Bingo came to a head this week – sort of. It has been a general boil on the body of Alabama for months. It has been a specific boil on both bodies of the Alabama Legislature this entire session. But the bingo boil came to a head this week – sort of.
The bingo bills encountered rough going from the very start. They were written by the most powerful bingo operators. Every provision enlarged the more powerful and diminished the less powerful. But all the bingo people could not agree on the proposed bill. Yes, the bingo boil came to a head this week – sort of.
The long and the short of it is that the bingo bills were not passed, and their sponsors were not optimistic that they would pass if brought up again this session. Sanders does not advise allowing this problem to fester.
We must lance the boil or do something else to bring bingo to a real head.
I have introduced two pieces of legislation that I think will help. On February 17, I introduced a simple measure providing for a statewide bingo commission to overlay all the Constitutional Amendments and resolve the legal issue. It would go into effect immediately. Those that are legal would be free to operate and those that are illegal would be shut down. Some of the crazy politics would be brought to an end.
The day after the bingo bills failed, I introduced a second proposal to let folk vote just on the question of bingo. There are no provisions for the big bingo bosses or anyone else. The people will vote “yes” or “no” just on the question of whether bingo should be legal. If they vote yes, additional laws would be passed to regulate and tax it.
I believe that these two pieces of legislation would really bring the bingo boil to a full head. However, if someone else has different ideas that work better, I will support those. I just know the bingo boil must be brought to a full head, not sort of.
Now, let's look at what our gubernatorial candidates are advocating. Both Artur Davis and Ron Sparks have recently sent out statements on this issue.
Rep. Laura Hall to host “One Woman Can Change The World” to celebrate Women's History Month in Huntsville. If not for the fact that this is at 7 am, Friday morning I would definitely attend, just not sure I can drag myself to Huntsville at that hour. http://bit.ly/chsfCp
Artur Davis to speak to North Alabama African-American Chamber of Commerce about economic plan and small businesses in Huntsville. The event is Friday at noon and you need to RSVP by 4 pm today. http://bit.ly/ad91i9
(
I'm promoting this story/report of "Mooncat's" as -- perhaps like others here -- I missed it last night and believe it's worthy of some focused attention, not just a passing glance. - promoted by BenGoshi)
Alabama's state budget year runs from October 1 to September 30th. Normally that's no big deal, but next year it puts us in danger of losing out on 3 months of higher federal Medicaid reimbursement from a provision in the Jobs for Main Street Act and its counterpart in the Senate. Congress extended federal medical assistance percentages (FMAPs) to provide a higher rate of Medicaid reimbursement to states, but as currently written, that higher rate only runs through June, 2011.After that, reimbursments will drop, meaning less federal money for a state budget that's already leaner than a homeless hound dog.
Congressman Artur Davis (D, AL-07) sent a letter to House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid, urging them to restructure the FMAPs to provide higher reimbursement through the end of Alabama's fiscal year.
“The fact that Alabama’s fiscal year starts as late as it does should not penalize low-income Alabama families dependent on Medicaid” stated Congressman Davis . “I am requesting that Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid make a reasonable accommodation so that our state receives the benefit of a much needed influx of new federal dollars for our Medicaid program.”
Texas and Michigan would be in a similar situation because their fiscal years also extend past June 30. Rep. John Conyers (D, MI) and four Texas Representatives signed the letter along with Davis.
You can read the letter here. As you can see, the temporary increase was for 6 months, to get cash strapped states through the 2010 fiscal year -- except all fiscal years don't end in June.
I seem to recall hearing folks suggest the State of Alabama could benefit by changing the fiscal year to a July 1-June 30 system. Does anyone have thoughts on such a move? Given how resistant to change state government has been, it's hard to imagine that change taking root.
Artur Davis is going to open his Huntsville field office on March 12. It's at 228 Holmes Ave NE, which I think is in the historic Huntsville Times Building, on the corner of Greene and Holmes Ave. I got this invitation in my e-mail yesterday:
"I would like to invite you to join Artur Davis, members of the campaign staff, and fellow supporters in your area for the grand opening of the campaign's newest field office: our new Huntsville headquarters!
