The morning before Christmas Eve I received an e-mail subjected, Spend Christmas With Your True Family. It came, of course, from a bar.
This morning I awoke to hear the trash truck leaving my subdivision, normally not an issue except that I – like most of my neighbors – hadn’t put our trash at the curb. Since Monday was the legal holiday, we assumed the normal “Monday holiday” rule was in effect, meaning instead of collecting our trash on Tuesday morning the truck would come on Wednesday morning.
This afternoon one of the smarter guys on my street explained that the trash guys don’t get holiday pay because they are all ‘casual labor’ with no benefits. Hence, no holiday the day after Christmas.
Now, the trash truck on my street bears the name of a very major national player in the trash game. The fact that the guys literally doing the heavy lifting don’t get a paid Christmas Holiday makes that company richer. And, it reminds me that the media covers all sorts of feel-good pieces before the holiday about people helping their struggling neighbors. Every kid gets toys and every poor family gets a turkey or ham . It’s almost good to be poor from Thanksgiving till Christmas.
After the wrapping paper goes to recycling, not so much.
That reality stings especially deep this year. We are days away from the new regime in Jefferson City and three weeks from the Trump tsunami hits Washington.
Governor Seal and the super majorities in the House and Senate act oblivious to Missouri’s financial woes. In the face of pending funding cuts to education, health care and other basic services the majority party proposes numerous new ways to decrease state revenue, including, just from the Senators…
► Senate Bill 17 (Krauss), phasing out the corporate income tax;
► SB 132 (also Krauss), lowering income tax rates;
► Senate Joint Resolution 12 (Eigel) capping state revenue growth to just the rate of inflation; and,
► About a dozen new tax credits and new sales tax exemptions.
Meanwhile, the Trumpettes talk openly of block granting Medicaid and Food Stamps knowing those changes will result in less help getting to struggling families and sick kids.
And, it seems like every Republican inside the beltway (I-495 encircling the District of Columbia and its immediate Maryland and Virginia suburbs) has a revolutionary plan to bring in more government revenue by lowering tax rates. Meanwhile, economist adding-up the cost of the President-to-be’s plans hit $7,000,000,000,000.00 before their calculators took the rest of the day off.
The plan, then, is to reduce the taxes paid (especially by the rich), cut aid to families and burden our kids, grandkids and great grandkids with even more public debt?
Let’s be clear. No one enjoys paying taxes. Yet, government can’t provide basic services and maintain roads, water plants and other infrastructure without money. When money gets tight they don’t skimp on the water plants (except in Flint, Michigan – we all know how that worked out), they slash programs which temper the impact of poverty on the vulnerable and investments in education – another way of taking money from the future.
So, the guys picking-up my trash are already working on the legal holiday for regular wages. Why is it so necessary to further reduce the bits of basic help their families need? Are we as a society so petty and mean that we’ll deny a child the ability to visit a doctor or eat a decent meal?
My answer, and yours, is no.
Alas, we have a lot of people to bring over to our way of thinking.
Happy New Year!
Glenn Koenen