Surprise, Surprise; States Most Captured By Big Energy (KY, OK, WV) Are Where Teachers Are Striking
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Richard Ojeda, a leader of the West Virginia strike and an insurgent Democratic congressional candidate, has been explicit about the connection. “We are on the next Saudi Arabia!” he bellowed at one Capitol protest. “They’ve said that — the energy people said that! So, if we’re on the next Saudi Arabia, obviously they want it to be just like Saudi Arabia, where you have about 10 people driving around in Lamborghinis and everybody else eatin’ sand sandwiches! That’s what they want. Guess what? No!”
In Kentucky, the ties between the collapse of coal and its education funding are less direct, though public employees are no less fired up about having a government they see as more beholden to big donors and corporate interests than to funding their pensions. Following the passage of a hotly contested pension bill, they’re marching Wednesday on the Capitol in Frankfort. The Kentucky Education Association — one of the main drivers behind the recent statewide sickout — says Gov. Matt Bevin has shown a “blatant disrespect for Kentucky’s public employees.”
At the center of all of these fights are long-standing issues: Teachers in each state have, for decades, been among the most poorly paid members of their profession around the country, and face mounting costs for basic health care and retirement benefits. That all three of these strikes have happened in states that have been historically dependent on the extractive industry is also no coincidence. The automation, and then decline, of the coal industry — due largely to the rise of natural gas — has led to shrinking tax bases in West Virginia and Kentucky, and in eastern Kentucky especially. In Oklahoma, massive tax giveaways to the oil and gas industry have landed the state in a budget crisis. West Virginia public employees are calling to raise severance taxes on coal and oil to fund their health insurance, and the pretext for the battle in Oklahoma was a years-running campaign to repeal the subsidies that helped deprive their schools of necessary supplies.
“There is a clear connection between the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been siphoned off in tax breaks for oil and gas production and the state’s inability to adequately fund our teachers and school operations and public employees,” said David Blatt, Director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute. West Virginia and Oklahoma are ranked 48th and 49th, respectively, in average teacher salary, according to the National Education Association, while Kentucky is doing better at 26th.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/04/12/teachers-strike-west-virginia-oklahoma-kentucky-fossil-fuels/
