It’s Over!

It’s over!

It’s finally over.

This isn’t the most miserable legislative session I can remember, but I’m old. At least they can’t unplug the clock anymore.

Still, this session had its moments.

You’ll have to excuse me if this piece is a bit loose and rambling. I’m writing this Wednesday night while they’re still going at it. I spent several hours earlier watching the streams of both House and Senate at once and…kids, DO NOT try this at home! Seriously!

Good Bill warned me it was a bad idea.

Bad Bill just laughed and threw another bag of popcorn in the microwave.

It’ll take a few days to pick up the pieces, figure out just what passed and what didn’t, and decide where we all go from here. It’s that way every year, but that’s cold comfort right now.

There’s one bill this session that I completely, totally support. It fixed a problem, permanently, and did it in less than three pages: Rep. Jim Carns’ HB258 permanently set the off-Presidential year primaries to the Tuesday before Memorial Day. It didn’t do anything else, so it didn’t screw up anything else. We could use more bills like that.

The bill that authorizes funding for tearing down the State House building, SB279, is pretty good. The new State House should be finished by 2027, and this one’s got to go. I’m pretty sure it’s riddled with mold and fungi, so I don’t want to be anywhere near it when it’s torn down. All that dust, all those spores…thank you, no. Hard pass on the miasma its destruction will create.

When I was a medical student, there was a patient on another service who’d gotten a fungal infection of his frontal and maxillary sinuses. He was on high-dose ampho-terrible (aka amphotericin B) and the surgeons basically had to amputate his face to get it all cleaned out. They had to remove his eyes—the sockets were mostly gone—and the fear was it’d get into his brain. He did lose his sight, but “responded well to treatment” (he lived), and last I heard he was getting a facial prosthesis made.

And people wonder why I avoid the State House whenever possible.

Several of our Glorious Leaders have told me the building makes them sick. I know my lungs and sinuses and eyes don’t like it. I can just imagine how it affects the people who work there.

I could make a joke about “if the fungus ate a legislator’s brain, would we even notice?” here, but I won’t. You’re welcome.

More’s the pity, SB279 doesn’t specify that the building needs to be blown up, burned down, and the ground sowed with salt—with the Legislature sealed inside. Oh, well.

I’ve seen drawings of the new State House, and it’s going to be niiiiiice. Posh, even. And in place of the old building? We get…a park.

Yep, a park. That will be used, what? Three, four times a year, tops?

What the City and State and everybody needs is a 15-story parking deck—maybe 20, who cares what it’s taller than, stick a fancy roof on it, with a flag pole if you must—but we’re getting…a park.

I’m sure it’s going to be lovely to look at as I’m driving by for the 47th time, looking for a parking place within a mile of the Capital. And God help you if you try to walk across it at night….

At any rate…the less said about the last day, the better.

Okay, the Shroud Award in the House was pretty funny. I’ll give you that.

But, large chunks of Wednesday were spent with some—only some, mind you—Democrats being a massive pain in everyone’s collective rear by showing theirs. Seriously? Did they really think throwing a filibuster tantrum will help their (admittedly weak) position?

Maybe it will, with their voters. I don’t know. And perhaps, the less said about that, the better.

I do think it’s worth mentioning that one of Alinsky’s Rules is that any tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. You’d expect Democrats, of all people, to know that—but judging by Wednesday night’s performance, obviously not.

I do know this: watching the Alabama Legislature’s live streams this session has me thoroughly convinced that representative democracy is a BAD idea! Like, really bad. McDonald’s McRib-level bad.

I feel like I should go around the State to our colleges and set up a little tent & table & mic, with a sign that says “Democracy Sucks—Change My Mind.” I’ll have a screen that I can loop some of the finer moments from this past session on, at least 5 feet high.

If nothing else, the reactions of our future leaders to the current crop will be PRICELESS!

Woo hoo! Viral videos, here I come!

And if you want to see the last legislative day, for some odd reason—severe masochistic urges, perhaps?—it’s on YouTube on The Alabama Channel. Kudos to the League of Women Voters for sponsoring the channel.

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