Alabama still collecting tax for Confederate vets

[Angry Dragon]

http://news.yahoo.com/alabama-still-collecting-tax-confederate-vets-095645624.html

By JAY REEVES - Associated Press | AP – 6 hrs ago


MOUNTAIN CREEK, Ala. (AP) — The last of the more than 60,000 Confederate veterans who came home to Alabama after the Civil War died generations ago, yet residents are still paying a tax that supported the neediest among them.

Despite fire-and-brimstone opposition to taxes among many in a state that still has "Heart of Dixie" on its license plates, officials never stopped collecting a property tax that once funded the Alabama Confederate Soldiers' Home, which closed 72 years ago. The tax now pays for Confederate Memorial Park, which sits on the same 102-acre tract where elderly veterans used to stroll.

The tax once brought in millions for Confederate pensions, but lawmakers sliced up the levy and sent money elsewhere as the men and their wives died. No one has seriously challenged the continued use of the money for a memorial to the "Lost Cause," in part because few realize it exists; one long-serving black legislator who thought the tax had been done away with said he wants to eliminate state funding for the park.

These days, 150 years after the Civil War started, officials say the old tax typically brings in more than $400,000 annually for the park, where Confederate flags flapped on a recent steamy afternoon. That's not much compared to Alabama's total operating budget of $1.8 billion, but it's sufficient to give the park plenty of money to operate and even enough for investments, all at a time when other historic sites are struggling just to keep the grass cut for lack of state funding.


more at link http://news.yahoo.com/alabama-still-collecting-tax-confederate-vets-095645624.html

[Riftaxe]

1. Good for Rep. Holmes

Although it is unlikely they will cease revenue collection, it is more likely that they will divert it away from the park. Which makes you wonder why the park has not been moved into the state system like the rest?

Anyone from Alabama have a clue on that?

[Posteritatis]

2. The state's budget kind of astonishes me

I'm from one of the poorest Canadian provinces, we've got about 20% Alabama's population, and our education budget - which is something of an embarrassment at times - is almost as large as that entire state's operating budget.

What the hell's going on there? How are they functioning at all?

[AverageJoe90]

4. How in the heck does N.S. not have even a million yet?

I've heard it's nice up there, especially in the summer.

[Posteritatis]

6. We're also the size of a postage stamp

The size, the kind of fractured economy and the fact that there's a lot of small-town clannishness deter a lot of would-be immigrants. More often people are leaving the province to head out west, though Halifax is an exception to that rule. We've hovered around a million pretty consistently for awhile.

That disappoints me - I do love this place - but there are definitely more attractive options if you're looking for someplace to live in something other than the retirement or artisanal sense.

[Rex]

7. That is the whole point in the private sector. Kill off public education

because as we can clearly see...corporations make better teachers, like people make good pets. :sarcasm:

[Riftaxe]

9. Education prices these days are truly obscene

However, for post secondary education (I have degrees from private and public systems) private systems do tend to lead to better results.

I remember trying to jump ahead and grabbing a course in Differential equations from North Eastern university, The professor spent an entire semester teaching what would take 3 weeks at the college I was attending. Needless to say, later on in life any resumes that included North Eastern hit the circular file cabinet.

But the basic education guaranteed should not even be up for debate on public or private, for many reasons it has to be public. The debate really should be on how to deliver quality.

[damntexdem]

3. Now here's a tax cut I could get behind.

And they could sell off Confederate Memorial Park to raise some revenue for the state.

[Taverner]

5. Well, if I were in Alabama I would need a place to take a shit - so it's good that park is there

And I can use the "stars and bars" as an asswipe - that's about all it's good for

[Historic NY]

8. Another unending war.