The World Around You

I am a strong supporter of bringing more diversity to the talk radio dial. If you are too, today is the day that Air America Radio premieres. You can listen online, if you aren’t in one of the select cities where they will begin today.

Check it out. You might be surprised.

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Biscuits Are Smart Investment
By Kristopher
Wednesday (Prattville) Progress

Take me out to the ball game. Take me out to the crowd. I have noticed an extra bounce in sports fans’ steps in the area lately. No, it’s not spring football, and only some of it is March Madness. No, double A baseball is returning to our area, and you can feel that little extra excitement. My wife and I picked up our ticket package on Saturday and Opening Day is just over two weeks away.

The Biscuits are coming and I cannot wait to see all the positive developments that will come from their debut. Only bringing professional baseball back to central Alabama would not necessarily have been a good thing. In fact, there was great potential for abject failure. This is not an area filled with baseball fans, previous teams have folded unceremoniously and the facilities previously available have been second-rate. There were so many ways for this to have been done wrong. Fortunately, the right choices have been made at every turn.

A new $26 million stadium, designed by the premiere firm in the business, is near completion, providing the perfect stage for the team’s future heroics. The name Biscuits has been much maligned, but has become a marketing goldmine. The potential for quirky tie-in events are endless and it embodies the spirit of family fun. The name has also brought attention to the area from national media and spurred local discussion since the day it was announced. Remember the old saying, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

On top of that the owners have brilliantly timed the rollout of each element of the team’s start-up to allow for maximum exposure and to keep excitement up. We’ve had the opening of the Biscuit Basket, uniform unveilings, job fairs and the first day to purchase tickets to get us through the period from last summer to now.

Finally, a sign of a group that knows what their doing, is the requirement for those with the best seats for season tickets to sign a three-year contract. This will help ensure bodies in the seats for years to come. Any team can get people to come once, but this should be an experience you will want to have again and again.

Yet, translating excitement and publicity into dollars is the ultimate goal of this entire enterprise. The new stadium will bring thousands of people to downtown Montgomery, which should result in even more development into the future. That development isn’t only good news for Montgomery, but for all of the tri-county area and beyond. Simply the idea of a revitalized downtown has brought about the planned expansion of the Civic Center, which offers the potential for many more large events to be staged in central Alabama. That means more tourist dollars for the entire area. This is a smart investment in the future of the entire region and those who can’t see that should look at what smart investment in the downtown of other southern cities has been able to accomplish.

So, I will be supporting the Biscuits all summer long at Riverwalk Stadium and I hope to see you there. Play Ball!

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I have not offered enough praise on this site for Jim Earnhardt, who is a must-read of mine every Wednesday. He writes a column in the Montgomery Advertiser that comments on letters to the editor submitted to his paper. His insights are almost always on the mark and I hope one day to be as pointed a writer as he is.

He is also a big advocate for the airing of alternative perspectives. He is always encouraging readers to make their views known and offering advice on getting into print. Thanks Jim for your work and keep it up!

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Harvey Jackson muses today on the debate over the official state spirit in the Alabama legislature. I too was disappointed that this did not refer to “Jeffrey”.

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In Alabama, it now appears that it’s okay for the Senate to pass a piece of legislation that they know violates the US Constitution, as long as it includes a provision that the state won’t spend any money to defend it in court. That’s what happened yesterday with a consitutional amendment that calls for the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Sen. Dial (D-Lineville) got the bill passed in the last special session, but it was not passed in the house. Twenty eight spineless senators voted for this amendment and not one sane individual stood in opposition.

I know why no one voted against it, they could be opposed by a candidate who says they’re against the Ten Commandments. But it would only take a scintilla of guts to have voted against the bill and defend yourself in the proper manner, by saying you could not vote for a law that you KNOW is unconstitutional. Of course, that would have been the right thing to do. So, I shouldn’t be shocked that no such thing even entered one of their minds.

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The AP and NBC News are reporting that the White House will allow National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice to testify under oath before the 9/11 commission.

Public pressure does work!

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It didn’t take long for things to get back to business as usual in Montgomery. Everyone is pointing the finger at someone else and the clock is ticking on this legislative session. The Governor is right that the legislature should act on his proposals and soon. The legislature is right that the Governor should have had more consultations with the legislative leadership before his proposals were presented.

The will of the people is NOT behind accountability as the Governor defines it. They don’t understand enough of the nuances of what is really going on to accept what any politician says at face value. I have repeatedly said that the people of this state don’t know how to handle an honest politician. They can take one who lies to them all the time, because that’s the status quo, but an honest man comes along and they want to hang him from the highest tree. Yet, this administration has also failed to communicate its message effectively. They keep stating what the people want without getting that express message from the people. That makes it difficult for people to connect. They come off as elitist because they’re telling people what’s good for them, instead of letting the people mobilize behind a solution.

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These are the kinds of stories the local media needs to do more. We pay $5.3 million every year in Alabama to clean up after people who litter. Stating this fact serves two purposes, 1) it shows that someone’s $75,000 salary is really not that big a deal in the grand scheme and 2) it shows that much of the cost of the government is because of the lack of effort by the citizens in doing their part.

I hope the Birmingham News continues to report this kind of information in the future.

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Gloria Borger has an excellent column in this week’s US News discussing what Clarke’s information means for the future, as opposed to what it tells us about the past. I love forward thinkers.

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Washington Whispers went to that old Hoosier sage, Dan Quayle for his advice to John Kerry in picking a running mate,

“I’d think he’d look for somebody younger, somebody to give vitality, more vitality to the ticket,” says the ex-GOP veep. Next, consider some regional balance to Kerry’s Boston-Nantucket digs. And then there’s politics. “He clearly needs somebody that’s more moderate.” Even though he urges Kerry to ignore the chamber, Quayle said two senators could fill the bill: Indiana’s Evan Bayh, because he was a popular guv, and New York’s Hillary Rodham Clinton, because she’s got oodles of White House experience.

That’s Quayle for you, well you shouldn’t pick another Senator, but if you did…

**UPDATE: Submitted to OTB’s Beltway Traffic Jam

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So now, Condi admits that the President did ask Dick Clarke to find out if Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 one day after the attacks. Well, I guess that means that Dick isn’t necessarily a bald-faced liar. Look, I believe Dick Clarke, but I also believe he is doing a certain degree of grandstanding. The administration needs to face-up to what it didn’t do, as well as the previous administration. But guess what? The previous administration is gone, GW is in the hot seat now and he needs to face the music.

There will be fallout from these disclosures as far as the eye can see and it will have a definite effect on the election. It is also likely that something else will come along in the next few months to distract us from this discussion. I’m not smart enough to predict what, but I am smart enough to know the distraction is coming.

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Bill Barrow at the Mobile Register has a piece this morning analyzing the Alabama legislature, as we approach the halfway point of the session. He correctly points out that the legislature has spent a great deal of time debating what constitutes real reform, but have passed no real accountability legislation.

The piece also includes some cogent analysis by Bill Stewart,

“I think it’s just a conflict between so many interests in Montgomery,” said William Stewart, a noted political scientist and state government expert at the University of Alabama.

First, Stewart said, “The governor is in a weakened position. … Democrats know that, and they want to win the governorship again and don’t want to give him any accomplishments to run on. And Republicans want to gain seats in the Legislature.”

But, he continued, “I don’t want to say the partisanship is the primary thing at work, necessarily. … You’ve got various other interests that are trying to see how they want to solve it all with the least damage to their own position.

“Business certainly doesn’t want more taxes,” he said. “And education and public employee unions don’t want higher (health insurance) costs for their members.”

What exactly comes of that political amalgam, according to Stewart, is difficult to forecast. “I think it will be a mixed bag, subject to different interpretations … a situation with multiple spins,” he said.

No kidding. When have we not had a mixed bag come out of Goat Hill? In the short time I have lived in Alabama I have been continually amazed at the inability for our elected officials to accomplish anything of substance. Instead of making real change, band-aid after band-aid continue to be proposed to just get to next year. it’s deeply disturbing, but extracting us from this cycle will not be easy.

