Making the rounds of the blogs recently -- most likely due to major media coverage of the required recount -- is a story about the apparent failure of a vote in the state of Alabama that would have amended the state's constitution to get rid of three segregation-era sections: one mandating segregation in schools, one allowing poll taxes (a Jim Crow law intended to discourage black voting), and one, added in 1956 after the 1954 Supreme Court decision banning school segregation, that essentially said that no education at all was better than integrated education: it declared that there was no constitutional right to an education at public expense.
Much fun is being poked at Alabamians for their apparent vote in favor of segregation and poll taxes. But the segregated-schools clause and the poll tax clause are unenforceable, and have not been enforced for decades. Much more important, and indicative of where the bitter end of Republican politics takes us, is the third section, which is still of active legal import and was affected by real campaigning. A generous observer might go so far as to say that Alabamans voted on this third provision, ignoring the unenforced first two. Ignore the argument for removing even unenforced segregationist language; this entry isn't going to be about race. The third one is different. And it's still awful. To understand how awful, we'll need some context.
It is September, 2003. Judge Roy Moore, the "10 Commandments Judge," is still making headlines and is just two months away from being kicked off of the bench by an ethics commission for his flagrant violations of American democratic principles. Alabama ranks last or near-last among American states in numerous important categories, not leat of which is the quality of its educational system. Its financial structure is a sight to behold -- companies which own a great deal of its land pay a tiny share of its property taxes, the government is rigidly constrained in its spending (92 cents of every dollar arrives at state coffers already earmarked for specific needs, making flexibility in the face of changing conditions almost impossible), and total tax revenues are quite low. It is a Republican's dream.
It is also a citizen's nightmare. Revenue collection is unfairly distributed and services are unfunded. The government faces a $600million shortfall in its accounts, and must reform its tax system or cut government to the bone, including such essential services as police and education. Leading the charge for tax reform, campaigning hard for a package on the ballot facing the people of Alabama, is Governor Bob Riley.
Riley is a real Republican. Besides laying out his economic case, he invokes Christian Scripture to remind citizens of their obligation to the neediest, including young children. He faces angry opposition from within his own party, especially from the rabidly anti-tax Club for Growth, a Republican wing that is more concerned with eating its own by supporting anti-tax Republicans in primaries than concerning itself with general elections. He lays his career on the line in full knowledge of what he is risking, believing that what he does is in the best interest of the people of Alabama.
He fails.
In the year since, I have been keeping an eye on Alabama. I have dry lists of figures which go on for pages describing the cuts necessary in program after program -- 50%, 75%, 100% eliminations of anything vaguely removable, like a botany museum or a musical enrichment program for kids. Bob Riley's courage -- real courage, as real as you can find off of a battlefield, risking his professional future for the good of millions of strangers he will never know -- is rewarded only in a few acknowledgements. I own one of those -- a copy of Governing Magazine's issue naming him Public Official of the Year. I drove from Texas to Pennsylvania and detoured through Montgomery, AL to get it personally autographed by Governor Riley, whom I will respect eternally for this act.
Today, Governor Riley is continuing to earn my respect by championing the measure that would have modernized Alabama's Constitution. (Another Republican, Rep. James Buskey, R-Mobile, sponsored it in Alabama's House.) Let us put derogatory humor aside for a moment, though -- any voters voting in favor of segregation were a tiny minority. The campaign was about the third part of the amendment, which would have struck the following language from Alabama's Constitution:
"... but nothing in this Constitution shall be construed as creating any right to education or training at public expense, nor as limiting the authority and duty of the legislature, in furthering or providing for education, to require or impose conditions or procedures necessary to the preservation of peace and order."
Campaign rhetoric from before the election can (as of this writing) still be found here and here. Why would anyone campaign against a declaration of the right to a free public education? This is still a burning question in the Third World (see the opening paragraphs); it shouldn't be in America. The answer lies, of all places, in taxes. From Alabama's Decatur Daily:
"While there was widespread support for removing language mandating segregated schools and imposing poll taxes — both long since left unenforceable — a section added by the Legislature stirred opposition from the Alabama Christian Coalition, former Chief Justice Roy Moore and anti-tax groups. ... The new part deleted a 1956 declaration that there is no right to an education at public expense in Alabama. Opponents said removing such language could allow a federal court to rule that education is a constitutional right and that Alabama must provide more funding through a tax increase."
Now we come down to it. Alabamians were persuaded to issue a majority vote against saying that a free education is a right in a first-world country... because it might mean higher taxes.
The talking heads that brandish moral values in our public discourse often tell us to be wary of the slippery slope. This is the slippery slope of shortsighted opposition to taxation purely for its own sake -- the oxygen supply is choked off to even the most essential of services, like education, and people come to accept this as normal. Damage is done to the voters' very ability to see that damage is being done, and in grasping for their wallets they release their hold on the future. When the anti-tax-and-no-other-policy contingent comes to your town, I hope you remember Alabama. I hope you can find the fire to fight this danger to your state's quality of life, and your nation's future.
Posted by William at November 30, 2004 04:17 PM