Sunday Night With John: Ducks Not In A Row
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Ducks Not In A Row
John Derryberry
Amazon received 789 million dollars in federal tax relief since Trump’s tax cut law went into effect. Read that again. The Seattle-based company’s profit was helped by recent changes to the tax law, giving it a $789 million tax benefit during that quarter. Not for the year, not for six months, but for one quarter of business, they took in an extra $789 million. Do you know what they paid in taxes last year? Zero! Read that again. A company that does billions of dollars in business, paid zero, freaking zero, in taxes.
Why does that matter? Let's take a look at Oklahoma, but you could look at Kansas or Iowa as well.
A deepening budget crisis has forced schools across the Sooner State to make painful decisions. Class sizes have ballooned, art and foreign-language programs have shrunk or disappeared, and with no money for new textbooks, children go without. But, according to a study by Emma Brown in 2017, perhaps the most significant consequence is that students in scores of districts are now going to school just four days a week. Four days a week allowed for our kids' education! I'm glad to see we have our freaking priorities straight. You are probably thinking, why? Let me tell you. Funding for classrooms has been shrinking for years in this deep-red state as lawmakers have cut taxes, slicing away hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue
Do you know the number of school districts in Oklahoma? There are 575. We could give each school an extra million in funding and still have $214 million left over to assist other schools. These cool millions could buy, I don’t know, new text books and computers, provide increased teachers' pay, and pay for armed guards to stand at every school entrance. How about meals for each kid who is going hungry? How about new clothes for homeless kids? Heck, how about dorms on the ground for homeless families to stay in during the school year? I don’t know, maybe we could get our ducks in a row and decide what’s truly important, helping a billionaire become a trillionaire or educating our future generations.
I do not fault Amazon for raking in the cash. They are supposed to do what is right for them as a company. I do not blame the struggling schools for figuring out a way to make dwindling dollars go as far as they can. Could Amazon take the tax windfall and donate it to schools? Yes, and I’m sure they do charity work. Could the schools pay their senior level management staff a lot less? Yes. But that doesn’t mean they are overpaid, or deserve to lose wages. What this means is that our elected officials have their priorities out of whack. Look at those figures again. $789 million in potential taxes would fund a number of needed educational programs, but, instead, we cut taxes so much we make education a four-day-a-week adventure. And we wonder why this country continues to descend into the haves and the have nots, even though there is more money today than ever.
Our elected officials have decided that the American moral of leaving the country in better shape for the next generation is no longer ingrained in our country's fabric. This is not a Republican or Democrat thing for me, It’s a failure of every elected official to remember this was supposed to be a government for the people and by the people. Now we sell out just to get re-elected, to hobnob with the elite, while we pretend we have the people’s best interests at heart. We place selfishness and greed on our holy altar. Damn the next generation, it will be their problem to figure it out. Maybe they will grow up to realize it’s time to get our ducks in a row. More than likely, the teacher had planned to teach that lesson on day 5, which no longer exists, so the ducks will continue to wander.