Quote of the Day. Week. Year. No, really.

If the religious right had called up Central Casting last year to fill the part of governor, it could hardly have done better than the teetotaling, Bible-quoting businessman from rural central Alabama who now heads up the state. As a Republican congressman, Bob Riley had a nearly perfect record of opposing any legislation supported by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.

But Governor Riley has stunned many of his conservative supporters, and enraged the state's powerful farm and timber lobbies, by pushing a tax reform plan through the Alabama Legislature that shifts a significant amount of the state's tax burden from the poor to wealthy individuals and corporations. And he has framed the issue in starkly moral terms, arguing that the current Alabama tax system violates biblical teachings because Christians are prohibited from oppressing the poor.

If Governor Riley's tax plan becomes law Ñ the voters still need to ratify it in September Ñ it will be a major victory for poor people, a rare thing in the current political climate. But win or lose, Alabama's tax-reform crusade is posing a pointed question to the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family and other groups that seek to import Christian values into national policy: If Jesus were active in politics today, wouldn't he be lobbying for the poor?

Alabama's tax system has long been brutally weighted against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600, when even Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.

A main reason Alabama's poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using "current use" rules, which significantly lowball its worth. Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.

Governor Riley's plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries this time, but that he intends to work for that later.

Church and state are not as separate in Alabama as they are in most places. (The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court was in federal court last week defending his decision to install a 2.5-ton rendering of the Ten Commandments in the state's main judicial building.) Alabamians are used to hearing their politicians make religious arguments, and Governor Riley thinks he can convince the voters that Christian theology calls for a fairer tax system. "I've spent a lot of time studying the New Testament, and it has three philosophies: love God, love each other, and take care of the least among you," he said. "I don't think anyone can justify putting an income tax on someone who makes $4,600 a year."

The state's progressive voters, including many in the sizable African-American community, have backed tax-law changes like these for years. And reform-minded business leaders, who see such tax changes and improved schools as crucial to the state's economic development, have promised to spend millions of dollars on television ads in support of the September referendum.

But religious groups could provide the margin of victory. Susan Pace Hamill, a University of Alabama tax professor with a theological degree from an evangelical divinity school, caused a stir with a law review article called "An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics," which makes an evangelical case for making the tax system fairer. She plans to train speakers this summer to take the theological argument to the grass roots. Kimble Forrister, the state coordinator of Alabama Arise, a coalition that advocates for poor people, expects the 100 church groups that are part of his organization to hold church-basement workshops this summer to get the word out to their congregations.

The Christian Coalition of Alabama has not yet taken a position on the September vote, but it has been speaking out against the plan's tax increases. In an interview yesterday, John Giles, the group's president, had trouble pointing to a biblical passage that directly supported his opposition to new taxes, but he referred to Jesus' statement about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The key question, he argued, is, "How much is Caesar's?"

As the Bush administration and the religious right fight to put theology more squarely into public policy discussions, they are going to have to be ready for arguments like the ones coming out of Alabama. Many theologians argue that it is far easier to find support in the Bible for policies that help the poor than for, say, a cut in the dividend tax. If Governor Riley's crusade succeeds this summer, Alabama may offer the nation a model for a new kind of tax system: one where the Devil is not in the details.


Sort of get the idea that there's no competitive exam for president of the Alabama Christian Coalition, dontcha?

Conversely, it could be that the score for Mr. Congeniality swamps the public speaking score.

the hobgoblin of small editorial pages

SPOKESMEN FOR House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.), Rep. Joe Barton (Tex.), Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (La.) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.) steadfastly deny a connection between $56,500 in campaign donations last year from executives of a Kansas-based energy company and the involvement of the four Republican lawmakers in legislation of keen interest to that company. We can understand why aides for the congressmen and senator would issue such denials. It is against the law for members of Congress to promise legislative favors in exchange for political donations. But executives of the firm, Westar Energy Inc., seem to have had a different take on their relationship with the legislators.

As Post writer Thomas B. Edsall reported last week, the Westar executives believed, as is evident from documents disclosed in a federal investigation of the company, that their donations to political groups linked with the four key Republicans would cause Congress to exempt their firm from a federal regulation they regarded as troublesome. Whether the campaign contributions were a quid pro quo for legislative action on a measure sought by Westar should not simply be a subject of debate between press secretaries and the media. Given the political game plan described by Westar executives and the subsequent legislative action that was taken, the matter warrants prompt investigation by the Department of Justice.

It may be easy to dismiss calls for such an investigation because the first requests for a probe came from prominent and highly partisan Democrats and from the consumer advocacy group Public Interest...


While you may chafe at this particular rhetorical formulation, I think it's important to remember that the Washington Post has, for the last twenty years, consistently been justly suspicious (to the point of summary dismissal) of attacks on public figures from prominent and highly partisan

er

Democrats.

calmer Richard Cohen

While I'm completely comfortable when swarthy people with iffy religions lose their human rights in America as long as I'm hysterical, I feel much better now and I can't figure out why John Ashcroft is still behaving like Beria when it isn't necessary to my personal feeling of wellbeing.

don't try this at home

President Bush yesterday defended the accusations leveled by his administration about Saddam Hussein's illegal weapons capability, saying history will record that the United States made the "absolute right decision" in attacking Iraq three months ago.

Bush's words came amid questions from Capitol Hill about the quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons and whether the administration distorted that intelligence. The administration had used as its primary rationale for the war against Iraq the accusation that Hussein possessed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons that represented a direct threat to the United States. No such weapons have been discovered to date.

"Iraq had a weapons program," Bush said yesterday after a meeting of his Cabinet, the first time the body had met since the war started. "Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out that they did have a weapons program."

Even in making that stout defense, though, Bush appeared to redefine the accusations being made about his administration's use of intelligence in rallying support for an attack on Iraq. Nobody disputes that Hussein had weapons programs at one point. At issue is whether Iraq pursued such programs after inspectors left in 1998 and whether Hussein continued to possess such weapons in quantities to threaten the United States.

But Bush spoke of Iraq's weapons program, rather than its weaponry, and referred to it in the past tense. Asked to clarify Bush's remarks, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush did not intend to make a distinction between weapons and weapons programs. "The president, in saying programs, also applies that to weapons," the spokesman said...


See, I tried and I tried to explain to HM about our family clean clothes program, but she's being really recalcitrant about it.

I may have to do laundry.

less regrettably prolix Michiko Kakutani

Don't you just hate Hillary when people in public life parse things?

science for the good of mankind

At first glance, it looks like a small chip of concrete, except the center is brown.

It is a piece of chocolate the size of a nickel and more than 1,500 years old, scraped from the bottom of a pot from an ancient Maya tomb in Honduras.



Beginning on Saturday, it will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History as part of an exhibition called simply "Chocolate," which covers the history and science of this long appreciated treat. The exhibition runs through Sept. 7...


two words: gift shop.

I am _so_ there.

dodgammit.

I want something good to happen for Mike Finley. He deserves it. He's a fine writer, he's been very strong about having a very hard year, and I think someone should do something about it, dammit.

Go see if it could be you.

I don't know if I buy this.

"ganked" (I just adore the way you young people argot) from serenada


You're Ripley. Believe it or not.


Which Drive-in Damsel Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla