Thursday, October 01, 2015

If Republicans know how to create prosperity, why is Alabama so poor?

The headline speaks for itself. Alabama has been Republican for years:
Republican candidates have won all but one of the state's elections for governor since 1986. Many of these recent contests, however, have been quite competitive. Both of Alabama's current U.S. senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, are Republicans, but Shelby was first elected to the Senate in 1986 as a Democrat. Following the 1994 election, he switched to the Republican Party. Since the 1990s, Republicans have held a majority of Alabama's U.S. House seats. After the 2010 elections, the Alabama State Legislature came under Republican control for the first time in the state's history.
Now go here:
In presidential races, every Republican except Gerald Ford has carried Alabama since JFK.

Republicans have won six of the last seven governor's races.

Lucy Baxley, the last Democrat to hold a statewide office, lost her PSC race in 2012.
Republican orthodoxy holds that a state which creates a low-tax, business-friendly climate will attract "job-creators." Why, then, is Alabama so sickeningly poor that it can no longer issue drivers' licenses in many (poor) counties?

California -- a more "purple" state than many outsiders realize -- finally elected a Democratic governor in 2010, and the obstructionist conservatives in the legislature finally had their power (somewhat) curtailed. Result: Jerry Brown managed to end the outrageous deficits run up by his Republican predecessor. Brown's new problem has been called "the politics of prosperity."

The Republicans, undaunted, are blaming the drought on Brown. Please note: Nobody is saying that the big problem in Republican-led Alabama is prosperity.

3 comments:

AAL said...

Good times, they're just around the corner. The problem is, those darn liberals keep making Alabama wait!

Anonymous said...

Kansas is the state to look at where Brownback's trickle-down policy experiment has left Kansas on the brink of financial ruin. In June, the state issued a $840 million debt certificate, basically a worthless IOU to keep the lights on. This was after slashing education, health and basic services to the bone and raising taxes on the poor and middle-class because . . . Brownback and his buddies just can't let the theory go or admit they're wrong. Anymore than the Bush Administration is willing to admit they brought the country to its knees after 8 years of wanton spending, disastrous wars and slashed taxes for the rich and mighty.

Poppy Bush was correct: trickle down is voodoo economics, a huge scam perpetrated by the well to do.

As for the South, Alabama et al? Lawrence Wilkerson said just days ago that without revenues from states like California and New York, the South would be Bangladesh. Yet the propaganda machines keep pumping out the same tired tune--the country's going to hell in a hand basket because of all those damn liberals! Corporations are people. Money is free speech. Yada, yada.

It's amazing how dumb people can truly be.

Peggysue

stickler said...

It's possible that Alabama is closing drivers' license offices for reasons other than poverty. It turns out that the offices are closing in the poorest counties that just happen to be more than 75% black in their demographics. Of course, voter ID cards cannot be a reason, since such cards are also available at the voting Registrar, right?