Staff report… U.S. Senator Doug Jones urges Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to establish a health care manufacturing task force to explore ways to move the state to the forefront of health care manufacturing in the United States. In a letter to Governor Ivey on Thursday, the Birmingham Democrat suggested utilizing existing infrastructure across the state,…
By Glynn Wilson – As a political issue, the social wedge issue of abortion only serves to divide Americans and does nothing to solve any real economic or social issues facing governments at the federal, state or local level. While public opinion polls have shown Americans equally divided at 48 percent of the public identifying…
By Glynn Wilson – President Donald J. Trump didn’t waste any time in showing his true priorities just a day after he and the country learned of his apparent exoneration in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of his involvement in conspiring with Russia to win the 2016 election. Trump and his Department of Justice reversed…
By Glynn Wilson – On Day 20 of the Trump federal government shutdown, U.S. Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat from Alabama, held a media conference call with reporters on Thursday to provide an update on what’s going on in Congress and Washington to end the shutdown and other national legislative issues, including the latest on…
By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — Winding my way back to my native state from the nation’s capital last week, I encountered the welcome sign on the state line with some trepidation, even dread. “Welcome to Sweet Home, Alabama. Governor Kay Ivey.” I almost turned around and drove somewhere else. At least in George…
By Glynn Wilson – Students across the country walked out in a symbolic protest on Wednesday to focus the nation’s attention on gun violence one month after a gunman killed 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Students in a number of schools across Alabama participated in the protest. When asked…
By Glynn Wilson – DAPHNE, Ala. — The “unwavering hero” of the massive tornado that struck Tuscaloosa in 2011, Walter Maddox, at 45, may be the early front runner in a crowded field of candidates for governor of Alabama. On a campaign swing through Baldwin County and Mobile Thursday night, the Tuscaloosa mayor said why…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – Democrats in bars and coffee shops around the nation’s capital and across Alabama are asking each other an implausible question: Is 2017 the year a Democrat might get elected to the U.S. Senate from the conservative state? The 63-year-old former federal prosecutor Doug Jones, who jailed a couple…
By Glynn Wilson – Alabama’s embattled Republican Governor Robert Bentley has been convinced he has no choice but to resign or face an impeachment trial, be removed from office and perhaps face jail time in an episode that is reminiscient of Richard Nixon resigning the presidency on August 9, 1974. Only Bentley is not being…
Connecting the Dots – By Glynn Wilson – What a year it has been. Whether you liked it and prospered or were horrified by some of the stories and events, it was a year to remember, even if many people would simply like to forget. To write a year in review column, I was looking…
By David Underhill – When Caesar made himself emperor of Rome he spayed and neutered the senate – but kept it alive as a pet in remembrance of the extinguished republic. When the Alabama legislature put constitutional Amendment 2 on the ballot for this year’s general election, it set in motion the mechanism for privatizing…
By Glynn Wilson – MONTGOMERY, Ala. — After all the pressure from the Watchdog Press, all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth by every special interest group all over the state and their favorite legislators convened to get what they want — and maybe in the process help the sick and poor just a little…
By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – A prayer for the Alabama legislature as it reconvenes in a special session, following another special session that failed to find funding enough to allow the state’s Medicaid services to function at a level keeping the needy alive. Schemes to finance the services with a lottery, or with…
By Glynn Wilson – The fools y’all elected to represent us in Montgomery have gone back home now on a paid vacation for a holiday they don’t even believe in, Labor Day. The fool of a governor y’all elected to represent us in the state capital is making excuses like the bad kid on the…
Governor Robert Bentley’s Lottery Bill Dies in the House – By Glynn Wilson – Never mind lottery fans and sick children who need Medicaid funding now. According to a plethora of reporting on Twitter late Tuesday afternoon, any hope of a lottery vote making it onto the November 8 ballot just went down in flames,…
By Glynn Wilson – It just goes to show that just about anything can happen in a place where nobody really knows what they’re doing. After just about every news corporation in Alabama had reported in print and on television that Governor Robert Bentley’s plan to bring the legislature back to Montgomery to pass a…
Glynn Wilson – I hate to say I told you so, especially on such an important matter of life and death for thousands each year. But as I already indicated, embattled Governor Robert Bentley’s proposal to get the Alabama Legislature to pass a bill allowing a vote on a lottery to shore up the general…
By Glynn Wilson – Two very different lottery bills won approval in the Alabama Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee on Tuesday, the second day of a special session prompted by a Medicaid funding shortfall, according to Arise policy analyst Carol Gundlach. Both are sponsored by Senator Jim McClendon, a Republican from Springville, and the Senate…
By Hank Sanders – MONTGOMERY, Ala. — What will this looming special legislative session bring? Will it bring fiscal solutions for Medicaid? Will it bring solutions for the hemorrhaging General Fund? Will it bring expansion of Medicaid? Will it bring long lurking gambling efforts to a head? Will it bring better or worse public education?…
By Glynn Wilson – MOBILE, Ala. — While the greatest political show on earth was going on live from Philedelphia on the Internet and most television news channels, with one of the greatest orators to ever occupy the Oval Office addressing the Democratic National Convention and calling on the election of Hillary Clinton to be…