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I just finished The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America by Eric Alterman and Mark Green. I wish books like this weren’t marketed the way they are. The people who really ought to pick this book up never will. You don’t have to believe the motives of the author are pure, but there are a great many facts contained here that the general public knows nothing about. Alterman and Green also do an effective job of sticking to the policy questions and avoiding too many personal attacks. In fact there is a paragraph in the conclusion whose tone I find particularly striking,

We leave it to others to explain what factors in Mr. Bush’s biography or past life experiences account for his conversion to and stubborn embrace of so extreme a political pth. What interests us are the policies themselves and the manner in which they have been pursued.

Here here. I do encourage you to check this book out. It has the added virtue of discussing the opinions of Richard Clarke, before he became a household name.

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My wife and I picked up our Biscuits tickets today. We will be in Section 106 down the first baseline for 12 games this year. I can’t wait to try out our seats. If you ordered season tickets you can pick them up now at the Biscuit Basket at Eastdale Mall in Montgomery.

If you don’t have tickets for any games yet, check out the official website at http://www.biscuitsbaseball.com.

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I have returned from a week in Tuscaloosa at the 29th Annual Alabama School of Alcohol and Other Drug Studies. It was a good conference, but I missed you all! I feel so out of the loop, it may take me a bit to recover. I expect to post some over the weekend, just to catch up.

Please treat this an open post to comment on whatever topic you choose.

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Bill Violates Elementary Principles
Wednesday (Prattville) Progress
By Kristopher

Representative Terry Everett and some of his cohorts in the US House may need to return to elementary school civics class, because they don’t seem to have a very good handle on the separation of powers in our government. Rep. Everett is a co-sponsor of H.R. 3920, the Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004. The bill would allow the Congress to overrule Supreme Court decisions by a two thirds vote of both houses. However, it would restrict its authority to decisions on the constitutionality of an act of Congress. Why would anyone propose such a thing?

Well, of course, this bill would have prevented the Ten Commandments monument from being removed from the Alabama Judicial Building. No, wait, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of that case, so this bill would not have any impact there. Then, maybe, it would have prevented the gay marriage decision in Massachusetts. No, no, that was a state court ruling. Well, it certainly would have stopped the decision that said the phrase “under God” makes the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. No, it couldn’t be that one either. That case is just now being heard by the Supreme Court.

I’m really at a loss to explain what this bill would have changed, had it already been in effect. Come to think of it, even if this bill passes, can’t the Supreme Court simply declare it unconstitutional? Of course they can! Didn’t most of us learn this little tidbit in the sixth grade? I guess Congressman Everett and his friends missed that day. The only way to make this proposal work would be to propose it as a constitutional amendment.

Yet, if this bill were properly proposed and enacted as a constitutional amendment, then we would no longer have an independent judiciary and the entire system would be turned upside down. Hasn’t the President of the United States been expounding upon the importance of an independent judiciary in Iraq? Evidently these congressmen do not hold the same high ideals for America.

Congressman Everett himself has little to say on the issue. He did say through a spokesperson, “I feel that elected officials ought to have the ability to review decisions by activist judges.” You can feel anything you want Congressman, but that is not the job of the legislative branch. The reason our system works so well is that there is a balance that has been struck between all the branches. Your check on the judicial branch is not through oversight, it is through changing the law. If you don’t like the way judges interpret the law, there are mechanisms to change it. If you don’t like the way they interpret the Constitution, you can begin the process to amend it. The judiciary is there to prevent you from stepping outside your preset boundaries. If you were given the authority you desire, we would have the fox guarding the hen house. We certainly wouldn’t want that, now would we Congressman?

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My Alabama Politics archive is now the number two search hit for “Alabama Politics”. I hope, with your help, I can be top of the heap! Thanks for coming everybody.

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The Mobile Register wants us to be outraged over the fact that Alabama taxpayers pay to lease four cars for staff that serve the legislature. I’m outraged at the fact that the Secretary of the Senate makes $226,000 a year! Are you kidding me? In this penny pinching state government?

