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Alabama DOT director stops road projects because of senator's billboard critical of Gov. Robert Bentley
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/02...s_roa.html

Leland Whaley taking Bentley to town on his radio show this afternoon.

Saying Bentley doing the same type stuff that got Seigalman in the slammer.

They kind of have a point. The state is broke, if they don't want to pay taxes, they shouldn't expect services, right?

(02-26-2015 07:34 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote:  They kind of have a point. The state is broke, if they don't want to pay taxes, they shouldn't expect services, right?

Sounds like a deal. Let's cut all the taxes in northeast Alabama and see what that does to the deficit.

North Alabama should just vote itself out of the state and join Tennessee or form it's own state. This place is beginning to get intolerable.

(02-26-2015 07:34 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote:  They kind of have a point. The state is broke, if they don't want to pay taxes, they shouldn't expect services, right?

The point is that the Governor is petty. Remember, he said he would NOT raise taxes, but now that he was re-elected, he wants to raise them. A senator opposes his flipped position, and he pulls the plug on a service to the people of that district.

Do you blame the senator or the governor? Bentley is dirty.

(02-27-2015 03:10 PM)the Dragon Wrote:  

(02-26-2015 07:34 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote:  They kind of have a point. The state is broke, if they don't want to pay taxes, they shouldn't expect services, right?

The point is that the Governor is petty. Remember, he said he would NOT raise taxes, but now that he was re-elected, he wants to raise them. A senator opposes his flipped position, and he pulls the plug on a service to the people of that district.

Do you blame the senator or the governor? Bentley is dirty.

Plus we didn't just wake up the day after the election and have a 700mil shortfall. He's known full well he was going to raise taxes and basically lied his way through the election. Holtzclaw called him on it and Bentley sent a guvment goon to teach him a lesson.

Bentley using a lot of the same tactics that the BOT & Watts are using.

There's plenty of blame to go around. The Governor and the Legislature knew we were in deep doody regarding the budget. Reporters knew it, and pointed it out during the last election campaign, but frankly did not make a big enough stink to get any answers. The public knew, if they gave enough of a damn to pay any attention.

Now the election is over and everyone looks around in wide eyed surprise and says "Well, hell, we need $270m just to stay even with what we funded this year, and if we pay back the loans that are coming due and pay for our state Medicare and for our overcrowded and underfunded prisons (which if we don't do something about the Feds will come in and take over and *make* us fix - which is the usual way we get dragged kicking and screaming into doing what we're supposed to) we'll need $700m.

And we wonder why Alabama is always in the bottom five unless it's bad stuff like illiteracy and teen births?

(02-26-2015 06:50 PM)the_blazerman Wrote:  Leland Whaley taking Bentley to town on his radio show this afternoon.

Saying Bentley doing the same type stuff that got Seigalman in the slammer.

I hope he's right in this case.

(02-27-2015 03:10 PM)the Dragon Wrote:  

(02-26-2015 07:34 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote:  They kind of have a point. The state is broke, if they don't want to pay taxes, they shouldn't expect services, right?

The point is that the Governor is petty. Remember, he said he would NOT raise taxes, but now that he was re-elected, he wants to raise them. A senator opposes his flipped position, and he pulls the plug on a service to the people of that district.

Do you blame the senator or the governor? Bentley is dirty.

Bentley is a

Bentley is doing what governors of Alabama have always done. If you don't do it my way, I will punish you by whatever means I have access to use.

Jeffco and B'ham didn't back Wallace's behavior so Jeffco got no completed interstates until all others in the state were complete. And today we wait for Corridor X to be completed in Jeffco/B'ham (when it will become I-22) as the only unfinished part from B'ham to Memphis. The "Harbert Section" of I-459 (US 31 to US 280) was completed early because Harbert "endowed a chair" at UAB to pay George Wallace a handsome fee there. The rest was not completed for years.

Alabama has been so corrupt for so long that its citizens have adopted a cynical acceptance of it as "normal way of doing government business".

So, trolling aside, no, I don't agree with what Bentley did. However he does have a point even if he's using the wrong means to make it (and those road projects will get done, they're not going to abandon 75% completed construction and just leave it there)

And I don't care what he campaigned on. The state is broke. They have cut as much as they could. Maybe he said what he had to in order to get elected, but now he's term limited and it's time to fix the problem. His opponent would have raised taxes even higher. At any rate, something has to give in this state. They have been operating under an effective deficit for the past four years by borrowing money from the rainy day fund. What is the alternative?

You think it's tough to counter the UAB football is a bottomless money pit argument now, wait until there is literally zero state appropriation dollars coming into UAB because you didn't want taxes raised.

Insert yet another line here about the irony of fiscal conservatives marching in the streets to get federally and state subsidized football back at UAB. I'm with you, I want football back, I'm just not blind to the fact of what I'm asking.

Those of us that live in the BHM MSA are also to blame. It's time for us to start electing candidates that support and believe in advancing the largest city in the state.

And the debacle that has unfolded during Bentley's second term is enough to show you that we should never support another candidate from the Bammerist party.

Yes, taxes are going to be raised. The question in our state has always been - "On whose "back" is the tax load going to be imposed?" To date the answer has always been - "primarily on the lower middle and below income group". The new proposed cigarette tax is typical.

Studies of Alabama 's taxing policies published in AL.com showed that the lower 50% income group pays over 2 1/2 times more of their income in state taxes than the upper 50%. The state's "soak the poorest Alabamians" taxing policies have rendered it one of the poorest states in America. Not only does the state government load up taxes on the poorest citizens, but they in turn provide their children with the poorest level of public education, especially now under the AAA which doesn't even pretend to fix "failing schools" but takes even more money away for private schools.