The World Around You

There is no doubt that the prison crowding problem in Alabama will not be solved with one simple action. However, the article does point out a number of things that must be done to even begin addressing the heart of the problem,

Experts point to a number of other steps Alabama must take to get a handle on its overcrowding problem, including re forming sentences, expanding community-based corrections programs, improving supervision of people on parole and probation and building additional prisons.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Yet another program that the President’s budget would cost Alabama. Good job by the Birmingham News to find someone in Sen. Sessions office who benefited from this program.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

It looks like Alabama Governor Bob Riley does not have to look far for someone to consort with in the club of Governors. I have to laugh when conservatives who run on a platform that includes cutting taxes get into office and realize, “hey, we really DON’T have enough revenue.” And as Governors they don’t get the option to ignore budget deficits like the President and Congress do.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The Academy Awards are tonight, hosted by Chris Rock. Here are some of my predictions, feel free to post your own.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE: Jamie Foxx - Ray (Easiest call in the room)

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Morgan Freeman - Million Dollar Baby (This one is deserved for the body of work as much as this role)

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE: Hilary Swank - Million Dollar Baby

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Virginia Madsen - Sideways (Looking for the upset here)

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: The Incredibles (You can’t stop Pixar)

DIRECTING: Martin Scorsese - The Aviator (Long overdue)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Super Size Me (One of my favorite films of last year)

BEST PICTURE: Million Dollar Baby (though there could be a surprise upset here as well)

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY): Sideways

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY): Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

UPDATE: Robert Tagorda at OTB has predictions as well.

UPDATE: Dan Drezner brings some thoughts to the table as well.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

the time has come to present the constitutional reform issue in its appropriate context. The 1901 state consitution does not work for the people of Alabama, it wasn’t designed to work for them. It was designed to work for a small group of individuals and it continues to work for them to this day. If we can’t find a way to enact constitutional reform, there is very little that will change in Alabama in the next 100 years.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Please keep in mind on this issue, all the legislature is doing is giving local authorities the authority to consider red light cameras. It is simply eliminating another barrier in the law to local control. If red light cameras are a problem in a given community then they could always stop using them. That should be left to the local elected officials.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

My weekly column ran in the Wednesday and Saturday editions of the Prattville Progress:

I must give kudos to Governor Bob Riley for his opinion piece that ran in a number of newspapers across the state this past Sunday. Those who follow Alabama politics know one of the major issues we face is the concentration of power in Montgomery. This wouldn’t be such a disservice if it wasn’t for the authority that has been assembled over the years under just a few un-elected individuals.

The Governor threw a strong first punch against one of these few individuals, Paul Hubbert, head of the Alabama Education Association. No one says that Paul Hubbert should not do his job and do it well, but what the Governor said in his piece and what I want to echo today is that what is in the interests of Paul Hubbert and the AEA is not necessarily what is in the interests of the state at large.

Let me preface my remarks with the fact that I value teachers and administrators a great deal, my wife puts her heart into educating children everyday and some of my closest friends and associates are teachers. They deserve the highest honor and the best pay and benefits we can offer, but that should not come at the expense of everything and everyone else in the state.

Too often in Montgomery what Paul Hubbert says goes. He is persuasive, has many friends and holds in his back pocket the threat of electoral defeat for anyone who tries to challenge him. The fact that Governor Riley is willing to take him on publicly tells me that he doesn’t care if he wins or loses the next election, and that is the only way for Alabama to win in the end. It will take more leaders to say, Paul, I don’t care if I get re-elected, what else you got? If you allow yourself to be blackmailed, you don’t deserve to be in office.

Governor Riley pointed out in his piece that Paul Hubbert re-stated his priorities in a letter to legislators. It said, “school employees hope they will be your first concern.” It is time for all of us to put the children of Alabama ahead of the interests of one powerful union. The AEA only has its power as long as the citizens of Alabama allow it.

I start by asking our representatives, Sen. Wendell Mitchell, Sen. Hank Sanders, Sen. Larry Dixon, Rep. Mac Gipson, Rep. Jack Venable, and Rep. Dick Brewbaker, will you stand with Paul Hubbert and the AEA or with the people of Alabama? Yes, we have serious issues that are bigger than this year’s budget, but one of the best places to start the process of reform is to take back the legislature by not allowing threats of electoral repercussions to sway elected officials from sound decision-making.