At the party, you'll be able to find out how you can volunteer, get your campaign gear, and be a part of Team Davis!
Here are the details:
Huntsville Headquarters Grand Opening 228 Holmes Ave. NE, Suite 216 Huntsville, AL
... but if you thought this was just a slip of the tongue by a candidate responding to an unexpected question in a casual setting, think again. Ron Sparks' campaign put out a press release Thursday saying ...
A convention is another way to raise taxes on the working people of this state. Can you imagine who would get hurt if Exxon [sic] Davis and every Alabama special interest group came together in a constitutional convention? Higher taxes for us. Tax cuts and tax breaks for the special interests that pay him off.
News flash to Ron Sparks:The special interests who wrote the 1901 Constitution are the same ones still getting hefty tax breaks today - and they're not average Alabamians by any stretch of the imagination. In many cases they're out of state companies that own thousands of acres of Alabama timberland and could care less if Alabama kids have decent schools or not. Any kind of tax reform that has ever been proposed for a new, fairer constitution, would benefit the working people of Alabama, not tax them at a higher rate. This accusation is pure hogwash.
Anyone who pays even a little attention to Alabama politics realizes that the 1901 Constitution holds this state back in many, many ways. It's a large part of the reason we so often have to "Thank God for Mississippi" whenever state rankings are released for education, economic conditions, public health and so forth. Cities and counties have no home rule. The Legislature spends half it's time embroiled in local issues. Economic development initiatives are discouraged. And after 109 years, it's pretty obvious that article by article reform is a polite euphemism for "no reform, no way."
I'm extremely happy that a Democratic candidate for governor, Artur Davis, has come out for making a clean break with the past and trusting the people of Alabama to elect delegates to a convention and pass critical judgement on the document arising from that convention. I'm extremely disappointed that another Democratic candidate, Ron Sparks, has chosen to villify the notion of a constitutional convention - using right wing "tax increase" language, no less - in an attempt to differentiate himself from his opponent.
Just this week I've received at least four press releases from Ron Sparks' campaign, each ending in a litany of things Sparks would do if governor. The final item in each one is ...
"And Let the People Vote."
Too bad Sparks is willing to let the people vote on bingo or a lottery, but not on a constitutional convention or a new constitution.
If you recall, in early August of 2009 I told you that Bradley Byrne and Tim James would be the top contenders in the Republican primary and that they would eventually be pitted in a GOP runoff to face Democrat Artur Davis in November. I stand solidly behind that scenario. My prediction at that time was based on intuition. Today’s confirmation prognosis is based on fact.
Flowers relies pretty heavily on end of year fundraising reports to back up his predictions. That may not be the case every time, but it's the way to bet. Candidates who can't afford to get their message out seldom win.
He also predicts Jim Folsom, Jr. will win a 4th term as Lt. Governor and that "Sparks will benefit from the George Wallace admonition that more folks vote against someone than for someone." I think that idea is not lost on the Sparks campaign as their releases lately have been much more negative about Davis than positive about Sparks. How much mud will half a million buy? We may find out because so far the media isn't distributing it for free.
From a considerably less esteemed/informed source, CasinoGamblingWeb says, "The leading candidate from the Democratic side is Ron Sparks." They also mention Republican Bill Johnson in a favorable light, although they didn't go so far out on the limb as to actually call him "the leading Republican."
The Huntsville Times reported this morning that the City of Huntsville plans to compete to be a test city for Google's new high-speed broadband network.
Mayor Tommy Battle plans to create a "Get Google" task force in the coming days to rally community support for Huntsville's application.
You can get behind the idea now by joining the "Google4HSV" fan page on Facebook. Started by Huntsville resident Peyton McNully, it already has more than 2,800 members.
That's terrific news for people in Huntsville because it's yet another option to compete with cable company providers and other telecommunications companies. Naturally, Google is looking for communities with large, tech-saavy populations - communities that probably already have broadband options.
