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After Previously Accusing Him Of Abusing Cancer Patients

Huntsville doctor Parker Griffith, a North Alabama Congressman, who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in December, will be delivering the weekly Republican YouTube address on Sunday — presumably from the standpoint of being a medical doctor who is opposing the Democrats on health care.

“The fact that a doctor who left the Democratic caucus is delivering the address this week is no coincidence,” an anonymous senior GOP aide boasted in an e-mail to news organizations. “This is a shot across the bow of any ‘moderate’ Democrat in the House who is considering voting for a health care bill loaded with tax hikes, Medicare cuts, and notorious backroom deals.”

As has been previously reported, however, there is an irony in this particular doctor being embraced by the GOP — after they openly accused him of some very serious acts of medical malpractice during the campaign against him in 2008.

During the 2008 election, when Griffith was seeking the open Congressional seat, the National Republican Congressional Committee ran an attack ad that accused Griffith of a practice known as “warehousing” cancer patients — meaning to deliberately give poor care to patients in order to keep them bedridden and make more money from their medical treatments.

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The Alabama AFL-CIO has scheduled a second public press conference for Monday, March 8, at 3 p.m. at the Huntsville Marriot concerning the re-election efforts of Rep. Parker Griffith in the 5th congressional district. It will be in the Enterprise Room at 5 Tranquility Base.

“Parker Griffith has scammed us out of $219,000 and that, my friends is a bitter pill to swallow,” AFL-CIO spokesman Al Henley said in a statement. “He used our volunteer base to advance is personal political goals and has done a terrible job of representing middle class working families the short time he has been a congressman.”

“After using us and our money to get elected and create name recognition he has aligned himself totally with corporate America and the wealthiest 5 percent of our country’s population,” Henley added. “We intend to do all we can do to see that his political career ends ASAP and this scheduled press conference is another step towards reaching that goal.”

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by Glynn Wilson

Alabama is a red state in more ways than one.

In addition to voting more for conservative Republicans than just about any other state in the country, earning the state red status on the national political map, Alabama scores a low down red on the green report card issued by the League of Conservation Voters.

Conservative Republican Senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby both scored Fs for Failure in a report released Monday. Sessions scored 9 out of a possible 100, while Shelby got an 18.

One of the primary reasons for the low score was due to the fact that Alabama’s delegation took a hard line against the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act, which would help bring more than 29,000 clean energy jobs to Alabama, according Conservation Alabama, a statewide conservation group that today joined the national League for the first time on our suggestion in releasing the 2009 National Environmental Scorecard.

“Alabama’s Congressional delegation opted against bringing clean energy jobs to the state and voted against reducing our national dependence on foreign oil,” Conservation Alabama’s executive director Adam Snyder said in a press release accompanying the report.

“In a state that has 11 percent unemployment, with some counties at nearly 25 percent, Alabama’s Congressional delegation cannot afford to send a message to the world that we are not open for business for clean energy jobs,” he said, even though that’s exactly what they did.

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Guest Column
by Phil Fleming

Bob Riley must explain to the people of Alabama why he received a specific $500,000 campaign contribution from disgraced lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon in his 2002 campaign for governor.

Abramoff and Scanlon sent the funds to the Republican Governor’s Association, which then added an additional $100,000 dollars. That $600,000 amount was deposited directly to Riley’s campaign account.

Let’s review the facts, all easily found posted online.

Abramoff and Scanlon received a total of $66 million dollars from six Indian tribes. Among the recipients of this money included Riley, former National Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed and Texas Congressman Tom Delay.

The Abramoff/Scanlon agenda during that election year was to block gambling in Texas and Alabama, which benefited the Louisiana Coushatta Tribe and the Mississippi Choctaw Tribe. They were successful.

Abramoff and Scanlon pleaded guilty to corruption conspiracies, Delay has been in legal limbo with pending criminal charges and a lot of hot air gets floated about who is supporting gambling and who isn’t.

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Alabama’s senior Senator gets famous, but NOT in a good way…

MSNBC’s Olbermann echoes our story at Truthout.org, which you can see here, in case you missed it…

An Alabama Senator with long-standing ties to the US military-industrial complex and an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama is backing down from a direct confrontation with the White House today after taking the unprecedented step of announcing last week that he would filibuster all the president’s appointments to secure earmarks for his home state. US Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who switched from the Democratic Party to be part of the Gingrich revolution in 1994, placed a hold on more than 80 presidential nominations before the Senate last week. He relented on Monday, saying he had simply been trying “to get the White House’s attention.”

