The World Around You

I hope it’s just a stomach ailment.

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The headline is more encouraging than what lies behind it. Support for additional taxes is up among legislators, not the population at large. It does still indicate that we will have some sort of tax increase, but that was in the cards anyway. The real question is what type of tax and how much? The session starts tomorrow and I have a feeling the proposals will be coming fast and furious, beginning with the unveiling of the Governor’s budget.

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Artur Davis understands that the Alabama Democratic Party has problems. The Democratic Party does not strong leadership if it is going to deserve to regain the Governor’s office that it so abused in the last administration. He’s also correct that timid has never been a successful strategy and that bold ideas are worth a try.

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There appears to be a positive story buried in this report. Alabama is moving in the right direction and the main reason we are ranked so low is the fact that we have been putting off necessary maintenance of personnel and infrastructure to ensure a sound footing for government. We all know that that procrastinating is going to bite us someday and this report is concerned with the someday. Alabama government is not setting itself up to be successful in the future, not so much from poor management, but from a denial of the realities of the future. Maybe reports like these will help change that tide, but not when the full story is covered up under headlines of poor management.

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All of the Alabama political world is focused on the legislative session opening on Tuesday. Governor Bob Riley will deliver his State of the State address that evening and the major issues, most pressing is the significant shortfall in the general fund, will begin to be addressed. The major papers offer a great deal this morning for those who are interested in what the legislative session will bring.

There are a lot of hints out there about where the legislature would like to end up, but the Governor is playing his cards extremely close to the vest. There will be no further cuts in state department budgets, because there is little left to cut, but everything else appears to be a possibility. I believe we will see a teacher pay raise of around five percent, we will see a tax on soda, we will see a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage that won’t be on the ballot for the next election and the same circus that we see every year surrounding a variety of other issues.

**Crossposted at Polstate.com

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This is a very misleading headline. I know about both of these funding sources and what they are being asked to do will not necessarily result in cuts, its just an additional step that they are being asked to take in the process of receiving funding. All of the programs these two will be competing against for funds fall under the same requirements. The funds are not being cut, the requirements to get the funds are just being altered.

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Rep. Artur Davis comes out swinging on the President’s plans for Social Security.

“He didn’t campaign on the issue, barely talked about it, and now he’s made it the primary thrust of his second-term domestic agenda,” Davis, D-Birmingham, said during an interview in his Capitol Hill office. “That’s a major mistake.”

No doubt. The only thing that could keep this from benefiting Democrats is that the number of members of the President’s own party who oppose the idea is growing.

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We could certainly use the money.

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The Center for Public Integrity has once again done our work for us. If you ever wondered about your legislators financial interests, thanks to CSPI you can now easily access his/her financial disclosure form online. Check it out, you might find it enlightening.

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The Alabama Legislature comes back in 5 days. Be afraid, be very afraid.

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There is no doubt we need to do more to combat methamphetamine use in Alabama. A statewide law enforcement unit by itself will do very little to combat the problem. We need a coordinated response that involves all sectors of the community and tighter regulation on the component ingredients used to make meth.

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I just wonder what response Stephen expected to get in this case. Also, exactly how do you define “wasting taxpayer dollars”? We don’t know, based on news accounts what the 70% meant. Is that 15 minutes a week or 6 hours?

Someone could just as easily classify the time that he spent talking to various state employees as a waste of their time and therefore taxpayer dollars. Is it a waste of taxpayer dollars when two co-workers have a non-work related conversation for more than a few minutes? Is it a waste of taxpayer dollars when social events (birthday celebrations, holidays, wedding showers, baby showers, etc.) are held during operating hours? If so, Stephen is going to be wasting a lot more time chasing down a lot more waste.

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Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has announced the second of his “listening post” stops.

My first Governor’s Listening Post in Huntsville was a great success. We had more than 70 people attend, and I really enjoyed seeing my old friends and meeting new ones.

I wanted to let you know that I will be having a second Listening Post next month in conjunction with a meeting of the St. Clair County Democrats. It will begin at 6:30 p.m. on February 3 at the Western Sizzler Meeting Room at the intersection of Highway 231 and I-20.

If you want, please drop by for a healthy discussion on the important issues facing Alabama and our nation. I have included below the list of questions I sent out in advance of my first Listening Post.

So ya’ll come down to the Sizzler if you have a word for the former Guv.

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The legislative agenda laid out by House Democrats yesterday looks very much like the legislative agenda last year. We will be seeing fights over the same issues on Goat Hill, many of the provisions the Republican Governor supports as well. So, once again we will see many of these bills pass the House only to die in the more conservative Senate, I hope we won’t, but hope rarely overcomes reality.

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I guess there are disadvantages to continuing to classify what we are in as a “War on Terrorism”. This is actually an interesting proposition by Staff Sgt. Gill and I guess it was worth a shot.

