Tony Rankins, a formerly homeless, drug-addicted Army veteran, got a standing ovation at the State of the Union after President Donald Trump described how he turned his life around thanks to a construction job at a company using the administration’s “Opportunity Zone” tax breaks targeting poor neighborhoods.
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Rankins, who indeed moved out of his car and into an apartment since landing a job refurbishing a Nashville hotel two years ago, doesn’t work at a site taking advantage of the breaks and never has done so. In fact, he started that job four months before the Treasury Department published its final list of neighborhoods eligible for the breaks. And the hotel where he worked couldn’t benefit even now because it’s an area that didn’t make the cut.
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Trump also praised Rankins’ employer, R Investments, for “working to help 200 people rise out of homelessness every year by investing in opportunity zones.”
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CEO Travis Steffens said he has hired hundreds of homeless to work at the 400 buildings the company has owned over the years, taking advantage of various tax breaks. But when it comes to Trump’s Opportunity Zone breaks, he said, the company has only one building tapping the program now, a warehouse in Cincinnati where no one seems to be working, homeless or otherwise.
AP News
It doesn't say a lot for the people receiving the awards, either. They knew it was bullshit.During [his] State of the Union address, President Donald Trump introduced Philadelphian 4th grader Janiyah Davis and said she would receive an “opportunity scholarship” to attend whatever school she wanted. He pointed to her experience as an argument for expanding school choice.
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During the State of the Union, President Trump spoke about Davis, who was in attendance with her mom. He said she was one of the “tens of thousands” of students on a waiting list for an opportunity scholarship.
“For too long countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools,” Trump said.
He then announced that he was “please to inform” her that her “long wait is over,” and she would receive a scholarship. “You will soon be heading to the school of your choice,” he said. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos reportedly personally funded this scholarship; she’s known for being a strong advocate for the school choice movement.
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However, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday that Davis already attends a competitive charter school, Math Science and Technology Community Charter School III (MaST III).
The Inquirer reports that her school is part of a charter network so competitive that it received 6,500 applications for 100 spots in the next school year. The school reportedly opened in the fall with about 900 students, one of whom was Davis. MaST III is funded by taxpayers and does not charge tuition, per the The Inquirer.
Time
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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