Alabama Senator Shelby Backs Down From Blocking Obama’s Nominees

by Glynn Wilson

An Alabama Senator with long-standing ties to the US military-industrial complex and an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama is backing down from a direct confrontation with the White House today after taking the unprecedented step of announcing last week that he would filibuster all the president’s appointments to secure earmarks for his home state.

US Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who switched from the Democratic Party to be part of the Gingrich revolution in 1994, placed a hold on more than 80 presidential nominations before the Senate last week. He relented on Monday, saying he had simply been trying “to get the White House’s attention.”

Read the full story at Truthout.org, a non-profit independent news Website…

Alabama’s labor union community will have a press conference on the steps of the Madison County Courthouse on Monday Feb. 15 at 11 a.m. to officially request a refund of their political contributions for the 2008 election cycle from Congressman Parker Griffith.

“In our opinion the change from the Democratic party to the Republican party has little or no effect on our request,” Al Henley, Secretary-Treasurer of the Alabama AFL-CIO, said in a press release. “We just simply believe he misled us in the campaign to get elected, and used our money to create a positive name recognition situation then immediately aligned himself with America’s biggest corporations and industries including the Insurance, Pharma and Medical industries, then proceeded to vote against our best interests.”

The press in North Alabama recently reported that the Congressman’s office said no requests had been made for refunds, but is not the case, according to the discussion on key e-mail lists around the state.

“We find it necessary to clear up the confusion on the issue of refunds of political contributions,” Henley said. He said the press and the general public are welcome.

Meanwhile, the Alabama Democratic Party blasted newly-minted Republican Representative Parker Griffith for his lack of leadership in defending critical jobs in Alabama’s fifth Congressional district.

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Alabama Governor’s Anti-Gambling Gambit Continues…

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson refused on Monday to issue a temporary restraining order blocking a raid by the Governor’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling on the Country Crossing bingo hall in Dothan, ruling that the issues should be dealt with in state court, according to the AP.

Meanwhile, reporters have learned that a group of people associated with marketing Mississippi casino interests met in mid January to discuss ways to fight increased gaming activity in Alabama, according to the Dothan Eagle newspaper, which has a special section on its Website to keep up with all the news on the controversy.

Roger Shuler of the Legal Schnauzer blog asked, are Mississippi casino interests influencing Alabama government?.

“Is it coincidence that Alabama Governor Bob Riley, who reportedly received campaign support from Mississippi casino groups, ordered attempted raids on two Alabama facilities roughly two weeks after the meeting?”

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Less Than 36 Percent Attend Church Every Week

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

In a continuation of our detailed look at public opinion in this state and country on issues such as religion, gambling and the environment, versus how those issues are covered by the media and portrayed by politicians, the Capitol Survey Research Center reports that 82 percent of respondents in Alabama favor legalizing and taxing gambling.

Among voters for the Democratic Party, the number is 84 percent, while 83 percent of Independents support the idea and even 82 percent of Republicans do.

Also according to the Capital Survey Research Center, only 31 to 35 percent of the public in Alabama tell pollsters they attend church once a week. The higher number is from counties in the northern part of the state and the lower number is from the coastal counties in the south.

Now compare those numbers to public support for pro-environmental policies.

Environmental activists have been painted as liberal extremists by conservative pundits and many were investigated as potential “terrorists” by the Bush administration. But according to detailed public opinion research collected over many years, the reality is something entirely different.

“As the ‘green’ movement continues to mature, those extreme portrayals are becoming largely outdated as mainstream culture comes to grips with the fact that environmental concerns are here to stay, and they must be addressed in ways that everyone can live with,” according to Gallup.

Public opinion research shows that 70 percent of Americans express attitudes showing broad support for pro-environmental public policies, and the numbers are not that much different on the state level in Alabama.

In fact, a couple of public opinion scholars I studied with at the University of Alabama in the early 1980s and the mid-1990s said support for a clean environment in the U.S. was as common as “mom and apple pie.”

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