City set to announce changes after BLM protesters target outdoor diners
Friday ’s Black Lives Matter protest — where outdoor diners on Phila Street were harangued while they ate — has prompted the city to rethink how it will handle future marches.
Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton said that the City Council will hold a special meeting at 4 p.m. Thursday at City Hall to announce new policies and procedures the Saratoga Springs police will follow to manage protesters they view as disrupting or harassing those moving about in the city.
Dalton, who didn’t want to specifically comment on what will be announced, said she is responding to angry phone calls from business owners and a video she was given showing protesters who gathered near Maple Avenue and Phila Street. In the video, Jamaica Miles, founder of All of Us who supports Black Lives Matter protests throughout the region, used a bullhorn to challenge diners who lined the narrow street.
“You all are really (expletive) comfortable out here having dinner, enjoying your lives as if the world is just going on,” Miles told them.
She then reminded diners of the late Darryl Mount, the 22-year-old biracial man who died in 2014 after being pursued in a foot chase by Saratoga Springs police. At the time of the August 2013 incident, Mount was 21 and, police reported, found in an alley unconscious after falling from a
So let’s be mad. But at who? Trump?
Certainly, some of the tax tricks he used seem sleazy, like allegedly deducting money given to his children as “consulting fees.” Yet so far as we know, nothing Trump did was illegal; he largely used massive losses in some years to reap refunds in others. He played by the appalling rules as they ’ve been established.
So let’s point the blame where it mostly belongs. It was Congress, of course, that passed laws that allow the very rich to pay less in taxes than bus drivers. It is Congress that turned the tax code into a labyrinth of deductions, credits and other goodies for finance and real estate tycoons, among others.
And it isn’t just congressional Republicans who are to blame. Democrats were in on this, too. The plutocracy results from a bipartisan consensus fueled by campaign contributions. The rich give — and get much more back.
They win. Politicians win. You lose.
Joe Biden spent 36 years in the Senate representing Delaware, which calls itself “The First State” but should really be known as “The Tax Shelter State.” It’s where multinational corporations and the wealthy go to hide assets and profits. Trump is among the many who have used Delaware to pay less.
Biden didn’t make state law, obviously, but there’s no evidence he opposed Delaware’s significant role in making the rich richer, or fought for financial fairness for the little guy. Quite the opposite. According to Mother Jones magazine, he “cast key votes that deregulated the banking industry, made it harder for individuals to escape their credit card debts and student loans, and protected his state’s status as a corporate bankruptcy hub.”
Meanwhile, the Times notes that Trump avoided some taxes thanks to a giveaway included in President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus package that Biden shepherded through Congress and later supervised. Trump should send Biden a thank you note. Maybe he did.
Neither party wants to talk about Biden’s record on financial issues, even during a heated presidential election. Trump and Republicans would rather label Biden a “socialist,” an absurd claim given his history, and can hardly toss rocks from their glass houses. Three years ago, they passed a tax package that REDUCED taxes on the rich, rebuking Trump’s populist 2016 campaign rhetoric.
Democrats, in turn, want you to believe that they ’re the party of the little guy and that the 2020 campaign represents, as Biden says, “Scranton versus Park Avenue.” In truth, Democrats are the party of Park Avenue hedge managers and Wall Street execs alike, as any look at Biden’s presidential campaign donations will show.
“Wall Street’s Big Money is Betting on Biden,” says NPR. “Private equity donors favor Biden over Trump,” reports Bloomberg News.
In Washington Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi and our own Chuck Schumer, want to end the cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes — which, as the Brookings Institution points out, “would be a massive tax cut for the rich.” Here in Albany, Gov. Andrew Cuomo also wants the SALT cap lifted and has resisted a tax hike for the wealthy, despite a massive budget deficit and, already, teacher layoffs. Biden, to his credit, wants to undo Trump’s tax cut for the rich, and promises to keep companies like Amazon from paying almost nothing to the federal government. But Biden’s record — and his campaign contributions — suggest he’ll do little more than tinker around the edges of tax policy.
No matter who wins in November then, this will almost certainly remain a country where the rich can fly in private jets, live in glorious mansions and pay less in federal taxes than a waitress. The plutocracy lives on.