Reply #12: They don't just look away, they are part of it

[LizW]

The set up for these political prosecutions is done by the major newspapers. The Birmingham News has been setting up the corruption case for well over two years, drilling it into peoples' minds over and over. Ask the most uninformed rube in the state about the two year college system, and he'll say, "Oh, it's crooked. They need to put all those crooks in jail." He may not know one other thing about current events, but he will know that.

The Republican takeover in Alabama is happening on all fronts. The political prosecutions of Siegelman and now the Democratic legislator are just the most outrageous examples.

There is a huge, insidious push to destroy the teacher's union, AEA. The Republican-majority Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled on a teacher http://www.bradleyarant.com/publications_opinions.cfm?ID=4853">tenure case that has terrible ramifications for teacher job security. If the Repugs can dismantle or even significantly weaken teacher tenure, they can kill AEA in a heartbeat. Without AEA, the next thing to happen will be vouchers and privatization, and in will come a tiered system of education with the rich getting the best private, for-profit education money can buy, and the middle class and poor left behind in rotting, underfunded schools.

I have five more years until my last child graduates from high school and we can get the heck out of here. I hope we make it before it is all torn down.