What does it mean to be wealthy?

A friend from high school who attended the generic reunion in Phil Campbell said something bout the "Upper Crust" of Phil Campbell, "Society People", she said. I didn't make much of the comment but in my recollection of the small town America I grew up in I have to assume she was speaking of those citizens who had shoes in the summertime.

The question arises from time to time of what is rich, what is poor, middle class, and what is truly wealthy. I recall once in the middle seventies seeing a government statistic that put middle class at a certain dollar amount per household member. I immediately took out my pencil and checked to see if I was middle class.. "Whew" Just made it by a few dollars. Unfortunately by the end of the year a new child was born and according to the United States Government I was poor again.

Unsatisfied with that set of rules I set about to establish my own standard of evaluating the classes, and myself among them and I came up with these guidelines. Actual lines one can draw in the sand to find out where you stack up in the socioeconomic ladder. I did no better in the standing but I did feel ownership of the measurement medium.

Test one, The line between poor and middle class.
Walk into the supermarket, if there is anything in the store you cannot buy then you are not middle class. Sorry to be the one to break the news but many in Alabama look into over the meat counter and wonder who buys a ten dollar steak. I have been there. You likely have been too.

I admit living on that line of middle class and poor America most of my life. Fortunately I have never been in the situation where I couldn't get in the supermarket. (although I was asked at a steak house once if I knew what it costs to eat there) If you just can't get in the supermarket then you are not on the socioeconomic ladder, you my dear friend, are a brick they use to scotch up one side of it.

The next rung on the social ladder occurs in the car dealership. If, like I, you sometimes find yourself in the automobile supermarket and your your transportation selection is influenced by the sticker price instead of your desire - you my friend are not rich. If you wonder as I do how any person can be so wasteful to drive a land barge or a hummer or that little red number that whispers your name as you walk past. Then my dear, you are not rich.

And the final line, or at least the last line that I know anything about is the Realtors office. If you dear friend have to base your home selection on your income. If they "pre-qualify" you for purchase.. then friend, you are not wealthy.

Of course we know that true wealth, wealth beyond measure is internal but it is somewhat difficult to engage in existentialism when the whispers of your soul are drowned out by the rumblings of the stomach.

My youngest reported being shunned once upon a time because she said she was rich, meaning that she had all she needed, she had food and shelter and clothes and she loved and gave love. The doctors daughters she ran around with said " You don't even have a four wheeler."

So don't get me wrong, money is not everything. Not unless you don't have it and the baby needs milk and school starts next week and there are no new shoes and check is late and the rent is due.

This is the center of my concern about the social ladder. That the people who live within a fifty mile radius of me live on that line between middle class and poor. And the people whey continue to elect to represent their interest have never seen even the line between wealthy and merely rich. Truly wealthy lawyers who manipulate us into believing that they are doing us a favor by giving us back a part of the taxes they levied on us right after the past election.

My concern is for the people. People just like you. And me.

What Soviet Threat?

I recall in the late seventies I warned that the Soviet Union could collapse under the weight of its own debt.

I was told that the Soviets could require the workforce to work whatever hours necessary for whatever pay was available, they could be taxed at whatever rate necessary to support their military complex and that no free nation could compete. They could not "collapse". Today you will note that most of your incoming freshmen regard the Soviet Union, If they have even heard the term, as something of an anachronism. A state government something like the CSA, as remote in their thinking as the Civil War.

Alabama Education Association

I am a member of the Alabama Education Association. I am a member of a lot of other organizations and like you I’ll bet there are some things you support in the organizations to which you belong and some things that you disagree with, maybe even loudly and heartily. That, gentle reader is my relationship with the AEA.

For starters, the AEA apparently isn’t going to support me. Even though I’ve been a member for 27 years. Even though I have been an elected delegate to the the annual convention more years than not. I’ve sent in my dues regularly and enjoyed the benefits AEA provides to teachers. Nobody else is going to look after my well-being and my ability to survive in education like the AEA. One wonders then, Why won’t the Imperial Grand Poobah of the organization back me? AEA apparently does not even recognize my candidacy. Because I’m a Republican? Because of favors owed to other candidates? Who knows.

