Craig Ford: Democracy isn’t the cause of our problems. It’s the solution.

  There is nothing more American than democracy. But to our leaders in the Alabama Senate, democracy just gets in the way of pushing their radical, anti-public education agenda.

  That’s why Sen. Del Marsh, the pro-tem of the Alabama Senate, has made it his personal mission to eliminate the state’s elected school board and replace it with one appointed by the governor.

  At the end of this year’s legislative session, Senator Marsh pushed a constitutional amendment through the legislature that would replace the state’s elected Board of Education with an education commission appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Alabama Senate. Because this plan means having to change the state’s constitution, the people of Alabama will get the chance to vote on the amendment this coming March.

ICE’s deliberate cruelty

  Five days after taking office, President Trump signed “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” – an executive order calling for the hiring of thousands of new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the use of state and local police to enforce immigration law.

  It effectively broadened the scope of who was at risk of being deported: “We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”

  And so, Trump’s war on immigrants began as he set in motion an enforcement machine long dreamed of by the nativist movement Trump had championed during his campaign.

Racism and sexism combine to shortchange working Black women

  Black Women’s Equal Pay Day arrives around this time each year, marking the estimated number of extra months—roughly eight months—that a Black woman working full-time year-round in the United States must work into the current year to have earned what her white male counterpart earned during the prior year. This year, Black women will have to work well into the month of August to catch up to the wages that white men earned in 2018 alone. In concrete terms, this means that Black women experience a pay gap every day—and this gap adds up. In 2017, for example, Black women earned 61 cents for every dollar earned by white men, amounting to $23,653 less in earnings over an entire year. In the span of a 40-year career, this translates into an average lifetime earnings gap of $946,120 between Black women and white men.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - The Summer of 1969

  As we say goodbye to the summer of 2019, allow me to reminisce with you and commemorate a summer exactly 50 years ago that was undoubtedly the most momentous summer in American history – the summer of 1969.

  It is amazing what all occurred in America during the last six weeks of the summer of 1969. Richard Nixon was in his first year as president. He had escalated the never-ending Vietnam War, and he had heightened the Tet offensive. The war was finally heading in our direction. A July assault on North Vietnam caused heavy casualties to the Viet Cong. Ho Chi Minh would die in Hanoi on September 2.

Can government contractors refuse workers based on religious beliefs?

  While religious freedom can mean many different things to you personally, within the U.S. Constitution it means only two things: the government can’t promote one religion over another (or promote religion over the lack of religion, or vice versa) and you have the right to worship, or not, as you choose —the government can’t penalize you for your religious beliefs.

  This month, the Department of Labor proposed a rule that could potentially pit these two types of religious freedoms against one another. The rule would allow federal government contractors to make hiring and firing decisions based on religious beliefs. Currently, federal government contractors are prohibited from discriminating against people on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin or disability — and under the Obama Administration, sexual orientation and gender identity were added to that list. The proposed rule wouldn’t overturn that policy; instead, it would make it easier for contractors to get a religious exemption so they don’t have to follow it.

Montgomery filmmakers seek the truth behind one of history's most prominent medical pioneers and those who suffered at his hands

"It moved me, and I was inspired to tell it." -"Remembering Anarcha" director Josh Carples

  When one Montgomery man learned the questionable tale of "the father of modern gynecology" - Dr. James Marion Sims - he felt compelled to pave over it with facts and set the record straight. But perhaps more importantly, he wanted to present the unsung story of the brave women who suffered at Sims' hands.

  Directed by Josh Carples (Terrible Master Films) and co-produced by C. DeWayne Cunningham (Carolyn Jean’s Son Visions) and Royce Williams (803 Films), "Remembering Anarcha" boldly chases the truth behind the career of Dr. Sims. The film examines which medical achievements can truly be attributed to him and how he contributed to the field of gynecology. And for the first time, it introduces the women who were not mere patients but enslaved women who truly suffered, typically without anesthesia, and who were experimented on in an inhumane manner by the physician.

Waiting for a check to clear sucks. The Fed wants to fix that.

  Many people have shared the experience of depositing a check and then waiting while it takes days to clear; the money is there, but not there.

  For low-income people, that experience isn’t just annoying. It can also be a real financial hardship. Mismatches between available funds and expenses can create a spiral of bank overdraft fees and denied transactions, and the deeper in someone gets, the more insurmountable it can feel.

  “It’s very embarrassing,” a commenter told TalkPoverty, describing a day of being hit with three separate overdraft fees while waiting on processing for a paycheck.

How much damage will come from this trade war?

  First, the good news: the U.S. and world economies have not imploded, so far, as fallout from the rising trade tensions between the Trump administration and Xi Jinping’s government in China. Now, the bad news: there is no certainty that this will not play itself out as a serious and damaging trade war between the two countries that might spill over into grievous harm to many other parts of the world as well.

  From the day that Donald Trump became president, he has been telling the American people and everyone else that he believes that national economic prosperity requires seeing international trade as a zero-sum game. In his mind, the buying and selling of goods and the investing of capital across political lines on a map of the world is economic combat creating winners and losers.

Craig Ford: A good solution to the Tier 2 retirement system and Alabama’s teacher shortage

  Earlier this year I wrote about the teacher shortage in Alabama and a proposed bill from Rep. Alan Baker (R-Brewton) that would help address the issue by fixing the problems state leaders created in our teacher retirement system back in 2012.

  The economic recession that began in 2008 had severely hurt the Retirement Systems of Alabama’s investments. The slowness of the recovery made things worse, and the state was looking at a situation where, in the long run, the government wouldn’t have the money to pay education and state employee retirees the benefits they had earned.

  Lawmakers rushed through a plan to create a new tier of retirement for any employees hired after 2013 (those hired before 2013 are still considered Tier 1 and will be paid the benefits they were promised at the time they were hired). This new retirement tier, called Tier 2, pays fewer benefits, raises the age of retirement, and takes a “use it or lose it” approach to sick leave days.

Israeli and U.S. destruction of freedom of travel

  Proponents of trade and immigration controls oftentimes forget that there is another factor that comes with their socialist immigration system, that is, in addition to the death, suffering, police state, and destruction of the rights of economic liberty, liberty of contract, freedom of association, and private ownership of property. That factor is the destruction of freedom of travel, another fundamental, natural God-given right that adheres in all people everywhere and that preexists all governments.

  We are reminded of this fact in a current dust-up involving two members of Congress and the Israeli government, which, like the U.S. government, has a policy of governmentally-controlled borders. The two members of Congress are Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both of whom are Democrats who have come out publicly in favor of the boycott Israel movement owing to the Israeli government’s longtime mistreatment of Palestinians.