Posted on 04/01/2016 11:46:27 PM PDT by iowamark
After his successful reelection bid in 2014, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley did something that shocked many of his fellow Republicans: He called for raising taxes to shore up the state's budget — $500 million in new taxes, in fact.
The moment was particularly head-scratching for anyone who had been following his career. It came mere months after Bentley had successfully campaigned on his record of not raising taxes in his first term.
"He frankly lost his mind," AL.com reporter Leada Gore told The Fix on Thursday. "He starts throwing out tax increases — it's almost as if somebody flipped a switch and we got a different governor."
That flipped switch, many in Alabama now think, had something to do with Rebekah Caldwell Mason, a former TV anchor who attended the same church as Bentley in Tuscaloosa and rose to become his top adviser...
But to lawmakers in Alabama, who battled with Bentley over that proposed tax increase and issues such as teacher pay and Medicaid, the revelations of the past two weeks are an "aha" moment. Bentley's relationship with his party started to decline precipitously around the time Mason's influence with the governor started to increase, they say...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sounds like the gov got played by the oldest trick in politics.Aint the first wont be the last.
What you have in Alabama is a non-party apparatus. Lobbyists run the state senate/legislature and the governor’s office. You can pretend to be a Democrat or Republican....it doesn’t matter. These special consultants will arrive to manage your affairs and agendas. Whatever you promised will disappear quickly, and the agenda of the lobbyists will emerge.
All that talk of various state parks needing to be closed, and sold off? Some people now think it was some agenda for the parks to be cheaply bought up, and casino operations to quickly be approved and moved into the commercially-run former state parks.
The medicare budget in the state? Go look at the expansion. Who is walking away with the cash? Someone connected to the lobbyists.
Ping to the Alabama list.
POP.
I took the time to listen to the recording. Yeah, Bentley was having an affair, you don't talk about the things he did without it being an affair.
Just wow.
I’ve not heard all the gory details, being over here in Indonesia. But this explains his wife leaving him and all his failures to live up to his promises.
"Not sure, but, uh, judging by their level of malevolence, there's gotta be at least one vagina involved."
Much like D.C.
$500 million in tax increases isn’t much for a medium-sized state. About half of this was a 5 cent increase in the gas tax, which isn’t indexed. With inflation and with greater fuel economy, states need to periodically revisit his tax in order to fund road construction and repaid. (In my states, hybrids and electric cars pay a fee, since money isn’t collected from them at the pump.) There was no increase in the income tax or the sales tax or the property tax (these are expressed as percentages and, so, go up with inflation automatically).
The tax increase proposals were cynical, not crazy. Once the new “funding” was rejected, as inevitably it would be, the governor has others to blame for all shortcomings. If miraculously approved, he has tons of $$ for cronies. This is a classic. Blaming problems on Jezebels and bad advisors (here we have a two-fer) isn’t exactly new either. “Amber” must be new to politics.
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