Posted on 09/28/2006 6:11:57 PM PDT by okstate
Alabama is my second favorite state. :)
Is Riley presidential material?
I have yet to find a candidate I like....
His war chest is huge and growing. There is some talk.....in shushed tones.
If you like tax raisers, Riley's your man.
I guess they don't love Lucy after all!
Darn.
And my governor is similar.
Mitch Daniels is such a RINO I will not vote for him again.
Governor Riley is a decent man, and a good governor, he is worthy of re-election. Besides Patsy Riley his wife is the best.
I don't think Gov. Riley would make it Presidentially because he is such an Unknown on the National scene.
Governor Riley passed the first major tax cut in decades here in 'Bama this year.
Oddly, a few people in our state missed the wall to wall news coverage of it here: On April 12, Gov. Riley signed an historic tax cut bill that provided Alabamians with the first significant tax relief since 1935.
see #13
Amazing turn of events. Early 2005, Riley was DOA. It like Roy Moore was going to oust him. Now Riley is flying high and Roy Moore's 15 minutes of fame expired.
But right after he was first elected he also tried to get a tax INCREASE passed. The voters raised so much hell about it that he withdrew the plan.
No, Honey. He didn't withdraw his plan. We voted it down 67% to 33%. The Democratic Party controlled legislature had lied to him when he was first elected, saying that we were in a budget crunch.
Now it's revealed that we had a surplus all along. We didn't need an emergency tax increase, in fact, we had too much revenue.
Hence, the largest tax cut in Alabama in almost a century.
I stand corrected.
His administration also instituted a program that effectively raised our property taxes in Alabama (Bi-annual assesment). Now, that's not all bad. I don't entirely fault Riley for being baited into the tax increase deal; he proposed in and tried to sell it, and it failed. He also tried to reform our archaic state-constitution (it's illegal to wear a fake mustache on church on Sunday). The tax raisin' scheme is hard to forget though. Alabama state government has very little accountability, so giving our legislature more money would have been silly. Nothing really gets done without the teachers union, insurance lobby (Alfa, State Farm) and the trial lawyers association's blessing. That said.....the Democratic party in this state still resembles the Wallace era political machine. Riley is a converted Democrat, and just that is better than the other candidate.
It stemmed from an old lawsuit. Alabama had lost the suit years ago, but under Seigelman was given various delays, appeals, deferals, etc.
Governor Riley simply stopped gaming the court ruling; now tax appraisals are more frequent (which sucks).
But it's not like Governor Riley went to the Legislature and said "raise our property taxes every year" and got some new law or some such out of them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.