Alabama sends message: We are too broke to care about Civil Rights/Voting Rights

[JDPriestly]

50. Of course they did this on purpose.

They never got over losing the Civil War.

It's time for the Justice Department to get serious about voting rights.

This is so obviously wrong, I don't think anyone could argue if the US federal government just opened the offices itself.

We in California faced debt amassed by a series of Republican governors. We elected a Democratic governor, Jerrry Brown and then a Democratic majority in our legislature. And then we voted in a referendum to raise taxes, our own and those of the wealthiest among us. And we pulled ourselves out of the worst financial predicament. (Hear that, Schwarzenegger fans.)

Alabama will never do that, never pull together like that, until it makes amends for its racist past. It will never move into prosperity until the white people in it fully give up those old ideas and subtle attitudes that keep it down, that divide and distract it.

Alabama needs a peace and reconciliation commission on the race and other class issues, but mostly on race, and then maybe it can get on the page and start operating so that it can pay its bills.