Inspiring the next generation

The New York Times today offers an interesting story on how some Southern leaders launched a bus tour from Tennessee through Alabama in an attempt to inspire the next generation of civil rights activists.

About 100 students from Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State University, Fisk University and American Baptist College accompanied veterans of the civil rights movement, some of whom came close to death in the bloody confrontations over interstate travel in the South.

The buses served as rolling classrooms, leaving Nashville early Saturday for Montgomery and arriving in Birmingham on Saturday evening. The students, along with faculty members, historians and others, returned to Nashville on Sunday.

Among the "instructors" on the bus tour were U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, and former Kennedy aide and publisher John Siegenthaler.

New Tax Reform Resource

The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a state-level think tank based in Atlanta, recently published a series of "Revenue Talking Points." Though designed for Georgia, these one page overviews of key tax issues can be useful to advocates of fairer, more adequate tax systems in other Southern states.

Many of the topics summarized in the Institute's talking points are analyzed in more depth in the Center for a Better South's 2006 book Doing Better: Progressive Tax Reform for the American South.

Study Addresses Poverty in Changing South

A column in today’s News and Observer by Todd Cohen discusses the South’s continued problem with poverty despite the rapid economic and population growth of many areas.

RALEIGH - The South has thrived over the past 25 years, but it also has left the poor behind: despite a booming economy the region suffers from big gaps in economic well-being, education and health for poor families.

Southern philanthropy also has been robust, yet the region's charitable foundations have focused mainly on relieving immediate needs and concentrated their giving in more affluent areas. For the South to thrive in an increasingly competitive global marketplace, its foundations must take the lead in driving the collaboration and investment needed to give the poor better access to good schools, good jobs and good health care.

Cohen cites findings from a new study released by Chapel Hill think-tank MDC Inc.

The problem -- Poverty abides in the South because neither government nor business has been willing to take on the cause of fighting social inequity. Government lacks vision, will and flexibility, and business keeps its eye on profits and market share.

The solution -- MDC concludes that foundations must be more strategic and collaborative, invest in change and work more closely with one another and with government and business to address the causes of social inequity.

Equipping the South to compete effectively in the global marketplace will require foundations in the region to move beyond charity and embrace social change.

Despite detractors, South still important

The New Republic's latest cover story ("What is the South?") focuses on the South's place today in politics. The conclusion: Despite detractors like Maryland Professor Thomas Schaller who believe the region has no worth, the South is politically distinctive enough that it can seriously influence national politics.

And, writes Nicolas Lemann in the Jan. 29 issue, race is the reason why the South still has an impact. In the story dominated by a look at memoirs by Sen. Jesse Helm and Sen. Trent Lott along with books by Schaller and Jason Sokol, Lemann says racial voting still is the implicit norm.

"It's as if there's a historic and demographic threshold above which white voters cannot avoid voting racially."

As the South gets more progressive, race-oriented voting will wither on the vine, just as it has in other parts of the country.

Reforming New Orleans' Schools

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans' public school system was regarded as one of the nation's worst -- a system plagued by corruption and low achievement. So it was no surprise that, after the floodwaters receded, city, state and federal officials, along with social entrepreneurs, all rushed in with novel plans to reform New Orleans' schools.

The progress of that experiment is the subject of Amy Waldman's "Reading, Writing, Reconstruction" in the January/February 2007 issue of The Atlantic. Waldman's article follows three sets of actors in New Orleans new educational system - a real estate developed turned charter school operator; the officials who run the schools transferred from the city to a special Recovery School District; and the principal and students of a school in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Waldman's story traces the actions taken by each set of actors since the flood and assesses their progress to date. Despite hard work and good intentions, all of three sets of players have fallen short of their expectations. The result: an educational system that continues to fail its students -- the students upon whom New Orleans' future rests.

UNC-Chapel Hill's Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity: Another Contribution to the South

The Raleigh News & Observer features an article detailing the development and impact of the Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The center was established with the help of former senator of North Carolina and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

The article addresses doubts among some that the center was merely a springboard for Edwards' presidential campaign and praise among others--including some conservatives like Walker Blakely of the UNC School of Law:

"I have heard nothing negative," Blakey said. "We have good people working with the center. I've read the annual reports. It appears to me they are doing a good job. You're talking about a huge problem. No one is going to reverse poverty in a few years."

