MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Gardendale Republican Senator Scott Beason thumbed his nose at the Justice Department Tuesday while addressing the tea party on the status of Alabama’s controversial anti-immigraiton law on the first day of the 2012 session of the Legislature.

He said when the Republicans talk about “clarifying” the law, that really means they will be making the law even “stronger.”

“And if the Obama Justice Department doesn’t like it,” he said, “frankly, they can lump it.”

He also claimed the Occupy movement had to bring in protesters from “out of state” to oppose him.

Glynn Wilson

Oh, no!

Not again.

Say it ain’t so, judge.

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

Most working people in America don’t have the time to pay close attention to the daily ins and outs of politics. What they know of the political system they hear from quick blurbs in passing on television news while they are busy providing dinner for their families, or what they hear on the radio in the car on their commute to and from work. More educated liberal Democrats tend to get more of this news from public radio, but for the average Southerner, this tends to come from talk radio.

More and more people are getting their news from social networking tweets on Twitter and Facebook, but unless they take the time to delve into the details of the story links, they will still only obtain a superficial outlook on public policy debates.

For those who take the time to find an independent journalist to follow closely, they will over time end up with a better understanding of how democracy works, the so-called “sausage factory” that is government.

One thing that I think tends to sometimes escape the understanding of the average American, who now tends to believe there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, is the extent to which the party in power gets to set the daily agenda for what issues are brought up in public debates in Congress and state Legislatures. This is one of the most powerful tools any political party has to control what we all talk about on a daily basis, whether people fully grasp this or not.

I honestly don’t think some of the new political activists in the Occupy movement really get why this is so important, so I want to tell you a couple of stories to illustrate this before I pack up the computer and head for Montgomery for the first day of the legislative session in Alabama for 2012.

I was talking to a friend in Virginia about this yesterday, a photographer who is in the process of moving from New Orleans to Charlottesville after a short stint teaching in Auburn. He and I endured the Bush years together, often bitching about the national situation on the golf courses of New Orleans or over beers by a campfire in an Alabama state park or the Great Smoky Mountains. We agreed that one of the worst things about those years was having to wake up every day to find out what crazy nonsense was on Bush’s agenda. It literally dominated eight years of our lives in a way I don’t think most people fully understand.

You see one of the most important powers the president of the United States has is to set the national agenda. The president can basically tell Congress what issues to focus on, which inevitably becomes what the press focuses on. Ultimately that is what we all end up talking about at the bar or the dinner table.

On the state level, the governor and the leadership in the Legislature have the same power, only less so, because even fewer people pay attention to state politics or local politics than national politics.

But the point I want to make for my friends in Alabama right now is that you are suffering from a similar fate that we all faced across America when Bush was in the White House and the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. For the first time in Alabama history, the Republicans control all three branches of government.

Oh, its true. They have had several Republican governors before now, since the 1980s. How did you like the leadership of Guy Hunt, Fob James and Bob Riley? They have also controlled the state Supreme Court since the 1990s. Have you tried to sue an insurance company lately for not paying a legitimate claim? If not, ask around. You can’t.

Now we have this Tuscaloosa dermatologist in charge, Robert Bentley, who got off to a rocky start by insulting everybody in the state who does not share his religion. Well I’ll be the first to admit he ain’t no brother of mine, and I have no doubt I will disagree with his priorities from sunup to sundown every day until he is defeated in the next election.

But the fact is, Bentley is not really such a powerful guy. He will not be able to rule this state with an iron fist like George Wallace did for much of the 1960s, ’70s and even into the ’80s. In this state, the guy you have to watch out for is the Speaker of the House.

Now I doubt half the people in Alabama even know who that is, so let me introduce you to Mike Hubbard (not to be confused with Paul Hubbert of the Alabama Education Association). Hubbard is the Auburn Republican who is now in charge of what you will be thinking about for the next little while. He is the head of the state Republican Party and Speaker of the House.

The official press arm of the Republican Party in this state, what I like to call the Newhouse monopoly press, ran an opinion column from Hubbard this week. If you live in the Birmingham area, you could have read it in The Birmingham News, but the same thing ran in the Mobile Press-Register and the Huntsville Times — or as most people online have come to know them, simply al.com.

In this editorial, Hubbard set the agenda for this year’s legislative session.

According to his list of priorities, the first item on the agenda will be to destroy the public school system in the state by funding charter schools, a crafty way to ruin the education for urban minorities in this state forever. If you are a rural or suburban racist, redneck, you will like this legislation and you should support it. Everybody else should organize a massive protest march to stop it.

