Alabama - The New Low-Tax Model

I wrote about Alabama's Republican Governor trying to raise taxes to cover some already rather minimal spending requirements in his state and how the voters rejected the increase. Today, the results of that rejection are coming clearer.

A NYT editorial on the current and growing mess in Alabama - cuts in services and social safety-net programs - lays out in graphic detail the results of the current conservative vogue. The NYT calls the drive to shrink government revenues, i.e. taxes, (so that deficits increase so that Repugs can slash social and government programs) "starving the beast." And the specifics are frightening:

"A hundred and fifty fewer low-income AIDS patients will receive life-saving medicines from the state. Fifteen thousand low-income Alabamians may lose their hypertension drugs.

High Hopes, a program that offers after-school tutoring to students who fail the high school graduation exam, is being slashed. And up to 1,500 poor children and adults with Down syndrome, autism and other disabilities will not be able to attend a state-supported special-needs camp.

[snip]

The court system is laying off 500 of 1,600 workers, from clerk's office employees to probation officers. The health department is losing investigators who track tuberculosis, and sharply reducing restaurant inspections."

And that is only the beginning:

"Next year agencies are bracing for a 56 percent hit. If the state cannot find more revenue — and Governor Riley is searching — it may be nearly impossible for basic services, including courts, prisons and police, to operate."

This is the future that the Republican party has in mind for all of us. Those who already have their money and their government contacts will be fine; in fact they'll do much better. The rest of us will have to fend for ourselves - with the poor completely abandoned.

All of the things that people want in a stable, just and peaceful society cost money. The only way to pay for those things is with tax revenues. Reduced revenues equals reduced services. Eventually, that includes things like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. Taking this to its logical end, it would also include things like prisons, schools, police departments and fire departments. Somehow people must be made to realize that taxes are not just a way for a government to take money out of their paychecks. Whoever can articulate this and can articulate a way to simplify tax law and close loopholes can make this a winning issue.

When you starve a "beast," you don't get to chose which parts of its body die. It all dies.

And what does that leave? It leaves the very rich in gated, fortified enclaves with everyone else outside in scenes that would likely be familiar to medieval peasants.