Gila Herald File Photo
Column By Mike Bibb
Let’s assume for a moment, some of the large corporations headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and insisting Major League Baseball move its All-Star Game to Denver, Colorado because of Georgia’s alleged voting requirements, would equally be upset if someone without proper identification insisted they be allowed to vote for a corporation’s board of directors.
Unlike Delta Airlines, I don’t think that turkey would fly.
Atlanta is home to some of America’s largest and most profitable companies. Coca-Cola, Home Depot, United Parcel Service, and Delta Airlines are a few. Each of these businesses employs thousands of workers, both salaried and hourly. Their combined payrolls are hundreds of millions of dollars per year, with gross revenues in the billions of dollars.
They also issue millions of shares of publicly traded stock. Owning shares of stock entitles an individual to participate in deciding who runs the company on a corporate level. Company boards of directors and the chief executive officers are often determined by the vote tally of shareowners.
Excepting employees or other individuals associated with a company who can sometimes purchase stock directly from the company, other people who wish to buy stock shares usually must go through a certified stockbroker.
Publicly selling/trading stock is a highly regulated industry with all kinds of rules and restrictions. Unlike walking into Walmart and grabbing a few items off the shelf, paying at the counter, and exiting the store, buying stock in a company requires a certain amount of personal information identifying who you are; date and place of birth, where you live, name of spouse, mailing address and (sometimes) phone number and email. Nothing out of the ordinary, but enough to factually substantiate you are who you say you are.
Actually, providing this kind of information is no different than information needed when opening a bank account, or obtaining a driver’s license, or cashing a check, or buying a car, or boarding an airplane. A common occurrence, performed millions of times a day and no one gives it much thought.
Except now, it has become a big deal in certain parts of the country. Some state voter ID laws have been intentionally twisted into a mechanism of alleged suppression, discrimination, and racism. That, somehow, for a person to factually prove his/her identification – often by the presentation of a driver’s license or state-issued ID card – is considered an infringement upon a person’s right to vote and a racist affront to people of color.
Even President Biden has compared Georgia’s election and voting prerequisites as a return to “Jim Crow days.” I have no idea how he came up with that conclusion. Of course, this is the same man who once warned a campaign crowd of predominately black voters that his opponent was “Gonna put y’all back in chains” in his best fake Southern drawl. So, I guess, it’s really not too surprising he randomly spews such absurdities.
Coincidentally, I’m colored white – yes, white is a color – and required to show my driver’s license to poll workers before being allowed to vote. Does this indicate I’m also being discriminated against or treated in a racist manner? Or, does that category pertain to everyone else but white people?
How much more ludicrous can it get? Well, apparently, we haven’t seen the bottom yet. Major League Baseball has now become entangled in the latest politically correct demands.
Following the footsteps of the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, professional baseball has decided to show it can be equally ridiculous – either ignoring or intentionally overlooking the fact the public is becoming increasingly less interested in the antics of these highly compensated players.
The reason is simple: People attend sporting events or watch on television ball games, track and field, auto racing, horse racing, hockey, the Olympics, Super Bowls, and any other sporting event for amusement and entertainment. They do not tune in expecting to be subjected to political statements and stunts or lectured by young professional athletes’ gibberish about social injustices, white privilege, and the premediated faults of our election systems. Especially when many of these players have recently been recruited from college and probably only know what they have been spoon-fed by ultra-liberal progressive professors.
People hear enough of this brain numbing nonsense every day.
So, when the heads of MLB suddenly decided to move this year’s All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver as a protest against Georgia’s newly enacted election laws, including voter ID requirements, many folks suddenly realized baseball, like other sports, has become immersed in politics and the social mandates of the day.
To magnify the significance of the situation, several of Georgia’s Fortune 500 companies have gone along with the looniness. Not content to remain neutral in a politically sensitive environment they, too, have guzzled the Kool-Aid in vain hopes of appeasing a segment of society that cares nothing about baseball, football, basketball, but is only interested in how they can manipulate big businesses, including the media, into carelessly promoting their radical political and social agendas.
In a Wall Street Journal article, April 2, 2021, the paper reports the All-Star game “Is the first major event to be pulled from the state, coming days after Atlanta-based corporations Delta Air Lines Inc. and Coca-Cola expressed their opposition to the law. The law’s backers say the changes are needed to preserve election integrity.”
The cleverness of the left’s scheming is keeping their real motives as inconspicuous as possible, while at the same time enlisting the efforts of “useful idiots” to carry out their plans.
Unfortunately, it’s beginning to appear a few of these less well-intended individuals have made their way into some of the board rooms of corporate America. Either that or contemporary wokeness has metastasized into a crippling departure from the business-as-usual mantra.
I retired from an Atlanta-based company whose slogan was once “Moving at the speed of business.” There was never any mention of “Moving according to the election laws.”
