Stupid in Alabama
Jan 28, 2010 Alabama politics, alabama, alabama constitution, alabama constitutional reform
Here’s an example of what I’m on about: the city of Florence, Alabama and the surrounding Lauderdale County rely on a 7-mill property tax to fund local education. This tax has to be re-voted on every so often; teachers always overwhelm the ambitions of anti-tax zealots and opponents of public education, yet hundreds of those people manage to show up at the polls and make things interesting in what ought to be a slam-dunk.
Mind you, Alabama has the lowest property taxes in the country. In order for Alabama to climb to the 49th place nationally, we would have to TRIPLE our millage rates. Meanwhile, ours is the most regressive income tax in the world — a flat tax would actually be more progressive than the current law, which taxes the poorest at ten percent and millionaires at three percent. Meanwhile, Alabama faces a gigantic hole in the state education budget due to an over-reliance on sales taxes.
But raise these issues in a public forum, and here’s what you’ll get: Alabama is a poor state. We can’t afford taxes. Never mind that education is the single most important factor in economic growth; this attitude has been passed down by the landowners behind our racist 1901 state constitution, who simply didn’t want to fund education for black children and poor whites. Never mind that Alabama’s poorest residents could certainly use an adjustment to the income tax scales — taxes’re bad, m’kay? is a constant refrain among reactionaries here.
So maybe you can understand why I have no patience for the progressives who whine that Obama hasn’t farted a socialist green-energy paradise out of his armpits yet. Anyone who’s lived in the Heart of Dixie for a while gains a new appreciation for the meaning of “progress.”
