Dear Alabama Readers,
For those of you easily offended by coarse language...you might wanna skip this one...I'M PISSED!
I don't know about you, but I’m sick of this whole, raw, shitty deal that we Alabamians are getting from our government. We just about have to be the most powerless people in all of the USA. No matter which way we turn the house and senate hamstring us.
Because of our antiquated constitution we don’t have home rule, so anything we want to do, like say fart, at the county level, has to waft through the legislature for their golden stamp of approval.
We don’t have Initiative & Referendum, so all of the deciding power about what we can and can't vote on is in the hands of the legislature. How do you like that? Judging by the actions of most members of the house and senate they feel you are not in any way, shape, form or fashion qualified to decide what issues you would like to vote on. You are simply too simple to understand the complexities of issues that you live first hand each and every day of your life. But, strangely you are 'smart' enough to vote for a candidate.
We don’t have recall so these sorry asses (like Phil Poole just as one example of MANY) get to serve out their remaining years and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it, but keep paying the sorry SOB’s $50,000 (or more if they decide to vote themselves another pay raise) for three months of kindergarten antics in our State House. And they want us to pay for their health insurance too boot! I'm ready to pay to send them to the hospital...but I would pay in the form of bruised knuckles and a visit to the pokey in handcuffs....unlike Senator Charles Bishop.
There is so much that needs to be done in Alabama. This is a GREAT STATE with GREAT PEOPLE and so much potential. But the way government is set up here means if you aren't part of a huge multi-million dollar lobbying firm or you don't have millions of dollars to buy a representative or senator to push your personal legislative agenda then you might as well hang your shit up. You are nothing in the eyes of those you elected to serve you.
I know that is a harsh reality for some of you who might have taken the time to meet with your reps and senators. Yeah, I know, they smile all nice, tell you they are happy to see you, act concerned and interested about the things you tell them and then promptly forget your name the minute you walk out the door....at least until election time anyway and they need a campaign contribution. All our elected officials do when they get elected is plot and scheme on how to get elected again…. The people be damned. The business of the state be damned. (Note: I do not feel this way about all of them and know for a fact that some of them couldn't be further from the description I've just provided.)
Most of us regular folks also don’t have ties to a large, powerful, rich lobbying firm to move the bills that are important to us and we don’t have access to millions of dollars in our personal funds to move bills ourselves. Truth be told it is hard for most of us to afford the gas right now to even go to Montgomery and visit with our elected officials.
And don't even get me started on how impossible it is to try and break into politics as a candidate not affiliated with either major party. Most regular folks I know won't even consider the possibility of running for office because it is such a NASTY business.
So….I’ve decided to sharpen my pitchfork. I can’t sit around and take another year of this shit. I can’t. I won’t. Alabama is long overdue for a little revolution. Where the hell is everyone else?
We need to put our angry, disgusted, collective heads together and figure out a plan to make our government work for us. I know many of you will say "Vote'em out!" and I will certainly do my part come 2010...but what about between now and then? And, let's be honest here, if there isn't a HUGE grassroots effort born of the people to educate voters and to recruit and support better candidates then most of the sorry dogs will be voted back in in 2010. And there we'll be...again!
I don't care what your political stripes are, what you think they are, what color you are, what bills you support, whether you support my efforts in drug policy reform or not we ALL have to come together and start plotting how to bring about better government in Alabama. This ain't cuttin it!
I'm thinking that when Governor Riley calls the special session that all of us who are able should travel to Montgomery and host a 'Special Shadow Session' of our own where we lay out what we want from our governing body and present it to them. This will be the highest form of mockery and embarrassment for members of the House and Senate.
I've found through my own political experiments that mocking the silly, smug bastards brings about the quickest change. They don't care to be humiliated in public. They are terrified of it. Take
Attorney General Troy King and the blow up pig for instance. Troy's moralistic hard-on was a ragin' til he was gifted with the pig. Then he shut the hell up for the entire session about tougher anti-obscenity laws and sex toys. He didn't make so much as another peep and didn't so much as send a representative from his office down when HB12 was brought up in committee. Shame is a very powerful tool in politics. And we need to shame them so bad that 98% of them won't even seek re-election in 2010.
If we can get enough people together to hold a shadow special session then those are the kinds of things we need to do to our elected officials. Be thinking on that and what some of those actions could be. For instance...we should all get together, march into the halls of the state house, disrupt things as much as possible so nothing gets done and then demand to be paid $50,000 for our efforts....with health benefits too.
We should build a puppet of Senator Phil Poole wearing a fucking diaper and sucking on a pacifier because he was such an infant all session because he didn't get his pork last session.
Let's think of something to humiliate those senators who filibustered all session long over a silly electronic bingo bill.
Get those brain gears turning y'all...we have a lot of work to do.
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Doggie I will eat you up! You should have heard her when I put her next to Snoot's pen. Vicious kitty. She took a swipe at him.