I sometimes use the term special interests as a catch-all too often myself. I applaud the Governor for calling one of those interests by name and spelling out to the people what his power means for the citizens of this great state. I hope he is willing to face the firestorm that will surely follow.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The owner of the Brew Pub in Montgomery claims he lost business by being forced to choose between being a smoking restaurant or a non-smoking restaurant. Later on in the piece he acknowledges he would have lost business going the other way as well. The ordinance has just gone into effect, as people begin to realize that the number of restaurants where you can smoke is limited they will begin to come back to his establishment. It is extremely unfair to base a loss of business due to the ordinance on one month of numbers. I would like to see what is numbers look like once summer rolls around. I have been to the Brew Pub since they went smoke-free and I did notice the difference and the place was packed on a Tuesday lunch hour. So, we shall see what happens in the future for this business and others.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The investigations into former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s activities continue. I’m sure that he continues to believe this is a witch hunt. If he didn’t have so many shady dealings maybe there wouldn’t be anything to hunt. There may not have been any illegal activity, but he sure left the appearance that there could have been.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Moving the age for mandatory school from 7 to 5 may not have been a good public policy decision, but Mike Hubbard’s (R-Auburn) reason for opposing it is bogus. He claimed he was against it because parents can decide better than government when to send their child to school. If that’s true, then why do we have mandatory ages at all? If that is your argument, where is the bill to eliminate all age requirements for school?

Government has an interest in ensuring that its citizenry is educated. A sensible compromise here would have been to move the age down to 6.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Mac appropriately states that this bill approved by a House committee is pure politics. There is no point to passing a bill saying the legislature cannot do something. They can just turn around tomorrow and pass another bill reversing course. If they wanted to do this kind of thing they could spend all day every day doing it and get nowhere.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Governor
Riley started playing dirty today in the fight over the education budget today. He actually found teachers who support his budget! And they’re highly regard teachers too. Who knew? I always thought the AEA (who oppose the Governor’s plan) spoke for every teacher. Oh well, guess I have to rethink that.

(SARCASM INCLUDED THROUGHOUT THIS POST FOR YOUR PLEASURE)

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

See, I can support the state GOP. Now, where we disagree is in the long term solutions. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve heard many long term solutions from the Republicans, other than cutting funding from everything. We cannot continue level funding everything to infinity and beyond.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you keep asking state employees and teachers to do more with less, you’ll eventually be asking them to do everything with nothing.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This piece ran in the Birmingham News this morning with the headline above. The story isn’t really what the headline indicates. There was an additional parole panel established by the legislature that is being proposed to be eliminated. The headline seems to indicate that if you commit a non-violent offense you will not be able to be paroled. That’s a big disparity.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Someone needs to say this is wrong. Lucius Black represents an area that desperately needs representation and it is only proper that he resign his office and allow someone to serve his constituents as they need to be served.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

My weekly column was published in the Wednesday edition of the Prattville Progress:

The Republican and Democratic leadership annoy me, at the state and federal level.

At the same time, I find people to admire who are members of both parties.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine who has been beat up in political battles over the years.

After talking about it for a good while we came up with a declaration.

We declared ourselves members of the Opportunist Party.

What is the Opportunist Party? The Opportunist Party stands for opportunity for all Americans. It also stands for seizing opportunities in the raging river that makes up the politics of Alabama and the nation at large.

There are so many good ideas that come from the current entrenched parties, but are not priorities for the party’s leadership and die from a lack of exposure.

The Opportunity Party is for taking those ideas and bringing them to the forefront.

The Opportunity Party focuses on those things we agree on and celebrates those victories, rather than exacerbating those areas where we disagree.

It’s also about standing for principles that cross current party lines.

The Opportunist Party values the religious faith of all Americans and what religion brings to our individual political beliefs, but we do not seek to implement policy solely on the basis of religious doctrine.

We also value hard work and believe that it should be rewarded appropriately.

We believe that government has an important, if limited, role. Only through offering greater opportunity can we take advantage of the hardest workers on the planet.

The Opportunist Party has no room for ideologues, grandstanders or thieves. If you don’t want to work and are incapable of compromise, no need to apply. In other words, Roy Moore, Alvin Holmes, Gerald Allen, and Roger Bedford would not be interested.

The Opportunist Party is not about enriching ourselves, it is about offering the opportunity for rewards to the masses.

We are also the party of change. We have no interest in maintaining the status quo, if the status quo is not working.

We have no good word to say about programs that aren’t working and tax dollars that are being spent to no positive end.

There is such a thing as government waste and we call it what it is and advocate for change.

Too often we hear politicians in the established parties using buzzwords like waste and special interests without specifying who and what they are really talking about.

Everyone is a special interest, but there are special interests that advocate beneficial policies and those that don’t.

The Opportunist Party believes in working with those interests that support our policies, but not demonizing those who do not.

We understand that interests can work for you and against you and we are willing to work with them when their goals match those of the people.

Finally, the Opportunist Party is just a pipe dream, but perhaps we can plant the seeds that will sprout into a more centrist and conciliatory course for our politics in the future.

At least, we can still hope it is possible.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Lucy Baxley’s momentum continues to build. The latest poll numbers staging hypothetical races for Governor show she has a lead over both current Governor Riley and likely candidate Roy Moore. The same poll shows former Governor Don Siegelman trailing both candidates. This will not dissuade Siegelman, but it should.

UPDATE: Mac points highlights the right track-wrong track numbers in this poll as well.

UPDATE: Jeff at the new blog Politics in Alabama finds the in-party poll numbers interesting.

