For years, the media and their Democrats in Alabama screamed about how our prisons were in disrepair and how they needed to be fixed.
They were right.
I figured the Republican leadership of this state was waiting for the federal government to storm in and take them over. I thought they would say, “Oh no, look what they are making us do.”
Turns out I was wrong.
Also, it appears to me now that maybe — just maybe — the media and their Democrats weren’t serious about building prisons for Alabama’s worst citizens, and they were just foolishly trying to score political points.
If that isn’t true, it sure looks like it.
Those prisons are getting built, and now the argument is that Governor Kay Ivey and the legislative leadership are choosing prisoners over COVID-19 patients.
This is absurd, but all of Alabama’s most opinion leaders in the media are trying very hard.
As Alabama counts its coronavirus dead, Kay Ivey counts out $400 million from COVID relief fund to build new prisons https://t.co/DkeFYaQXMM #alpolitics #covid #alabamaprisonhorror pic.twitter.com/gXiI5zzyeV
— JD Crowe (@CroweJam) October 3, 2021
Alabama lawmakers say they want to ease prison overcrowding but refuse to make sentencing reform retroactive. Meanwhile we’re going to spend $400m of ARPA money on new prisons. Pathetic. https://t.co/lF1qEGxwy7
— Kyle Whitmire (@WarOnDumb) September 30, 2021
https://twitter.com/BurkhalterEddie/status/1443718936848183298
Other states have utilized excess American Rescue Plan funds to provide a variety of loans and aid to small businesses that are suffering during the ongoing pandemic. In Alabama, your fiscal conservative Republicans just voted to use that money to pay for a suspect prison deal.
— Josh Moon 🇺🇸 (@Josh_Moon) September 29, 2021
There were so many tweets and no minds changed.
Their arguments are silly and predictable, but they also are untrue. Some of this gifted money has been spent on the pandemic, but the amount needed was apparently less than Congress allocated with very few strings.
And many states are using this money for other stuff.
- Many states increased unemployment insurance
- San Francisco is increasing government spending
- Pittsburgh bought 78 electric vehicles and will pay black women $500 a month for two years
- Missouri wants $400 million on broadband
- Texas may use $200 million for cyber security, $286 million for teachers retirement and $237.8 million for mental health
- South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster says he wants $300 million for an interstate
The understanding with this federal money was to be used to help with the actual pandemic, help businesses that were harmed, help people who were laid off (with bonus money for others), and to make state and local revenues whole.
There was wide latitude for what to do with this money, and politicians are going to use it.
Congress should have done more than loading newly-printed money into a cannon and firing it at other politicians.
These same gripes are from people who thought anyone that voted against this absurd monetary mismanagement was a heartless monster.
Again, maybe they aren’t being honest all the time?
The complaints, be they from Alabama’s saddest political journalists or U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), are political nonsense that will rightly be dismissed.
Dale Jackson is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts a talk show from 5-9AM weekdays on WVNN and on Talk 99.5 from 10AM to noon.
