I offer up this assessment of the just concluded legislative session for your use. There were some good things accomplished contrary to what we have read. Best Regards, JGS

The power structure in the State of Alabama has shifted from Democrat to Republican control. The Democrats are having a difficult time adjusting to not being in control and being the ultimate power base in the state. The recently completed legislative session was a total disaster if you listen to the Democrats.

However, in all fairness, the Republican legislature did get the budgets passed during the regular session, something the Democrats had a problem doing at times. On more than one occasion, it took a special session, at taxpayer expense, to get a budget or pass other critical legislation. This past session has already been covered adequately by Steve Flowers more than a month ago in this paper with his closing remarks of “all in all a pretty good session.” Coming from Flowers, I consider that rather high praise for the Republican legislature.

I have listened and read all year of just how terrible the Republicans are in Alabama. Clearly understand, I am neither Republican, Democrat nor Tea Partier. However, the Democratic party my parents were loyal to no longer exists. It is a thing of the past. Most modern day Democrats are to the left of center, liberals or progressives.However, it is difficult to understand the Democrats whining and complaining about Republicans when the Democrats had 136 years to fix the problems in the state and failed to do so. In fact, they failed miserably. The state ranked near or at the bottom of almost every statistical category. Therefore, I believe the question should be, why not try another approach, other than more money, since the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over?

According to the latest published results, Alabama’s unemployment rate is 6.5 percent. Therefore, the Republicans must be doing something right since the national average is a bogus low of 7.4 percent as 988,000 discourage workers stopped looking for work in July. Governor Bentley promised not to take a penny of salary until the state reached a point of full employment. Clearly, Democrats are not the only politicians concerned with education, health care, and the general well being of the public. However, there is such a thing as personal responsibility that seems to have faded from the lexicon. Present day Democrats seem to want to absolve individuals of personal responsibility.

This is not to say there aren’t any questionable issues from the session, only that there is a new direction in progress.