The controversial immigration law, the strictest in the country, is being challenged in federal court and has met with disapproval from Republican Attorney General Luther Strange. A study published last week by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama estimates the bill will cost the state billions of dollars in lost income from illegal immigrants, lost tax income and related costs. Provisions of the bill have wreaked confusion in courthouses across the state, and raised the ire of farmers who depend on immigrants to harvest crops.

Senator Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, said portions of the bill likely will be rewritten this year.

House Speaker Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, said the most important lesson of the 2011 session was to more carefully vet bills.

“We want to make sure we are more in tune with some of the consequences that happen in some bills that are unintended,” he said.

This year, budgets will be the key issue. The General Fund could have a deficit of more than $400 million with no visible means of filling the gap without raising taxes, which is unlikely. (Emphasis mine)

I recorded Senate Republicans rushing into the chamber from a committee meeting to reconsider an amendment to SB256, the Senate version of the immigration bill, by a small-government Republican. Churches across the state lobbied for an amendment to soften some of the more onerous provisions, and I watched it pass in the Senate — only to have HB56 fly through the House untouched, and then pass the Senate because Republican leadership wanted the strongest bill possible.

There are no unintended consequences to HB56. The problems with it cannot be fixed because they are in the very purposes of the bill. Remember, HB56 came to the legislature from FAIR, the Owellian-named organization behind Arizona’s SB1070 — and FAIR makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Self-deportation of foreign manufacturers from Alabama is a feature of HB56, not a bug.

At a meeting of the Marengo County Republican Executive Committee, as reported by the Marengo Democrat-Reporter, Reynolds told gathered Republicans that there is “no doubt President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and he is working to put America in a Reichstag Moment situation.” As the Democrat-Reporter helpfully explains, the “Reichstag moment,” refers to the suspension of the German constitution by Parliament to enable Adolph Hitler’s rise to power.

[...]

Reynolds went on to blame former RNC Chairman Michael Steele for the financial difficulties the national Republican Party faced in recent years.

It’s the black guy’s fault — of course! That’s how Reynolds makes his pitch to tea party groups. Among Reynolds’ greatest hits are his response to the “magic negro” Limbaugh nastiness: “Didn’t bother me one bit. … This is just people looking for something to make an issue of.” Mind you, this is a member of the Republican National Committee, a man who purportedly speaks for his party.

Its nice to see Republicans creating jobs in Alabama — heck, my favorite thing about Greg Canfield’s appointment to head the Alabama Development Office was that such a nice man should actually get to create a job, for once — but getting arrested shouldn’t be a condition of hiring in the industries he gets to recruit.

There are actually two identical House versions of the bill, HB 30 (.PDF) and HB 36 (.PDF). Both are sponsored by Jim McClendon (pictured right). Parts of the text of this bill are nearly identical to model legislation (.PDF) from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This model legislation is appearing all over the country, but its consequences will be worse here than elsewhere.

That’s because a 1939 law gives Alabama sheriffs near-complete control of leftover funds. Lack of oversight has led to abuse before. Just two years ago, Morgan County’s sheriff was put in jail for starving his inmates to line his pockets. Nothing in any of the three identical versions of this bill will change that snippet of our state’s extensive code. Did I mention that Alabama is also one of the most corrupt states in the country, ranked 4th in 2007 by Corporate Crime Reporter?

Now that the “real” conservatives are in charge of the state, their solution is to pass legislation written by the prison labor industry. Which is where things get strange, as in Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, who recently spoke about the state’s overcrowded prisons:

While releasing some prisoners could ease beleaguered state budgets and prisons, Strange said, it would be politically unpopular and must be packaged with some stricter crime laws to gain support.

“We have a … (prison) population that’s about 195 percent of the designed capacity, so we understand the problems,” Strange said.

[...]

