for a vote to adjourn. Despite most representatives opposing adjournment, the electronic voting board tallied 68 ayes and 13 nays.

Following the failed impeachment attempt, Long treated his opponents ruthlessly. He fired their relatives from state jobs.

There were accusations of voter fraud against Long; voting records showed people voting in alphabetical order, among them celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth. Although his Senate term began on March 4, 1931, Long completed most of his four-year term as governor, which did not end until May 1932.

he often joked his legislature was the “finest collection of lawmakers money can buy”.

Long created a public works program that was unprecedented in the South, constructing roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and state buildings. During his four years as governor, Long increased paved highways in Louisiana from 331 to 2,301 miles (533 to 3,703 km) and constructed 2,816 miles (4,532 km) of gravel roads. By 1936, the infrastructure program begun by Long had completed some 9,700 miles (15,600 km) of new roads, doubling Louisiana’s road system. He built 111 bridges and started construction on the first bridge over the Mississippi entirely in Louisiana, the Huey P. Long Bridge. These projects provided thousands of jobs during the depression: Louisiana employed more highway workers than any other state. Long built a State Capitol, which at 450 feet (140 m) tall remains the tallest capitol, state or federal, in the United States. Long’s infrastructure spending increased the state government’s debt from $11 million in 1928 to $150 million in 1935.

Long was an ardent supporter of the state’s flagship public university, Louisiana State University (LSU).

Long made the first $2,000 in property assessment free, waiving property taxes for half the state’s homeowners. Some historians have criticized other policies, like high consumer taxes on gasoline and cigarettes, a reduced mother’s pension, and low teacher salaries.

When Long arrived in the Senate, America was in the throes of the Great Depression. With this backdrop, Long made characteristically fiery speeches that denounced wealth inequality. He criticized the leaders of both parties for failing to address the crisis adequately, notably attacking conservative Senate Democratic Leader Joseph Robinson of Arkansas for his apparent closeness with President Herbert Hoover and big business.

None of his proposed bills, resolutions, or motions were passed during his three years in the Senate.

In a nationwide February 1934 radio broadcast, Long introduced his Share Our Wealth plan. The legislation would use the wealth from the Long plan to guarantee every family a basic household grant of $5,000 and a minimum annual income of one-third of the average family homestead value and income. Long supplemented his plan with proposals for free college and vocational training, veterans’ benefits, federal assistance to farmers, public works projects, greater federal economic regulation, a $30 monthly elderly pension, a month’s vacation for every worker, a thirty-hour workweek, a $10 billion land reclamation project to end the Dust Bowl, and free medical service and a “war on disease” led by the Mayo brothers. These reforms, Long claimed, would end the Great Depression. The plans were widely criticized and labeled impossible by economists.

Of the two trucks that delivered mail to the Senate, one was devoted solely to mail for Long. Long’s newspaper, now renamed American Progress, averaged a circulation of 300,000, some issues reaching over 1.5 million.

Some historians believe that pressure from Share Our Wealth contributed to Roosevelt’s “turn to the left” in the Second New Deal (1935), which consisted of the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, Aid to Dependent Children, and the Wealth Tax Act of 1935. Roosevelt reportedly admitted in private to trying to “steal Long’s thunder”.

Regarding Roosevelt, Long boasted to the New York Times’ Arthur Krock: “He’s scared of me. I can out-promise him, and he knows it.”

By 1935, Long’s consolidation of power led to talk of armed opposition from his enemies in Louisiana. Opponents increasingly invoked the memory of the Battle of Liberty Place (1874), in which the White League staged an uprising against Louisiana’s Reconstruction-era government. In January 1935, an anti-Long paramilitary organization called the Square Deal Association was formed. Its members included former governors John M. Parker and Ruffin Pleasant and New Orleans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley. Standard Oil threatened to leave the state when Long finally passed the five-cent per barrel oil tax for which he had been impeached in 1929. Concerned Standard Oil employees formed a Square Deal association in Baton Rouge, organizing themselves in militia companies and demanding “direct action”.

On January 25, 1935, these Square Dealers, now armed, seized the East Baton Rouge Parish courthouse. Long had Governor Allen execute emergency measures in Baton Rouge: he called in the National Guard, declared martial law, banned public gatherings of two or more persons, and forbade the publication of criticism of state officials. The Square Dealers left the courthouse, but there was a brief armed skirmish at the Baton Rouge Airport. Tear gas and live ammunition were fired; one person was wounded, but there were no fatalities. At a legal hearing, an alleged spy within the Square Dealers testified they were conspiring to assassinate Long.

In summer 1935, Long called two special legislative sessions in Louisiana; bills were passed in rapid-fire succession without being read or discussed. The new laws further centralized Long’s control over the state by creating new Long-appointed state agencies: a state bond and tax board holding sole authority to approve loans to local governments, a new state printing board which could withhold “official printer” status from uncooperative newspapers, a new board of election supervisors which would appoint all poll watchers, and a State Board of Censors. They stripped away the remaining powers of the Mayor of New Orleans. Long boasted he had “taken over every board and commission in New Orleans except the Community Chest and the Red Cross”. A September 7 special session passed 42 bills. The most extreme, likely aimed at Roosevelt and his federal agents, authorized Louisiana to fine and imprison anyone who infringed on the powers reserved to the state in the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

On September 8, 1935, Long traveled to the State Capitol to pass a bill that would gerrymander the district of an opponent, Judge Benjamin Pavy, who had held his position for 28 years. At 9:20 p.m., just after passage of the bill effectively removing Pavy, Pavy’s son-in-law, Carl Weiss, approached Long, and, according to the generally accepted version of events, fired a single shot with a handgun from four feet (1.2 m) away, striking Long in the torso. Long’s bodyguards, nicknamed the “Cossacks” or “skullcrushers”, then fired at Weiss with their pistols, killing him. An autopsy found Weiss had been shot at least 60 times. Long ran down a flight of stairs and across the capitol grounds, hailing a car to take him to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. He was rushed to the operating room where surgery closed perforations in his intestines but failed to stop internal bleeding. Long died at 4:10 a.m. on September 10, 31 hours after being shot.

Over 200,000 people traveled to Baton Rouge to attend Long’s September 12 funeral. His remains were buried on the grounds of the Capitol; a statue depicting Long was constructed on his grave. Although Long’s allies alleged he was assassinated by political opponents, a federal probe found no evidence of conspiracy. Long’s death brought relief to the Roosevelt Administration, which would win in a landslide in the 1936 election. Farley publicly admitted his apprehension of campaigning against Long: “I always laughed Huey off, but I did not feel that way about him.” Roosevelt’s close economic advisor Rexford Tugwell wrote that, “When he was gone it seemed that a beneficent peace had fallen on the land. Father Coughlin, Reno, Townsend, et al., were after all pygmies compared with Huey. He had been a major phenomenon.” Tugwell also said that Roosevelt regarded Long’s assassination as a “providential occurrence”.

Evidence later surfaced that suggests Long was accidentally shot by his bodyguards. Proponents of this theory assert Long was caught in the crossfire as his bodyguards shot Weiss, and a bullet that ricocheted off the marble walls hit him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long

September 8, 1935