Republicans, Democrats and 2010 midterms in Montgomery

By Jennifer J. Foster

As long as we’re talking midterm elections, yesterday’s “Good Morning, Democrats” from the Alabama Republican Party is worth a mention.

ALGOP communications director Philip Bryan began producing the morning missive one year ago this week. Against the backdrop of continued partisan gridlock in Montgomery and an ongoing (and well-publicized) effort by the ALGOP to raise money to support Republican legislative candidates in the 2010 cycle, Bryan used the occasion of the anniversary to fire this shot across the Democrats’ bow:

As long as your leadership style is punitive to those who cross you, but not productive for those who pay you, we will address your failures, bemoan your ethical standards, bash your tax hikes and recount your fat pay raises…that is, until the dawn of a new day in Alabama - Wednesday, November 10, 2010.

Republicans and Democrats in the Alabama State Legislature are famous for their—ahem, inability to get along. But in recent years—and especially since the most recent organizational session, when one senator’s leadership flip-flop threw the chamber into a chaotic, acerbic partisan abyss—the Senate has suffered from an absolute dearth of statesmanship. But since the recent failure of the Democrats’ grocery tax repeal in the House, that chamber has fallen victim to partisan gridlock, too.

Republicans say the bitter partisanship infecting the Legislature is evidence of the need for GOP control. Democrats say it’s a function of the GOP’s persistent campaign to achieve it.

Whomever you believe, 2010 is going to be a wild election year in Alabama ... and yesterday’s “GMD” is a preview of why.

Alabama tax breaks

By Jennifer J. Foster

If you saw Friday’s episode of “Capitol Journal,“ you might remember the segment in which New York Times regional newspapers reporter Dana Beyerle and I discussed the dueling bills to repeal the grocery sales tax.

By way of background, the Democrats’ bill would repeal the grocery sales tax altogether; Republicans, on the other hand, want a sales tax rebate program for Alabamians under a certain (very low) income threshhold.

The Democrats’ plan would cost an estimated $400 million, which is paid for by a repeal of the federal income tax credit for Alabamians over a certain income threshhold. The Republicans’ plan is estimated to cost between $15 million and $20 million; they are still trying to figure out how to pay for it.

I said on the show last week that I am not a huge fan of either one of these bills. The Democratic plan is bait-and-switch: It would levy a new tax—though on fewer people—in place of the lifted one. I’m not a fan of anyone, no matter how rich they are, paying taxes twice on their income. It’s bad enough to have to pay taxes once on something you’ve already earned. But the Republican bill discriminates. If some Alabamians aren’t going to have to pay the grocery tax, why should I have to?

Dana and I briefly broached the subject of all the tax breaks that exist in Alabama. The point was that if the Legislature was really serious about repealing the grocery tax in a fair and equitable way, they would take an unvarnished look at the laundry list of tax credits, incentives and rebates they give for all manner of reasons and to all manner of entities in this state.

Enter my blogger friend Kris.

He started wondering this week how much the state should be collecting but isn’t because of credits, incentives and rebates. He decided he was going to figure it out. So he started this Wiki site to catalog them.

If you live in this state, his effort is worth your time and attention.

Kris says there are only two states—Alabama and Georgia—that don’t compile tax break information for its citizens. If transparency is good enough for 48 other states, you have to wonder why our lawmakers don’t think we deserve it.

Kudos to Kris for determining to ferret out some hard numbers on an issue that politicians are very good at making very foggy.

Alabama legislators, we are watching you.

Tea parties brewing, but what will they mean?

By Jennifer J. Foster

Tomorrow is Tea Party Day.

Unless you have just emerged from your quiet life in a remote cave or today is your first day on the Internet, you’ve heard about the taxpayer revolts that have been organized in cities across the country.

The events are modeled after the famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, when American colonists decided they had had it with the Tea Act and its taxes and, by extension, taxation without representation and British rule entirely. The colonists, some dressed as Native Americans, staged a raid on three ships docked in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea—90,000 pounds of the product worth a total of $1 million by today’s measures—into the water.

Nothing like a little economic resistance to get things moving ... and that’s exactly what happened: The Crown cracked down, and several equally historically relevant events paved the path to Lexington and Concord. But the original Tea Party was the galvanizing event that divided the people of the colonies into loyalists and revolutionaries.

Tea Party 2009 planners are hoping history will repeat itself. They are looking to the rallies tomorrow to send an undeniable signal to the federal government—if not to President Obama, then to the men and women of the United States Congress—that Washington spending is out of control, that Washington has overreached into state Capitols and that, from their perspective, Washington’s governance has developed an eerie resemblance to that of a certain English monarch in the late 18th century.

It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow. From a political perspective, there is more than a little irony in a grassroots movement that is being coordinated on a national level. How many people will turn out? And will the group include anyone who doesn’t listen to Glenn Beck and/or Sean Hannity? That’s not a joke: If the group does include non-Beckites and/or those who haven’t been “Hannitized,” it will indicate that the protests have developed a broader base than just those who opposed Barack Obama as a presidential candidate; if not, it will mean that the tea parties are just the newest incantation of that opposition to Obama.

SIDEBAR: I cannot believe I just wrote the word “Hannitized” on my blog. Consider that this week’s sign that the Apocalypse is upon us. END SIDEBAR

There’s something else, too, and I was going to mention it as my wild card on “Capitol Journal” last week, but we ran out of time: There’s evidence to suggest that it won’t just be tea party supporters showing up at the events tomorrow. The president’s supporters have an opportunity to take advantage of the media that the tea partiers will have assembled; don’t be surprised to find the so-called “teaparty infiltration teams” (yes, that’s an unfortunate acronym) there in force to advance their own message. How will that go down? Will the protestors and the counterprotestors play well with others?

And then there is the sheer politics of it. How will elected officials themselves react? Will they participate? Fox News reported last week that early indications are that most of them will stay away. This surely won’t be the case, however, for non-incumbent politicians aspiring to 2010 wins. One example: Alabama GOP gubernatorial candidate Tim James will attend several tea parties tomorrow, including the one here in Auburn. And looking toward the 2010 cycle, will tea party supporters lash out against Republican and Democratic incumbents alike? If so, what will that mean for third-party candidates (and keep in mind what I said two weeks ago about ballot access for those minor parties)?

Imagine millions of disaffected – yet engaged – voters going to the polls to reject the two major parties but finding their ability to so hampered by ballot-access restrictions for their preferred candidates.

Talk about your recipe for revolution.

See also:

A really cool first-hand account of the original Boston Tea Party, from Eyewitness to History.