by Jesse J. Lewis, Sr.

Taken from The Christian Science Monitor by Linda Feldman

However, if not, President Obama’s promise to use executive action to get around congressional gridlock is unparalleled in modern times, some scholars say. But to liberal activists, he’s not going far enough. The course of Obama’s final three years in office, in which he has promised continuing assertive use of executive action, will be shaped by the debate where to critics, Obama is the ultimate “imperial president,” willfully violating the Constitution to further his goals, having failed to convince Congress of the merits of his arguments. To others, he is exercising legitimate executive authority in the face of an intransigent Congress and in keeping with the practices of past presidents. Here are some main points he made in his fifth State of the Union (SOTU) speech.

• Inequality. Mr. Obama has referred to growing income inequality, and a lack of upward mobility by the lower and middle classes, as “the defining challenge of our time.” Critics say he is engaging in “class warfare,” but Obama is undaunted – and likely sees this populist message as central to Democrats’ chances in the fall midterms.

As he did last year, the president called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. But this year, he’s going for a higher minimum – from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.10 over two years. And to spur Congress on, Obama announced that he plans to sign an executive order requiring workers hired under new or renewed federal contracts be paid a higher minimum wage, at least $10.10 an hour. He will also, once again, call on Congress to extend long-term unemployment benefits.

• Jobs. Obama acknowledged that the current unemployment rate of 6.7 percent, though declining, is still too high. More ominously, the US labor participation rate – the workforce’s share of people who are either working or looking for a job – is at a 35-year low. But he highlighted actions he has taken, and plans to take, to boost employment.

One such initiative, announced in 2012, aims to create 45 “manufacturing hubs” around the country, public-private partnerships aimed at spurring innovation and boosting middle-class incomes. Lacking funding from Congress, Obama has had to scale back his goal. But using repurposed federal funds, two are completed, and two are in the pipeline. Earlier this month, the president visited the new hub in Raleigh, N.C., and this could win a line in the SOTU.

• Obamacare.  Obama can hardly mention his signature domestic program, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), without acknowledging the terrible problems in the rollout last year. But he didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he highlighted the fact that HealthCare.gov now works and other strides – including the 3 million (and counting) Americans who have signed up for coverage on government-run health-insurance exchanges, as well as the millions more who have newly enrolled in Medicaid. He reminded viewers of the popular elements of the ACA, including a ban on excluding people with health problems from coverage. And he reminded Republicans that he rejects any efforts to defund, weaken, or repeal the ACA citing the forty attempts to de-fund it.

• Immigration. This is the one big policy area where politically polarized Washington might, repeat might, be able to find common cause this year. Republicans know they have to act on the issue of America’s 11 million illegal immigrants, many of them from south of the border, if they hope to attract significant Latino votes in the future.

• Climate change. His longstanding energy policy is “all of the above” – from fossil fuels to green technologies. Environmentalists, a key Democratic constituency, want him to place more limits on fossil fuels in a transition toward more clean energy, as 18 groups said in a Jan. 16 letter to the president. Obama adviser John Podesta pushed back, defending the steps the president has taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

• Education. Both early childhood education and college affordability fit into Obama’s larger theme of income inequality and upward mobility, and they definitely occupy space in the SOTU. More and earlier education equals more and better job opportunities down the road, the thinking goes. In last year’s SOTU, Obama proposed universal pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds, at a cost of $75 billion, but legislation has stalled.

• Afghanistan, Iran, and NSA. During Obama’s first presidential campaign, he promised to extract the U.S. from two costly wars, those in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the year that he can check off those two goals, as U.S. troops end their 13-year military involvement in Afghanistan at the end of 2014. The Iraq war ended in 2011. Obama is likely to put a punctuation mark on these milestones Tuesday night.

Though President Obama has streamlined his ambitions in this speech, perhaps he can get better participation from Congress in his goals that are so important to him

