Unbelievable how you win an election in Alabama
by Jesse J. Lewis, Sr.

It’s sad that if you run as a Republican in the State of Alabama all you have to say is – “I am a Conservative and the first thing I’ll do is repeal Obamacare.” The sad part about this is Obamacare will be with us for many years to come. Should some changes be made? Yes. Keep in mind seven million people have registered.
When this program gets more successful, when Obama leaves office, it will be referred to as Affordable Care Act, for they will not give Obama the credit for having a successful program.
The big topic of the day is the Paycheck Fairness Act. Republicans are criticizing the Democrat-backed Paycheck Fairness Act as a “desperate” election-year stunt that hurts women, criticizing both the White House’s own pay practices and the numbers it uses to advocate for equal pay.
“The Truth is the ‘Paycheck Fairness Act’ is a desperate political ploy,” Republican National Committee Press Secretary Kirsten Kukowski said in a memo Tuesday to mark Equal Pay Day, the annual public awareness holiday that highlights the day each year when women catch up to their male counterparts’ pay from the previous year.
The Paycheck Fairness Act, which Democrats are pushing hard as part of the party’s election-year agenda, would require employers to disclose payment information to a federal commission, prevent employees from being punished for inquiring about their co-workers’ pay, and make employers liable to civil suits alleging pay discrimination. The bill could make an appearance on the Senate floor as soon as Wednesday.
According to the Republicans “ObamaCare is deeply unpopular, and they don’t want to talk about how policy cancellations are hurting women, or about how women are losing access to the doctors of their choice, or about how it’s meant smaller paychecks for working women (and men),” the statement concluded. “So instead they’re talking about the ‘Paycheck Fairness Act’ using dishonest rhetoric and inaccurate math.”
It’s a key part of Republicans’ midterm elections pitch to women. In 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney lost women to Obama by 11 points. A CNN/ORC International poll released earlier this year found that more than half of all Americans think the GOP doesn’t understand women. That number jumps when you ask only women.
The Republican Party cannot criticize the Democrats for finding a horse they could ride to victory. We all know that the Republicans and Democrats are trying to find something positive that would assure them maintaining the Senate and winning the House is the upcoming election.

e-mail: jjlewis@birminghamtimes.com

by Hollis Wormsby, Jr.

No Snitch Culture Anchor of Culture of Violence

Birmingham teen Tajuan Gosha was originally indicted and charged with capital murder in a shooting death that occurred in 2012.  However, because of two delays in his trial based on an inability of prosecutors to get witnesses to speak, prosecutors were forced to accept a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a split sentence of 20 years with three to serve.
Last week it was announced by the defense attorney for the teen accused in the Railroad Park shooting that the only witness had recanted his testimony, and that based on the fact that the other 800 or more people in the area did not seem to see anything and to a person have refused to come forward and testify, it is possible that all charges will have to be dropped in this case.
These kinds of cases happen with a frequency in our community here in Birmingham. It gives the criminal element a sense of power, for even if caught doing the most heinous crimes, rarely is the system able to make them pay heinous prices. I have overheard conversations in the community that include the line, “I will ice his a** and do the three years,” where three years is the expected consequence for senselessly taking the life of another.
Each time we read stories about plea bargains like the one that young Gosha got we are mad at the District Attorney and the Judge, but our real anger has got to be directed at the attitude in the community that says either out of fear, or out of cultural alliance, concerned citizens should not report what they know regarding violent crime in our community.
Violent crime is the biggest deterrent to economic development in our community. Our home values are depressed, we have vacant and blighted properties in large part because of the level of violence we allow to be pervasive in our communities. It is in our self-interest to change the culture of violence in our communities. We could double our property values overnight, if we would just take the steps necessary to get violent crime under control. And the biggest step is to end the culture of not speaking out on what we see.
If a group of men are breaking into your neighbor’s house they are working your neighborhood. Just because you slither back into your home and close the curtains instead of calling out or shouting that you have called the police, does not mean that they are not going to bother your house. If you and everyone else just tries to hide they are going to bother whatever house they want to, cause they are running this thing, and your inaction says so.
Nobody wants to become the target of a thug on bond, but the reality is we all already are, we are participating in a lottery with daily victims. It was scary to march in the Civil Rights Movement, but Black people did, and by conquering our fear we changed the world. It was scary standing up for our voting rights, but we did. We have stood up to everything that has challenged our community along the way.
Today the challenge is a sinister change in culture that is being pawned off on our community as cool. A culture that disrespects women, disrespects hard work, and rewards those who invest the least in our community. We need for our real leaders to step up and help us fight this battle. We need the courage to step up and tell the truth and shame the devil. In doing so we will soon send a message to those who do not respect our community and are not willing to invest in its growth, that we may not be able to stop you from acting like a fool, but when we catch you acting like one, we will make you pay a dear price. Maybe when your brother sees the price you paid, your way of living won’t seem so cool. One can only hope.
Or at least that’s the way I see it.

The Birmingham Times received four letters to the editor from Kamau Afrika; unfortunately due to space, we were not able print  them in their  entirety.

1) Alabama Legislature refuses to allow Alabama voters to vote on a fair lotto that will help our young struggling citizens further their education. They’d rather see white women having to result to selling themselves on Backpage.com, Adultstrips.com and Erosguide to make ends meet to pay for their college tuition.
2) They raided and closed down Bingo Halls in Green County last week putting 1,264 (I was one of many) Alabamians onto the welfare roles for taxpayers to foot the bill (encouraged with Wetumpka Indian’s kickback money paid to the Alabama Speaker of the House and AG’s office) that have been opened legally with an Alabama Legislative Act.
It is time for another bloody American Revolution !!!

