  (5.67a/IDA-1.5 for conspire-post@firefly.prairienet.org); Tue, 27 Sep 1994 13:37:47 -0500
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 26


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 26
             ======================================
                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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L.J. DAVIS INTERVIEW
 
L.J. Davis, author of an article offering a good look beneath the 
surface of Arkansas politics ("The Name of Rose", *The New 
Republic*, April 4, 1994), was interviewed by phone by David Inge 
of the local PBS-connected radio station on August 4, 1994. What 
follows is my transcription of that interview.
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[...continued...]
 
DAVID INGE:
Again, our guest is L.J. Davis. He's a contributing editor to 
*Harpers* magazine.
 
We'll go to the phones here, starting with a local caller, in 
Urbana, on line 1. Hello.
 
 
CALLER #1:
Hello. The rhetorical question you posed about Indonesians and 
Pakistanis arriving in Urbana-Champaign probably didn't take a 
good location. It probably wouldn't create much excitement here 
because if Pakistanis and Indonesians aren't arriving every day, 
they are, very, very frequently, along with Taiwanese, Koreans, 
and mainland Chinese. So...
 
 
L.J. DAVIS:
Carrying bags of money, of course.
 
 
CALLER #1:
Uh, sometimes a fair amount, I should expect. At least the 
Saudis.
 
But anyway... The question was good. I think, perhaps, the 
location wasn't.
 
But it seems to me, the case you're making is that there are a 
*lot* of muddy feet and not simply in the Clinton administration. 
There's more in the previous two administrations and that it's 
going to be very difficult to get Congress to come to pointing 
fingers.
 
 
DAVIS:
Well they're, they're certainly trying. You know, a congressman 
or a senator loves nothing more than a television camera, and 
they certainly have had a lot of them recently, haven't they?
 
 
CALLER #1:
Um-hmm. Yes, they have.
 
                  -+- A Fat Man in a Fez -+-
 
DAVIS:
But you know, going back to Little Rock, you know, I mean after 
I'd been there for awhile, considering the milieu and considering 
the strange people that *did* show up there, I wouldn't have been 
surprised if I encountered a fat man in a fez, Peter Lorre, and a 
Maltese falcon! It was that sufficiently strange.
 
We haven't talked about the involvement of many of these same 
people, including Hillary Clinton's boss, in the first, billion 
dollar S&L failure in the country, which happened to occur in 
Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where all the *world* seemed to come 
together! You had the corrupt Prudential-Bache branch in Dallas 
involved. You had Bob Straus's law firm involved. You had the son 
of the mayor of Dallas involved. It was an *incredible* mess.
 
 
CALLER #1:
It still sounds to me as though this is a very *pervasive* 
condition which doesn't affect a single administration but, 
regrettably, sounds as though it affects everything during the 
last 25 years!
 
              -+- For a *Long* Time to Come -+-
 
DAVIS:
I would say that the world changed rather considerably during our 
lifetimes. And [for] our younger listeners, of course, this *has* 
been their lifetime. They don't remember that it was ever 
different. {1}.
 
One of the examples that I frequently use is that, before the 
regulations were hauled off to the knackers' yards -- starting in 
the Carter administration -- from the crash of '29 until the 
1980s, there has been precisely *one* major stock scandal (that 
everybody forgets), the salad oil scandal, in the 1960s. 
Afterwards, *everything* went haywire.
 
Your point is an excellent one. We're gonna be recovering from 
this for a *long* time to come.
 
 
CALLER #1:
I agree with you, very much so.
 
How do we get back to the position of considering regulation not 
to be a dirty word?
 
 
DAVIS:
Well we have to acknowledge something: It seems to me that on 
inaugural day in 1981, the purport of the President's message was 
that human nature had just been repealed!
 
 
CALLER #1:
This never happens, of course.
 
             -+- A "Miraculous" Reappearance -+-
 
DAVIS:
Exactly. Some regulations were foolish, of course. Others were 
strangling, yes. But to... Nobody seemed to think, to realize, 
that those regulations were put in place by "fiends" like 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt because they had a rather cynical view 
of human nature: they believed that people, when placed in the 
vicinity of a large sum of money, might be tempted to steal it. 
And I have repeatedly pointed out, in articles that I've been 
writing over the last decade or so, that before you repeal a 
regulation you ought to examine the purpose of that regulation 
and see just exactly what it was designed to prevent! All too 
often, once the regulations were repealed, the very abuses they 
were designed to prevent made a "miraculous" reappearance in our 
society.
 
 
CALLER #1:
I really think we need to re-read the history of the period of 
Teddy Roosevelt, and just preceding that, to see what we're 
headed back for.
 
 
DAVIS:
Well, or a thing that, another period that I would call to our 
attention, is the Grant administration.
 
 
CALLER #1:
Yes.
 
 
DAVIS:
A time that bears an eerie similarity to what we've been going 
through for the last 15 to 20 years.
 
 
CALLER #1:
Of course that's what set up the conditions that led to the 
reforms of the liberal Republicans at the end of the century and 
the beginning of this century.
 
 
DAVIS:
And then the liberal Republicans turned into liberal Democrats. 
In fact it was, you know, two members of the same family that led 
the charge! Uh, "Teddy" and Franklin.
 
 
CALLER #1:
Yeah. And in my home state, the LaFollettes...
 
 
DAVIS:
And the LaFollettes.
 
 
CALLER #1:
...ultimately migrated to the Democrats.
 
Very good points! Thank you.
 
 
INGE:
Thank you for the call. Let's go to Champaign county on line 
number 4. Hello.
 
 
CALLER #2:
Yeah. The wider context: I'm wondering whether you're familiar 
with the Houston reporter, Peter Brouton's(sp?) book, is that?
 
 
DAVIS:
Uh, I know Mr. Brouton. I know him by telephone. We have been 
telephone friends over the years.
 
 
CALLER #2:
Right. And you've seen some of his clippings and some of his 
articles and that sort of stuff?
 
 
DAVIS:
I have seen... I at one point leaned, some of my stories leaned, 
rather heavily on Mr. Brouton's findings.
 
His book, unfortunately, is, shall we say, "dense"?
 
 
CALLER #2:
Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's... I have not read it. I do know that 
it has a title, and in the foreward, he says that he could easily 
have put Lloyd Bentsen's name at the end of it, instead of George 
Bush's, 'cause he's basically looking at underworld ties to S&L 
failures in Texas. And both of those gentlemen are implicated 
fairly well, I understand.
 
               -+- "America's Switzerland" -+-
 
DAVIS:
Um basically what he... I think that book is mis-titled. 
Basically what he's got is a "good 'ol boy" network of the sort 
that we all too frequently see in the "Bubba Belt", as I call it, 
throughout American... well let's see, the "Gulf Band", as it 
were, you know. The most egregious state is probably Louisiana -- 
"America's Switzerland", you know? I mean, in Louisiana, things 
that are against the law everywhere else in the world, including 
Switzerland, are perfectly legal. But, you know, you sort of get 
the impression after awhile that the telegraph line between those 
states and Washington has been down since 1861!
 
                    [...to be continued...]
 
--------------------------<< Notes >>----------------------------
{1} "They don't remember that it was ever different." Exactly. 
For many, having an obviously corrupt Presidency is *normal*. 
They have no memory of what it was like to have a President that 
(at least in theory) you could look up to. For those growing up 
today, what can they aspire to? To be like George Bush? To be 
like Bill Clinton?
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."
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