Alabama

The South Is Still Doing It Again

I pointed out that the south is beginning to attempt various forms of legalization of weed. Looks like others are joining in.

Bill to Legalize and Regulate Marijuana Introduced in Alabama

FrEaKy SeX FrIdAy – Halloween edition 2011

Sex Offender ? NO trick or treating for you.

This story comes from local media out of Alabama [bold text added]:

No trick or treating for Russell Co. sex offenders

The Russell County Sheriff’s Office says it wants to make sure parents have one less thing to worry about when their children go trick or treating next Monday night.

On Halloween, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., the Russell County Sheriff’s Office is partnering with the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to sponsor a meeting of all registered sex offenders in the county.

All sex offenders who are on probation are required to attend. Sex offenders who are not on probation are encouraged to attend. “We’re just kind of improving on what I already thought was a good idea that they tried last year or the year before. and so um, the state probation office, pardons and paroles office actually said yes you can do this, we’ll make them be there if you’re willing to help provide security so we’re doing that,” explained Sheriff Heath Taylor.

The meeting on Monday night for the 150 registered sex offenders is being held at the Russell County Courthouse.

Nothing wrong with this. Protecting children from sexual predators and offenders. Well hold on just a gosh darn minute. They say "All sex offenders".

Why does a person convicted of a sexual assault [on his own wife] and now a registered sex offender have to come to this meeting of ‘sex offenders’ ? He didn’t molest a child. He got into a fight after having sex with his wife and she called the cops. They were both drinking, but only took him to jail and charged him with sexual assault. He is a registered sex offender for life because of this. Sorry Dave !

What else is wrong with this meeting of sex offenders, especially those convicted of pedophilia ? Well slap me silly, but now they know who their friends are in the local area. Y’all have just set up a networking group of sexual deviants to share and exchange ideas. Most of them probably already knew each other, or that the other existed through a search of the public registry, but now they are in contact with each other. Thanks local law enforcement !!

By the way, here I am in my Halloween costume -
Cant wait to try it out on the neighborhood …

Hey kid, I got some candy for you !

Follow @BuelahMan

All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Revolt or WordPress.com

How Was Your Florida Spring Break?

Courtesy of Redskynews

I have a few young family members that just had Spring Break. I called them personally and asked them to not go to Florida (or anywhere on the Gulf Coast). I explained to them that I believe that swimming, eating the seafood (maybe some people don’t mind their fish with lesions on it), or even frollicking in the sand could be hazardous to their health.

As far as I know, only one relative went (after telling me on the phone that she wasn’t going). I have yet to speak with her about it (and probably won’t). Young people have priorities very different than an old guy like me, I understand that. But had one of my uncles ever personally called me and asked me to not do something, I would have evaluated sources and information shared with me and made my own decision. I hope she did this.

Would she have seen the news that shrimpers keep pulling up nets full of oil (found in the Courthouse News Service link above):

At a scoping meeting last week in Biloxi, Miss., Vietnamese shrimpers said they have pulled up nets full of oil from the seafloor and have had to decide whether to report the oil to the Coast Guard, which would mean dumping their day’s catch, or pretend they don’t see the oil.

John Lliff, a supervisor with NOAA’s Damage Assessment Remediation and Restoration Program, said no one knows how much of the seafloor is covered in oil. …

Shrimpers in Biloxi also said that in places where shrimp have been plentiful, there are no shrimp now. …

If she had been investigating my claims, she may have found one such article that caught my attention where I was informed that Mississippi’s Attorney General, Jim Hood, attended various Town Hall meetings in South Mississippi to find that the biggest complaint was not the slow financial payouts by BP’s hired hand, Feinberg, (I covered him here) but more related to how many people are getting sick:

[Waveland resident Laurie] Lambert said, “I mean there’s people getting sick everywhere and nobody realized how bad it is.”

