Noses are thumbed
I have gotten in the habit of ignoring the Mobile Register’s editorials, since they usually serve only to raise my blood pressure, but a forum I visit called my attention to this one from yesterday. It’s entitled, “Senators thumb noses at Mobile, Baldwin.” Apparently during the debate about Ben Brook’s coastal insurance bill, Mr. Barron expressed the opinion that southwest Alabama is just too far away from his district for him to have to worry about it. “I don’t have to be for your bill,” he said. And Mr. Rodger Smitherman was heard to say, “We’re not going to pass no bill doing all these things and giving breaks for these people that own these $250,000, $500,000 and million-dollar condos.” (I am assuming he was not using the double negative to indicate assent.)
Bulletin for the senators: not everybody in Mobile and Baldwin counties lives in a half-million dollar beach condo. And Mobile does bring a little money into the state, you know. There’s tourism (all those beach condos), and the steel plant, and if you open a paper you might see something about a tanker contract.
May 5th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Just where is Mobile anyway??? Have I heard of it?
May 5th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Del,
I wish I could say I was surprised. After all, it’s all about what’s in it for the legislature, rather than what makes sense, when it comes to Alabama politics.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I find it rather ironic that all the spam comments here in the past few days have been ads for homeowners’ insurance. If the state doesn’t care about the tourism (and other) dollars that Mobile, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, etc. bring in, perhaps Louisiana or Florida would be interested.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:40 am
(Yeah, I know LA’s not right next door, but I’m thinking of the Mardi Gras connection, and around here cities do non-contiguous land grabs all the time.
)
May 6th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I think I heard recently that Pensacola’s city council passed a resolution (worthless, of course) asking to be annexed into Alabama. I guess they are tired of dealing with Tallahassee. So, folks have it bad all over
May 6th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Last weekend we heard from Katrina-Rita survivors living in SW Alabama, Louisiana and New Orleans. These ‘weren’t no’ fancy condo owners but working stiffs, good people whiplashed by Nature in tandem with slow or no relief, intentionally snarled red tape and poor communications. There ‘wasn’t no’ help in Coden but Tim James had plastered flyers above the water line offering ‘no assistance,’ just pennies on the dollar for people’s homes. There ‘wasn’t no’ quick clean up, just fast work towards putting up a hazardous waste treatment plant. There ‘wasn’t no’ effort to draw down available federal monies by local officials, but what money did come was parceled out to the well-connected.
That’s just a part of what has happened in one small, neglected community. Ther’s lots more of the same in Mississippi and Louisiana.
I’d like Sens Barron and Smitherman–and all other officials with the power to look the people of Coden and the whole Gulf in the eye and say what they said.
Don’t bail out ‘no speculators’ with losses on fancy properties or beach-eroding, wetlands-destroying development, but do give a hand up to the decent folks doing productive work on the Coast.
The senators need to learn more about how connected all Alabamians really are. They and their constituents–and you and I–send ’stuff’ down drains every day that hurts upstream waterways and, eventually, the gulf.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Well said, Helen!!