However, small towns and rural areas continue to have limited - if any - options for broadband service.
So it was good to receive a copy of Congressman Artur Davis' economic plan "to create the jobs of tomorrow, today" and find that it contains a section on broadband. Congressman Davis spoke about his plan at Alabama A&M University on Monday and Mooncat and I attended the press conference.
That's the most charitable excuse I can come up with for the campaign's latest flurry of semi-hysterical press releases. Mooncat has already discussed the "Man Without A Plan" email series, noting:
I swear, these missives make me downright nostalgic for the emails of former campaign manager Justin Saia, which were not sufficiently appreciated at the time.
These latest emails make me nostalgic for Dick and Jane readers. The grammar was better; there were pictures; and the stories were easier to follow.
In the past 24 hours, the Sparks campaign has sent three more emails with these titles:
Day 7: Still No Funding Plan
Day 8: Still No Funding Plan
Artur Gives Big Breaks to Oil, Credit Card Companies
Today's latest is a treasure trove of logical fallacies. In fact, the fallacy part is the only thing "logical" about the allegations contained in the email:
Ron Sparks has never taken money from large corporations and turned around to vote the way they wanted him to vote.(Appeal to Motive, Judgmental Language, Poisoning the Well --- and, by the way, the Agriculture Commissioner doesn't have a vote on anything.)
“I'm here to stand up for working Alabamians, not to punish them because some big company gave me money to do what they wanted me to do,”(Appeal to Emotion) Sparks said. “My vote will never be for sale like Artur Davis'. The only people I'll listen to when making decisions are the people of Alabama.”
Davis has yet to respond to the fact he sold his votes in Congress.(Fallacy of Many Questions .. aka... "loaded question" like: "When did you stop beating your wife?" ...often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner's agenda.)
And those are just the ones that jumped out at me on the first reading. Ok... so we understand that campaign literature is, at its heart, a form of propaganda. Not in a bad sense, but because the campaign is deliberately using information to try and influence the opinions of others and encourage them to reach a predetermined outcome.
However, good campaign literature - even attack pieces - provides background and context for the information presented. Just throwing around wild charges and innuendo is more of a characteristic of a bad blog post than a professional campaign communication.
This reminds me of the fall of 2008 when crazy relatives kept sending me those "Obama is a Muslim who won't salute the flag and isn't even a citizen" emails.
Truly, the latest Sparks campaign emails are so bad that it's hard to critique them seriously instead of just ridiculing them.
Who cares about the (large and boring) Republican gubernatorial field? All the excitement in Alabama's gubernatorial race comes from Democrats Artur Davis and Ron Sparks. Chuck Dean of the Birmingham News writes ...
On Saturday, Sparks denied that he had ever implied the money came from his own personal accounts. Reminded of his previous statements, Sparks finally said he couldn't recall exactly what he had said earlier but said the letter should put the matter to rest.
It didn't.
Davis, who appeared along with Sparks and six Republicans running for governor at a Saturday forum in Hoover, said the letter does nothing to explain how Sparks qualified for the loan.
...
"How many people in this state making seventy thousand dollars a year, which is roughly his salary, who have no assets, whose home is valued at two hundred and some thousand dollars, can get a five hundred thousand loan with no collateral and no co-signers? If banks are that generous, it would be news to a lot of hard-working families in Alabama."
The only mention of the Republican candidates was the fact that six of them were present at the forum.
Remember the Meadowcraft plant in Wadley, Alabama that was forced into bankrupcy -- despite a backlog of business -- because Wells Fargo wouldn't give them a loan to cover operational costs? Obviously, Meadowcraft should have tried doing business with River Bank in Montgomery instead of Wells Fargo.
We've already seen television ad buys from Republicans Bradley Byrne and Kay Ivey in the Alabama gubernatorial race, now Democrat Artur Davis is going on the air with this ad in the Huntsville market, starting tomorrow.
Alabama First:
It's a positive, you can trust me, kind of ad on jobs -- arguably the number one issue on the minds of voters right now -- and ties in nicely with the Secure Alabama's Economic Future plan Davis unveiled on Monday.
I think this ad works better than either Byrne's (which were kind of cluttered and stilted) or Ivey's (view it here) because you have a narrator (major serious voice) talking about the issues and the candidate over images of Davis with ordinary people, Davis with supporters, Davis with family. There's no awkward candidate talking about himself as in the Ivey ad. Also not much wasted time or verbiage here, which I thought was a weakness of the Byrne ads. There's also a strong outsider element to this ad -- notice how it opens up with a shot of the US Capitol dome, and the voiceover is "While Washington tries to cut our NASA and missile defense jobs … Artur Davis is fighting for us in Congress, putting Alabama first." It sets up Washington as the bad guy (a pretty common view in Huntsville right now) then pivots to Davis as the guy up there fighting for us. I'm reminded of Davis' recent appearance with Huntsville mayor Tommy Battle in which Battle introduced him as "our Congressman from the 7th district, our friend who is always there when we have gone up to Washington." One nit: I don't think they needed the image of the economic plan superimposed onscreen quite so much.
The Davis campaign supplied a transcript and "fact check" table (I like that!) which you can see below the fold.
On Monday gubernatorial candidate Artur Davis unveiled his economic plan -- an Alabama jobs plan, if you will. It includes tax credits for new jobs that pay higher than average wages and jobs in high unemployment areas; lending programs geared to small businesses; expanded availability of venture capital; incentives for existing businesses that expand, upgrade or launch new products; lifelong learning accounts; tax incentives for adult education; child tax credits for working class families; initiatives to expand biotech and aerospace industries in the state; expanding nuclear power generation and transfer; a new rural energy initiative; expanded broadband and public internet access; a new rural infrastructure initiative and a plan to tie federal transportation funds to an actual statewide master transportation plan.
Now, I don't care for the nuclear power expansion and am still skeptical of offshore drilling (Drill, baby, drill! scarred me for life) but there is a lot of good stuff in there -- best practices from other states and ideas that haven't already been around the block a dozen times. This is the kind of plan that really could lift Alabama to the next level.Think North Carolina, Georgia or Virginia ...a place where we don't have to be eternally thankful for Mississippi! Another great benefit of Davis' economic plan is that it's finally shaken some lottery/gambling revenue numbers out of his Democratic rival, Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks.
For the better part of a year, we've been asking how much Sparks' Lifestart Lottery would bring in for higher education and the customary answer was, "more than we have now." Ditto the tax on casino gambling. Sparks wouldn't even commit to an approximate tax rate on gambling until November, when he said "I would tax it at the same rate that our neighboring states are taxing gambling."That could be as low as 10 to 15%, given that rates in Mississippi are around 11%. But now Sparks has unveiled the following plan:
The Sparks Plan
Now THIS is a Plan, Artur
“I'm the first and only candidate with a plan who has the money to pay for education during the worst recession of our lifetime. And, I promise you, when elected governor I will get it done for the working families of Alabama,” Sparks said.
- Close tax loopholes and make multinational corporations pay their fair share in taxes.
- Create jobs by expanding economic development incentives and targeting tax credits.
- Create an education lottery to give every high school graduate a colleg (sic) scholarship. Raise $400 million for our kids.
- Create voluntary pre-kindergarten for every four-year-old child.
- Make electronic bingo operators pay a minimum of 25 percent in state taxes, investing new dollars in our schools and in programs for seniors. Raise $400 million per year and give five percent to counties without gaming operations.
- Create a $1 billion highway construction program that will create 30,000 new jobs and impact every county in Alabama, along with $400 million in additional funding from the federal GARVEE program.
Follow me below the fold for some analysis and perspective on Ron Sparks' economic plan.
In a USA Today column, David Person tackles a question we have often wrestled with ... and calls BS on it:
The "black enough" argument is antiquated and offensive, but it's a game high-profile African-American candidates seem doomed to play — at least in part because old-school civil rights leaders keep it alive.