One way around this problem, Strange said, is to package statistically based prisoner releases with mandates that death row inmates be put to death sooner, guarantees that those likely to re-offend will serve their full sentences, and other measures widely seen as tough on crime. (Emphasis mine)

Symbolic punishment is not a bug in HB 30/HB 36/SB 63, it is a feature. No politician was ever run out of office for advocating tough love on prisoners. Of course the people who take the hit will be Alabamians who work for a living; but Wal-Mart can save their families money on the plastic crap prisoners are punished making. See how that works?

I kid, though, because the taxpaying shopper is actually going to get the shaft. These prison-profit schemes somehow never actually pan out in saved money, as Max Shelby reminds us:

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has been slithering in and out of Alabama to some degree since *the late 1990′s when Hal W. Bloom, Jr. (The Bloom Group) lobbied briefly for the corporation. Fine & Geddie were next in 2006. In 2011, new players Roth & Hagood are entering the ‘incarcerate for profit’ game– CCA is back, and possibly positioning themselves to profit from the “meanest immigration law in the country.”

Alabama tried this private prison idea before in Perry County with bad results. Less than a year into the contract, Alabama had to buy the facility back from the LCS Corporation and wasted $60 million dollars in the process. The state seems poised to take another bite at the private prison poison apple, and this time they couldn’t have picked a more unsavory corporate character than CCA.

But one cannot call it unethical — at least, not in the world of people who insert the book of Rand between Romans and Revelations. In their universe, all of this is a matter of rational self-interest. Indeed, HB 63 has the enthusiastic support of (surprise!) a Koch-funded policy chop shop called the Alabama Policy Institute, which offers a nice report (.PDF) promising that taxpayers will save ten percent on operating costs by using private prisons.

We’re the perfect state for this scheme, too. Our rich history of peonage and slavery by another name make Alabama the perfect location to try new corporate innovations that closely resemble those hallowed institutions of yore. If the party of Lincoln tries really hard they can reinstate our 1903 vagrancy law in time for the next election — if there’s profit in it, why not?

This week the political newsletter, Inside Alabama Politics, (IAP) reported that Leura Canary, the recently retired U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, will join Bronner’s RSA staff in January at a salary “in the $175,000 to $200,000 range.

At last report Bronner’s salary was nearing $600,000, and he already has at least a half-dozen staffers over the $200,000 threshold and dozens more over the $100,000 level.

Long story short: Leura Canary is Alabama’s John Yoo. She’s connected to the Karl Rove machine. She apparently lied about recusing herself from a case against a Democratic governor — a case now reportedly being reviewed by the Justice Department. Her new job is an olive branch from the state’s public retirement systems manager, David Bronner, to the Republican supermajority that tore apart the teachers pension contract in this year’s session; it would be ironic if she suffered a perp walk from one of RSA’s gilded buildings, and tragic that I’d probably not be there to catch it on camera.

“Democrats do not want to solve the illegal immigration problem because they know, this is a fact, that when more illegal immigrants move into an area, when their children grow up and get the chance to vote, they vote for Democrats,” he said. “They like big government, they like programs, they’ve benefited from the day they were born because the child was born into poverty because mom and dad are poor.” (Emphasis mine)

Get that? Congressional Democrats voted to spend $600 million on border security last year because they do not want to solve the illegal immigration problem. The White House proposed that measure while raising the rate of deportations to an all-time high because they do not want to solve the illegal immigration problem. Illegal immigration is at a two-decade low because Democrats do not want to solve the illegal immigration problem. Republicans blocked the Bush plan to solve immigration because Democrats do not want to solve the illegal immigration “problem.” See how that works?

But for me, the best part is Beason’s fact-free, talk-radio fueled nonsense about immigrant culture. In fact, folks from south of the border tend to be rather family-oriented and conservative — a natural fit for the Republican Party if only they weren’t being chased out of the “big tent.” Beason didn’t stop:

“The illegals are always praised for sending money back home, ‘they are so great’, ‘such family people’,” he said. “But why is it right for them to send billions of dollars home, before they even try to buy some health insurance here that you and I pay for— it doesn’t make them sound so wonderful does it? They’re basically saying, no we’re going to keep the money and you’re going to pay for what I need.” (Emphasis mine)

Gee, it seems like only yesterday the Republican line on health care reform was that it would destroy America by letting illegal aliens buy their own health insurance. Joe Wilson, anybody? And never mind the barriers to banking — it’s not that we force the undocumented to wire money back home instead of opening a savings account right here, it’s because of their evil conspiracy against the American economy. See how that works?