“It makes me sick to see little kids swimming out there in that water. There’s dead fish everywhere. I mean, that alone is nasty. That’s just a cause right there for health problems,” said Lambert.

While others were a bit more poignant describing their ailments:

“When they started burning the dispersants out there, my lungs caught on fire. I have emphysema and COPD,” Martin Rehbein said.

He is now beginning to see skin problems. He wants Hood to know he’s convinced it’s caused from the spill.

“These things just started coming out and this has gotten a lot worse,” said Rehbein.

I wonder if she saw any of the 136 dead bottlenose dolphins that seem to be washing up all over the coast during her visit? From MSNBC:

As of Monday night, scientists counted 136 bottlenose dolphin carcasses found since mid-January along the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, almost half of them newly born or stillborn infants.

And [Blair Mase, NOAA's stranding coordinator for the Southeast] noted that “we’re still in the response phase” since carcasses are washing up daily, including at least two on Tuesday in Louisiana.

Or the new rash of sea turtles dying in droves?

“In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen an increase” in turtle deaths in the northern Gulf, Connie Barclay, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told msnbc.com.

Since March 15, she noted, 39 deaths were confirmed in Mississippi, 4 in Alabama and 3 in Louisiana.

I will admit that when I read at Digital Journal (via Activist Post) that the Obama Administration decided to restrict finding on these dead dolphins referenced above, it causes me to consider that we have just another lie and cover-up in the making. But what else is new with the Fascist State?

And like everything else I bitch about here, surely any thinking person will admit the huge possibility that things are far worse in this situation than officials will ever admit to. Just consider that for every dead animal that washes ashore, there is likely many more that don’t make it to be seen:

The death toll from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill goes far beyond the animal corpses washing ashore, says a report that warns that whale and dolphin deaths may be 50 times higher than believed.

The report, by an international team of marine mammal specialists, estimates that for every corpse that washes ashore another 50 may never be found.

I was discussing a different topic at my friend, DublinMick’s blog, when I noticed this comment post that caught my attention:

FLORIDA MEGASTORM: WORST YET TO COME, 3/31/11 10 a.m.

400 lightning strikes in 20 minutes, widespread flooding, power outages near Brooksville and points east. This is from the first hours of this storm, although it was turbulent overnight.

Majority of storm still out in Gulf, aimed at coast just north of Clearwater. Storm moving 45 mph. They keep extending the tornado watches. Wind 100 mph in places.

Lots of reported tornado sightings. Everything canceled, people running for cover. Weather guy on channel 8 is explaining it as just another cold front. Lots of high rises on the beach near St. Pete are in big trouble in about 15 minutes.

Dutchsinse called this two days ago on YouTube.

Report from St. Pete: “My dogs have been freaking out since Sunday night.”

National Weather Service: “Main threat straight line winds.” Hmm, that would put the multiple tornadoes second. Lightning and hail #3.

Speaking of some way to stir this mess up even more and then dump it further inland. One of the early fears about this poison dump was “what if” a big storm hit? It appears we may see what happens. My prayers and hopes for the safety of those citizens go out.

Now, I don’t think that my young niece has any immediate health effect to deal with, but from what I have read it doesn’t necessarily happen immediately. I also understand that most that have had ill effects are full time residents, by and large.

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All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Revolt or WordPress.com

What’s For Dinner?

The TV may tell you that it is over (or simply ignore the issue, as instructed from on high), but there is not a chance in hell I am going to eat ANYTHING from the Gulf of Mexico for a very long time. I will NOT eat ANY shrimp, unless I can be convinced that it originates from elsewhere and is safe. This means that those trips to the Chinese and Mexican restaurants are over (not that I do it very often, anyway).

Why? Because the government and media lie with abandon. As I first questioned long ago, why aren’t people having independent tests done? When they do they find a totally different result than the “official” testers do (isn’t that amazing how that works). Seriously, a “smell test”? There are far more accurate and scientific means of ensuring the food is safe. I can only think of one reason why they would NOT conduct those tests and rely on the ineffectual tests: hiding something.

