Alabama Terror

Alabama is famous for self-deception, lying and stupidity unmatched in American history, except of course, by its neighboring sister state, Mississippi.
   Starting with the Big Lie that the American Civil War was fought for state’s rights, not to protect slavery, Alabama went on to totally subjugate the huge percentage of its population that was and is Black by sheer terror. Bombing and KILLING CHILDREN in a Birmingham church comes to mind in the Sixties, as do savage police dogs attacking American flag carrying marching Black children. Police officers using cattle prods on men, women and children demonstrating for their rights to vote also bring back more warm memories of the Sixties.
   The Federal Government made a huge mistake when it ended the Army’s occupation of Alabama in 1876; it should still be there bayonets fixed.
   The lies continue — the lies are based on race and white duplicity.
   Example: Alabama’s state legislature passed and the governor signed an anti-illegal alien law. The Federal Government and myriad private groups sued to stop enforcement of the law.
   A Republican-appointed (Bush 41) Federal District judge enjoined parts of the law but allowed several other parts to go into effect. The state is permitted to ban it and local governments from entering into contracts with illegals. Result: some residents are receiving notices to cut off water because the people have Spanish surnames (no proof of illegal residence has been offered by those threatening to cut off the water).
   The law requires that school districts document the legal residency of school children and their parents. This is necessary it is claimed, to determine how much of education funding is spent on illegals; this, despite the Supreme Court’s 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision that mandated a state educate any child who enters the school door. The Federal Government and its private partners appealed the district decision to the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court. Luther Strange, the Attorney General of Alabama, a Republican, opposes the government’s appeal. This brilliant man continues the century and a half of Alabama lies and deceit in presenting his case to the Atlanta court.
   He claimed to the three judge panel that “illegal aliens” make up a substantial portion of the state’s prison population, thus causing huge state expenditures. As evidence, he used an affidavit saying that “182 state prison inmates are currently subject to deportation based on holds placed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” That is 182 inmates out of more than 31,000 total Alabama state prison inmates. For Alabama residents who are capable of dividing 182 by 31,000 that amounts to 0.6% of the total prison population.
   Is 0.6% of the Alabama prison inmate population a “substantial portion” of the state’s prison inmates?
   Strange also claims that “many of these people are taking jobs away from United States citizens and authorized aliens who desperately want to work in these hard economic times: while the unemployment rate in Alabama stands at 10%, approximately 4% of Alabama‘s workforce consists of illegal aliens.”
   Two more lies. He does not provide any proof that Americans are flooding to replace illegal alien workers who are leaving their jobs and homes out of fear. In fact, the truth is that crops are rotting in the fields because there are few workers applying for empty jobs. So desperate are Alabama farmers for workers that the Governor is talking about sending state prison inmates to the fields to harvest crops. The state of Georgia tried this and flopped — the work is “too hard” for prisoners.
   Where are all the “desperate” American workers?
   Alabama’s Attorney General Luther Strange continues the Big Lie by stating “the difficulties in collecting taxes from these persons, many of whom work off the books, means that many of them are utilizing Alabama’s public resources without paying their fair share.”
   He offered no proof to back up his stupid assertions. According to the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants in Alabama pay $25 million in state income taxes, $5.8 million in property taxes, and $98 million in sales taxes, for a total contribution of more than $130 million.
   It comes, then, as no surprise that the learned judges of the 11th Circuit not only continued the injunctions leveled at the district court but enjoined the school census provision and several others until such time as the court can handle the entire case in November.
   What this law and its supporters show the country is that Alabamans are the problem, not Republicans or Democrats. The outrageous racial terror against Blacks and now Mexicans was perpetrated first by Democrats and now Republicans.
   Only 4% of Alabama is Hispanic and three-quarters of them are legal. Thank God the federal courts exist, for only they can protect this tiny number of people from being lynched literally and figuratively by the same people who used dogs and cattle prods on children when I was a Twentysomething.

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