~a column by Colleen O’Brien
It’s not just the political news that dismays me; it is just about all the news.
Today I learn that Amazon paid no taxes last year. And for nine years they’ve paid federal income taxes at a 3.0 percent rate. Corporate tax hovered around 35 percent during all that time. The company paid so little because it had significant write-offs, obviously more important than my write-offs. And in 2019, Amazon received a $129 million tax rebate.
Unlike some of the crooks we’ve been reading about, most companies are acting within the law. It is Congress whose members are more influenced by the begging of big corporations than by the whining of ordinary citizens who believe they’re legitimately more in need of the break. American law really does admire wealth.
Amazon and other big corps received stimulus money the first time around when Congress gave us money, too, for help during COVID-19. The predominately Republican U.S. Senate thinks an additional stimulus for the working family is far too much money because we’re all getting unemployment, and what more do we need? Many of us folks are not working, the unemployment has run its course, and we could be about to lose our apartment when jurisdictions say they can no longer make landlords carry any of us unemployed renters.
~~~
What might be a debacle of a general election, what with threats of gangs at the polls and not counting ballots correctly and other scare tactics – I have to move on to happy news; or at least happy news to me, because I’m tired of doom and gloom and stupid pols. I have no control over the sky falling on our democracy in 13 days. . . if we’re lucky in a few weeks for counting ballots correctly.
So, Saturday morning, I went to a protest. A bunch of voters (180 was my count) stood on the side of a busy four-lane thoroughfare holding signs with their favorite candidates’ names in big bold blue letters, waving giant flags with those names in even bigger and bolder blue letters, and chanting.
Cars who liked us blew their horns and waved and gave us thumbs-up. Cars that didn’t like us revved their engines, didn’t look at us or gave us a different finger.
We were told not to react toward protestors on the other side. We did not yell back or flip them off.
One of my friends dressed up as Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Betty is her name, and she’s a little thing like RGB. With a black chignon wig, a black robe, an eyelet collar, pretty earrings, eyeglasses and pink high heels, she was the spitting image as she stood on a couple of boxes so that passing cars could see her and her signs:
”I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brothers is that they take their feet off our necks.”
Some people would say that the new nominee to perhaps fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s place on the Supreme Court is a woman, so what’s with the foot on the neck, Ruthy?
The other side of Betty’s sign read: “I dissent.” RBG could hold her own with the predominately male court.
I talked to a protester who had just moved from South Bend, IN, to my Florida town. “I love Mayor Pete [Buttigieg],” she said. She’d been a lifelong Republican until she met him. “He’s so smart compared to. . .” She grinned. “I looked into everything he said and liked it, so I changed my voter registration.”
An older fellow in a wheelchair asked to read my sign: “I’m marching for my daughter and my granddaughters.” He gave me a thumbs-up and said, “Atta girl, Grandma!”
The protestor group that had started out with 30 folks had grown by six times, and they were diverse, talkative, in a rather happy mood. There were old ladies and old men sitting on lawn chairs or resting on their walkers and canes; young women and young men with tattoos and lean physiques, waving their signs as they danced to the music in their earbuds; black and brown and white men and women; most of the people were middle-aged – 35 to 60 or so. I saw no kids and only one baby. A woman’s tee shirt read, “Bless the other side; they need more prayers than we do.” And another tee that read, “The people are pissed.”
Both of the shirts could be worn by either side.
I had to leave after an hour and 15 minutes because the day was growing too hot and humid. After I crossed at the stoplight to get to my car, I passed a bar and decided a beer would taste perfect. I walked in with my signs in hand, and a fellow at the bar said, “Hey! None a’that guy in here!”
I smiled at him, although he couldn’t tell because I had a mask on, and said, “Oh, come on. You hold your sign and I’ll hold mine.” I left anyway, the bartender saying to him, “Darn it, Joe, you just lost me a customer!” I missed a chance to discuss politics with the other side, but I was in too good a mood.
I found my car, stuck my sign in the back, side window and drove by the entire long city block of protestors, laying on the horn all the way.
My bad-news blues were over because I was taking advantage of the First Amendment. I love to protest.
