Weather and Property Insurance in Alabama

     Two big stories this morning regarding severe weather in Alabama...starting with a Birmingham News piece about the April tornado outbreak. If taken together, those tornadoes would represent the 5th most costly disaster in U.S. History.

     And The Huntsville Times reports Alabama now holds the record for the number of F-5 tornadoes, the most powerful and often most deadly category....seven of them since 1950. (I took the photo to the right from a helicopter the morning after the 1977 F5 Smithfield Estates tornado.)

     Add it all up and insurance rates in Alabama are sure to head upward, though the experts say that's more because of the overall increase in weather damage from thunderstorms than from the tornado damage.

Beer

     In my lifetime, I believe I have consumed less than the contents of a single six-pack of beer. And half of that was in Vietnam.

     It has never been my alcoholic beverage of choice.

     But I am interested in politics, and the way some small-government advocates are perfectly willing to go all big-government when it comes to liquor (and sex too).

      Especially when Big Business is hounding the politicians to use government powers to clamp down on competition.

     Read the Birmingham News story this morning regarding the call for a boycott of some brewers because they are making sure the competition remains handcuffed by arcane regulation.

     Rather than Free The Hops, they want to sentence them to life without parole.

     If someone wants to brew beer and the product isn't poisoning folks, I say let 'em go for it!

Underground Car-road

     The Birmingham News reports today about a proposed burying of I-59/20 along the northern edge of Downtown. The paper includes this illustration showing what it might look like if the gazillions of dollars is found for financing:

Very impressive. But in the article itself, there's this reference:

 "A sunken interstate also would open up land for development."

     Not much "development" in the picture, is there...just nice grassy parkland with folks strolling. So which will it be? A Wal-mart or a park?

     And has anyone considered the irony that at the same time Birmingham is talking about burying the currently raised I-59/20, they're talking about raising Highway 280 on the South end of town.

   

  Make up your mind!