Auburn University’s interim President, Dr. Ed Richardson is only making $265,000 per year. The interim State Superintedent of Education, Dr. Joe Morton only makes $148,000. Governor Riley makes $101,000. What makes this man so special that he deserves to make more than twice as much as the Governor????

There needs to be some serious rethinking on Goat Hill about priorities. This man should be forced to retire immediately and be prelaced with someone who is paid much less and the pay scales for legislative employees needs to be seriously examined. In the alternative, the budgeted amounts for legislative aides shoud be drastically reduced and let the chips fall where they may. This is outrageous and should be dealt with immediately.

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Today is the 25th anniversary of C-SPAN. Congratulations to the staff of the network and a special thanks to Mr. Brian Lamb for his years of dedication and service to this outstanding endeavor. I don’t know what I would do without it. I am proud to be a C-SPAN junkie.

*UPDATE: James believes Lamb is a superior journalist. I would have to agree. And Brian’s a fellow Purdue alum!

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I’m so glad to know that this is the piece of Alabama news running in today’s New York Times.

ALABAMA: FIGHT OVER OFFICIAL STATE WHISKEY Alabama is fighting over whether to name an official state whiskey that has its origins in the state’s history of bootlegging. The Legislature overwhelmingly passed a resolution to declare Conecuh Ridge Fine Alabama Whiskey the “official state spirit,” but Gov. Bob Riley vetoed the resolution. The fight is not over. The House of Representatives voted 54 to 7 to override the veto. If the Senate also overrides the veto in the next few weeks, Conecuh Ridge will be officially recognized. (AP)

The Governor should be congratulated for trying to stop this ridiculous exercise, especially when the legislature has not accomplished much of anything else this term. There is a lot of work to be done and the mere fact that the representatives on Goat Hill would waste their time with this trivial pursuit enrages me to no end.

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Donald Rumsfeld has an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times. I love how he can continue to talk out of both sides of his mouth, I really do. We keep hearing about how this is a different kind of war, but he spends half the piece talking about a trip to Korea and the parallels between what happened 50 years ago and the events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, I do want to agree with his sentiments in the final paragraph, thanking the soldiers who are laying down their lives every day in Iraq,

You join a long line of generations of Americans who have fought freedom’s fight. Thank you.

And thank you, thank you, thank you for your service.

Still, on this anniversary of the beginning of the war, we have to go deeper than that sentiment. With everything we know now, about Sadaam’s acts and about what he didn’t possess, was it still the right decision? I don’t believe it was, but this anniversary also reminds us that we can’t change the past. The decision was made and we need to pick up the pieces and help the Iraqis build a stable government that belongs to them. I have about as much confidence that this administration can accomplish this task as I do that President Bush is reading Dude, Where’s My Country right now.

*UPDATE: James sees a different irony here.

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Well it appears the officer who stopped state representative Alvin Holmes has been caught in the crossfire between Holmes and Montgomery County Sheriff D.T. Marshall. Marshall can’t stand Holmes and the fact that it appears one of his deputies may have had the man dead to rights and let him go has just been eating away at the man.

So, yesterday the deputy was suspended for 60 days without pay. I truly feel sorry for this officer of the law, who obviously understood the law about legislators as most law enforcement officers did. The fact that Marshall wishes he would have handled it differently, considering the person involved, is irrelevant.

Furthermore, the fact that the officer found out about his suspension via the television is ridiculous. I hope the deputy wins his appeal of this ridiculous suspension.

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Well, it took until 11:39pm last night to get a vote, but the Alabama Senate did pass “Bingo for Books”. It’s nice to be high-minded and talk about how you don’t want the scourge of gambling to invade our fair state, but bingo machines in two locations in the state is not that big of a deal, and we gave up the luxury of being high-minded when it comes to sources of revenue a long time ago.

The bill will move on to the state House of Representatives. It will need 63 votes to pass. Then it will have to be voted on by the people. I believe that this plan will pass because the purpose of the funds is spelled out clearly and most Alabama citizens understand that we need to fully fund textbooks for all of our students. Yet, as many of you know well, I have been burned before by my fellow citizens, in whom I put so much faith.

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