World Ends in Two Days!

Well not really.

We interrupt this Eagle Forum questionnaire to bring you breaking news.

The Alabama Legislature is considering three measures of which you should be aware and take a few minutes to call in your comments to your Senators and Representatives.

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Bingo was his name O' (GCB)

This legislation puts the name Bingo on a constitutional amendment that would be much better named the “Gaming Commission Bill” .

What this constitutional amendment allows is far and away not your grandma's bingo. Automated Bingo by any other name might still be a slot machine when installed in your local hangout. The folks who praise the “good” politicians who “let the people vote” have left a few interesting points out of the argument.

The new eight page Bingo Bill leaves most of its content to the imagination. The original 42 page bill put the “voluntary” tax at 25% of the “profits”. Now profits, you know, are what is left after the investors and shareholders are paid. This is zero for CPA who has finished the eighth grade.

“Voluntary” means that most operators wouldn't have to pay it. The new bill, As I understand it, leaves the tax structure on the “proceeds” to be defined by a simple majority of the legislature. So it was, and probably still is, a tax of 25% of nothing. The other troubling thing is the that the vote is going to be statewide and so is the implementation.

I can see that Birmingham and Mobile will vote overwhelmingly for the Bingo Bill and then put a bingo game with “technical aids” (slot machine) in every gas station in my rural district of Northwest Alabama.

These machines will take Visa and and debit cards and wire the money from the poor rural areas to the Godfather in Vegas at the speed of light. This is just welfare for the rich. When my friend Joe gambles away the family milk money and has to ask for state help to feed his family he is just acting as a middle man to take welfare money and send it to the corporate casino owners.

Oh..I almost forgot, it is Immoral Legalized Gambling for our State. - Kill the Bill!

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PACT what pact? I agreed to what?

The Prepaid Alabama College Tuition program is still in trouble. Pending legislation this week in the House would repay your money our State Financial Administrators gambled away from the State Education Trust fund.

As an educator whose retirement depends on that fund I am forced to raise an eyebrow at the $240,000,000 of my money going to pay for fiscal mismanagement of our elected officials.

The State has no choice but to make good on the promise we made to the 45,000 PACT holders but I suggest that the money be made up from the Alabama Trust Fund instead of the Education Trust Fund.

Current legislators say they can't take the money out of the one billion plus Alabama Trust because they plan to spend it on pork projects for themselves. (They didn't actually say that, But that is what they meant) -Kill the Bill!

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Transportation Bill.

Also on the list of things to do in the final two days of the session is a bill to put one billion dollars from the State Trust Fund (oink) over the next ten years (It currently contains $1 billion) into specialized highway construction (oink).

The bill as written would put most of the money into high population areas and leave the rural Northwest Alabama area in the dirt driveway again. A pending Republican amendment to the bill would have most of the money spent in rural areas where it is most needed but it is unlikely to pass.

If we could get $100 million of the money in just one or two of of those years to get a highway started from the Mississippi line in west Colbert county to Tuscaloosa through the middle of Colbert, Franklin, Marion, Lamar, and Fayette Counties I might dance a little piggy jig myself, But the paucity of representation in Northwest Alabama makes that unlikely.

My main concern is that the State Trust fund which is much needed for job development in the next ten years will be completely dedicated to intercity roads.

Without jobs our citizens can ride mules on dirt roads just fine.

Without the republican amendments to put money in the rural areas, we need to- (altogether now) -Kill the Bill!