Archive for: October 16, 2006

Bob Riley apparently isn’t happy that the community service grants were considered constitutional by the Alabama Supreme Court. He’s also probably not happy that his hand-picked attorney general, Troy King, lost both sides of that case. Last year, King defended the grants (which is his job) and lost. This year, he brought the lawsuit against the grants and lost again.

So Riley says he is going to ask the Supreme Court for a rehearing of the unamimous decision. Let me say that again. The Alabama Supreme Court, with right-wing, pork-hating nutjobs like Tom Parker, turned down the governor’s appeal 9-0. Every single justice voted and they all said the grants were constitutional. That doesn’t mean the think they’re a good idea, mind you. They’re judges, not legislators. But Riley says he should try again.

This really just proves what I’ve been saying for years. Conservatives and Republicans say they are against judicial activism, but they are really just against judicial decisions that they don’t like. They will fully endorse and support and call for an activist decsion if it fits their interests. The community services grants are constitutional — they may be a bad policy — but they are constitutional. Bob Riley, however, can’t stop them in his current position as governor. He tried to veto them but his veto was overturned. He then tried to get the courts to strike them down, but the court said they were legal. Now he’s going to try again. Someone needs to tell Bob Riley that the court doesn’t exist to make policy decisions.

There’s a great, in-depth article examining the natural gas prices in Alabama. The skinny is that Alabama pays the third-highest rates in the country. Only Florida and Hawaii pay more.

In a written statement, Alagasco officials said the Press-Register was trying to mislead the public by providing false comparisons. Alagasco officials declined interview requests.

“We’re kind of in a dynamic where we don’t have any choice,” said Wes Phillips, a spokesman with Mobile Gas. “The prices we end up charging customers are mostly influenced by gas supply costs, taxes and weather.”

But when the Press-Register compared to areas with similar gas costs, taxes and weather, Alagasco’s prices were still higher. Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that two of our three current Public Service Commissioners were recently discovered to be receiving a majority of their campaign contributions from the utilities and spending it on personal expenses like cars and such. The two commissioners are Jan Cook and Jim Sullivan. Cook is up for re-election this year against Republican John Rice. Sullivan’s term expires in 2008.

The only commissioner not shown to be in the pocket of the utilities they are supposed to regulate is George Wallace, Jr. Wallace gave up his re-election this year in a failed bid in the Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor. Instead, Republicans chose a utility lobbyist, Luther Strange.

“You’ve confirmed why I wanted to have comprehensive hearings a year ago. Something is not right at the PSC,” Wallace said Friday.

“We need to have an investigation. It needs to be done. I hope that new commissioners will come in and do something about this. The commission is not protecting the people of Alabama from high rates, and something needs to be done.”

There are two contenders for Wallace’s seat — Perry Hooper (R) and Susan Parker(D). Hooper has already come under heavy scrutiny for allegedly receiving campaign contributions from utilities.

• Alabama Moderate links to this post with Tidbits from Elsewhere

The Probate Judge of Crenshaw County makes $115,000 a year — more than double what most county workers in the county make. His salary is constitutionally required to be the same amount as the district judge because the Alabama Constitution of 1901 apparently specifies the salary of County Probate judges (and at different rates).

In 2004, a state-wide amendment was proposed to release the requirement that the salary be tied in with the District Judge. If passed, which it didn’t, it would have been left to the county commission to set the judge’s salary. The amendment is being proposed again on the 2006 ballot, but this time it will only be voted on by the residents of Crenshaw County. The current Probate Judge, James Perdue, was not in office when the current salary conditions were approved and has not taken an official stand on the issue.  County Commission Chairman Ronnnie Blackmon insists this is not a shot at Perdue.

The Alabama Democratic Conference, the largest group of black voters in Alabama, yesterday voted to endorse the straight Democratic ticket at a meeting in Hoover. Although a group of Democrats, they still reserve the right not to endorse Democrats from time to time.

The biggest worry for Democrats this election was whether the group would endrose the Democrat running for attorney general, John Tyson. Polls have Tyson in a very close race with incumbent Republican and Riley appointee Troy King. The loss of the ADC’s endorsement could have cost Tyson thousands of potential votes.

The group’s chairman, Joe Reed, criticized Tyson for his prosecution of Mobile County’s former school board president, David Thomas. The lack of an endorsement is thought to have contributed to Tyson’s slight victory in the primary where he won by a mere 12 points against an avowed racist and Holocost denier, Larry Darby. It will be interesting to hear if Reed again pushed for the organization to not endorse Tyson.

If the Democrats take control of the U.S. House or Senate in November, 7 of Alabama’s 9 representatives in the national government would be losing a lot of power. Alabama has 5 Republican congressmen and both of our senators are Republicans.

No Alabamian in national government is going to lose this election save a miracle. All of the incumbent congressmen are polling well and neither of our senators are up for re-election this time. But if the Democrats takeover the House, the first order of business after the election will be to marginalize the new minority party. Many Republicans will lose their committee seats so that the Democrats will have a comfortable majority and all Republican chairmen will be replaced with Democrats. If you’ve ever seen the How a Bill Becomes Law cartoon, then you know that legislation usually has to pass a committee first before it is voted on by the full body, so which committees a member is assigned to is extremely important.

Alabama is pretty stacked on the House Agriculture Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Robert Aderholt is on the very powerful House Appropriations Committee. Spencer Bachus is on several powerful committees and was hoping for the chairmanship of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services Committee. That’s not going to happen if the Democrats take over.

It will probably be good news for our two Democrats, though. Artur Davis (D-Birmingham) has been vying for a spot on the House Ways and Means Committee for a while now.

Here is where our Republicans in the House currently sit.

• Jo Bonner (R-Mobile)
• Committee on Agriculture
• Budget Committee
• Committee on Science

• Terry Everett (R-Montomgery)
• Armed Services Committee
• -chairman, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces
• Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
• Committee on Agriculture
• Committee on Veterans’ Affairs

• Mike Rogers (R-Anniston)
• Armed Services Committee
• Committee on Agriculture
• Homeland Security Committee
• -chairman, Subcommittee on Management, Integration and Oversight

• Robert Aderholt (R-Gadsden)
• Committee on Appropriations

• Spencer Bachus (R-Vestavia)
• Committee on Financial Services
• -chairman, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit
• Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
• Judiciary Committee

We’ll see come next month.

About 100 black Republicans in Alabama met in Selma on Saturday for the Washington-Douglas Black Belt Economic Forum. They talked about way to attract industry and jobs to the black belt. It wasn’t just black Republicans. Also in attendence were Alabama Sen. Bobby Singleton (D-Greensboro) and U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R).

“Black people in Alabama are more politically literate today,” said Griffin, who is a Republican. “The days of black people voting for Democrats because that’s the way it was in the past are over.”

I think this is great. I don’t like it when a section of the population is a voting bloc for one party. Hopefully it’ll also lead Alabama’s Republican leaders to begin considering ways to win more of the black vote and come up with economic plans to help out the state’s non-white urban and rural areas.