But, the AEA does have a couple of sacred cows which need to be de-horned. The first of these is serious review of the tenure laws. While I support the current laws for teachers in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, tenure for people who work for community colleges needs to be reformed. When I talk to people in the district the perception of teachers and administrators who remain on the payroll after they commit crimes seems to be a serious sore point with the working taxpayers.

I do have to agree with AEA's rules preventing the review of incompetent teachers who need to be removed by incompetent and overpaid administrators who also need to be removed. There is simply to much room for a qualified teacher to be removed simply because a brother-in-law needs the job. AEA can help with that but still, The tenure laws need a review.

Some years ago, Republican Representative Tripp Pittman, of Baldwin County, introduced legislation which provided for some improvement in the existing tenure law. Administrators—those people who run the colleges and their various divisions - could only obtain tenure as members of the faculty.

This meant that people responsible for academic, vocational, and technical areas would have to be members of a faculty first. My friends and I supported this portion of the measure. But hurtful to the entire concept of tenure lurked the idea that faculty members on continuing service, once fired, would place an unfair burden on men and women who can’t afford that expense.

AEA objected to this package and killed it.

In addition, community college faculty members should only be able to obtain tenure after five years’ service. And I think it ought to be expanded to require peer review evidence of superior teaching, community service, and professional growth in the teaching area.

Lost in the proceedings was a overly-wordy piece of legislation from the 1990s called “The Articulation and General Studies Agreement.” This agreement says that credit hours at our community colleges transfer to public four year institutions with the same status as if the student took the course at the senior institution. The other side of that coin must be that equal credit hours mean equal conditions of learning. First of these equalities should be the hiring, professional growth, and retention of our community college faculty. Second, but not less important is funding for facilities that are at least equal to the University setting. This is going to require a complete review of the regulatory body of the Community College System.

I’ll have more to say about the Alabama Education Association in the coming weeks. You can depend on me to stand up for honesty and ethics reform in every nook and cranny of government. That reform will start within the cranny in which I live.

What follows, Gentle reader is the "Covenant for the Future" pledged by your Democratic legislators (and my opponent in the senate six race) in the last election.

Many would have passed with bipartisan support had they come out of committee.

Only one, dear reader, actually made it into law. See if you can pick it out.

(If you have any comments on the accuracy of any of the statements please speak out.)

The Democratic Covenant

Democratic lawmakers have kept Alabama’s taxes the lowest in the nation.
We will work to keep them that way.


In the first ten days of the next regular legislative session, Alabama Democrats will introduce legislation as required and ensure a vote to enact the plan presented below:

ETHICS & ELECTION REFORM
1. Stop all PAC to PAC transfers
2. Require registered lobbyists to report to the Alabama Ethics Commission all expenditures related to appointed or elected public officials.
3. Pass legislation to strengthen the law against nepotism in state hiring
4. Eliminate all "pork" projects from state budgets
TAX REFORM
1. Stop annual property tax increases by returning property reappraisals to a four year cycle
2. Oppose any increase in taxes without a vote of the people
3. Eliminate the sales tax on food
4. Further reduce the state income tax on all working families and individuals earning less than the Federal Poverty Level
5. Create the Alabama Energy Independence Act with tax incentives for Alabama farmers and refineries, providing Alabama jobs, and making Alabama less dependent on foreign oil

EDUCATION
1. Pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit the use of Alabama Education Trust Fund money for non-education purposes
2. Pass budgets that increase funding for the following education priorities
- Classroom discipline
- Emphasis on "back-to-basics" education
- Technology in the classroom
- Support students and the work of teachers and other education personnel, instead of bureaucrats and "pork" projects

FAITH & VALUES
1. Pass a constitutional amendment confirming that all life is a gift from God and should be protected; and that life begins at conception
2. Require public schools to offer Bible Literacy as part of their curriculum
3. Defeat any efforts to redefine marriage or provide the benefits of marriage to a same-sex union

SECURITY
1. Pass the Alabama Border Protection Act requiring immigrants to register for a work permit before working in Alabama and making it a felony for employers to repeatedly hire illegal immigrants
2. Provide funding to train Alabama law enforcement personnel to allow full enforcement of immigration laws including deportation of illegal immigrants
3. Pass tough new laws to help apprehend and punish internet predators of children and fund enforcement of new child protection laws.
4. Pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of or transfer of authority of the Alabama State Docks in Mobile or inland river ports to any foreign entity

HEALTH
1. Establish the Permanent Joint Health Care Committee of the Legislature to guarantee
- Access to affordable, quality health care for every citizen
- Cost containment and access to affordable prescription medications
2. Create the Alabama Legislative Health Care Access Trust to provide scholarships for medical students who will serve in underserved areas
3. Guarantee funding to keep the state’s Medicaid program viable

This is what they promised to do in the first ten days. Did they?

