Author: mopress

By Greg Moses

In Texas the top-to-bottom ratio is ten-to-one. For every pre-tax dollar earned by a family among the bottom twenty percent, a family in the top twenty percent earns ten dollars and forty cents.

Only two states, New York and Mississippi, outscore Texas on the raw top-to-bottom scale. Massachusetts is tied with us. In California and New Mexico, every single bottom dollar is matched at the top by ten dollars and twenty cents.

Over time the pattern only gets worse. In Texas over a period of 17 years (from 1988 to 2005) the average pre-tax income for families of the bottom fifth grew by 13 percent or about $1,800 in annual income; whereas, for families in the top fifth, pre-tax incomes grew by about 31 percent or $38,000 in annual income.

Tax policies tend to narrow the top-to-bottom ratio by a couple of points. But whether you’re looking at the top-to-bottom ratio before taxes or after, the gap between the top fifth and bottom fifth grows tenaciously year by year.

The same trend holds between top incomes and middle incomes. During the first five years of the 21st Century, middle income Texas families managed to increase their incomes by about one percent or $500 in annual income (after taxes); whereas families from the top fifth added about nine percent to their incomes or about $10,000 (after taxes).

If the business of America is business, then the business of business in America is inequality. And this poses an environmental hazard to civil rights. What can it mean to fight for equality, equity, or equal opportunity in a society where everyone is daily experiencing inequality on the rise?

In a 2008 report co-authored by Arthur B. Laffer, Ph.D., the tax policies of Texas were declared to be better than California’s based upon a supply-side matrix. It was another way of saying in so many words that we should keep a state income tax off the table in Texas.

But what’s interesting about the tax policies of Texas and California from a top-to-bottom point of view is that the tax policies take both states from their top five positions in pre-tax inequality and move them down the scale to where they are tied around 17th place for growth in inequality after taxes.

The tax policies of the Lone Star State have not only satisfied the supply-side guru, but since Texas families start off more unequal than California’s in pre-tax numbers, we have also managed to eliminate slightly more inequality in the process.

In both states, we might add, the top-to-bottom gap in after-tax incomes stands above 13-to-one if by “top” we mean top five percent instead of top fifth. Would it be too radical to suggest notching this number down via tax policies to a more polite dozen-to-one?

Notes

Numbers for the top-to-bottom study (in 2005 dollars) were released last Spring in a joint study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. See PULLING APART: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends by Jared Bernstein, Elizabeth McNichol, and Andrew Nicholas, April 2008 [in pdf format].

For the “Laffer Report” see, COMPETITIVE STATES, Texas v. California: Economic Growth Prospects for the 21st Century, Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics, August 2008, Texas Public Policy Foundation [in pdf format].

PS

Laffer and associates have also been busy in Oklahoma. A Tulsa Today Staff Report of Nov. 21 covers a supply side review of Oklahoma taxes dated January 2008 [in pdf format]. The report offers fond remembrances of Laffer’s prophetic support for “Prop 13,” the California property tax revolt that signaled the advent of the Reagan Revolution worldwide.

On Sunday, December 7, at 4 p.m. a peaceful coalition of individuals and groups opposing Willliamson County’s participation in the detention of asylum seekers will gather on the Williamson County Courthouse steps in downtown Georgetown.

Although federal law requires the “least restrictive setting possible” for immigrant families, in 2006 Williamson County contracted with Corrections Corporation of America, a private for-profit prison company, to incarcerate non-criminal women and children in the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor. The contracts between ICE, Williamson County, and CCA are up for renewal in January.

Please help us show Williamson County, Homeland Security, and the private prison industry that imprisoning innocent children will no longer be tolerated in the United States of America.

We will meet in the parking lot on Austin Ave. between 4th and 5th Streets in Georgetown at 3:30 p.m. and walk 3 blocks to the County Courthouse to hear community leaders speak in support of alternatives to the incarceration of families awaiting asylum or immigration hearings.

There are currently 385 detainees in T. Don Hutto including 92 children. As a result of the lawsuits brought by ACLU and the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, detainees are now allowed to wear their own clothing. Thanks to a recent intervention by the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, ICE has also agreed to allow detainees to use phone cards given to them rather than having to buy the cards through CCA.

If you would like to bring a gift to the vigil, suggestions include new toys in their original packaging, books, music players, music, lotions, shampoos, candy, phone cards, and clothing such as sweaters and warm socks.

For further information or to sign up to speak, please contact Sherry Dana at sdana787@gmail.com. 512-868-5181

Our quarter-year of absence at the Texas Civil Rights Review has coincided with the electoral revolution led by Barack Obama, so we couldn’t be more pleased to have a picked a season during which little more needed to be said.

Yet the time of absence wasn’t chosen so much as it was delivered with a bundle of priorities that left not a spare minute to type in. At one point, it was only thanks to a delayed airplane that I was able to hammer out a fast note to a contributor. The competing priorities this past quarter were entirely welcomed, so worry not; our energies are well, our spirit intact.