So, when a local DOES collect a sample and have it independently tested, what do they find?

When Mac learned that the Gulf shrimp testing performed to date had not included an analysis of whole shrimp with intact shells or digestive tract, she decided to mobilize. She obtained two pounds of locally caught shrimp from Venice, a small town located in the heart of Southern Louisiana. The samples were promptly transported on ice to a laboratory in Mobile Alabama, where Chemist Dr. Robert Namen tested the digestive tracts of the shrimp for components of crude oil. What they found was an alarming 193 parts per million of “Oil & Grease.”

h/t IntelHub

I have a friend that I graduated high school with that is in the medical field and lives down in New Orleans. I have been quite concerned about her and her family and have asked her about the situation down there and if she and her family are well. The response I got was so very cryptic as to give me pause: she said that she would have to speak with me in person to explain. This person has never been quiet about anything in her life, as far as I know (very outspoken and knowledgable), so when she made that comment I knew to NOT quiz her about it. Something very strange is being conducted, to a point that I made the assumption she is afraid to say anything. I could be wrong.

But, there are those that will speak up (and from the looks of it, she needs to, if exposure to contaminant in the Gulf caused this):

Lisa Nelson of Orange Beach, AL is one of a growing number of people sickened and dying as a result of the BP disaster. Local physicians have no idea how to diagnose or treat patients who have bee exposed to highly toxic crude/dispersant combination. Local, State, and federal agencies continue to cover-up nad offer zero assistance.

From a cursory glance, it looks like the woman went thru a horrible car wreck or something. The bruises and the swelling… I mean, this woman is a doll and look what happened to her. And she isn’t the only one. There are many more people sick from this and very few Doctors will even discuss any potential for chemical poisoning. It’s a flu or virus or something else.

But what if they could prove that the sea life is dying, too? I mean surely the huge fish kills mean something, don’t they? What about the coral reefs that support much of that life?

Coral, Marine-Life Devastation Near BP Oil Spill Indicates Much Worse Long-Term Damage Than Feds Had Admitted

“What we have at this point is the smoking gun,” said Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who led the expedition aboard the Ronald Brown, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel.
“There is an abundance of circumstantial data that suggests that what happened is related to the recent oil spill,” Fisher said.

It is almost as if every single communication that the government issues and asks for feedback is fraught with problems. Many can’t even reply via email or online forms to attend events scheduled to allow citizens to participate. They also have a revolving door of officials who first ok’d the usage of the banned Corexit (banned in the UK and most of Europe) and now are in charge of the citizen communications. From Activist Post:

The November 3rd EPA press release claims their Restoration Task Force wants to hear from the public, but when coastal residents attempt to RSVP they are informed that the registration deadline was November 1st (two days prior to when the EPA let concerned citizens know about the event).

Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator that approved countless exemptions for the use of the COREXIT is hosting a public meeting Monday in Pensacola, Florida that will help the public deal with the effects of dispersed oil. Here’s is what the release said, “President Obama issued an executive order in October to create the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, continuing the administration’s ongoing commitment to the gulf region. The task force works to integrate federal restoration efforts with those of local stakeholders and state and tribal governments, and to facilitate accountability and support throughout the restoration process.  Document

Most residents on the coast maintain that BP‘s 100 million dollar PR campaign has all but silenced the free press while independent test results tell a much different story than our federal agencies would have us believe. “I find it ironic that the same person (Lisa Jackson) that approved the use of the chemical that poisoned the Gulf is now in charge of recovery… Now the company responsible for this mess is telling our government agencies what is safe for it‘s citizens?”, said Cherri Foytlin, the wife of an out of work oil worker, “I attended the Clean Gulf Conference sponsored by most of the major players in the Industry. Marty Cramer of Conoco Phillips announced, ‘The use of dispersants and burning of oil is no longer considered an alternative solution – it is the solution.’ What is a public hearing without the voice of the people? Some of the people in that meeting should already be in jail.”

