Some days I getting spitting mad and feel like I'm ready to go to war against the naysayers that want to tear down this state where I live.
That's why I choose to live here. That's why millions of others choose to live here. Go live where others think like you do and be happy.
Then there are those days when all I can do is shake my head. It's at those times when those who claim that we are a bunch of backward idiots seem right on the money.
This past week was one of those times. When I saw that the Alabama Senate had voted 32-1 to defund Forever Wild and direct that money to the floundering Alabama State Parks system, I could only sit in disbelief.
caught so much flack that they saw the error in their ways. Sen. Clay Scofield, R-Arab, who sponsored the bill, suddenly had a change of heart and said he was withdrawing it.
Should that measure had passed the Housein this special session, the future of Forever Wild would have been placed on a ballot at a later date. Voters would have had been forced to choose between Forever Wild and state parks.
If you are a student of Alabama politics surely you understand that if a program is funded well that it doesn't matter if the program is a beneficial or that it is a model for other programs. There's some Representative somewhere that is dying to steal its money and give it to someone else. Forever Wild has had a bulls eye on its back for two decades. It appeared early last week that the clock may have struck midnight.
It would have taken a vote of the people to change the Alabama Constitution with an amendment that would defund Forever Wild and rescue the state parks. My first inclination was that voters extended Forever Wild for another 20 years by an incredible margin in 2012 and if forced to go to the polls again, they would vote to save the program.
The more that I thought about such a vote, though, the more worried I became. Obviously, most Alabamians approve of what Forever Wild is and what it has accomplished, but I venture to say that most have never set foot on a piece of Forever Wild property. Millions of Alabamians, on the other hand, play at state parks each year.