You may have guessed...
that I am a Democrat. You're right, a Yellow Dog Democrat that usually just pulls the big lever, like some pull the big lever for the Republican list of candidates. I vote this way because Republicans are for big business and Democrats are for everybody else. I once voted for a Republican, Guy Hunt, who was impeached before his term ended. I wasn't surprised. The reason I voted for him was a protest against the slate the Democrats put forward that year. Alabama Democrats were ashamed of the slate that year and put Hunt into the Governor's office. Painful lesson.

Now I am about to commit to voting for another Republican, Bob Riley, who is Alabama's current Governor. I didn't vote for him but he has earned my vote if he gets the tax plan we are to vote on next month into law. Poor people in Alabama carry the load on taxes, paying about 12%, while very rich people pay about 3% of the total tax bill. Poor people start paying taxes if they make the huge sum of a little over four thousand dollars per year. Riley is going to raise that to twenty thousand dollars as the threshold. I like that. Poor people will get a lot of the benefit of the new tax law in that their children will be assured of a state paid education all the way through college. No loan, no payments after graduation, just free. If there were no other benefits, that would be enough.

People who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes are not appreciative of the fact that they make a lot of money off everybody in the state, sure, they work hard and risk their capital to achieve their financial goals, but they enjoy a much higher quality of life than most of their customers. Most of them were educated at a public college or university, paid for by taxes, but they seem to forget about that soon after getting the first big paycheck. People who fight against paying their fair share of taxes are just plain selfish. President Bush is leading us toward a real schism in this country based on income. There will be no middle class, just rich and poor. If you don't know where you will wind up, you will most likely be in the poor group. For the first time a millionaire will be considered "poor". The tax bill under the new tax plan will be handed, not to middle class earners like you, but to big corporations who pay no taxes, huge landowners like Alabama Power Company and the timber companies who own all those pine trees you see planted in straight rows. These people now pay about a dollar a year per acre.

We need this tax increase and if we get it, I will vote for another damn Republican at the next election for Governor.