A Confederate statue graveyard could help bury the Old South

  An estimated 114 Confederate symbols have been removed from public view since 2015. In many cases, these cast-iron Robert E. Lees and Jefferson Davises were sent to storage.

  If the aim of statue removal is to build a more racially just South, then, as many analysts have pointed out, putting these monuments in storage is a lost opportunity. Simply unseating Confederate statues from highly visible public spaces is just the first step in a much longer process of understanding, grieving, and mending the wounds of America’s violent past. Merely hiding away the monuments does not necessarily change the structural racism that birthed them.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Prison issue to be addressed in Special Session

  The second year of the reign of Gov. Kay Ivey may give her a second major accomplishment of her tenure. 

  In her first year, she spearheaded the measure to increase the state’s gasoline tax in order to allow Alabama to proceed with a much-needed massive infrastructure program labeled Rebuild Alabama.

  It is my belief that she and the Alabama Legislature will resolve the state’s looming prison problems. It was first thought and actually assumed that a Special Session would be called in late October. However, it now appears that the scenario used by the governor and her chief of staff, Jo Bonner, last year was so successful that they will replicate the road program plan. They will call a Special Session within next year’s Regular Session.

Trump’s bad Nixon imitation may cost him the presidency

  Whatever Donald Trump does, Richard Nixon usually did it first and better.

  Nixon got a foreign government’s help to win a presidential election over 50 years ago. Trump’s imitation of the master has proven far from perfect, and that may cost him the presidency.

  Trump’s first mistake was soliciting foreign interference personally. As a result, he cannot deny that he urged Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden. The proof is in his own White House’s record of their telephone call.

When justice depends on the size of your pocketbook

  Tella Barnett fears she’ll end up behind bars again if she gets behind on her payments.

  She’s one of the thousands of people in Alabama who pay to stay out of prison. One day last March, she paid a $30 monitoring fee as well as a $40 supervision fee. She paid $40 in drug testing fees and $30 in “rescheduling fees.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I can barely afford to eat,” said Barnett, 30. “I have three small children and I’m trying to pay for my home. I have $375 a month in rent, plus the power, plus the water, plus gas to get to work. It’s hard to pay that, it really is.”

The impact of partisan gerrymandering

  Once a decade, every state redraws its electoral districts, determining which people will be represented by each politician. In many states, this means that politicians gather behind computer screens to figure out how they can manipulate the lines to box out their competition and maximize the power of their political party. While an increasing number of states employ independent commissions to draw district lines, the large majority still lack safeguards to prevent partisan favoritism in the redistricting process—also known as partisan gerrymandering.

Worse than Watergate

  Watergate has long been the standard by which other political scandals are judged. Commentators use the suffix “-gate” and talk about how contemporary events mirror those that occurred during the Watergate investigation.

  But the country is now confronted with a presidential scandal that presents an unprecedented danger to American democracy and national security. Evidence that has been released—by the White House no less—shows that President Donald Trump abused his authority to attempt to extort a foreign country to intervene in the 2020 election. And recent reporting shows that he withheld vital military aid to Ukraine as part of his unlawful pressure campaign.

Trump’s corporate tax cut is not trickling down

  Two years ago, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). At the time, the Trump administration claimed that its corporate tax cuts would increase the average household income in the United States by $4,000. But two years later, there is little indication that the tax cut is even beginning to trickle down in the ways its proponents claimed.

‘Always sticking to your convictions’ sounds like a good thing – but it isn’t

  There is nothing wrong with strong opinions. They are healthy in a democracy – an apathetic electorate is an ineffective electorate.

  But a curious fact about American society’s supercharged political culture is that even the most humble debates (think: Which fried chicken sandwiches are best?) turn a tweet into matters of conviction.

  The result is that many of us come to see criticism as intolerable and disagreement with our opinions as a mark of moral inferiority.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - 2020 U.S. Senate race right around the corner

  Even though qualifying does not begin until October 8, 2019, the field is probably set for the GOP Primary in March to unseat Democrat Doug Jones, who is sitting in Alabama’s Republican U.S. Senate seat.

  First District Congressman Bradley Bryne and Secretary of State John Merrill may be the favorites to lead the field and square off in a runoff. Either of the two will probably win by a 60-40 margin over Jones in November.

Why we’ll always be obsessed with – and afraid of – monsters

  Fear continues to saturate our lives: fear of nuclear destruction, fear of climate change, fear of the subversive, and fear of foreigners.

  But a Rolling Stone article about our “age of fear” notes that most Americans are living “in the safest place at the safest time in human history.”