Not content with lies and bigotry, Beason ended his talk with eliminationism: “empty the clip and do what has to be done.” Gee, what happened to that new tone in American discourse? Better yet, why is a member of the state legislature even talking about an issue that’s constitutionally appointed to the federal government?

The senator discussed immigration laws that have been passed in the state so far, but said that the have been inadequate and poorly enforced. He focused mainly on Alabama’s enforcement of the 287(g) program, which is a federal program that allows local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration laws. The program’s purpose is to allow officers to detain immigrants who are arrested for non-immigration offenses and transfer them to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We have more 287(g) officers than any state in the nation, we’re dealing with it,” he said. “But here’s the rest of the story, our 287(g) agreement that was entered by the Governor’s office doesn’t allow our State Troopers to go on any job site anywhere or to stop somebody anywhere and check to see if they’re legal.” (Emphasis mine)

It’s hard to overstate how much that latter paragraph makes me want to scream. In an era of extended budget shortfalls, Alabama’s Department of Public Safety has been badly understaffed for years. Beason wants the already-stretched troopers to add immigration enforcement to their portfolio, but I doubt he’s willing to pay for it. Instead, he wants to pass an Arizona-style “papers please” law and show how tough he is on Teh Brown. There’s no substance here, just pandering to the Wallace legacy.

Cullman is famous for a Jim Crow era sign that read, “Nigger Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You in This Town.” Given that the Cullman Times played stenographer for Beason, my plan to cover the Alabama legislature in March seems more important than ever before. If you have a few bucks to spare, please click the graphic below to drop them in the kitty and help defray the costs of the 2011 Goat Hill Project.

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Alabama is officially a red state at last. Republicans own the state house for the first time in 136 years:

Stewart attributed the Republicans’ taking of the Legislature for the first time in 136 years, as well as every state constitutional office, to deep public dissatisfaction with the weak national economy and to the policies of President Obama.

“Things are not going well,” Stewart said. “The voters don’t like some of the legislation that’s been passed. This is a way to protest.”

To make things worse, Alabama Democratic leadership held an irregular vote this summer to keep themselves in charge of the party after the election, no matter who wins. Nothing less than an intra-party bloodbath can save it.

On the other hand, it will only take six or eight years for Alabama to remember why it used to vote for Democrats.

The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

And what, pray tell, does Shelby want to extort from the administration? The Mobile Press-Register reports:

- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: “Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.” Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based “at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

The story of the tanker planes is ridiculous. Northrop wants to team up with Airbus to build them in Alabama; rival Boeing wants to build them in Washington. Now Northrop wants the Air Force to change its criteria for selection or else it will take its football and go home.  The second one is new to me, but just how bad is the problem of improvised explosive devices in the United States? Because I don’t see the FBI deploying to Pakistan anytime soon.

Maybe I’m wrong; maybe Northrop/EADS should have the contract and the FBI desperately needs this facility to be in Huntsville. Or maybe Shelby is just a pig at the trough in Washington taking “the party of no” to petty extremes. As I noted back in September amid the “czars” nontroversy,  the GOP obstructionism is aimed at hampering Obama’s ability to govern. Effective leadership consists of delegation to competent subordinates; block the subordinates, and you block the leader. As of August, Obama still didn’t have half his team in place:

While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.

All of which suits Shelby and the GOP just fine, I’m sure. After all, they were willing to block Obama’s nomination for head of the Transportation Security Administration just to keep the people at the x-ray machines from unionizing. The funny thing is, I remember when Shelby was the Democrat who unseated Denton by accusing him of overconsuming pork.