Haiti paid France reparation in the amount of $17 billion for the loss of its slaves, plantation and production from 1804 – 1994. Haiti paid the full amount for 34 years then the amount was reduced by France to 17 million. All white powers continued their racist economic onslaught against Haitian Blacks that dared to fight them for 12 years until they freed themselves. The Spanish, British and Americans under the hypocrite and pedophile (child rapist of 13-year-old slave Sally Hemmings) President Thomas Jefferson  who wrote the U.S. “Declaration of Independence set up blockades and imposed embargoes against Haiti. The U.S. Marines invaded Haiti under President Woodrow Wilson on July 28, 1915 and occupied Haiti for 19 years until Aug 15,1934 after setting up a puppet oppressive regime to serve only the White Corporate Power interest which gave nothing back to the infrastructure. The “Corpratocrity” or what is commonly known as the Greedy Global Corporations i.e. U.S. Military Industrial Complex (Pres. Dwight D Eisenhower warned us against) is a $57 billion entity. All white western powers’ wealth came from the murder and oppression of Blacks in particular and others of color that did not have the means to fight back. The Natl Urban Leagues new “State of Black America” report says that Blacks in America are fastly losing all of the economic gains made and even the middle class  will be impoverished within 10 years if we do not unite here as well as globally. That means you, your children & your grandchildren are dead. Pan Africanism is the only way !!! Obama is not gonna help !!!

I have been struggling in Real Estate some 20 years, now unable to gain additional employment to finish my masters. I was offered a managers job at Rivers Edge Casino that the State of Alabama just raided. Some 1,299 other employees are affected and an entire impoverished Greene County will continue to suffer. Years ago before I became computer literate, I’d often go to Kim Rafferty’s home and pay her to post my ad for property rentals on www.Craigslist.com. By the time www.Backpage.com came along I learned how to post myself. Both sites had a huge variety of categories of which I viewed. Over the last 12 years I noticed after the Craigslist killing of the “Call Girl” by a medical student, a lot of attention has been given the power, influence and the profit of these two as well as the new Angies List. I noticed however, due to the bad economy, one category grew exponentially: the Escorts, Call Girl and Prostitutes. Before Bob Riley, one would rarely find seven postings in Alabama. Those sites, as well as others like Adultstrips.com and Erosguide, are proliferated with desperate women trying to support drug habits, get thru college, raise children or just pay bills and survive. We have no leadership in City, County nor State that has any vision nor one that thinks out of the box to eliminate illiteracy and bring low skill, high pay sustainable industry to Alabama citizens.
I am writing about this because it came so close to me to learn of at least seven women that I knew that had posted on the escorts sites. One I had dated prior to her turning to escorting and another whose number I had recently gotten with the intent to date and I was simply experimenting with Googling  numbers and guess what popped up ? An ad in West Palm Beach, Florida with her picture. When I confronted her that ended the relationship before it got started.

Kamau Afrika

Another legislative session has ended in Montgomery. And like most years, this session had its share of disappointments.
While there were some positive things that came out of this legislative session, the $400 bonus and conditional 4 percent pay raise for state employees next year, as examples, the bad outweighed the good.
Once again, legislative leaders refused to pass bills allowing the people to vote on a state lottery. A lottery could bring in hundreds-of-millions of dollars for our public schools and provide scholarships to our children. But the leadership in Montgomery continues to refuse to let the people of Alabama vote on the issue.
The leadership also refused to allow a vote on legislation to provide additional funding for workforce development training and to put clawback provisions on tax incentives offered to businesses and corporations.
It was disappointing to see the state House of Representatives pass legislation that doubles down on the failed Accountability Act. This bill would have removed the cap on tax credits for individuals and couples donating to scholarship organizations for private schools. The Accountability Act has already cost our public schools $40 million this year; it will cost us at least $25 million next year. What’s worse, is for all that money lost, only 52 kids transferred to private schools last year. Passing this bill would be like betting on the loser of the Super Bowl after the game has already been played. We know it is a losing bet! Thankfully, the bill was not passed by the state Senate.
At the top of the list of setbacks is the legislature’s failure to pass a pay raise for educators and retirees.
Gov. Bentley promised in his State of the State address to give educators a 2 percent raise, but the Republican Supermajority was never on board with the governor’s plan. From the beginning, the legislative leaders claimed there was not enough money for a 2 percent raise— that argument just doesn’t hold up.
As the saying goes: where there’s a will, there’s a way. If legislative leaders had chosen to make educators’ pay a priority, then they would have put the pay raise in the budget first and then budgeted everything else around the raise.
As the governor has said from the beginning, we know the money is there. Gov. Bentley proposed an education budget that not only provided a 2 percent raise but also fully funded the Public Education Employees’ Health Insurance Plan, PEEHIP.
Legislative leaders have claimed that the governor paid for this raise by going around the spending cap created by the Rolling Reserve Act. These same legislative leaders also chose to go around the cap in their budget, so there is no legitimate reason for why we are not giving educators and retirees a 2 percent raise next year.
Instead, the Republicans forced through the budget without a raise at the last minute and then ended the session so that the governor could not send the budget back with a pay raise amendment. Legislative leaders have done everything they could to avoid having to vote on a raise. Now the only option left is for the governor to veto the budget and call a special legislative session.
It is ridiculous that it has come to this! Had the legislature simply passed the governor’s version of the budget, we could have avoided all of this. Now the governor must either keep his promise and call a special session or sign the budget without a raise and lose all of his credibility.
There is no good outcome to this situation. But the governor must stand by his word and veto this budget. Educators were promised a raise. More importantly, they have earned one! If the governor backs down now he will lose his credibility. I hope Gov. Bentley will do the right thing and, for the sake of our educators and himself, keep his promise and demand a pay raise.
Rep. Craig Ford is a Democrat from Gadsden and the Minority Leader in the Alabama House of Representatives.