Along with this idea, you will hear the term “accountability” a lot, something we heard from Bush a lot too. On the national level, this resulted in the No Child Left Behind Act, a law designed to actually leave a lot of children behind. It was designed to kill the “liberal” idea that students ought to be taught to think for themselves and replaced it with a system of memorizing answers to select questions so students could pass a test so the schools could keep their federal funding.

Now that that system has failed across the country, the Alabama Legislature would like to implement it here. You know what they say. The South is always a decade behind the rest of the country. Well, the Republicans in Alabama are out to prove this theory, because they think it serves their economic and political interests. It doesn’t, but they are going to try to convince you that it does. Don’t be fooled.

Another thing you are going to hear a lot about is talk that the Republicans are going to cut government spending, and they will do like Bush and talk about it in terms of how the “average family” has to “balance its own checkbook.”

Hubbard’s compatriot in the Senate, a guy you’ve never heard of named Del Marsh, will be talking about something called the “efficiency-in-government initiative.”

Now when you hear this, your eyes are going to glaze over and you are going to head for the Budweiser cooler, but take my word for it. You are going to be screwed by this initiative just like Bush screwed you with his deregulation scheme that led to the financial meltdown and the BP oil spill.

When you hear things like, “We aim to ensure the financial stability of vital state programs, particularly the retirement systems and our prisons,” what you should read into that is that the Republicans want to privatize the prisons and continue the trend of locking up more people for profit, especially long-haired redneck hippies who like to smoke a little pot with their beer. It also means they are going to try to raid the state retirement system like Bush tried to privatize Social Security. Bush failed, but unless enough people start paying attention and get involved to stop it, they might just succeed in Alabama.

I’m here to tell you that if they screw up my 85-year-old mother’s retirement, I am coming after them. I would rather stop them now with words that influence public opinion. So listen up and get busy protesting.

The stated goals of this session are going to be passing an even more draconian anti-abortion bill to screw the rights of women even more, to “reform” the anti-immigration law to let the churches off the hook so they can support it, and to repeal a legislative pay raise they passed that they are calling the “Democrats pay raise.” Don’t believe everything you hear.

And contrary to their stated goal of getting the government out of your lives, they are going to put the cops in your car more than ever before because they are going to try to pass a bill prohibiting texting while driving. If the overly draconian anti drinking and driving laws in this state were not enough to keep you locked in your suburban homes glued to the TeeVee forever, now you won’t be able to tweet on the road either.

Sorry college kids. You may as well get your plan together to move to a state with mass transit now. You have no future here. Try the metro system in DC or New York, or Porland, Oregon for that matter. Get out while you can and move to a real city, where people think for themselves.

Are you happy with your choices yet? If not, next time you go to the polls to vote, remember that the party you vote for sets the agenda for what you have to think about. If you like talking about screwing women, bashing teachers, destroying a democratic government and turning its functions over to private, for-profit corporations so they can cut your pay some more, vote Republican.

But if you are watching what’s going on at the national level, where things are starting to turn around and get better in this country with unemployment down, more people getting jobs — and yes, the American automobile industry back on top again — consider putting your pet social issues aside and voting to make government work again for practical reasons.

Don’t believe anybody who tells you they are running for office to destroy government. It turns out they are telling the truth at least about that. It’s about the only truth that ever passes their lips.

Then ask yourself: Is that really what I want? To destroy our ability to govern ourselves in America or Alabama? Do you really like BP, Exxon-Mobile, ATnT, Southern Company, ALFA and the rest of the corporations so much that you want them running the government too?

Sorry, but I will take a little government regulation of the private sector any time over a politician who claims the corporate model is better. I have lived through too many tough times listening to that destructive rhetoric, and I have seen that it doesn’t make things better, only worse. Perhaps one day more people will wake up and see that too, hopefully before it’s too late.

by Glynn Wilson

The race for Alabama’s Sixth District Congressional seat is about to get interesting enough to draw attention from around the country now that one tea party Republican has decided to challenge another in the primary, and an interesting new female candidate has decided to jump in as a Democrat.

State Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale, one of the chief sponsors of Alabama’s draconian immigration law which has drawn scorn from around the country and hampered industry recruitment efforts, announced Thursday that he would challenge Rep. Spencer Bachus in the Republican primary to be held this year on March 13.

