If you missed it Sunday, you can still catch it on HBO or the Web.

HBO

One cool moment with Fergie and Mick Jagger with U2 at Madison Square Garden doing Gimme Shelter…

HBO: The 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert

Guest Editorial Column
by Ron Sparks

Alabama is facing the greatest financial crisis of modern history with the potential looming on the horizon of firing thousands of teachers and denying care to thousands of nursing home residents. While other candidates for governor, both Democrat and Republican, refuse to address this crisis, I have offered a means of providing additional funding for our state without taxing working families.

Just last week, we learned that Alabama has one of the ten highest unemployment rates in the nation. This news comes on the heels of months of catastrophic financial projections that the Education Trust Fund, Medicaid, and other vital state services are at great risk.

Recently, federal stimulus money helped fill the holes in the state budget. That much-needed money has now been spent and the chickens are coming home to roost.

What’s been missing from the political debate is any effort on the part of my fellow candidates to be honest about our state’s financial condition and plain talk about what we are up against.

Basic laws of economics tell us that we can’t spend what we don’t have. Considering the crisis we are facing and the many needs we have, we have very few choices. We must cut services, raise taxes on the working people of this state, or as I have proposed, identify new revenue streams to flow into our state budgets.

I have been clear that I will never raise taxes on the hard working men and women of Alabama. Our families are already strapped with all they can handle just trying to keep a roof over their heads and food in their children’s mouths. I will not support any plan that that will put teachers out of work and takes supplies and technology out of your child’s classroom. Whether you live in Wilcox County or Mountain Brook, every child deserves the same standard of educational opportunities.

The only option left is to find new money for our state budgets.

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An elite division of Blackwater plans targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.

And everyone’s denying it.

Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan Revealed

What does it profit a country to gain the whole world, yet lose its soul?