In the short time I have to write tonight, I’d like to reflect upon what usually goes on here, and why we miss it.

The Texas Civil Rights Review was founded in 1997 as on online archive dedicated to racial equity in the Land Grant system of higher education in Texas, and, by proxy, across the USA. Thanks to that work in the 1990s some real progress was made for some real people. And as we look forward to Change, please remember Mr. President that equity in the Land Grant system is still possible, still worthy, and perhaps more than ever a timely theater for economic and democratic renewal of ourselves and our posterity.

After a few years of exile from Texas politics (perhaps not unrelated to our successes in the Land Grant establishment) we returned in 2003 with a hopping mad interest in what had happened to affirmative action policy, and we proudly outed a blue-ribbon report from a Land Grant college committee that recommended affirmative action in admissions. (We still like to call it integration, remember?)

As Summer turned to Fall in 2004 we covered the trial for public school funding in an Austin District Court, and documented the courageous struggle of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to uphold the principles of equitable funding, especially for impoverished Hispanic children.

On Christmas Eve 2004 we posted our first of many letters from federal prisoner Ramsey Muniz. We still say it would be a righteous act to pardon Ramsey and set him free.

In the opening months of 2005 we covered the hearings that officially certified the election of Hubert Vo to the Texas House of Representatives. We followed up on the Vo hearings with a massive review of the hearing documents. (Rep. Vo has since been re-elected twice. In 2008 he won a comfortable 56 percent of the vote.)

In April of 2005 we reported on thousands of pages of documents that we reviewed at the office of the Texas Secretary of State regarding the construction of a statewide voter database that was built to satisfy the so-called Help America Vote Act (VAWA).

During the summer of 2006 we filed an open records request with the Texas Governor seeking documentation for the deployment of the Texas National Guard to the border with Mexico. We were told there were no documents. Later that year, we followed a rising flood of immigration issues that culminated in the federal roundup of several Palestinian families from the Dallas area who were cruelly treated regardless of age or pregnancy status.

In 2007 we let fly a few thousand words over the converging issues of immigration injustice in Texas, symbolized by the Hutto family prison and the border wall reflex. If Change means anything, it should make a difference on both of these issues.

Earlier this year we covered the federal harassment of Albanian refugee Rrustem Neza, who was finally released to live with this wife and children after a year of meaningless imprisonment at Haskell. And we reported on the shocking detention of Bujar Osmani who was nabbed by federal agents while taking a bathroom break at a law office.

As the summer of 2008 turned into record swelter, we reported the death, the federal documents, and the dreams of Riad Hamad, ebullient champion of Palestinian children.

In these stories and others, we have been very nearly alone in our commitment to documentation and detail. So yes, there was something to miss when we were absent during the Fall quarter of 2008. If you missed us, you weren’t alone. We kind of missed us too.

As for the future, we remain realistic. The amount of time devoted to the Texas Civil Rights Review these past five years will not be sustainable, but the reasons for this are good ones. Your editor has not given up or burned out. I’m just busy.

Whenever I do have a few spare hours, you’ll know it. I’m here. I keep my eyes open. I may be out of the office a lot, but I ain’t giving up the lease. — gm

The following item previously appeared in the announcements section of TCRR–gm

This message is from Antonio Diaz of the Texas Indigenous Council in San Antonio. He and his sisters and brothers have been leaders in the campaign against the TDH immigrant family prison since early in the protests, which began in December, 2006:

“Native people celebrate death as it is apart of the circle of life, there is no need to fear physical death, the death of innocence on the other hand is a sad thing indeed. We will be going to Taylor on Sat. Nov.1st to recognize the Death of innocence of the Children Detained at T.D.Hutto Prison, Nov.1st is known as “Dia de los Inocentes”.

“Dia de los Muertos from Nov 1st to Nov 2nd. This loss of innocence due to incarceration because of greed of private prison corporations like Corrections Corp. of America must be addressed and the policy of fear and division that allows for rampant greed to dictate immoral immgration legislation must come to an end. Reinstating the Catch and Release program will be the first step to bringing justice into immigration reform. Join us if you are able 6 to 8 pm in Taylor TX. at T.D.Hutto Res. Ctr. — for more info (210) 396- 9805
Antonio Diaz”

T. Don Hutto is at 1001 Welch St., Taylor, TX (map). From Austin, take I-35 north to Round Rock. Exit Hwy 79. Turn right on 79 and drive east to Taylor. Just before you enter Taylor, go right on the 79 bypass (sign says to Rockdale). Take the first left onto S. Edmond St. Edmond ends at Welch. Go right on Welch and you can’t miss the prison.

Solidarity,

Leslie Cunningham

“Las luchas obreras/No tienen fronteras.”