I don’t know what is going on, but it seems clear that a cover-up is ongoing. When I see people who live there saying they won’t eat the stuff, I sure as hell won’t.

Bon Appetit.

All posts are opinions meant to foster comment, reporting, teaching & study under the “fair use doctrine” in Sec. 107 of U.S. Code Title 17. No statement of fact is made or should be implied. Ads appearing on this blog are solely the product of the advertiser and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BuehlahMan’s Revolt or WordPress.com

Give Me The Republican Nomination For Ag Commisssion… Or…

Alabama politics: Which is more apt?

h/t Raw Story

Elevated Levels of Benzene, Hydrogen Sulfide, Methylene Chloride in Gulf Air

And so the cancer sicknesses can begin to take their toll on humans (from Facing South):

Today the Louisiana Environmental Action Network released its analysis of air monitoring test results by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s air testing data comes from Venice, a coastal community 75 miles south of New Orleans in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish.

The findings show that levels of airborne chemicals have far exceeded state standards and what’s considered safe for human exposure.

For instance, hydrogen sulfide has been detected at concentrations more than 100 times greater than the level known to cause physical reactions in people. Among the health effects of hydrogen sulfide exposure are eye and respiratory irritation as well as nausea, dizziness, confusion and headache.

The concentration threshold for people to experience physical symptoms from hydrogen sulfide is about 5 to 10 parts per billion. But as recently as last Thursday, the EPA measured levels at 1,000 ppb. The highest levels of airborne hydrogen sulfide measured so far were on May 3, at 1,192 ppb.

Testing data also shows levels of volatile organic chemicals that far exceed Louisiana’s own ambient air standards. VOCs cause acute physical health symptoms including eye, skin and respiratory irritation as well as headaches, dizziness, weakness, nausea and confusion.

Louisiana’s ambient air standard for the VOC benzene, for example, is 3.76 ppb, while its standard for methylene chloride is 61.25 ppb. Long-term exposure to airborne benzene has been linked to cancer, while the EPA considers methylene chloride a probable carcinogen.

Air testing results show VOC concentrations far above these state standards. On May 6, for example, the EPA measured VOCs at levels of 483 ppb. The highest levels detected to date were on April 30, at 3,084 ppb, following by May 2, at 3,416 ppb.

Have you still got that idiotic idea of a Florida vacation in mind? We put that out of our mind before this, but now, even if someone GAVE me the money and everything was free, I wouldn’t drive to spend a minute there.

Our world in the SE USA (and likely beyond) is doomed yet the response is almost exactly the same as we are getting with the banking fiasco ripoff. Just more obfuscation, finger pointing and little else of substance to change the reality (or even acknowledge it fully). Washington’s Blog makes the connection:

As ABC News notes, the White House allowed BP to suppress video of the oil spill for 3 weeks; and a top oil spill expert says that BP’s use of booms around the spill site now won’t really do anything … and is just an exercise in public relations so that it looks like it’s doing something.

BP is also using dispersants to hide the extent of the oil spill. Specifically, as many commentators note, the dispersants cause much of the oil to sink, so that it appears that the spill isn’t that big. But the dispersants are not only highly toxic, but will also probably make the damage from the oil itself even worse.

Moreover, just as the cover-up about the severity of the financial crisis has allowed Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and most of Congress to kill real financial reform, BP and the government’s drastic underplaying of the size of the spill has allowed BP to skate by without taking emergency actions, such as bringing in booms on an emergency basis, or to undertake more pro-active and creative responses.

And just as nothing has changed going forward with regard to the economy since the 2008 meltdown, nothing has changed with regard to offshore drilling.

