Wednesday, March 7, 2018

P.T. Barnum Went to Montgomery


We were going to call today's blog "Larry, Curly, & Moe Went to Montgomery," but we decided to give our legislators the benefit of the doubt. So, who's today's P.T. Barnum? While it may have been Will Ainsworth with his teacher/gun bill last week, today it's Chris Sells of Greenville with a bill on new capital crimes...except they aren't new.

Rep. Chris Sells wants to make the murder of a police officer, corrections officer, first responder, or child under the age of 14 a capital offense. Of course, all but the intentional killing of first responders is already a capital crime, but why let that stand in the way of some good publicity?

Even for those legislators unfamiliar with the law, which is apparently most of them, it's surprising that they don't remember Lynda Lyon Block. She was the last person electrocuted in this state (1993); her crime was the murder of a police officer who had stopped her for simple questioning.

We need prisons/prison reform. We need better state highways. We need... Yet what we get from most of our state legislators is a pathetic performance designed to take up time and make them look good. 

And the voters don't care...


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Nepotism. Ain't it grand? We understand that sometimes the best qualified candidate is related to a current employee. That's fine in the private sector, but what about the public?

We see that Franklin County is about to be bombarded with bad press concerning the former county administrator Crista Massey Madden. She's the daughter of a county commissioner who had worked several years for the county before her father was elected to his current position. Nevertheless, it took only one year for her to be promoted to top dog after her father was elected.

We've previously discussed how some states and local governments have rules in place to "avoid the appearance of evil." This means Madden wouldn't have gotten the job under those circumstances. Yet she did in present day Franklin County, and now it will be easy for critics to accuse Rayburn Massey of complicity in whatever went on. 

At least it's the Franklin County Commission and not the Lauderdale this time...





2 comments:

  1. Crista Madden was at least employed by the Franklin County commission before her dad got the job. Why aren’t you kicking and screaming about the Jordans? I don’t know a member of that clan that isn’t employed in some capacity by the City of Florence, and Dixk Jordan was definitely there first.

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    1. Over the years, we've had at least five blogs dedicated to Dick Jordon's favoritism toward his wife...one such incident precipitating a lawsuit against the city. Yet, no one in his family, as far as we know, is being accused of actually stealing from the government.

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