Wal Mart Republicans

In response to my friend Michael Sorocazk of Muscle Shoals who recently penned a letter to the Times Daily, (Yes the same Times Daily who declined to run this response). Mickey's assertion that the Republicans “Only care about money and power.” Is offensive, Mike, given the money and power of my opponent in this race - my friend, this is oscar-meyer-baloney-whitewash. (You, my gentle reader, may fill in what I really wanted to say)

Having first voted for Richard Nixon, and often repeating the line “fool me once shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me”, I too, have in times past regarded myself a Democrat. I usually voted in the Democratic primary because that is where the local candidates ran. But my Alabama Conservative roots always ran deep.

True, the Wall Street Republicans have given main street a lickin' in the past decade. Rich bankers and lawyers lived in obscene excess while while Alabamians struggled to feed the family. The Democrats that I supported in years past were the Alabama Conservatives who bear little resemblance to the present day Democrat/Socialist Party.

The last presidential election saw the emergence the Wal-Mart Republicans with presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. I supported, and was at the victory party for Dr. Robert Bentley. He, like Huckabee, represents a new kind of grassroots common man approach to government.

The New Republicans are Ex-democrats and conservative Christians who expected universal health care and got Obamacare, who wonder in amazement who is going to pay for the b-b-b-bailout, people who wonder how long can we as a nation can continue pouring money like rain out of a boot to any project that will provide “stimulus”. And people like me who are just “Taxed Enough Already.” These voters are now the face of the New Republican Party. A party with which Mike Hubbard and Official Alabama Republican Party is seemingly completely out of touch. At least if the money they threw at Byrne while they turned their backs on Bentley is any indication.

We are going to support real job creation instead of empty buildings and sewer systems for goat farms. We are going to remove the cronyism of the present triad of democratic senators that campaign with your tax dollars and keep you in the dark about where those $500 checks come from. (And keep you dancing like a trained pig to get them.) Mike, some of the candidates, like Bentley and myself, are in this race to end the culture of corruption and bring jobs and much needed relief to the people of this district. I will thank you, if you please, to know the difference between the Wall Street Republicans and the Wal Mart Republicans. Try not to paint us all with the same dingy whitewash brush.

More on National Alabama Corporation.

One of my friends said yesterday that a certain project he was working on might be bigger than the rail car plant. “Heck”, I said “ JJ's restaurant is bigger than the rail car plant.”

Alabama needs jobs. Production jobs that export product and import multiplier dollars. We need real careers that can become life's work for your kids and grandkids. Senate district six is at the top of the list only when it comes to people who are looking for work.

Now in fairness, Alabama has some high paying jobs in some areas. Aerospace in Mobile and Huntsville, Automotive manufacture in Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, and other smaller manufacturing facilities around the state. However, What we are seeing in the seven counties in Northeast Alabama is mostly rocks and trees. As my friend says “The end of the universe as we know it”. Northwest Alabama residents are driving to the diesel manufacturing plant in Columbus, Mississippi, the Toyota plant in Tupelo, Mississippi, the solar panel manufacturing plant in Senatobia, Mississippi. Most of them are looking for a home in Mississippi. (do you see a trend?) All of these jobs could have been Alabama jobs with the right incentives and leadership.

The official Alabama unemployment map has Winston county at 17% unemployed. It recently dropped but the population dropped at the same time. The unemployment dropped because the unemployed people just left. The other counties, Franklin, Lamar, Fayette, Marion, Lawrence, and Colbert are slightly less but I remind the gentle reader that if you are the one out of work your unemployment rate is 100%.