email:jjlewis@birminghamtimes.com

by Representative Craig Ford

There is a disturbing trend happening in Alabama: the growing number of people enrolling in Medicaid and what this says about our economy and job creation.
Every year for the past five years, Medicaid’s enrollment has increased dramatically. In 2010 the state spent $307 million on Medicaid, with a significant portion of that coming from the federal stimulus money. Last year, Medicaid received $615 million from the state. This year, the program’s administrators are asking for $700 million.
This increase in Medicaid enrollment is not a part of the Medicaid expansion or Obamacare. Gov. Bentley has made it very clear that he will never support expanding Medicaid, even though Alabama taxpayers are paying for that expansion.
There are two reasons why more and more Alabamians are turning to Medicaid for their healthcare needs. Both of those reasons are directly related to our stagnant economy and job growth.
The first reason for the growth in Medicaid enrollment is due to the kinds of jobs we are creating and, more importantly, the kids of jobs we are losing and not replacing.
Alabama has lost thousands of jobs over the past five years. These were jobs that paid a livable wage and usually came with some kind of health benefits. But we have been hemorrhaging jobs for years now.
The reality is that for almost every job we are creating we are also losing a job. Alabama is currently ranked 49th in the country for job creation. We only added 300 jobs to our economy in the last fiscal year. In fact, we are one of only five states that saw our economy shrink in 2013.
 The people who lost these good jobs are now left having to work part-time or lower-wage jobs that do not come with benefits, leaving hard-working Alabamians living in poverty. Our job growth in the “leisure and hospitality” industry is almost as high as our growth in manufacturing. That means of the jobs we are creating, just as many have been maids or fast-food workers as have been machinists or welders.
Because we are losing good-paying jobs and replacing them with low-wage jobs that do not come with benefits, more and more Alabamians are having to rely on Medicaid to provide their children with basic health care.
But there is a second reason that more Alabamians are enrolling in Medicaid: more people are dropping out of the workforce because they have given up hope of finding a job. The clearest evidence of this is the dropping unemployment rate and the shrinking size of our workforce.
Over the past five years, thousands of Alabamians have quit looking for work. Some have started looking again, but most have never come back. Because they are not looking for work, the government treats them like they do not exist and does not count them when calculating the unemployment rate. This is why our unemployment rate has gone down.
But because they are not employed and have given up looking for work, these Alabamians do not have health insurance. For them, Medicaid is the only way they can provide their children with health insurance.
Medicaid enrollment has ballooned since 2010, more than doubling its cost to the taxpayers. The only way we can bring Medicaid’s expenses down is to create jobs that pay a livable wage and come with benefits so that Alabamians will not be forced to rely on Medicaid.
But clearly we are not doing that. Our economy is limping along on life-support, and our state leaders seem to be out of solutions. That is why House Democrats proposed a legislative agenda that focuses on job creation and education. Our legislation would increase funding for vocational and workforce development training, as well as dual enrollment for high school students. This will allow existing businesses to expand while also making us much more attractive to the industries we are trying to recruit to our state.
Our agenda would also require that no corporate tax incentives could be given without a commitment to create jobs, and would put clawback provisions on all tax incentives. So, if a company does not create or keep the jobs it promises the taxpayers will get their money back.
These are common sense solutions that will put our economy back on the road to recovery. There is still more that needs to be done, but these proposals are a good start. Our problems with Medicaid are just a symptom of the illness. It is time to get Alabama’s economy off life-support!
Rep. Craig Ford is a Democrat from Gadsden. He has served as the House Minority Leader since 2010.

One of the most recognizable financial names recently reached the century mark.  Merrill Lynch, the firm that democratized finance for the middle class, turned 100 on January 6.  It rose from humble beginnings to become a financial giant, only to be rescued from failure by Bank of America.
The story of the firm that “brought Wall Street to Main Street” began in 1914 when Charles Merrill established Charles Merrill and Company – with no assets and no clients.  The firm consisted of Merrill and Edmund Lynch, and the name changed to Merrill Lynch in 1915.
The company grew rapidly and made several highly successful investments. The most successful came in 1926 with the purchase of controlling interest in Safeway Stores, which shortly became the largest grocery chain in the nation.
Significant change took place in the 1930s and 1940s.  Merrill merged with E. A. Pierce and Cassatt and Company.  Later, the combined company merged with Fenner and Beane, an investment bank and commodities company.  The new entity became Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Beane.
In 1958, the name changed to Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith. By now, it had become the largest securities firm in the world.
Merrill Lynch rose to prominence on the strength of its extensive brokerage network that brought investment opportunities to millions.Name and reputation were paramount in its growth.
Subtle changes surfaced in the 1990s. They started with the collapse of Orange County, California. Accusations that Merrill Lynch sold inappropriate and risky investments to Orange County led to a then-massive $400 million settlement.
The financial collapse hammered the last nails in the company’s coffin. Prior to the collapse, it added billions of dollars of mortgages to its balance sheet and purchased a subprime lender, First Franklin Financial.
Unfortunately, the company was in a business in which it had little expertise. In November 2007, it announced a write-down of $8.4 billion in losses associated with the national housing crisis.
Conditions worsened. For the year ended June 30, 2008, Merrill Lynch lost $19.2 billion or $52 million per day.  And on September 15, 2008, it agreed to be purchased by Bank of America for the fire-sale price of $20 per share, marking the end of a storied era.

