Alabama
Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?; Perry's Appeal To Evangelicals Catches Flak Over Ad; Obama: 'It Doesn't Really Matter' Who GOP Nominates; Heating Assistance Cut For Poor In Northeast; Alabama Governor Admits Immigration Law Must Be Retooled; Iowa Evangelicals Play Kingmakers In Crucial Republican Presidential Caucus; Why Conservatives Can’t Fix Poverty.
Top 10 Reasons Alabama’s New Immigration Law Is A Disaster For The State’s Economy; Undocumented Immigrants Facing Deportation: Caught Up In Confusion, Lost Records, Inconsistent Policy Enforcement, And Difficult Choices; A Deeper Look At Income Inequality; Why The Debt Panel Is In Trouble; How Congress Occupied Wall Street (OPINION – Sarah Palin); 68 Percent Of The Sons Of The 1 Percent Work At Their Dad's Company; More Than 1 In 5 U.S. Children Poor, Census Says.
U.S. Bishops Should Focus On Economy, On Deficit Reduction; The Public Has Spoken: Tax Hikes On Rich, No Cuts To Medicare; My Foreign Aid Budget Starts At Zero; John McCain 'Very Disappointed' By GOP Candidates' Endorsement Of Waterboarding; Keystone XL: Despite Delay, Oil's Grip Remains Strong; Latino Evangelicals Challenge Alabama Brethren On Immigration; Mariann Budde, Diocese Of Washington’s Next Top Bishop, Has Plans For Reviving The Episcopal Church.
Abuse at Afghan Prisons. How Catholic Conservatives could turn the GOP presidential race. OpEd: Jesus would not #OccupyWallStreet. OWS is "largely secular." Religious leaders see immigration as "God's Call." OpEd: Alabama new immigration law has unintended consequences. OpEd: Wall Street Worship. Could 2012 be the most ideological election in years? And much more.
Why Homelessness Is Becoming An Occupy Wall Street Issue; U.S. Pulls Out Ambassador From Syria: Diplomats; Hispanic Alabama Schoolchildren Face Bullying In The Wake Of Anti-Immigrant Law; Vatican Calls For Economic Equality, Sweeping Reform Of Global Financial System; We Pay More To Drive Than We Spend On Taxes; New Obama Foreclosure Plan Helps Banks At Taxpayers' Expense
The District of Columbia has no voting representation in Congress, and our city government hasn't always been the best. But yesterday, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray issued a new executive order reaffirming and strengthening previous policies that District police and other public agencies will not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under the policy, D.C. police will not ask questions about the immigration status of someone arrested, and will not enforce ICE detainers against someone who has not committed another crime.
By the time someone figured out what happened, the deadline to appeal the denial of his post-conviction appeal had passed. So far, the state of Alabama has successfully argued that despite the mail room debacle, Maples should have been aware -- through his local counsel -- that the clock was ticking and that he just blew it.
Courts have struggled for years over the question of who should bear the penalty for a lawyer's mistakes or incompetence and the Maples case represents an extreme example of the problem of imputing the mistakes of a lawyer to the client.
Susan Pace Hamill, a professor at the University of Alabama Law School specializing in federal corporate tax law, had previously worked at two prestigious law firms and at the IRS. Her research on the Alabama tax code—the most regressive and harsh on the working poor of any in the country—led her to write "An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics." Her article convinced Alabama's conservative Republican Gov. Bob Riley to propose a state constitutional amendment that would have revolutionized tax policy in Alabama. The proposal failed in the 2003 vote, but the reform work continues—with the potential of spurring a nationwide movement for tax justice. This is her story, as told to Sojourners associate editor Julie Polter.
I had lived in Alabama seven years, which has more taxes than you could shake a stick at, and I had never focused on the state and local inequity. I'm not proud of that. However, I did notice that the first property tax bill for our house was so low that I thought it was for the month instead of the year. I read grocery sales slips thinking, "That's too high on groceries, that's not right." And every year for state income tax I would get refunds while I was writing checks to Uncle Sam.
Meanwhile, my kids are attending a C- funded school system, one of the few in the state I deem minimally adequate, and every year the teachers are begging for donations to cover things. The signs of inequity were there, but I refused to put them together because I didn't view it as my problem. I would think, "I'm not a state and local tax specialist. I'm a federal person—I'm too busy."
Then I took sabbatical to attend Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, a primarily Southern Baptist institution. At Beeson, another sign came under my nose: A little newspaper article about a big Washington, D.C. think-tank study on income taxes that ranked Alabama the worst. It stated, "Alabama's Income Tax Least Fair," and cited a $4,600 threshold [at which income-tax liability begins]. My first instinct was "That has to be a misprint! Even if we're the worst, that can't possibly be true."