For example, since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20th, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. And a whistleblower who survived the Gulf oil explosion claims in a lawsuit filed today that BP’s operations at another oil platform risk another catastrophic accident that could “dwarf” the Gulf oil spill, partly because BP never even reviewed critical engineering designs for the operation.

Indeed, the industry and government spokespeople have used the exact same word as each crisis – financial and environmental – unfolded. They said the problem was “contained”.

In both cases, we the people are left holding the bag because the giant companies and their campaign-contribution-buddies in DC are trying to sweep the severity of the problem under the rug, to manage the crisis as p.r. campaigns to protect those who let it happen … instead of actually taking steps necessary to solve the problems, and to make sure they won’t happen again.

I wonder if this seems futile to you (especially considering that MOST of the oil is purposefully being dispersed under water).

BTW: As I previously noted, the Gulf Currents have already grabbed the oil and is spreading it to the rest of the Sunshine State. Ed at Not Another Conspiracy tells us that tarballs have reached The Florida Keys.

Goodbye reef.

Now answer this. Will someone get pissed when it hits the eastern seaboard or should we wait until it hits Europe?

Just wondering….

The Coming Gulf Crud

I pointed out early on how horrific this Gulf oil vomiting is. How it could turn the Gulf (and possibly every ocean black). How it could kill all living beings in her waters and if the reservoir is as big as they claim, might kill off every living being in ALL oceans (thereby killing every other terrestrial being, as well). What I am saying is that if this isn’t stopped, it could be the very end of the planet. I don’t think this is overboard, in any degree.

As I have said already a few times, this is far worse than what they have been telling us and even MSM is beginning to pick up this story. NPR had a fascinating story the other day and Common Dreams picked up on it.

Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.

A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.

Given that uncertainty, the amount of material spewing from the pipe could range from 56,000 barrels to 84,000 barrels a day. It is important to note that it’s not all oil. The short video BP released starts out with a shot of methane, but at the end it seems to be mostly oil.

“There’s potentially some fluctuation back and forth between methane and oil,” Wereley said.

But assuming that the lion’s share of the material coming out of the pipe is oil, Wereley’s calculations show that the official estimates are too low.

“We’re talking more than a factor-of-10 difference between what I calculate and the number that’s being thrown around,” he said.

At least two other calculations support him.

Timothy Crone, an associate research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, used another well-accepted method to calculate fluid flows. Crone arrived at a similar figure, but he said he’d like better video from BP before drawing a firm conclusion.

Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, also got a similar answer, using just pencil and paper.

Without even having a sense of scale from the BP video, he correctly deduced that the diameter of the pipe was about 20 inches. And though his calculation is less precise than Wereley’s, it is in the same ballpark.

“I would peg it at around 20,000 to 100,000 barrels per day,” he said.

Chiang called the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day “almost certainly incorrect.”

Chiang is being pretty nice about that. For, as always, the lying liars are bald-facely NOT telling us the truth. Of course their official estimate is untrue. To explain that they have ruined our planet irreversibly, would never do. BP disagrees with the figures, altho they were the fastest to suggest that no one could accurately estimate the flow of oil, even tho there is technology readily available to do such an estimate.

No matter what the lying assholes say, tho, what is happening in the Gulf is far worse than the Exxon Valdez spill (which was about 250,000 gallons of oil). This hole is shitting that every day. Magnitudes worse in volume.

Guess what? Even the MSM is hinting that we were lied to about this:

This new, much larger number suggests that capturing — and cleaning up — this oil may be a much bigger challenge than anyone has let on.

And you want to know what else? It could do this for years or even decades before emptying its gut:

Matthew Simmons, retired chair of the energy-industry investment bank Simmons & Company, said that BP and the US military’s engineers are more or less clueless about cutting off the flow.

“We don’t have any idea how to stop this,” Simmons said. The former banker mocked a proposal to try and plug the leak with trash, saying it was a “joke.”