Designed as a Republican district to sit alongside the minority Democratic Seventh District, the Sixth District runs from Tuscaloosa north of Interstate 59 up through Hueytown and Gardendale all the way to Warrior in Blount County, then curves east toward Springville and runs all the way to Ashville in St. Clair County. It runs from there south to Pell City, Childersburg and all the way past Clanton. (See map).

Bachus was first elected to Congress in 1992, but he came under scrutiny and national criticism in recent months, landing on the CBS investigative magazine show “60 Minutes” in a segment on Congressional insider trading, an unethical but not illegal practice where members of Congress profit from knowledge they gain due to their seats on key committees. Even the tea party and right-wing talk radio shock jocks in conservative Alabama are now calling for Bachus’s head, so many encouraged Beason to challenge him this year.

Beason played a key role in the so-called “Bingo Trial” in Alabama last year, in which Republican prosecutors tried to jail Democrats for being pro-gambling. It didn’t work, since no one was convicted. But during the investigation, Beason wore a hidden recording device for the FBI. He tried to entrap Democrats into admitting they were willing to swap campaign contributions for votes on pro-gambling legislation, but he recorded himself referring to black customers at dog tracks as “aborigines.” He later apologized, but refused to give up his spot as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee until the Republican leadership finally responded to criticism by removing him.

The Locust Fork News-Journal has learned that Air Force Col. Penny Huggins Bailey of Leeds has decided to run for the Congressional seat as a Democrat. On her new Facebook page, she says she’s a graduate of Leeds High School and Samford University and served in the U.S. Air Force for 24 years. Her husband is still on active duty and will be deploying to Afghanistan in 2012 for a year.

“I believe Americans deserve honest and true representation in our government,” Ms. Bailey says on her Facebook page. “We have too many professional politicians in Washington D.C. that do not represent their constituents but simply write legislation and vote to better themselves and their positions in life. This is not what our forefathers envisioned for us. I want to bring politics back to supporting and representing Americans.

“I was raised in one of the best small towns in America and was taught by family, friends, teachers, and neighbors that what really matters is God, Family, and Country,” she says. “For 24 years I had the honor to serve in the U.S. Air Force where Service before Self, Excellence in all you do, and Integrity were our core values.

“Now,” she said, “I desire to bring these values to Congress as I do not believe professional politicians are representing us, the American people. As the representative for Alabama’s District 6, I will represent the people of this district. I am not a professional politician but an American who is willing to stand up and ensure Washington, D.C. hears our voices and that they will serve us, the American people, and not the other way around.”

A federal appeals court has balked at deciding a controversial legal case pitting the Alabama Education Association and its ability to raise membership dues against the new Republican administration dead set on weakening public employee unions and suppressing votes for Democrats.

According to a court filing that just popped up online from the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, the federal appeals court panel tossed the state’s appeal in the case back to the all Republican Alabama Supreme Court. The professional organization for teachers won a victory in a lower court and obtained a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a law passed by the new so-called “Super Majority” of Republicans in the state Legislature, a law written to prohibit payroll deductions to groups that use some of the money for “political activity.”

The appeals court panel indicated it would be “constitutional” for the Legislature to block the payroll deduction if the organization is guilty of “electioneering.”

Outgoing AEA Executive Secretary Paul Hubbert told the Associated Press that AEA has a publication it uses to “inform” teachers about issues of concern to them, issues that are the subject of government action. But he denied that the organization is primarily engaged in “electioneering” for one party or another.

“We keep our members informed on the issues,” Hubbert is quoted as saying.

In reacting to the non-decision, the Birmingham News editorial board came out with another in a long line of unsigned, silly Newhouse-style editorials concluding that if AEA’s activities are “not electioneering .. we’ll admit we have no idea what electioneering is.”

Hey, they said it. We didn’t.

Apparently the near-monopoly press in Alabama is quite happy to have an all Republican court decide the issue, a court of elected judges who raise millions upon millions of dollars from corporate interests in some of the most high priced elections in the country.

It’s too bad the appeals court panel did not show a little more backbone and actually decide the issue. We know from previous experience how the Alabama Supreme Court will rule: On behalf of its corporate masters at the Business Council of Alabama.

Watch for more union busting and Democratic voter suppression measures when the Alabama Legislature gets back together in Montgomery come February. And don’t count on the courts in Alabama for justice — unless you are a highly paid executive at an insurance company or other major corporation that pays no taxes in the state.