Fob James

Forrest Hood " Fob " James, Jr. ( born September 15, 1934 in Lanett, Chambers County, Alabama ) is a former American politician, who exercised twice the Office of the Governor of Alabama. He was a member of both the Democratic Party and the Republicans.

Early years and political rise

Fob James attended the public school in Lanett and the Baylor Military Academy in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering at Auburn Polytechnic Institute, where he played as a halfback on the football team of the Auburn Tigers. After graduating, he was active as a professional at the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League before joining for two years in the U.S. Army and held the rank of Lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers. After his military service he returned to Alabama, where he was a building inspector was active until 1962 and then opened a sports equipment business.

Governor of Alabama

James joined in 1978 by the Republican Party to the Democrats, then went to the office of Governor of Alabama and defeated the Republican candidate Guy Hunt. During his first term of office was the state of significant problems, however, James was successful with his education reform package in a reasonable extent, improved the mental health system, as well as the overcrowding problem of some prisons and took the formerly financially difficult ailing Medicaid system on again. James united state agencies to reduce government spending, and worked on stiffer penalties for convicted drug traffickers. However, he was in his efforts to draft a new constitution, unsuccessfully stood for a gasoline tax, continued the court arranged desegregation ( desegregation ) around at some of the state office subordinate facilities and secured the adoption of its draft legislation for the elimination of the income tax deductions for social assistance payments. While the state's economic crisis, James realized a 10 -percentage spending cut, put a hiring freeze in order and dismissed temporarily a considerable number of state staff members. He was also quite helpful in the development of state highways resulting from the allocation of a fixed amount of money for such surveying from the State Oil Windfall Fund.

Governor James stood for re-election in 1982 and lost to his opponent George Wallace, but he came after the election in November 1994, back in the office after he was again joined the Republicans. He is married to Bobbie Mooney, they have three children together.

Creationism and film

In the documentary Break the Science Barrier the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a scene is shown where James, who rejects evolution, 1995 at a meeting of the Alabama State Board of Education the passage of a primitive man imitates in order to mock the prevailing theory in science to making. He supported a policy that imposed a warning in biology textbooks that read: No one was present when life on Earth was formed, therefore, everything that relates to the origin of life as a theory and not as fact.