Mike JR Goens and the Times Daily Empire.

Mike J.R. Goens is the editor we all love to hate.

Of course only he and I are old enough to know who J.R. is - And know why this is a complement.

In fact, a few years ago I got so mad I canceled my prescription to the Times Daily. Now I have to drive to the Chevron station at five a.m. each morning and pay full retail price to get my daily dose of Mike's indigestion.

The source of my most resent indignation is Mike's assertion that not one of the candidates has put forth an actual plan.

He claims that in his extensive TV viewership that although no one is opposed to job creation or economic development no politician has put forth anything to actually create jobs to make life better for the people of Alabama.


This may contain a grain of truth as I might indeed not rise to the level of actual politician. I hope not, as this fits my overall philosophy that State Government is far too important to be entrusted to politicians.

This is somewhat akin to one of my lawyer friends in Russellville saying that all the candidates are law and order candidates, to which I replied "Yeah but you get indited a couple of times and it takes the edge off your argument. "

Likewise if you hold office thirty years and do absolutely nothing to create jobs, exports goods, or import dollars it kind of takes the edge off your job creation and economic platform.

Mike, if you choose to turn off the TV and listen for a minute, I do have a plan.

And although you warned me that actually disclosing a plan might cost a candidate votes -

Here it goes.


My plan is:


A block of wood!


That is correct.

A twelve inch by twelve inch by twelve inch block of wood.

Or a ten gallon aquarium filled with wood chips, About the same thing. .


Mike, Tele-port yourself, mentally if you will, to a random point in District six. The area roughly sixty miles wide and one hundred miles long in the Northwest portion of the state. More than five thousand square miles containing less than one hundred thousand people. Open your eyes. What do you see?

Trees.

Lots and lots of trees. Pine. Oak. Locust. Cedar, Scrubbrush. Now - be aware that one cubic foot of that forest is equal to one gallon of gasoline. One acre of the tops and scrub left after a good lumbering is eighty thousand pounds. The total standing timber in Northwest Alabama is equivalent of Ten Billion Gallons of gasoline. Forest byproducts left to waste and rot each year could be money in Alabama's pocket if there were a market for low grade wood chips.


My proposal is to offer a bond issue to a company that will build wood chip electrical generating facilities in District Six. Each fifty million dollar bond issue has the potential to put five hundred workers directly in jobs and indirectly employ another thousand. The demand for clean energy is so great that plants can be profitable and the loans can be repaid within three years. Add to this the latest EPA regulations that effectively destroy the potential of coal as an electrical generating fuel and you see we are left with. Nuclear plant licenses are forty years and have to be amortized over fifty. Wind farms are controversial and expensive, and wind in Alabama is seasonal. Solar is even more expensive and requires massive federal subsidies.

But wood is CO2 neutral. Clean Burning, Potash (fertilizer) Producing, Available and Renewable. In fact, wood chips can be added to existing coal facilities to help meet EPA requirements.

Now Mike that is a plan. And before you go shooting it down take a look at Haley Barbour in Mississippi and the fifty million dollar bond that Mississippi issued to take away Alabama jobs. When I see a newspaperman whining "Where's the Beef?" I feel kinda like asking "Ain't it easy to criticize the hypocrites from the outside? "


So Mike..Turn off the TV and tell me. " What is your plan? "

Voice of the people (Or - Get your finger out of my happiness!)

It is a slow news Monday. All I have for the gentle reader is an editorial by my good friend Mike Goens of the Times Daily;

http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20100425/ARTICLES/4255019/1031?Title=Bingo-vote-was-doomed-from-the-start

In which he lampoons the “silliness” of the legislature by not putting the Gambling Commission Bill to a vote of the people -

Just because it is an election year in which your elected Representatives are actually sensitive to the will of the people.

One of the checks in our checks and balances system is the ability of the rural inhabitants of our State to call upon our elected servants and ask them to kill legislation that would harm our district with the implicit “or we will vote you out”. Unfortunately this only works in election years.

I am reminded of a few years back there was a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot regarding Dothan Alabama. A one cent tax that was proposed to do something about the traffic around the industrial park. I looked it over, thought “Humm, That's in South Alabama, doesn't affect me – I should vote for it and help those guys out.”

Turns out the vote was overwhelmingly affirming the tax everywhere in the State -

EXCEPT Dothan.

Nowadays I just choose not to vote on bills outside my area. But I am constantly aware that there are still people out there who think like I did back then.

Or think like Mike, and will overwhelmingly vote for a bill that is detrimental to our rural areas, And call it “the will of the people”.

Mike, if you are listening, we love you, but the paper goes all the way to the Mississippi line. A huge portion (5000 square miles of Senate District 6) largely don't want a Bingo bill that helps Florence, Birmingham, and Mobile on the backs of the communities like Maud, Hodges, and Pea Ridge.
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In a related note. The House and Senate agreed to fund a One Billion Dollar Transportation bill with some conditions, one of which was that the fund balance was not to fall below 2 Billion dollars.

I don't know how much over two billion we have but in September of 2009 it was 2.7 Billion. Assuming Kay Ivey has not lost any of that money we are left with $700,000,000 for the Transportation bill.

I heard the fund was actually a little below the two Bil's mark but I can't confirm at this time.

If the money is in fact there, 75% goes directly to the Transportation department,leaving $175 million for allocation to the individual districts and counties.

About half that goes to the Congressional districts. The other half to the individual 67 counties.

That's about 2.6 million per county.

Over ten years it becomes 260,000 annually per county.

I think that is about the price on the guard rail on one side of the bridge at Margum and maybe enough roundup to spray the ditches. As I said before, A Majority vote of the people oft leaves the minority in the dust of their dirt driveway.