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OK, sailaway, I'll call you a naif and you can appear in those Calvin Klein commercials next to Kate Moss. (Comes with the title.[g])
LA=NO=Mississippi River=Army Corps of Engineers=flood control=flooding from a major federal national waterway=federal matter.
Can't let LA or NO control the river, they'd make it by tolls.
Tidbit for sailors: One of the old treaties gives Brits the perpetual right to enter & sail up that river without having to stop first for a formal Customs entry, the way everyone else does.
See? Federal Matter.
As to po fohk being sold swampland...well, after all, the Party Machine down there is one of the two largest federal political machines in the nation. Surely that makes it vital to the rest of the machine? (sigh)
I heard a good story from one of LBJs younger cronies. LBJ coming from another wonderful state where both parties play the same game. They were walking through a cemetery reading the names off tombstones and counting their votes. Come to one old tombstone and the new guy says "I can't read it, skip it." And the older one says "Hell no, you go clean that stone off and read the name. He's got the same right to vote for LBJ that everyone else does!"
Yes, that's party politics, not limited by place or party. Done in NY and Boston, too. Tip O'Neill wrote a wonderfully entertaining (or traumatizing) book about it titled "Speaker of the House". Which was his job for so many years.
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