UPDATE: Even Markos weighs in with a thoughtful analysis of the new numbers.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Dr. Page Walley and Belyn Richardson talk the talk of appearances mattering, but it doesn’t appear to be so in practice. Appearances do matter and there is the appearance based on the information in this piece that it is who you know when it comes to working as a consultant for DHR. I will say that I don’t believe this problem is unique to DHR, but that agency is so large and has such a large workload that it probably happens more under that agency than others.

Judith Bernier, a 22-year DHR employee, retired in 1997 making about $28 an hour to take a consulting job with the agency, state records show. She joined SCB Technology as a DHR consultant in 1999 and the company bills $70 an hour for her contract work as a federal program specialist. Bernier is married to Tom Bernier, DHR’s director of child support.

Sandra Porter earned about $16.65 an hour working for DHR when she retired after 29 years in 1998, state records show. She joined SCB Technology in May 2000 and the company gets $45 an hour for her work as an asset management specialist.

Other former DHR workers who became consultants with SCB include:

Ron Marks, who left making about $28 an hour after 21 years with the state; the state paid $68 an hour for his work as a federal program specialist until he left in October.

Pamela Burkett, who left making $33.30 an hour after 21 years with the state; the company bills the state $75 an hour for her work as a federal program specialist.

Jill C. Manly, who left making $19.75 an hour after 26 years with the state; the state now pays $60 an hour for her work as a functional analyst.

If the department really understood that appearances matter than these kinds of relationships would not develop. It’s not just the fact that these contractors have ties to the department, but the exhorbitant fees they are allowed to charge.

Let me put some additional blame on the legislature, they enjoy getting attention for questioning the administration’s contracting practices, yet they usually miss the real improprieties. While their busy questioning the racial make-up of contractors they don’t bother to explore the relationships between contractors and the agencies they are contracting with.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Governor Riley finally realized he has nothing to lose by taking on the most powerful man in Alabama politics, the head of the Alabama Education Association, Paul Hubbert. In an opinion piece running across the state of Alabama today, the Governor clearly states the truth about the education budget,

This is the first time ever that a governor’s budget fully funds all these education requests.

Yet if you listened to opponents of my budget, you’d think education funding was being cut or “diverted” to some other purpose.

They are being absolutely dishonest. Every dime of my education budget goes to education and to helping our children learn. The heads of state agencies appeared before a Senate committee last week and confirmed this.

Yet the leaders in the Legislature and the budget chairmen refuse to even consider the budget I presented. Their denial of an open and honest debate is a disservice to the people of Alabama and especially to Alabama’s children.

Alabamians should ask themselves why legislative leaders continue to ignore the facts about the education budget and refuse to even debate it.

I think we all know why: Too many in the Legislature listen only to Paul Hubbert, the head of the school employees’ union. Hubbert’s job isn’t to make sure our children receive the education funding they need. His job is to make sure his union members get the money they want for a bigger pay raise.

The Governor goes on to remind everyone that Hubbert’s motiviation is education employees, not Alabama’s children. It is high time that Hubbert was confronted publicly by politicians who know it is wrong that he holds as much sway as he does.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I listen to Al Franken’s radio show on a regular basis, and anyone who thinks that this demonstrates “an explosion” needs to have his/her head examined. The “conservative” radio hosts raise their voices like this on a regular basis and we don’t get blog postings about their “explosions”. Franken has the guts to go into the lion’s den at CPAC and all he gets is a lot of made up “news” about his behavior. This is nonsense and the people perpetuating it know it.

UPDATE: At least James Joyner only goes so far as to call it a “row”.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Sometimes you just have to call them as you see them and if Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) is quoted accurately here, he is a liar, plain and simple.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The NY Times has a piece in tomorrow’s paper based on a new audit by the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. The headline has to do with port security, but the second paragraph begins with this sentence,

In addition, less than a quarter of the $517 million that the department distributed in grants between June 2002 and December 2003 had been spent as of September 2004, the inspector general found.

The distribution of the massive amounts of funds that have been put under this department has been haphazard at best, not just in port security, and it is reflected in the fact that so few of the dollars have even been spent, in some cases two years later. Now, I understand how the federal bureaucracy works and it is likely that it took some time for the funds to even be available to the grantees. However, it shows that as we continue to pump more dollars into this behemoth, no one has a clear handle on (a) what constitutes enough or (b) what results we are getting for the money being spent. This would be a problem no matter who was in charge and is happening across the department, but it is time to slow down and attempt to be a little more methodical in what is being funded from DHS and setting appropriate priorities in securing the homeland.

**UPDATE: DavidNYC has remarks on this at Daily Kos as well.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This is my wife’s school. Needless to say they had an exciting day yesterday, especially since there were not enough bathroom facilities at the church for all of the kids and teachers. I think they will catch the child that did it.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Legislators want to address the problems with the Secretary of State by stripping her authority over the voter office. This makes no sense, and I’m glad the probate judges came out against it. The problem is with Nancy Worley, not the structure of the Secretary of State’s office. Worley has found ways to mess up in the SOS office that no one even knew existed. She was ill-qualified for the job and needs to be gone in 2006, but the solution is not to remove responsibilities that rightfully belong in that office.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.