orbis quintus

American Zombie does great work investigating corruption. It’s shameful that the work he throws himself into is pretty much ignored by mainstream media. He and Lucy Bustamante found a wealth of evidence of fraud on the part of State Representative Lucas Leonard. He found 23 semi-fictitious non-profit organizations registered to Leonard Lucas and Audrey Walker dating to 2010. Lucy Busatamante found that 7 organizations based all at one address on St. Claude, allegedly helping the neighborhood. One neighbor recalled some turkeys given away one year, but that’s about it.

This is outside my normal area of interest, but it’s painful to see work like this go unrecognized when the Times-Picayune (which wasn’t even bothering to cover what he covers in the first place) has been completely gutted.

All i can note are my own personal observations. I have no expertise obviously.

When we were in Austin, i saw a lot of Ron Paul signs in yards and along roads. They were the only political group to stake out a patch of ground in front of the Austin City Limits Festival and proselytize (although i did see a few Obama stickers on backpacks.) I just chalked the signs up to the libertarian technology community in Austin.

It’s November and i live in Hammond, Louisiana. The only presidential campaign signs that i’ve seen up in town are Ron Paul signs. We walk through neighborhoods downtown, and there in front of a lot of well-upkept homes, although i’ve noticed that they are more prominent in mixed race neighborhoods, which is a little disturbing.

Ron Paul scares the shit out of me. I’m seeing the Clinton and Giuliani match-up as inevitable, but the Ron Paul factor is spooky. He doesn’t seem to be part of the predetermined equation between two self-entitled political machines, but he doesn’t seem to be a force for good either. Few of the people who are disgusted with the establishment seem to be grasping the danger of Ron Paul though.

Two local blogs, Your Right Hand Thief and Library Chronicles have tackled the Ron Paul phenomenon. Library Chronicles has covered how Paul is making an impact in New Orleans. Paul’s Louisiana profile is important to me, as we are a relatively political backwater, so nationally something more powerful must be on the move, but he also nails something that has been coalescing in my head:

My model stars Rudy! Giuliani as the ghoulish authoritarian Nixon, Hillary Clinton as the bumbling centrist Hubert Humphrey, and Paul as the insurgent x-factor George Wallace. In ’68 Wallace’s run exposed a dangerous fault in the old Democratic “New Deal” coalition splintering the working class populist vote along racial and social lines and ushering in a major political realignment which appears to have peaked with the rise and… perhaps… fall of the Rovian neo-cons currently ruining our Constitution and pretty much blowing up the world.

Again, very fucking scary.

Both blogs point to this Orcinus post.

I don’t have much hope for 2008.