The center at UNC aims to focus on solutions to poverty and lack of opportunity in addition to academic research.

The South has a disproportionately large rate of poverty relative to the rest of the country. Thus, centers like the one at UNC and the Center for a Better South will continue to address such a problem that is especially prevalent in the South.

Remembering Dr. King

The South, more than any other region, needs to remember the life work of Dr. Martin Luther King, writes GwinnettForum's Elliott Brack. Local governments should honor him gratefully, he says.

After all, it was by the continued efforts and leadership of Dr. King that the South (and at the same time the entire nation) recognized the immorality and harmful effects of segregation, then threw off these shackles to assure legal civil rights for all.

Dr. King, by his moral leadership and position that segregation was simply Biblically wrong, released this nation from the limits that it had imposed on itself, and many people, in the past.

Though racism still rears its ugly head from time to time, it's now viewed with general hostility. Today's it is universally recognized that the one individual who unleashed this new wave of freshness in our society was this minister from Atlanta, a person who was able to show us all that turning the other cheek was stronger than the laws of the south of that day. Dr. King's inspired non-violent approach to the war on segregation is a message of peace, redemption and hope that has not only inspired our nation, but the entire world.

So it is fitting that the United States honors him and his memory with a holiday. Unfortunately, some people do not honor that special day which gave the South new hope for all. While you would expect some die-hard, perhaps Confederate-flag waving reactionaries would be included in this lot; unfortunately, some local governments and institutions are included in the list of those not honoring the King holiday.

Interest in Tax Reform Bubbling

As legislatures across the South prepare to convene, issues pertaining to the adequacy, stability and fairness of state revenue streams continue to attract attention. In recent weeks, the discussions have become more prominent in at least three states across the region:

In Virginia, Gov. Tim Kaine proposed raising the state's income tax threshold to $12,000 for single filers and $24,000 for couples.

In Alabama, Gov. Bob Riley once again is talking about how best to reform the state's revenue system and has released a number of proposals to accomplish those goals.

In North Carolina, an appointed State and Local Government Fiscal Modernization Committee continues to meet to develop a comprehensive set of policy recommendations.

As these discussions unfold, they stand to benefit from the analyses of various reform options contained in the Center for the Better South's 2006 book, "Doing Better: Progressive Tax Reform in the American South."

Brack: Ford offers leadership model for South

The Center for a Better South's Andy Brack suggested today in The Anniston (AL) Star that Southern legislators could do well to emulate the leadership of the late Gerald Ford:

Southerners may not agree with everything offered by their state governments but they do expect for them to be fair, open and decent. Southern legislators should emulate Gerald Ford's style of leadership in 2007 by promoting better, more decent government.

Brack also suggested to state lawmakers that they revisit their state tax structures to make taxes fairer to everyone, as outlined in the Center's 2006 book, "Doing Better: Progressive Tax Reform for the American South."

Tax systems need overhaul

An editorial in today's issue of The State newspaper from Columbia, S.C., could have been part of last year's call by the Center for a Better South for an improved tax system:

The problem with our tax system isn’t simply that one tax is too high or another too low. The problem is that our tax system was crafted for the Depression-era economy, when property ownership was a proxy for wealth, and people spent most of their money on food, clothing and other tangible goods. The problem is that this outdated tax system has been nipped and tucked over the decades to carve out special exemptions, exclusions and credits, sometimes for legitimate purposes but often simply as a favor to favor-bearing special interests.

Like the editorial, the Center called for comprehensive structural tax reform by legislatures across the South to bring outdated systems into the modern era. Does this sound familiar:

"... We argue it is incumbent for lawmakers across the South to revisit their state tax codes in a holistic manner to bring our tax systems into the 21^st century. All components – the income tax, sales tax, property tax and others – should be thoroughly examined and modernized to improve and ensure the fairness, adequacy and integrity of our tax systems. In other words, lawmakers can truly represent people across the South by restructuring state tax codes to make them more representative of today’s complex and rapidly changing economy."

• Learn more about the Center.

South Loses Invaluable Academic

Sunday’s News and Observer contains an editorial written by Rob Christensen highlighting the important academic contributions and recent passing of Southern historian George Tindall.

