The World Around You

The fun returns to Montgomery tomorrow as legislators return for, we hope, a brief special session to enact some cost saving measures on state employee health insurance.

Gov. Bob Riley is summoning the Legislature into special session Monday afternoon to consider a plan he says is the first ste,p but not the final fix, for controlling rapidly rising health insurance costs for public employees.

Lobbying groups for public employees are hopeful that their support of Riley’s health insurance plan will be followed by a cost-of-living increase, their first in more than two years.

Alabama’s costs for providing health insurance coverage to state workers and education employees have risen from $320 million to $970 million in six years. Riley first tried to address the issue in the spring regular session of the Legislature, but nothing passed because he was at odds with the Alabama Education Association and the Alabama State Employees Association.

The excitement of special session is they always turn out to be about a lot more than the call from the Governor contains. Stay tuned…

**Crossposted at Polstate.com

Josh Marshall expresses very well the reasons not to support a Hillary for President campaign.

As big a fan as I am of Bill Clinton, I’d be against another Clinton family presidency even if there weren’t a Bush family. But given that we’re now two President Bushes and counting, it makes it all the more important for Democrats to be clear on the principle at issue. A (Hillary) Clinton v. (Jeb) Bush grudge match in 2008 would be a sign of all sorts of sclerotic tendencies in American politics.

Now, to the second reason, the one I focused most on in that Jan. 2000 article in Slate. And that would be, ‘Are you kidding?’

Let’s be honest, Hillary Clinton is a deeply divisive figure. And if there’s one thing Democrats have learned in this and the previous election it is the danger of going into a national election with a candidate who cannot even get a real hearing over a large swath of the country.

It would hurt our democracy to have either another Clinton or another Bush in the White House. It is time for new blood.

The Birmingham News reports this morning on an incident that occurred on election night in Montgomery.

The reporter asked Sam Maraman, one of the shindig’s hosts, to switch the big TV to the NBC station during her live shot, but Maraman refused.

When the reporter asked why not, Maraman asked, “Did you pay for it?”

“No,” she said.

“Well, we did,” said Maraman.

Questioned later, Maraman said the event was sponsored and paid for by the Montgomery County Republican Executive Committee, and it preferred Fox to NBC.

I would think that’s its standard practice to give the reporters’ this courtesy, but I guess courtesy went out the window in this case. In addition, it would appear that the county party was much more interested in the national returns than in county offices, which I also find enlightening.