Wayne Curtis, Ph.D., is a former superintendent of Alabama banks and Troy University business school dean. He is retired from the board of directors of First United Security Bank.  Email him at wccurtis39@gmail.com.

By Steve Flowers

It seemed to go under the radar last year but the Bentley administration quietly inaugurated the largest road-building program seen in the state in over six decades.
Gov. Bentley launched the Alabama Transportation Rehabilitation and Improvement Program (ATRIP). The ATRIP program, coupled with another road program, the Rural Assistance Match Program, will bring the total for road and bridge construction in Bentley’s first term to well over $1 billion.
This probably makes Bentley’s road program the largest since Gov. James E. “Big Jim” Folsom’s famous Farm to Market road program in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Big Jim’s Farm to Market road program was his greatest legacy. Folks in rural Alabama still talk about Big Jim’s roads today.
Bentley designed his road program to come to fruition and have the greatest political impact while he was running for governor this year. It appears that he will have smooth sailing and will not need the ATRIP program to propel him to victory.
Under ATRIP the state borrows 80 percent of the cost of each project through what are called Grant Acquisition Revenue Vehicle bonds (GARVEE). It allows the state to borrow against future federal highway grants at an interest rate of 2.6 percent. Local cities and counties are required to make a 20 percent match, except in the rural counties that cannot afford to match state funds. For these poorer counties, matching funds are provided under the Rural Assistance Match program.
Mayors and county commissioners throughout the state have made hay with Bentley’s road program. The governor has endeared himself to these local officials. Roads are near and dear to the hearts of mayors, city councilors and especially county commissioners. In fact, roads have been an integral part of political patronage in state politics for years. In my early legislative years, the governor would entice legislators to vote for his programs by holding the lure of a particular road project important to a legislator over the head of that legislator like a carrot over the head of a rabbit.
This discussion of road programs reminds me of a humorous story that occurred during the Wallace years.
The year was 1983. George Wallace was beginning his fourth and final term as governor. As you know, Wallace had been shot numerous times by a crazed would be assassin in 1972 in a Maryland parking lot while running for president. Wallace miraculously survived that assassination attempt but was left paralyzed and in constant pain. He had to take medication to alleviate the pain so some days he was not quite cognizant.
However, Wallace was determined to remedy the shortfall he inherited in the state coffers. His solution was to raise taxes. He called them revenue enhancement measures. I called it a tax-a-day club.
Wallace made me one of his floor leaders in the House. Therefore, I felt duty bound to vote for his revenue enhancement measures. My seatmate and new best friend was a gentleman from Talladega named Jim Preuitt. Jim and I were the only two freshman floor leaders. We dutifully toed the line on the first six revenue enhancement measures but then the Wallace team came with a biggie. It was a substantial gasoline tax for road improvement. I told Jim, “I’m falling off the wagon here. I can’t have a record of voting for every tax that comes down the pike.”
The governor had earned a vaunted reputation through the years of cajoling reluctant legislators to his side of an issue by calling them down to the governor’s office in small groups and enticing them with plum projects for their districts, usually a road. Wallace was on his game for this road tax vote. Therefore, those of us who had indicated our reluctance were called down to the governor’s office to be hot boxed.
Preuitt and I were in a group of real naysayers to Wallace’s taxes. Wallace looked over as though he was surprised to see us. He then zeroed in on Rep. Noopie Cosby from Selma. Noopie had not voted for any of Wallace’s revenue enhancement measures and he was not planning on breaking his streak with Wallace’s gas tax.
Noopie has gone by this name since childhood but Wallace immediately addressed Noopie as “Nudie.” He began, “Nudie, when I was a young legislator I had a road program. So Nudie, you need you a road program and, you see Nudie, if you vote for the gas tax then your road program will be part of my road program. But Nudie, if you don’t vote for my gas tax then I’m afraid your road program will not be part of my road program.” Wallace explained politics to Nudie that day.

See you next week.

Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His column appears weekly in more than 70 Alabama newspapers. Steve served 16 years in the state legislature. He may be reached at www.steveflowers.us.