Perhaps they keep it alive because it's what they know. Not content to stop there, Person brought a new voice to the conversation:
"Generally, the moment that we're in now is one where the primary need is the protection of human rights, to encode them as civil rights," Benjamin Jealous, CEO of the NAACP, told me. "What that requires is something different than when the primary objective is to enforce civil rights."
"If you're enforcing civil rights, you're going to need a good lawyer," Jealous continued. "For human rights, you need a plurality or super plurality of voters. You must speak in the most universal terms possible."
Times have changed (that's a Good Thing) and new times require a different kind of leader. It seems an obvious consequence of actual progress, but some people don't see it that way. In the end, it didn't hurt Obama. We'll see how big a problem this is for Davis.
In a previous diary, I tried to outline the real racial obstacles in the path of a Davis victory in Alabama's Gubernatorial Election and why I believe that Artur's efforts this year, though admirable, will fall short. I said some things that were difficult to hear and I wrote some things that were difficult to say.
Nothing I wrote should be construed as a personal attack on anybody on this board or as an indictment of any particular individual, race, or group. Nothing is either black or white. There is a lot of gray in the world and I write primarily to facilitate discussions that can yield a greater understanding of the world as it is. My hope is that through dialogue folks can create a path that leads to reconcilliation and community.
On my own blog, I let it all hang out. I say what I think without regard to feelings or political correctness. I intend to leave that at home when I come over here. At my spot we have "family discussions." I'll do my best when writing over here to say what I need to without being unnecessarily inflammatory because I need for y'all to hear what I'm saying.
I'm am only loosely affiliated with the group these days (oh, commuting) but I'm very excited to have the chance to help promote an event being hosted by our awesome University of Montevallo Young Democrats next Tuesday.
Agriculture Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Ron Sparks will be speaking on campus at LeBaron Hall at 7:00PM next Tuesday, February 23. It will be a brief talk and attendees will likely (to my knowledge) have the chance to ask the Commissioner a few questions.
This has been a really great year for Montevallo in terms of campus political activity -- we have a very robust conservative group on campus that has hosted folks like State Rep. (and State Senate candidate) Cam Ward, and the Young Democrats will also be hosting Rep. Artur Davis in early March. I know both groups are looking forward to hosting more talks throughout the year.
If you're in the area and able to attend, please come by!
EVENT DETAILS
Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks
Tuesday, Feburary 23 at 7:00 PM
LeBaron Hall, University of Montevallo
Hopefully I will have a good explanation for my relative absence in a few days, but I at least had to stop by and share this -- it's my school, after all!
(This should spark some good discussion about Alabama in general and the election in particular! - promoted by countrycat)
Artur Davis is a facinating politician in many respects. The power of his intellect and sharp political skills set him apart from most pol's. The sky should be the limit for Artur. In Alabama, congress is the limit for Artur. If not for the Voting Rights Act, he would not be a member of congress from Alabama.
In America, it should be a no brainer that any child born anywhere should be able to reach for the highest political rung in state government and not be deterred, discouraged or attacked on the basis of race. Unfortunately, that is not the America we live in despite the fantasies of some whites that we live in a post-racial utopia. It does not matter how many blackfolks buy into the white fantasy that Artur can win this year. It isn't true. This diary seeks to explore the reasons for this bitter reality.
A souce sends recent polling by Anzalone-Liszt on Artur Davis' popularity with Democratic voters in the 7th congressional district. The poll was in the field Jan. 24-28th.
79% of those surveyed have a favorable opinion of Davis. 13% have an unfavorable opinion of Davis.
So much for the "Democrats in Artur Davis' own district don't like him" meme. But wait, there's more. Check out the racial breakdown:
Among white Democrats:
70% have a favorable opinion of Davis. 25% have an unfavorable opinion of Davis.
Among African-American Democrats:
83% have a favorable opinion of Davis. 8% have a negative opinion of Davis.
