The World Around You

I won’t even talk about the comments from our friendly Broncos fan when I was out of town and did not have a take on the Colts loss to the Broncos two weeks ago.

Congratulations to Peyton Manning and the Colts as they advanced in the most convincing fashion and get rewarded with a visit to Kansas City.

* Steve Irwin: This is what happens when you dangle your baby in front of a crocodile! Crikey!
* SAARC Summit: Let’s get together, yeah, yeah, yeah.
* Howard Dean: The covers and Time and Newsweek will generate searches.

There are a couple of very dangerous intersections near where I live in Prattville that have been causing people headaches for years. Marty Roney reports that these intersections will finally be dealt with in the near future,

Turn lanes will be constructed on East Main Street from Virginia Street to Shady Oak Lane, and traffic signals will be placed at Main and Shady Oak and Main and Chambliss Street. Bids are set to be opened on the $750,000 project in April, with work beginning in late June or early July, said Mayor Jim Byard.

Washington Whispers reports,

Security is one thing, but how about this from the Department of Homeland Security? The agency has instructed employees to ignore, in some cases, court orders to disclose information. The agency says that an employee who gets a court order should seek a delay. And if he or she is unsuccessful and the court persists, the employee “shall respectfully decline to comply with the demand.”

A poll of Mobile and Baldwin county residents published in Sunday’s Mobile Register, indicates the support for a statewide lottery and casino gambling may be increasing,

A majority of residents in Mobile and Baldwin counties would support establishing a state lottery and legalizing casino gambling, the results of a new poll suggest.

…

The vote on the omnibus spending bill that is expected in the coming weeks means more to Alabama than most states,

Hundreds of Alabama airports, roads, libraries, museums, colleges, research projects and water systems are awaiting millions in federal dollars from a tardy but massive $328.1 billion spending bill due for a final vote when Congress returns this month.

Alabama’s projects vary greatly in size, scope and location, from $30 million for a new applied sciences building at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and $12.5 million for the new biomedical building at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to $75,000 for the Mobile Museum of Art and $25,000 for the 21st Century Council Impact Learning Center in Jackson County.

The 1,400-page bill consolidates what would normally be seven separate budgets for various government departments for the 2003-2004 budget year, which began Oct. 1. It actually appropriates about $820 billion in regular spending, but Congress has discretionary control over about $328 billion of it. Within that discretion, there are thousands of special items inserted by lawmakers for projects back home.

Alabama, with three of its nine Washington delegates on key spending committees, is a top recipient of those funds. Critics call the funding “pork” because it is based largely on political power, not competitive needs.

“You don’t see many delegations with 33 percent of their members on the appropriations committees,” said David Williams, vice president for policy at the Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonprofit watchdog. “That’s exactly why Alabama is always at the top of the list.”

This does not include all of the projects supported through various grant programs whose funding is on hold until the omnibus is passed. It’s a horrendous way to write budgets, but it’s time to move on and hope for better next year.