Republican Alabama Governor Using State Education Funds To Subsidize A Water Park

Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey is using state funds earmarked for education to help subsidize the construction of a water park near a military base in the state. Alabama consistently ranks among the lowest in the country on nearly every issue - economics, education, environment, quality of life, and life expectancy - but instead of spending "extra" money to fix any of those problems, the governor wants to use it build some water slides. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

In nearly every single statistical indicator on how healthy a state is, education, economy, mortality, infant mortality, um, environment, Alabama ranks near the bottom in every single one of those categories. Sometimes there's only one or two states worse than Alabama. So recently it was announced somehow some way the state of Alabama has a 2 billion surplus in their state education funds. But rather than spend that money to make their schools better so that they don't rank, uh, what is it, 47th in the country, cuz that's how bad the education system is in the state of Alabama. They're 47th in the country and they got 2 billion extra dollars for education just sitting there. So you would think like, Hey, this is a great opportunity. We got billions. We can make it better so that we don't look like a bunch of backwoods red rednecks down here in Alabama.

We can improve our system. But you know what Republican governor Kay Ivy's gonna do with that money Instead? I wish I was making this up. She's gonna build a waterpark. She is going to use millions of dollars from that 2 billion education surplus, not to help our children, but to build a waterpark because who needs books when you can have water slides? Wouldn't you rather be lounging in a lazy river than sitting in a chair that's not gonna break in a classroom? Teachers? I mean, doesn't that sound like what we need here in the state of Alabama? A new water park, 25 million, uh, roughly going to the, uh, city of Montgomery. And the city of Montgomery, by the way, has said, yeah, we're gonna use it to subsidize this, uh, the Montgomery Whitewater rafting park built near a military base.

Oh, they're also gonna spend, by the way, a hundred million of that 2 billion surplus building new prisons in Alabama. So we're not gonna do anything about the, let me just read you the numbers here. This is insane. Alabama's 47th in education, 45th in healthcare, 43rd in crime, 38th in overall economy, 37th in both opportunity and natural environment. It's the third worst state in child wellbeing. A quarter of the children in Alabama live in poverty. 20% of the kids in Alabama are currently experiencing food insecurity. They're ranked near the bottom in life expectancy. In fact, in one county, the seventh congressional district, the average life expectancy is actually 10 years less than the national average life expectancy. So if you live in Alabama's

Seventh Congressional district, congratulations, you're gonna die 10 years sooner than you should. Uh, they also have the nation's fourth worst infant mortality rate. So that's how bad the state of affairs is in Alabama. And it's because of solid Republican rule. Much like what we have down here in Florida and throughout most of the South Republicans are bad at government. They just suck at it. They're stupid. They're so stupid that when they get their hands on a bunch of money that they could actually use to improve things in their state. As you've got more babies dying than anyone else, your children in schools are losing ground to everybody else in the country. You wanna protect kids. Just say, spend the 2 billion on the kids and not spend the 2 billion to send the kids to a waterpark. That's not what the children of Alabama need. They need food. Their parents need money to keep a roof over their heads.