Simmons noted that the pressure at 5,000 feet undersea — where the well site is located — is so high, that containment efforts are likely often to fail. At 5,000 feet underwater, blocking elements have to be able to hold even with pressures off 40,000 pounds per square inch.

Incoming American Association of Petroleum Geologists chief David Resink says the oil reservoir that is feeding the spill is colossal.

“You’re talking about a reservoir that could have tens of millions of barrels in it,” Resink said. At the current spill rate, it “would take years to deplete,” he added.

There is history with spills and as in the case of the Valdez, there was a cost associated with harm to humans. There is nasty stuff in that putrid slime (an estimated 50,000 gallons of benzene were released from the Alaska disaster. To those in clean up, it cost the their health (and lives):

Oh, and by the way, It’s Here!

There are no words….

The “New” Dead Sea

Coming to a shore near you…

WTF Thursday: Here Comes The Guard

What happens when funds for the Sheriff’s Department is used up? Send in the Guard, instead of sending in the money. And the Sheriff is in acceptance, like a good little Sheople:

Its coming, folks.

H/t matrixxx123456789 & PrisonPlanet

Sweet Home Alabama

It’s not exactly what you think, but to me this is very, very cool.

h/t Neatorama

(There are several Mariachi band cover songs found here. Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust, The Cranberry’s “Zombie”, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall”, and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” (and more). But you know I’m a redneck and Lynyrd Skynyrd is one of my favs. What can I say?

B’Man’s Hypocrite Watch: Alabama’s Own, Sen Richard Shelby

Mooncat at LeftinAlabama has a great post up today about who knew about the torture going on, even as they scream they knew nothing.

But don’t think, even for a second, that this is just those hypocrites on “the right”. There were Dems aware and didn’t say anything.

But the bastard above (the one in the middle holding hands with Saddam) knew what was going on, even before the memos.

See mooncat’s post for the details. Till then, immerse yourself in the touchy-feely that Dick had with Saddam. Notice that he is posing for the camera, but I wonder if his mind was on what was in Saddam’s pants.

I’m just asking…

Gene’O Must Have One Of Those “Men Crushes” On This Old Redneck

I wonder if I should file a stalker police report or just be sad for the faux progressive?

Gene’O, I don’t swing that way (not that there is anything wrong with being gay).

Of course, in this financial mess, if you were to offer me enough money, I may let you suck my pecker. (But then you would have to remove Barack Obama’s first.)

Do you have a big mouth? You’ll need it.

Richard Noggin’ Saturday: Every Redneck Senator

This is how gullible and ignorant most us rednecks are: we don’t realize that our very own Senators are working very hard against us… because they are so stupid and short-sighted (and/or corrupt).

Is there anyone that actually voted for that fucktard, Shelby of Alabama? There must have because he was elected, but the funny thing is that I can’t seem to find anyone in my travels that will own up to voting for him.

How about that dickhead, Bob Corker, who wanted President Obama to automatically force a wage cut on American autoworkers, so wages will be more in line with the transplants Asian automakers? (Now ain’t that a hoot, rednecks. Your Senator wants to cut your wages to bring it DOWN to match the rest of the world. And you seem to be oblivious and in some cases agree wholeheartedly.)

I prospered as the automotive sector made a move from higher wages up north to the “right to work” states that have so many uneducated workers who have lived basically poor lives that it was heaven for us. But now we are seeing how this shift affects us because many of the good jobs that were shipped here because of cheap labor have now all gone overseas, leaving us dumbass rednecks poor and stupid. Why? Cheaper labor (and in some cases, slave labor).

When will we act as if we have just a little bit of sense and cull these absurd fools out? When will you ignorant and complicit rednecks realize the royal f#cking you are getting from your own redneck leadership?

I have nothing to lose (its already gone), but you might. You better get vocal before you lose all of your shit, too. From Alternet:

Even More than Race, the South Is About Exploiting Workers

Cheap labor. Even more than race, it’s the thread that connects all of Southern history—from the ante-bellum South of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis to Tennessee’s Bob Corker, Alabama’s Richard Shelby and the other anti-union Southerners in today’s U.S. Senate.