Personally, I am working on it. As a long time technical educator I have a vested interest in finding jobs for my graduates. I am tired of having to tell students who ask for employment advice to “Put your stuff on the back of your pickup truck like the Beverly Hillbillies and get out”

Two projects I am involved in right now have promise. I talked with Perkins Diesel last year, I talked with a couple of wood chip companies, and I am promoting residential solar like Wolverine. But the gap between what is needed and what is being done by our elected officials is as vast as the biblical great divide.

Which brings us back to Colbert County, and what was to be the mother of all career opportunities in district six. That rail car plant was supposed to be putting $150,000 a day in high powered multiplier money into the Northwest Alabama economy and it is Dead! Dead! Dead!

People as far south as Winfield have asked about it saying “ I put my application in and did the training, when are we going to work?” I have to say to these folks, “I don't know when you will go to work.” But somebody should know. And that somebody should tell us.

What I know, or think I know since this is all just whispered rumor around the coffee pot, is that the Alabama Bureau of Investigation was called in because money from was being funneled into private offshore accounts. This investigation resulted in the replacement of the local plant manager for National Alabama. (twice). So the rumor goes.

You have likely heard nothing about it. I have to assume that if something significantly illegal was going on somebody would have been extradited from Canada. I really assume that. I really do.

I know, or think I know, that CSX in Florida bought 750 rail cars on the pretext that National Steel Car had the production facilities to make them inside the United States. I know or think I know, that those cars are being manufactured in Canada and will be railroaded right past the Barton Plant.

We need jobs. We need new industry creation incentives like they have in Mississippi but the first thing is to make pay the investments we have already made. This half billion dollar job creation expenditure in Barton has become a “spec” building like the funny money building in Vina only 300 times bigger.

Speculative investment building with tax dollars? The very sound of it rolls off the tongue for me a little like bad cabbage. The people of Northwest Alabama deserve to read the reports. The people of Colbert county deserve something better than a sophisticated Ponzi scheme.

Like the song says, “ I could be wrong but I'm not”. I know something is fishy up there on the Pickwick lake. I think it's not the Bass Tournament because we lost that too.

Oily Tides

There is a tide in the affairs of men./
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life/
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,/
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures./

Emma Garner 1965

Actually as I was to learn later this little ditty was not the original work of Aunt Emma.

What she said actually was:

" There is a time and tide in the affairs of men/
that taken at their crest can lead to fortune/
denied bind us in sorrow and misery. / "

English is a foreign language you know.

The first quote of course is Shakespeare and predates Emma quite a little bit, But she lived it and taught me to live it, at least to some degree. And so it is. Some men are born to fame and fortune/ some achieve it/ and some have it thrust upon them.

Emma said that too.

For most of us opportunity bounces off our chest on national TV leaving us famous for the unexpected perfect pass in the super bowl game of life.

We all have that once in a lifetime opportunity. An opportunity that for some reason we were just not expecting. We prepare for it. We go to school for it. We pray for it. and when it comes we say " What the heck is this?" Too comfortable in our shallows to cut the ties that bind us from our fortunes.

Right now there is a man down field in that game of life in Louisiana. A man standing in the shallows watching the oily tide come in.

You may think I am talking about Hayward's replacement Bob Dudley.

I am not.

I refer instead to the talking orange Polo named Darryl Willis.

I fear that Willis is in just such a place in his life. A place where his choices and his decisions will determine how long and how well he lives and serves on this earth. Certainly how his tombstone is inscribed and how he will be remembered by history.

Hayward will be forgotten next week. Dudley may well be gone before that. But the man who writes the checks to the people will be remembered forever. Those who have suffered loss of livelihood in the gulf will tell stories for generations.

Darrel Willis is born in the south and bred in England. He takes his tea hot and his biscuits cold. However, His blood is the blood of the people he is appointed to serve.

I would caution Darrel to fear God more than BP. Respect his elders and his ancestors, and make this decisions based upon what is right and morally responsible to the people instead of what is good for his boss and shareholders.

It will be hard. He will be denied and it will cost him his job. But he has the opportunity to go down in spoken history of the people of the gulf as the man who saved the gulf. He can choose greatness. Or he can choose to live in the shallows and retire from his desk job in Houston.

Darrel Willis is at a crossroads.

Choose wisely Darrel.

Make sure you catch this ball Darrel.