Now I remember

(Originally posted on myspace last week)

I sometimes forget that Alabama doesn't always have the best reputation in the world. Living in Rocket City, where there is a huge focus on technology, I often forget that many outsiders view Alabama as somewhat. . . well, "hick-like", maybe? It's certainly not someplace that anyone would think of if asked to list the most progressive, modern states.

It's a shame, because Alabama really is much better than people think. For the most part, at least. Today is one of those days when I am almost embarrassed to live in Alabama. Listening to the Senate audio feed, I almost thought it was a bad joke. It's like bad stereotypes of Alabamians escaped from some comedy and took over the feed.

I don't normally like to listen to the Legislature, but today I decided to listen to the Alabama Senate so that I could hear whether HB196 makes any progress today. Many of us have been calling our Senators for the past few days in the hopes that it would come up for a vote. We had hoped that it would be heard on Tuesday, but when it wasn't we felt fairly confident that it would come up today.

Ha! I'll be amazed if they make any progress on anything today. A Senator has taken offense at something, apparently, and has basically decided that he'll spend the rest of the day reading anything and everything while preaching about what God expects us to do. I spent several minutes trying to figure out why I would "hep" someone "with a cup on the cone who needs change". I finally realized he was saying I should "help someone with a cup on the corner". All this because Alabama still has a tax on food. (Though dropping that tax would actually cost most of us more than keeping it does, since they would eliminate deducting federal taxes to "make up the difference.")

It's absolutely absurd. Thank goodness he's not representing me, because if he was I would move. It's not just him, though. Several of them are being completely immature. They are willing to waste the entire day and taxpayer money because they didn't get their way on something. It shouldn't be allowed, but apparently it is. They are breaking for lunch right now, and some people seem optimistic that things will be better when they get back, but I'm not too sure about that.

I know that HB196 isn't really that important, and certainly the world will keep turning if it doesn't pass today. I imagine that there are bills that ARE important that should have been heard today, though, that now may die because these people can't just get their acts together and move on. It's embarrassing. And I realize that this sort of thing happens in governments everywhere, but I've never just sat and listened to it before. I have a new appreciation for that commercial where the firefighters are acting as the goverment! I hadn't realized just how unrealistic it is. It would be nice if it seemed that our Senators were actually trying to accomplish ANYTHING today. I know that government doesn't typically move fast, but I thought it would at least move.

UPDATE - Well, the bill wasn't heard but the Senate did at least start passing other bills. Our next (and last, for this session) chance is Monday May 19.