It’s at the epicenter of a sad class divide between a desperate, poorly educated workforce and a demagogic oligarchy, and it has been a demarcation line stronger than the Mason-Dixon in separating the region from the rest of the nation.

The recent spectacle of Corker, Shelby and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky leading the GOP attack on the proposed $14 billion loan to the domestic auto industry—with 11 other Southern senators marching dutifully behind—made it crystal clear. The heart of Southern conservatism is the preservation of a status quo that serves elite interests.

Expect these same senators and their colleagues in the US House to wage a similar war in the coming months against the proposed Employee Free Choice Act authorizing so-called “card check” union elections nationwide.

“Dinosaurs,” Shelby of Alabama called General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler as he maneuvered to bolster the nonunion Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and other foreign-owned plants in his home state by sabotaging as many as three million jobs nationwide.

Corker, a multi-millionaire who won his seat in a mud-slinging, race-tinged election in 2006, was fairly transparent in his goal to expunge what he considers the real evil in the Big Three and US industry in general: unions. When the concession-weary United Auto Workers balked at GOP demands for a near-immediate reduction in worker wages and benefits, Corker urged President Bush to force-feed wage cuts to UAW workers in any White House-sponsored bailout.

If Shelby, Corker, and McConnell figured they were helping the Japanese, German and Korean-owned plants in their home states, they were seriously misguided. The failure of the domestic auto industry would inflict a deep wound on the same supplier-dealer network that the foreign plants use. The already existing woes of the foreign-owned industry were clearly demonstrated in December when Toyota announced its decision to put on indefinite hold the opening of its $1.3 billion plant near Blue Springs in northeast Mississippi.

The Southern Republicans are full of contradictions. Downright hypocrisy might be a better description. Shelby staunchly opposes universal health care—a major factor in the Big Three’s financial troubles since they operate company plans—yet the foreign automakers he defends benefit greatly from the government-run health care programs in their countries.

These same senators gave their blessing to hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to the foreign automakers to open plants in their states, yet they were willing to let the US auto industry fall into bankruptcy.

In their zeal to destroy unions and their hard-fought wage-and-benefits packages, the Southern senators could not care less that workers in their home states are among the lowest paid in the nation. Ever wonder why the South remains the nation’s poorest region despite generations of seniority-laden senators and representatives in Congress?

Why weren’t these same senators protesting the high salaries in the financial sector when the Congress approved the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street? Why pick on blue-collar workers at the Big Three who last year agreed to huge concessions expected to save the companies an estimated $4 billion a year by 2010? These concessions have already helped lower union wages to non-union levels at some auto plants.

The idea of working people joining together to have a united voice across the table from management scares most Southern politicians to death. After all, they go to the same country clubs as management. When Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker warned of Democratic opponent Ronnie Musgrove’s ties to the “Big Labor Bosses” in this year’s US Senate race, he was protecting the “Big Corporate Bosses” who are his benefactors.

The South today may be more racially enlightened than ever in its history. However, it is still a society in which the ruling class—the chambers of commerce that have taken over from yesterday’s plantation owners and textile barons—uses politics to maintain control over a vast, jobs-hungry workforce. After the oligarchy lost its war for slavery—the cheapest labor of all—it secured the next best thing in Jim Crow and the indentured servitude known as sharecropping and tenant farming. It still sees cheap, pliable, docile labor as the linchpin of the Southern economy.

In 1948, when the so-called “Dixiecrats” rebelled against the national Democratic Party, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina declared war on “the radicals, subversives, and the Reds” who want to upset the Southern way of life.

Seven years later, Mississippi’s political godfather, the late US Sen. James O. Eastland, told other prominent Southern pols during a meeting at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis that the South will “fight the CIO” (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and unionism with just as much vehemence and determination as it fights racial integration.

