New Years - AGAIN?
It's only the third day of 2005 and I'm already getting the impression it's going to be "more of the same...". Whilst I was away (working), the County Commission has initiated another 1 percent sales tax on goods and services.
If Will Rogers was right when he said American politicians were "the best money could buy", inflation truly is out of control. This group of politicians couldn't lead a group of Girl Scouts through an ice cream store without taking casualties. They're also living proof that, at least in Birmingham, Alabama, we're still paying a pretty stiff price for slavery. To say the council's biased is the 2005 equivalent of saying Bull Connor was "extreme" in his reactions to peaceful protests. Having already run competent officeholders - and most businesses - out of Birmingham's city limits, they're now determined that "white flight" won't be over until Jefferson County, Alabama has a racial balance equal to that of Soweto.
Today, what used to be a bustling downtown is home to a "diverse" but miniscule loft/condo conversion community and the assorted lawyers and bankers who were exempted from paying taxes as an incentive to get them to remain in their high-rise office buildings. None of the lawyers, bankers and "professionals" incidentally, would dream of "living" in Birmingham - most commute to homes in Shelby County - the area known as "over the mountain" or the "tiny kingdom" of Mountain Brook. Mountain Brook, incidentally, is where there are plenty of South Americans and "people of color" - until 5PM when most of them leave their jobs as gardeners and servants. Like the rest of the U-S, our liberal intelligencia follows the old Adam Clayton Powell adage "do as I SAY, not as I DO."
Of course, that's local politics and not interesting to anyone outside Birmingham.
Unless, of course, you want to see what happens when progressive leadership is used as a synonym for payback. Birmingham's trying is darndest to become the next Detroit, Michigan. Actually, it would aspire to be Marion Barry's Washington, D.C., but Birmingham - like the rest of Alabama - has an inflated view of itself psychologists usually trace to a deep-seated inferiority complex.
Of course, if you'd passed on the airport that turned Atlanta into a mega-city, and virtually every other opportunity since 1950, you'd feel a little sheepish yourself.
Several years ago, one of the local "insiders" asked me what I felt it would take to bring Birmingham to her rightful place in the new south.
I stand by my answers:
1) Several key indictments of our "opinion makers" and politicians along with several "old line" funerals
2) Constitutional reform
3) Term limits for all politicians, judges and "civil servants"
Happy New Year, Birmingham.
If Will Rogers was right when he said American politicians were "the best money could buy", inflation truly is out of control. This group of politicians couldn't lead a group of Girl Scouts through an ice cream store without taking casualties. They're also living proof that, at least in Birmingham, Alabama, we're still paying a pretty stiff price for slavery. To say the council's biased is the 2005 equivalent of saying Bull Connor was "extreme" in his reactions to peaceful protests. Having already run competent officeholders - and most businesses - out of Birmingham's city limits, they're now determined that "white flight" won't be over until Jefferson County, Alabama has a racial balance equal to that of Soweto.
Today, what used to be a bustling downtown is home to a "diverse" but miniscule loft/condo conversion community and the assorted lawyers and bankers who were exempted from paying taxes as an incentive to get them to remain in their high-rise office buildings. None of the lawyers, bankers and "professionals" incidentally, would dream of "living" in Birmingham - most commute to homes in Shelby County - the area known as "over the mountain" or the "tiny kingdom" of Mountain Brook. Mountain Brook, incidentally, is where there are plenty of South Americans and "people of color" - until 5PM when most of them leave their jobs as gardeners and servants. Like the rest of the U-S, our liberal intelligencia follows the old Adam Clayton Powell adage "do as I SAY, not as I DO."
Of course, that's local politics and not interesting to anyone outside Birmingham.
Unless, of course, you want to see what happens when progressive leadership is used as a synonym for payback. Birmingham's trying is darndest to become the next Detroit, Michigan. Actually, it would aspire to be Marion Barry's Washington, D.C., but Birmingham - like the rest of Alabama - has an inflated view of itself psychologists usually trace to a deep-seated inferiority complex.
Of course, if you'd passed on the airport that turned Atlanta into a mega-city, and virtually every other opportunity since 1950, you'd feel a little sheepish yourself.
Several years ago, one of the local "insiders" asked me what I felt it would take to bring Birmingham to her rightful place in the new south.
I stand by my answers:
1) Several key indictments of our "opinion makers" and politicians along with several "old line" funerals
2) Constitutional reform
3) Term limits for all politicians, judges and "civil servants"
Happy New Year, Birmingham.
posted by Jim Shepherd | 1:24 PM
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