That's a fav/unfav spread of +66 for Davis in his home district, among the voters who know him best, and the spread is still +45 among white voters only. That's damned popular!
Some of us may know "the way Alabama is" but apparently white Democrats in the 7th CD didn't get the memo that Davis is supposed to be posting Obama-like numbers with them. He's very popular with all Democrats in the most Democratic region of the state. If Davis can translate a chunk of this popularity with voters who know him to voters in the rest of the state, he's on track to be the Democratic nominee and maybe Alabama's next governor. Could that be the reason he's been criss-crossing the state for over a year, talking to all kinds of groups, letting them see for themselves who he is and the way Alabama can be.
Black farmers won a historic discrimination lawsuit against the federal government in 1999, known as the Pigford settlement. Part of the agreement included compensation of black farmers for the discrimination.
But thousands of farmers missed the filing deadline. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus sought to reopen the lawsuit, Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, leading the way.
In 2008 lawmakers added $100 million to the Farm Bill to pay those who filed late.
But, says Davis, that’s not enough.
In September Davis introduced a bill that would clear up the congressional intent regarding $100 million already appropriated for Pigford litigants and guarantees litigants access to the permanent appropriated judgment fund.
The heart of this matter is that agriculture officials systematically denied loans and other assistance to black farmers for decades because of their race. Nancy Scola writes:
The deal is this. Pigford v. Glickman alleged that black farmers had faced institutional and systematic discrimination at the hands of the USDA for years and years, generation after generation. (Dan Glickman was the USDA Secretary at the time the case was filed.) In case after case, black farmers where denied loans and other lines of credit that their white counterparts were regularly granted. After years of wrangling, Pigford was finally settled in 1999 by consent decree. The USDA agreed to a process by which black farmers could apply for restitution.
All well and good, but those applications were due within six months of the settlement. It's been estimated that as many as 74,000 farmers applied for Pigford payments after the deadline. They were shut out of the settlement for good, it seemed.
And so, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been pushing for Congress to intervene and offer some relief to the farmers who were eligible for Pigford payment but somehow missed the boat.
So the Pigford case was nominally settled back in 1999, but due to the short application period, a lot of folks were left out, even though they were legitimately victims of discrimination. This is a perfect example of institutional racism that has nothing to do with ugly personal incidents or rhetoric, but effectively keeps a minority group from amassing financial resources. In this case, discriminatory practices caused a lot of black farmers to remain at subsistence levels or even lose their farms. And things haven't been particularly rosy post-Pigford, either.
Yesterday Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle introduced Rep. Artur Davis (D, AL-07) as "our Congressman from the 7th district, our friend who is always there when we have gone up to Washington." These days, Huntsville is happy to have any Congressman we can get, especially one such as Davis with good working relationships on both sides of the aisle in Washington, DC.
That's the kind of Congressman we need because a big chunk of our local economy is in a precarious position at the moment. The proposed NASA budget does not fund the Constellation program and a lot of local jobs are on the line if the return to the Moon is cut.
Battle, Davis and former NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin held a press conference yesterday following a meeting with local space and aeronautics industry executives on the future of the space program. They stressed the need for bipartisan efforts to preserve the manned spaceflight portion of NASA's mission. All three men believe the return to the Moon is a mission of great strategic importance and that America must believe in and invest in the concept of manned spaceflight. Battle referenced the need to demonstrate that "America will be second to none." Dr. Griffin expressed concern that China has embarked on a mission to land men on the Moon and said the United States would suffer economically and strategically if we allow China or any other country to take the lead in space exploration. Davis cautioned against walking away from our 40 year committment to leadership in manned spaceflight, stressing the need to capture the national imagination and inspire the best young minds to pursue a future in space.