Tindall was regarded, along with the late C. Vann Woodward (a UNC-CH graduate) and John Hope Franklin of Duke University, as part of the holy trinity of 20th-century Southern historians.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Tindall, Woodward and Franklin took Southern history out of the magnolia-scented Lost Cause legends of the Civil War and administered the smelling salts of reality.

Tindall’s most important academic legacy is his insistence on including all Southerners in Southern history. His contributions to Southern History fundamentally challenged and changed the way Southerners view their history and themselves.

All three insisted that Southern history had to be written in black and white," Luker said. "Prior to their generation, Southern history had been written as a history of white people. That produced such a badly skewed and romantic vision of the South that we can look back on it with amusement and sadness."

In his personal life, Tindall was ahead of his time. In the 1950s he made sure that dinners were held in hotels where white and black historians could eat together, and he sent his children to the first integrated day-care center in Chapel Hill.

Because of Tindall’s breadth of knowledge regarding the American South his passing marks not only the loss of a great Southern academic, but a cultural resource.

Tindall knew things about the South that escaped most others -- from the Mississippi Chinese to the mulatto communities in the Appalachian mountains.

"In that sense," Luker said, "he really had no peer and no replacement, unfortunately."

In Jefferson's shadow

A truly notable bit of irony caught by the Washington Post's Reliable Source today. 5th District Congressman Virgil Goode continues to fan the fire of the controversy set off by his ignorant reaction to his colleague-elect's decision to take his oath of office on a Koran with a recent post on USA Today's blog, reiterating his condemnation of Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison's choice and his own commitment to the issue of illegal immigration lest we

"leave ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion."

The latest wrinkle, according the Reliable Source, is that the Koran upon which Ellison will take the oath, on loan from the Library of Congress, was the personal copy of Thomas Jefferson. The symbolism is deliberate; according to Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert:

"Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers' belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself."

But the irony extends further, to Virgil's district in central Virginia, which both includes Jefferson's home, Monticello, as well as his monument to secularism in education, the University of Virginia. The story within the story here is just how accurately the flap illustrates the acute divide between the city of Charlottesville, which encompasses both of the aforementioned Jeffersonian sites and which voted for Goode's opponent by 75% in November, and the part of the district further South, extending to the North Carolina border and accounting for Goode's victory. Virginia's 5th district continues to prove an case study as single area containing swaths of the most ideologically, socially, and economically at-odds elements of the South.

NC legislator ready to pull up his sleeves on tax reform

In November, we discussed North Carolina's newly formed State and Local Fiscal Modernization Study Commission, a council tasked with the evaluation of the state's fiscal system. Today, the Charlotte Observer published an in-depth story about what N.C. State Representative and Commission co-chair David Hoyle sees for the future of the Old North State's tax system--one which experts say has become antiquated and ineffective.

A businessman by trade, Hoyle brings what former N.C. Governor Jim Hunt calls a "big view of North Carolina" to the table as he leads the Commission and the Legislature to bring a 1930s-era tax system up to par. Currently North Carolina's tax system relies exclusively on revenue from sales tax and income tax to fund more than 75 percent of the state's budget. Analysts predict that as state sales tax revenues continue to decline as they have over the past 30 years, and the economy begins to focus on services, which are not taxed, the system will not be stable or reliable enough to satisfy the demands of residents. The issue boils down to a now or later decision, says Hunt.

"The legislature's been forced into using a lot of quote 'Band-Aid' solutions to make the budget work for a number of years," Hunt says. "We need to get this thing on a solid, long-run basis."

States across the American South are experiencing the same problems. Most Southern states do not take full advantage of taxing services as well as goods. For example if South Carolina taxed more services in 2001, the state could have put an additional $670 million dollars in the bank. Its not all about bringing in more revenue though, Hoyle says. "Any changes should be revenue neutral," so if services are taxed, other rates, such as the sales tax, could be lowered. Tax systems can be enhanced to broaden the entire tax base to include any number of resources, not just services.

State politicians across the South have balked at touching the tax codes, citing other priorities or disagreeing completely that a change is even needed. To many, the solution is just another raise in taxes, but Hoyle doesn't buy it. He says just look the surge in growth in North Carolina in recent years as an indicator that taxes do not drive away growth. Last year, North Carolina posted a net gain in population to become the 10th most populous state in the country.

Want to know what your state can do to modernize its revenue system? See Doing Better: Progressive Tax Reform for the American South, from the Center for a Better South.