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Marshall County Sheriff Mac Holcomb is reluctantly moving his letter from a county website, as so many of us thought he should have done in the first place. Thank you to Mac for taking the action. Oh and by the way, any lawsuit brought by a homosexual citizen who felt he/she was treated unfairly would not have been “frivolous”, it would have been right on point.

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State Rep. Mike Hill has some compelling evidence that a trooper who killed a citizen his first month on the job should not have been hired in the first place.

State Rep. Mike Hill, R-Columbiana, has given the state Department of Public Safety court records dealing with Trooper Michael Braswell Roberts’ driving history, including five speeding convictions from 1996 through 2001, and his 2001 divorce, in which Roberts acknowledged threatening his wife and agreed to undergo anger management counseling.

“I was not ugly about it, but I just asked how someone with that history got to be a state trooper,” Hill said. He is awaiting a response, he said.

Roberts was hired as a trooper last year.

The FBI and the Alabama Bureau of Investigation are looking into the Dec. 17 death of Chris Lindley, 29, who was shot following an altercation with Roberts a few hundred yards from Lindley’s home near Alabaster.

Authorities say a trooper stopped when he saw a pickup truck apparently stuck on railroad tracks south of Alabaster on U.S. 31. The altercation followed an attempted arrest, they say. Shots were fired and Lindley, the driver of the truck, was pronounced dead on the scene.

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An interesting proposal from Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright, larger, regional parks as opposed to the ninety neighborhood parks the city now has. This is a forward looking idea, but it has to be executed well to avoid generating the opposite response from what is intended. If construction operations are not ongoing simultaneously in several parts of the city, then people are going to take offense and site selection will also be crucial. You cannot say that you want everyone to come together, but then build all of these parks in predominantly white areas. This proposal will be all in the execution.

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Alabama ranks sixth in the nation for the ratio of tax dollars it receives back to the dollars it puts into the federal treasury. We should emphasize that this is a good thing for Alabamians, especially those that claim they don’t need government assistance.

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The “Water Wars” between Georgia, Florida and Alabama have a new player, the Army Corps of Engineers. Alabama has filed a lawsuit claiming the Corps is illegally storing water for recreation and drinking in Georgia. This really has become a tremendous battle over who controls water resources in the Southeast.

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R.I.P. Mr. Carson

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Just a cute little piece for your Sunday enjoyment: Muppets Over Time

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Good Luck Trey!

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New poll numbers from the University of South Alabama indicate that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman would fare better in a race against Roy Moore than a rematch with his 2002 opponent, current Governor Bob Riley. These are interesting poll numbers in that the electorate does not seemed as disillusioned with Siegelman as many political observers have assumed.

**Mac is right, this will definitely do nothing to suspend Siegelman’s aspirations.

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If Roy Moore thinks we’re living under tyranny, I’ll show him tyranny. Tyranny would be if someone had the authority to lock roy Moore up for no reason and keep in there. Tyranny would be if someone had the authority to kill all Christians with no repercusisons. That’s TYRANNY Roy, look it up before you start throwing words around.

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This is just another sad event for our community, Two more Teenagers lost on our roads. My condolences to the families of David Wayne Barnett and Lila Michelle Broadway.

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

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Prichard’s pension fund, which lacks $16 million needed to meet its obligations, regularly overpaid some former employees and for years sent benefits checks to the homes of dead retirees, city officials said this week.

Prichard officials said they first learned of those practices in 1999 after accountants looked into the city’s files. Since then, city officials have struggled with a myriad of incomplete records and dug through Social Security files to bring payments into line and to keep benefits checks from going to the homes of people who have died, Mayor Ron Davis said.

Although Davis and other officials have said the City Council failed to allocate enough money for the pension plan in years past, City Finance Director Dana Foster Allen said this week that about 90 percent of the problems jeopardizing the pension plan involve improper payouts.

“People were paid more than they were due,” Allen said.

In the case of checks mailed to homes of retirees who had died, some of the checks were cashed, possibly by relatives of the deceased, he said.

Mobile County District Attor ney John Tyson Jr. said those who cashed checks intended for the deceased could be charged with theft.

Why do people do stuff like this? Do they really think no one will ever figure it out? Now they’re going to have to pay back the funds they received that they didn’t deserve.

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This looks like the press is trying to create an appearance of monkey business where there is none. There is no doubt in my mind that $380,000 to $500,000 is a low-ball estimate for a new voter registration system.

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Count Representative Spencer Bachus as firmly against the President’s guest worker plan.

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I don’t want anyone who opposes a lottery for Alabama to overlook this story: Alabama pumps up Tennessee lottery

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As editor of ALHotline.com I offer today’s headlines for your perusal:

AP: DOC Requests Doubled Budget for Fiscal 2006, Changes to Sentences

AP: DPS Request 34 Percent Budget Increase to Help Hire 100 More Troopers

Birmingham News: Bushes, Rileys Share Dance at Ball

Birmingham News: Evolution Debate Seems to Wane; Board Prepares to Revise Courses

Mobile Register: Alabamians Enjoy Inaugural Ceremonies

Mobile Register: Group Seeks More from National Party

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