Rep. Davis contined, "I will be working very closely with Democrats and Republicans to fix this problem in the President's budget. I'll be working to save the Constellation program ... to allow us to resume and to pick up and carry on with the vital mission of manned space travel. ... While this is about the national imagination, this is about our leading edge in technology, there are thousands of jobs in this community that could be impacted. ... Huntsville is already losing jobs because of what's going on. I want to send a clear signal today to the men and women who work at Marshall. The men and women whose families are dependent on space, that I am going to be advocating for their interests and many Democrats and Republicans are going to be standing with us. This can't turn into another Washington food fight between Democrats and Republicans. It can't turn into another vattle between the Obama administration and the Bush administration. It' can't turn into a nother fight over political legacies."
Contrast that call for bipartisanship with the Parker Griffith radio ad I heard on the way to the press conference, in which Griffith says "the Obama-Pelosi liberal agenda is headed in the wrong direction" and pledges to "oppose this dangerous, liberal agenda."No one could mistake that for a willingness to pursue bipartisan solutions to NASA's current budget uncertainty.
"People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House," Tancredo said during a speech, according to the Cleveland Leader.
Tancredo also said Obama won because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote."
Alabama used to have literacy tests for voting, along with poll taxes, and those were used to keep blacks and poor whites from exercising any influence over elections. The first time we interviewed Rep. Artur Davis, all the way back in August of 2008, he spoke of his mother's generation, Joe Reed's generation, and why it is understandably difficult for that generation -- who grew up unable to sit at the front of the bus, unable to use the same bathroom as white people, subject to literacy tests and poll taxes -- why it is difficult for people who were subjected to those circumstances to believe it is possible to elect a black president or a black governor. Remember, this was in August of 2008, almost 3 months before Obama's election.
In the process, Davis told a wonderful story of civil rights attorney Fred Gray's experience with a literacy test. He failed it, even though he answered every question correctly. The authorities -- concerned only with preserving the status quo -- absolutely could and did fail people who aced the test, the same way they passed people who didn't answer correctly, as long as their skin color passed the test.
Here's more about those literacy tests Tancredo and the Tea Bag crowd want to bring back.
In the rural counties where most folk lived, you had to go down to the courthouse to register. The Registrars Office was only open two or three days each month for a couple of hours, usually in the morning or afternoon. You had to take off work — with or without your employer's permission — to register. And if a white employer gave such permission, or failed to fire Black who tried to vote, he could be driven out of business by economic retaliation from the Citizens Council.
On the occasional registration day, the county Sheriff and his deputies made it their business to hang around the courthouse to discourage "undesirables" from trying to register. This meant that Black women and men had to run a gauntlet of intimidation, insults, threats, and sometimes arrest on phony charges, just to get to the Registration Office. Once in the Registrars Office they faced hatred, harassment, and humiliation from clerks and officials.
The Alabama Application Form and oaths you had to take were four pages long. It was designed to intimidate and threaten. You had to swear that your answers to every single question were true under penalty of perjury. And you knew that the information you entered on the form would be passed on to the Citizens Council and KKK.
Using a broad range of criteria an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA's program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives. Furthermore, NASA's attempts to pursue its moon goals, while inadequate to that task, had drawn funding away from other NASA programs, including robotic space exploration, science, and Earth observations. The President's Budget cancels Constellation and replaces it with a bold new approach that invests in the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration ...
"This is a bad decision for Alabama families. Alabama and especially North Alabama cannot take this kind of potential job loss during the worst recession in our lifetime. This could cost us thousands of high-paying jobs at a time we face the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.
"The moon mission has contributed to endless technological breakthroughs and has provided countless jobs for Alabama. This move will not only cripple the Huntsville area economically, but the whole state.
"I am prepared to gather this state's Democratic leadership and Republican leadership in a unified effort to go to Washington and fight for these jobs."
“A manned spaceflight program is a vital component of America’s scientific future. NASA's decision to scrap the Constellation program is a major error that Congress needs to correct. I will work with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to push the Administration to reverse course; if our voices are not heard, the advocates of Constellation will be waiting on the floor of the House and the Senate. It also goes without saying that the 2200 job loss from shutting down Constellation is an unacceptable blow to North Alabama’s economy.”
Long time Alabama pol and pol-watcher 