Eastland, Thurmond and their friends lost the integration battle. Their successors are still fighting the other enemy.

See more stories tagged with: labor, south, oligarchy

Joseph B. Atkins is a veteran journalist, professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi and author of Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), a book that details the Southern labor movement and its treatment in the press. A version of this column appeared in the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American and the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger.

Richard Noggin’ Saturday: Alabama’s Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett

Alabama Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett

I normally don’t add the pics from Jonathon’s site, but in this case, I felt I needed to make an exception by showing the face of evil dressed up as a servant to the people. I read this from Jonathon Turley and thought to myself, “how many of these people are in jail being starved for smoking weed?”

This sounds precisely like something a backwoods redneck sheriff would do. Take in over $200,000 (probably buying his own personal coke) and starve those who are under your care.

My hometown sheriff’s department have a long history of this kind of shit (Tishomingo county, Mississippi).

We had one sheriff who went to prison and got out to become a preacher. Praise Gawd!

Another, Sheriff Bob “Cocaine” Payne, got his nickname for a reason. Can you guess why?

But, as bad as the inmates had it (for about three years I went to the jail every Sunday just to talk to folks who were locked up :under the guise of religion, but I never said religious shit to them) I can never remember it this bad. They just needed someone to talk to from outside, especially when family had given up or they had none. But they had some food, even though other “contraband”  issues were pretty stupid. I can’t tell you how many kids (18 or so) that I spoke with that simply had a dime bag of weed on them and couldn’t even afford the bail or a bail bondsman. Yet, they would languish months and up to a year for such a trivial thing.

I also know Morgan County pretty well (lived there many years ago and have many customers in the town of Decatur). This is a more robust and populated town than most Podunk towns I live around. Right on the river and probably has around 40,000 citizens (my hometown has about 3,000 as a comparison).

So, you would think that they could find a more understanding redneck to run their county. I also wonder if this sorry sob was put into the general population? Can you imagine those he was starving getting their hands on him. What a total piece of shit.

Federal Judge Jails Alabama Sheriff Who Profited After Inmates Went Hungry

U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon in Alabama took the extraordinary step this week of ordering Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett to be locked up in his own jail after testimony showed that he had deprived inmates of adequate food while profiting from the meager diet. Bartlett personally kept $212,000 in “surplus money” from the meal program.

Judge Clemon held the hearing to determine whether the sheriff was in violation of that agreement with some surprising testimony.
Bartlett is to remain the Morgan County jail until he comes up with an adequate plan for feeding the 300 inmates as required under the 2001 court order.

Clemon correctly questioned the legality of allowing sheriffs to keep the surplus money from such programs, noting “He makes money by failing to spend the allocated funds for food for inmates.”

Yet, 55 of Alabama’s 67 counties are allowed to keep make money operating their jail kitchens. The law pays sheriffs $1.75 a day for each prisoner they house and lets the elected officers pocket any profit they can generate. Alabama should be ashamed of creating such a system that is ripe with abuse and conflicts of interest. I have done prison work for roughly three decades and I have never heard of such a system.

Inmates testified that they had to struggled to buy enough food to survive. They described how they would often received half an egg, a spoonful of oatmeal and one piece of toast most days at their 3 a.m. daily breakfast.

Bartlett insisted that he took steps to vary the meal such as spending $1,000 cost for an 18-wheeler full of corn dogs, which he split with another sheriff. He then forced the prisoners to eat corn dogs twice a day until they were all used. The judge was not impressed with the corn dog diet as a point of pride. “So until they were used up, they became the staple diet for inmates in the Morgan County Jail?” Clemon asked.

Alabama should be subject to a federal investigation for this program and the violation of the constitutional rights of the inmates in their care. Congress should also hold hearings on the matter since these sheriffs received federal funding directly linked to inmate care.

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