I sat on a bench at the heart of the Auburn University campus adjacent to what I believe they still call “The Quad.” It was a Saturday morning, the first weekend of that year’s spring break week, and I had chosen to remain in Auburn in lieu of taking yet another debauched beach vacation. Accordingly, the campus was sparsely populated and absent its regular hustle and bustle of students.
The other night Charlene and I had the joy of going to dinner with our adult son, who was in town on business. It's such an amazing and truly wonderful thing to see your kids grown up and living good lives. I have many memories from his time growing up, but the events of the past week brought one particular story to the forefront.
First, before you make any assumptions about where this story is going, please note that I did not attend Auburn or Alabama and don’t watch college football. (I know, sacrilege.) I’m an NFL guy. That said, pretty much everyone I know is a fan of one school or the other.
When Alabama’s labor participation rate is low, we all pay the price. Businesses continue to struggle with staffing issues. The worker shortage is contributing to near-record-high inflation, putting added stress on the budgets of Alabama families.
They called us the TV generation. Because that was pretty much all we had. No smartphones. No computers. No internets.
Listen to 1819 News Reporter Will Blakely on The Jeff Poor Show as they discuss Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and the fiduciary implications of not investing in the best-performing security and instead investing in a "woke" security that doesn't perform nearly as well.
Why have so many Alabamians taken themselves out of the workforce? It is in no small part because Alabama’s government makes it much harder to start a career or change an occupation than most states.
Desperate to get a win before the midterms, President Biden announced Wednesday that he would be canceling $10,000 of student debt for people making less than $125,000 per year and $20,00 for Pell Grant recipients. This could cost between $440 billion-$600 billion.
Listen to 1819 News Contributor Stephanie Holden Smith on Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan as they discuss the huge Alabama state budgets and the legislature's reluctance to cut taxes in a time of high inflation and record budget surpluses.
Listen to 1819 News Contributor Amie Beth Shaver on News & Views with Joey Clark as they discuss the effects of abortion on women and the California transplant to Muscle Shoals who appreciates that Alabama enforces its laws.
Biden is sending the message to Americans that your word does not have to mean anything. Your signature on a legal loan document can be ignored and then “forgiven.” You don’t have to work hard and do without luxury items until your bills are paid anymore.
The actions and policies of Donald Trump as president demonstrated to me that he is a Frederick Douglass Republican, but he never stated that publicly, to my knowledge. He should study the life and life-empowering values of Frederick Douglass and state the truth honestly -- that he is a Frederick Douglass Republican.
We know abortion hurts women. And, no, I don't mean the 63 million children killed in abortion clinics, half of whom were little girls. I'm talking about their mothers.
Listen to 1819 News Contributor Stephanie Holden Smith on News & Views with Joey Clark as they discuss her recent Op-Ed that government can't produce money, taxpayers do, as well as how Alabama stacks up to neighboring states in terms of tax cuts over the past few years.
It’s rare that elected officials of all ideological stripes agree on how to spend money, and it’s even rarer that elected officials agree regarding cutting taxes. What is clearly unanimous in the state of Alabama is widespread understanding, and literally everyone is in agreement that state coffers are overflowing.
What if the revolutionaries of the past failed to understand what they had torn down? What if the progressive builders of yesteryear never wished to understand what they had destroyed in the first place? What if they were so intoxicated by their sublime vision of ‘the new thing’ — a new day, a new man, a new human nature, a new science, a new religion — that they destroyed many things worth saving?
Listen to 1819 News Reporter Craig Monger on The Jeff Poor Show as they discuss the election lawsuit, Lindy Blanchard's withdrawal from it and Don Siegelman joining it.
Difficult times will show you what someone is made of. Difficult times will also show you whether or not someone has the ability to lead others. What will that person do when difficulties arise? If that person is a leader, or the head of a household, or the boss at the business, what will they say or do to show those whom they lead that there is a way forward and here’s how we get there together?
I’ve been around cops since I was a kid. Right off the bat, we learned police officers were the good guys and that if you did something really bad, you might end up in a horrible place called jail.
Some fool once called her “white trash.” And that’s when she made up her mind. She wanted to better herself, and her family. So, that’s what she did.
School choice for every family, regardless of income, zip code or social status, has become reality in Arizona.
This week, President Biden signed a bill that Congress passed, authorizing the IRS to hire 87,000 new employees. I was hoping that Joe Manchin would hold the line in the Senate.
“Alabama budgets are in great shape.” That was the message last week from the Alabama Legislative Services Agency’s deputy director Kirk Fulford to a joint meeting of the legislative budget committees in Montgomery.
In 1999, when the Florida legislature was first considering a meaningful school choice program, opponents predicted the worst. Governor Bush’s plan to offer vouchers to students in failing schools would “kill public education,” according to Leon Russell, then the chairman of the Florida Chapter of the NAACP.
We are living in unprecedented times. The tyrannical Biden administration and Marxist-liberal Democrats are doing everything possible to tear down America. Never in our lifetime have we witnessed the unrestrained use of power and authority by our government — carried out at the expense of individual liberty.
Listen to 1819 News Reporter Will Blakely on News & Views with Joey Clark as they discuss the drama surrounding the University of Alabama sorority rush and accusations that a pledge was wearing a wire for a news organization.
I'd planned to write about motherhood. It was based on a conversation Larry Taunton and I had a few weeks ago. But the more I researched the topic, the more discouraged I became.