Of Taxes, Texas, Voting Rights, Doing Things Right and Fastly

The Schloss-Blog has too many issues to deal with and not enough time nor space to do it. But let's get started anyway.

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THE RECOUNT in Arizona is almost over, some 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County. The people doing the recount and the people providing support are all Republicans or Republican-appointed shills who are going to say the vote count is off.

They have charged all expenses for this to the state of Arizona, in other words, to its taxpayers. Or at least $150,000 worth of it. The rest is being financed through campaign finances raised or private contributions.

The company overseeing everything, Cyber Ninjas, has no voting-count experience and is on record as a known disbeliever in the election results. Now, with the hand recount almost done (the third one), the examiners, including known Republican operatives and candidates for office, are inspecting the paper ballots for - are you ready(?) - bamboo, or evidence it came out of China.

The sad part is that this effort is generating calls for same in battleground states that Biden won.

In other words, Republicans are pieces of shit.

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Taxes.

We all pay them. The only two definite things: death and taxes.

Unless you're rich. Like, really, really rich.

You know, like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates kind of rich.

If so, you hardly pay any taxes, according to an investigation by ProPublica.

It found that the 25 richest Americans, whose income tax returns they claim to have obtained, reveal that they pay nothing or next to it.

And for those 25, that goes back 15 years.

How do you feel about that? I paid more in taxes last year than, oh, say, Elon Musk.

How do they dodge the taxman? Easy. In simplest terms, they live on their earnings off of existing investments rather than have working income taxed, like you and me.

The only way to beat this is to get rich. Just like them.

Good luck.

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Some of the country's biggest and best-performing VC's (venture capitalist types) are taking a turn for the better.

Of everyone.

Before they sink their money into your venture they want to know what's in it.

For the planet.

No, really. Crain's Chicago Business is reporting that major corporations are entertaining proposals to go green, think ecologically and be nice to the planet nowadays.

Almost 30 years ago, I heard a speaker at a conference talk about how he helped found the "Don't Mess With Texas" award-winning, anti-littering campaign. He talked about how companies had to "do good to do well."

Now, three decades later, it has come home to roost on Wall Street.

'Bout time.

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One sports thing. My wheelhouse.

Aaron Rodgers didn't show up at Green Bay's mandatory OTA session (Organized Team Activity).

Does anyone really think he won't be the starting quarterback for Green Bay on the NFL's opening weekend in September? The Packers have the best regular-season record in the league the last two years (26-6).

Rodgers is the reigning MVP.

He'll be there. I really doubt he wants to be traded to nor play for, let's say a Denver team that is going nowhere, with or without him.

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Finally, reading an old article about The Daily Show's Trevor Noah.

He was an immensely successful stand-up comic in his native South Africa who once supposedly attracted a crowd of screaming fans there at an airport in which Justin Bieber was also in plain sight.

Noah makes perfect sense of how poorly things could go in America in the wake of Trump and the anti-American domestic media that supports him, with which he has tangled in the past.

One example of how bad things have been is that months after his death, Herman Cain's Twitter account was still posting misinformation that the coronavirus was bogus.

Bogus.

And that was where America found itself in 2020 - you either believed the virus was for real.

Or you didn't and you bought the BS coming from the Trump camp.

America still has a long way to go in the battle against the virus and its variants. We will likely not have 70 percent of the population vaccinated by July 4, like Biden wants.

We've come so far against the virus, further than Trump ever would've gotten in his serial-killer campaign of denying it.

We've got to get everybody vaccinated. Before we're quarantined again.

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Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.