My good friend, Michael Calvert, likes to remind me the Alabama Constitution is the only one in the world that contains the words “pick up truck.”
And it has a lot more words—340,136 to be exact—12 times longer than the average state constitution, 40 times longer than the U.S. Constitution.
About 90 percent of the document’s length, as of 2011, comes from its 854 amendments. About 70 percent of the amendments cover only a single county or city, and some deal with salaries of specific officials.* Continue reading How can one document create so much havoc?→
3rd Ave N. looking east from 18th street; courtesy of the Birmingham Historical Society
After World War II, Birmingham and New Orleans were the top two leading cities in the South. Now they’re at the bottom. New Orleans had Katrina. What’s Birmingham’s excuse?
Birmingham’s centrally located in the South, is absolutely gorgeous, and has very smart, likeable people–as do other Southern cities. Why have we performed so poorly? Is there something in the water? Continue reading Government structure is killing us→