Mike Hubbards novel approach to explain states woes Josh Moon, - TopicsExpress

Mike Hubbards novel approach to explain states woes Josh Moon, Montgomery Advertiser September 2, 2014 Mike Hubbard has a future in fiction writing. If an op-ed he penned Sunday for his hometown newspaper, the Opelika-Auburn News, is any indication, the Alabama Speaker of the House has a knack for spinning a tall tale. Hubbards storyline is an old standby, but one that never fails to deliver for the Alabama GOP: the liberals are destroying this country, killing jobs, attacking the South and probably hoping you die penniless and bitter. The antagonist is, as usual, Super Villain President Barack Obama, who spends his days in the White House contemplating ways to attack Alabama jobs and Alabama values and Alabama people (except the minority and poor ones, who are on his side). The protagonist, as you might have already guessed, is Mike Hubbard, and maybe his supporting cast of other Republicans. Theyre protecting you (unless youre Hispanic, black or poor, and especially not if youre any combination of those) and your values (unless your values happen to be slightly different from theirs). Hubbards tale begins with an odd victim of Villain Obama: Burger King. The back story: after decades of making billions of dollars serving people food thats horrible for you, BK has decided that paying U.S. corporate taxes is too costly. So, its moving to Canada. Not physically. Just on letterhead. Hubbard writes that poor ol BK has no choice, because poor ol BK is paying too much in corporate taxes, thanks to Villain Obama. The taxes are hurting the franchise so much that it ONLY made over $1 billion, pocketed only nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in pure profits and opened just 670 new locations in 2013 alone. Now, lesser fiction writers might have struggled with the fact that Villain Obama hasnt raised the corporate tax rate during his presidency and has actually implemented measures that lowered the rates most companies pay. But not a guy with the gifts like Hubbards got. He just sorta yada, yada, yadad those facts with a line about liberals dangerous and destructive anti-business policies. Thats true fiction writing, yall. And that was just the first lesson for us aspiring novelists. Hubbard saved his best, most imaginative story-telling for his descriptions of how Villain Obama is attacking Alabama. According to Hubbard, the sinister plot that he has uncovered is a plan by Villain Obama to eliminate one of the states biggest advantages — low energy rates — by implementing restrictions on coal burning plants. And because hes an evil genius, Villain Obama, by way of the EPA, has implemented these changes nationwide. (Bwahahahahaha). These new regulations might just be enough to keep Alabama from bleed(ing) jobs from the northern areas of the country …, Hubbard writes, masterfully omitting the part where his party successfully ousted a guy who was trying to lower those job-attracting energy rates even more. Again, a normal person who gets all caught up in reality might struggle to write around the fact that Alabama was the only state in the country to have its unemployment rate increase over the last year. Or that Alabama has lost thousands of jobs since Republicans took over the Legislature in 2010. One also might be concerned with glossing over the fact that most of the major companies that have relocated to Alabama have done so not because of the states better educated workforce or its better health care facilities or its pristine infrastructure. Theyve done so because the state dumped billions of dollars in economic incentives — some of which was straight cash — at their feet. But even more concerning to those of us who live in this non-fiction world is the vilification of Obamas policies, which have produced the longest period of private sector job growth in the nations history, created a stock market that reaches record highs every other month and dragged the country out of the worst recession in 80 years. The fawning liberal media, as Hubbard called all of us writers confined by facts, simply couldnt make Hubbard the hero and Obama the villain in this economic story. But then, thats the difference between fiction and reality.