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View Full Version : So, If You Think Utah is Bad, Check out Alabama



USS Utah
05-25-2016, 03:51 PM
A friend of mine who lives in Alabama recently posted this at my history group:


A few years ago, the Democratic party in Alabama took a beating in state elections. Running against Obama, the hated liberal/communist/socialist born in Kenya black president, Republicans ran for and attained everything from dogcatcher to almost every position in the state legislature as well as the governor's office and the Chief Justice of the Supreme court. Democrats were absolutely swept from every important office and Republicans took over with promises to eliminate deficits, cut spending, refuse expansion of Medicaid, cut taxes, and generally clean the place up.

Since then the Republican attorney general had to recuse himself from investigating his buddy the all powerful speaker of the house. It seems the speaker is now under indictment for 23 felony counts. The wheels of justice turn slow when Republicans control the state and Republican's are under indictment so this case is still going on a full 18 months later with no end in sight; just lots of postponements. Meanwhile, the erstwhile speaker still holds his position of absolute control of legislation and recently won his speaker seat again in a clean sweep of the internal house election.

The governor, a kindly old Republican doctor who agreed to serve without pay on his election to help put things in order turned against his supporters and tried to raise taxes to cover budgest shortfalls that still exist after the legislature gutted public services, public road spending, and public education (which ranks 49th out of fifty in the US). The heresy of actually talking about raising taxes turned his own party against him with a vengeance. Shortly afterwards, proof magically appeared of his infidelity with his top advisor, an ex Miss Alabama contestent 30 years his junior. Oh.. and by the way, she and her husband have a public relations firm which has been paid some 600,000 dollars from the governor's PAC in the last 3 years. He saved the state government money by paying them directly out of his PAC donations so we basically had a lobbyist as the governor's top advisor who controlled the agenda for him and carried on an illicit affair with him that caused him to get divorced form his wife of 40 years. Paid junkets to Las Vegas, state funded renovations on a mansion in Gulf Shores, and state helicopter trips to fetch his wallet from across the state are the daily fodder in the news here now.

He admitted to inappropriate comments when taped recordings of their conversations came out but has denied a sexual relationship even though the recordings suggest otherwise. This has led to attempts of his enemies to seize his secretary's desk where the supposed trysts were accomplished in case there might be forensic evidence still there. In Alabama you may be a Conservative Republican and have an affair with your top advisor paid extravegent fees by your PAC, use state funds to remodel a house on the beach for the two of you, and even get divorced and thrown out of your church but you absolutely cannot try to raise taxes. Impeachment proceedings are underway from several quarters for misusing state funds, and moral degeneracy.

The only problem is that they don't want to try to prove the moral hijinks and impeachment hasn't been carried out against a sitting Alabama governor; much less an upright conservative Republican one. There also seems to be some influence peddling wherein the governor tried to protect the aforementioned speaker of the house under indictment so he is expecting some help from that quarter as well.

If this isn't enough ridiculousness, the Chief Justice of the Supreme court has now been temporarily removed from office by a state court of appeals for refusing to follow federal law allowing same sex marriage and opining publicly and repeatedly that the Supreme Court of the US made a bad decision. It seems that our Chief Justice understands the Constitution better than everyone else and he knows he is right. Never mind that he has already been removed from office once for spiting the US Supreme Court and refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he had put in the State Supreme Court building. Now he is likely to be removed again for continuing to tell county magistrates that they cannot carry out same sex marriages even though the Supreme Court has decided against him. In case anyone is worried, I am sure he will be re-elected again after they throw him out of office for the second time very soon.

Unfortunately, this is an inconvenient time for his latest hijinks as he is the duly charged authority who is supposed to hear the impeachment proceedings currently being filed against the governor to remove him from office. Maybe the Chief Justice, the Governor, and the Speaker of the House will get a group rate at the penitentiary.

The good news is that our State government is standing up to the Federal government. We simply can't have them coming down here appying standards to our schools, providing health care assistance, and telling us what to do. We elect native crooked politicians for that.....

You simply can't make this stuff up folks....


http://flattopshistorywarpolitics.yuku.com/topic/3478/Meanwhile-in-Alabama#.V0YdfiHSN3E

LA Ute
05-25-2016, 04:01 PM
A friend of mine who lives in Alabama recently posted this at my history group:



http://flattopshistorywarpolitics.yuku.com/topic/3478/Meanwhile-in-Alabama#.V0YdfiHSN3E

I hate one-party rule, regardless of the party that's ruling. We have the reverse image of Utah here in California.

NorthwestUteFan
05-25-2016, 05:36 PM
Great stuff Flat Top.

In 2010-ish Alabama passed a law allowing police officers and sheriff's deputies and state troopers to detain people on the suspicion of being illegal aliens and to call INS on them. This only scared away there migrant workers (many of whom have work visas of some kind), who avoided the state like the plague.

Farmers were struck with the realization that their crops would die in their fields without a labor force to harvest and they tried prison labor, paying above market wages for high school kids, etc. This was especially problematic for crops requiring very hard labor, such as watermelons. They couldn't get the same level of work and competence out of the local workers at $15/hr (which was bankrupting them) that they previously got out of Julio and Juan and Jesus for $7/hr.

The farmers (along with hotels and restaurants owners) led the fight to repeal that poorly designed law.

I am sure that law sounded great on paper or when legislators pounded their fists while giving impassioned speeches, but in the end it is readily apparent that there law should have been challenged strongly before it ever moved beyond the early bill stages.

Single party rule is horrible.