Posted by Montgomery Advertiser – Bentley: Attorney general to control task illegal gambling task force
Montgomery Advertiser – Business owner donates lawn equipment to Montgomery after theft
Montgomery Advertiser – Website urges rich to ‘give back’ tax cuts
Huntsville Times – Ask Us: Is it true that the City of Huntsville owns and operates a train?
Huntsville Times – EDITORIAL: Another lifeline for Alabama’s Medicaid Agency
Birmingham News – Teacher’s unwise geometry, frozen puppy’s rescue top 2010 Birmingham News online stories
Birmingham News – Sagging home prices seen across Birmingham
Birmingham News – Birmingham schools push ahead with plans for career academies
Birmingham News – Number of state employees in Alabama remains stable
Birmingham News – Mobile’s Jo Bonner tapped to chair House Ethics Committee
Birmingham News – Read the list of 22 top-selling liquor brands in Alabama
Birmingham News – $566,000 grant will allow Helena Fire Department to bring back firefighters
Press-Register – Austal’s LCS win will bring 2,000 more jobs to Mobile, Ala., as shipbuilder graduates to big leagues
Press-Register – BayFest, Shrimp Fest make Alabama’s Top 10 tourism events for 2011
Press-Register – BayBears revenue was on the slide before recession, figures show
Press-Register – 8 months later, BP’s Gulf oil spill cleanup costs appear manageable
Press-Register – EDITORIAL: Clean beaches, tourist perceptions in 2011
Tuscaloosa News – Report: Flawed data may hurt coal ash laws
Tuscaloosa News – Ex-Greene sheriff to return to beverage control job
Tuscaloosa News – EDITORIAL: Medicaid push helps children, state budget
Tuscaloosa News – EDITORIAL: Cutting pork is a necessary sacrifice
Florence TimesDaily – Car theft reports on the rise in Shoals
Florence TimesDaily – State, county swing Republican
Florence TimesDaily – Irons eyes adult care legislation
Florence TimesDaily – Key Cave refuge is one of Shoals’ best-kept secrets
Anniston Star – Haley’s history lesson: Perspective for Gov. Barbour
Anniston Star – Harvey H. Jackson: Beach ‘looks like winter before spill’
Decatur Daily – Morgan County figures good guide for state
Good Morning, Danny & WALTM…
Tuscaloosa News – EDITORIAL: Cutting pork is a necessary sacrifice
“Senators and Congressmen await the time when they have enough seniority and clout to cash in chits for pork. Once in the pork barrel driver’s seat, they loathe to relinquish power.
But the cycle must be broken at some point, and the country’s mood has never been more receptive than now. Curtailing earmarks won’t solve all of the country’s financial problems. But it is a logical step and one that has symbolic significance as well.
If the public isn’t willing to allow Congress to cut pet projects from the budget, Congress must look elsewhere to strike a better balance between spending and revenue. The public could well be asked to consider a choice between pet projects and higher taxes. And the latter is never popular.”
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From Forbes:
“The sovereign debt crisis now threatening Europe, as well as major American states and cities, discloses the sheer incompetence of a political class that has over-promised, under-delivered and squandered vast amounts of their citizens’ wealth.
Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, California, Illinois, Los Angeles and Chicago are simply the poster children for what happens when elected officials engage in reckless and irresponsible management of their economies, their banking system or their respective government’s public finances”…
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–The Ruling Class Has Bankrupted the World–
Two paragraphs which tell you pretty much all you need to know about the condition we’re in. Though the author should emphasize more that while politicians were leading the charge, there were plenty in big business cheering them on. The people in charge of the show running–Big Government and Big Corporations–have spent us in to oblivion. They did this by taking away our money and giving us slips of paper and then borrowing like mad against the wealth of the people until we, the people, have little wealth left and massive debts hanging over our heads.
This will all crash and burn. Today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year one day, for certain. It can’t be sustained forever; I’m astounded they’ve managed to keep it together as long as they have. But it will fall apart not least because while there is still a small and shrinking window of opportunity to dodge the worst of it, our Ruling Class is just continuing to print fake money and borrowing like mad.
The “Fed” played “Santa” while the U.S. is drowning in debt, it appears the Federal Reserve has been spending hundreds of billions propping up companies and banks in the United States and abroad. When the government picks the winners and losers, you have the potential for politics to interfere and determine who gets the money and who benefits. These include politically-connected U.S. based companies, like General Electric, to foreign-owned giants like Toyota, the Korean Development Bank and Swiss-controlled UBS. There’s nothing like bailing out Europeans so they can retire in their early fifties. BMW was also a benefactor of the Feds largess.
So the big question is, with the Fed pumping money in HUGE quantities to all these private companies, just how much of the Wall Street rally is real and how much is TARP/Stimulus/QE2 which are not real?
It all gets back to economist Luigi Zangales’ philosophy that the government’s economic policies should be pro-market [benefiting everyone] rather than pro-business, designed to give advantages to favored banks and corporations or help the “fat cats” and “insiders.”
Yet… those same banks did not assist those who just needed a little propping up in order to stay afloat. They were given a huge stack of cash, which if that was the right thing to do it was likewise the right thing to do to restructure some home owner’s loans. No one should have gotten a dime, or everyone should have.
This is what we are aware of. Think of all the things we are not aware of. Friendships are made and federal bureaucrats and legislators enjoy “the good life” following their government “service.”
CitiGroup supposedly is courting former Obama Director of Management and Budget Peter Orszag. I wonder what favors Orszag did for CitiGroup or other major financial institutions during his government “service.”
Our job is to take back control of our destiny. What happened on November 2nd was just a tiny first step in the process. The Ruling Class doesn’t want to do this as there is no place in such a world for parasites who get rich and powerful by bamboozlement and fraud. And so the entire Ruling Class needs to be tossed out on its ear and a new system developed which rewards hard work, savings and careful investment. Until we do that, we won’t get back to prosperity.
Beware of those who allegedly fret about “extreme” positions. They are the people who said we were fools for nominating Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Such warnings are mere attempts to get us to knuckle under to be afraid of getting rid of those who wrecked the nation and the world. Thus the Master to the Slave trying to convince the slave that without the master, the slave will perish.
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The tea party has done us a favor by reminding us that the Constitution should be our governing document, guide our political decision making, and limit government’s intrusion into the rights reserved to the people and the states.
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-Pookie