Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 1-14-22

Political
Maya Angelou Becomes First Black Woman To Appear On US Quarter
Michelle Obama Makes
Midterm Push To
Register A Million New
A new U. S. quarter featuring the late Maya Angelou went into circulation Monday, the U. S. Mint announced, making the legendary poet and activist the first Black woman ever to appear on the coin.
The Maya Angelou quar- ter is the first in the American Women Quarters Program, which will include coins fea- turing prominent women in American history. Other quar- ters in the series will begin rolling out later this year and through 2025, the Mint said in a release on Monday.
"Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country -- what we value, and how we've progressed as a so-
Voters With Coalition
Heading into the 2022 midterms, the Democratic party holds a slim majority in the House and an even smaller one in the Senate (de- pending on how Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema feel that day). With the Senate yet to take action on the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, much of the work falls to grassroots movements and organiza- tions.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama stated in a letter titled “Fight For Your Vote” that her voting rights group When We All Vote, will work together with other civic organizations to register a million voters ahead of the midterms.
The letter, which ran as an ad in the Sunday New York Times, also stated actions to train at least 100,000 volun- teers to help people register and recruit thousands of lawyers to protect voters in states where “the freedom to
MAYA ANGELOU, AMERICAN WOMEN QUARTERS PROGRAM.
Most of the attention Mon- day went to President Joe Biden’s speech attacking Donald Trump for sending his goons to derail democracy, but we also learned an ex- tremely important detail about Vice President Kamala Harris: she was inside the Democratic National Commit- tee’s headquarters when a live bomb was found.
Harris, still a U.S. Senator while she was veep-elect, said at the top of her own speech on Thursday that she was in the Capitol for a briefing from the
V. P. KAMALA HARRIS
Senate Intelligence Committee
hours before the violence started, but rolled out before the first Trump extremists en- tered the building. Unfortu- nately, her schedule took her from the frying pan and into a possible fire.
How could a pipe bomb have been left outside the HQ of ei- ther political party–let alone both–without beind detected?
And how’s it possible that a year later, no suspect has been identified even though Wash- ington, D.C., should have been the most secure and surveilled city on earth on Jan. 6, 2021?
ciety," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a sepa- rate statement. "I'm very proud that these coins cele- brate the contributions of some of America's most re- markable women, including Maya Angelou."
The new coin still features George Washington's vis- age on the "heads" side, while the "tails" side honors An- gelou by evoking one of her most famous works, the auto- biography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
MICHELLE OBAMA
vote is threatened.” Organiza- tions such as the NAACP, Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight Action, Voto Latino Founda- tion, and 27 others signed in solidarity.
In her letter, Obama re- ferred to historical examples throughout history to show the fight for voting rights in 2022 is worth the work.
Kamala Harris Reveals January 6 Bombshell: Now, We All Have Questions
Treasury Warns Taxpayers To Brace For A Turbulent Tax-Filing Season
Americans can start filing their income tax returns Jan. 24, but existing backlogs and long- standing operational problems at the IRS, aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic, are likely to make for a frustrating filing season for taxpayers and tax preparers, a Treasury Depart- ment official said Monday.
The IRS is still dealing with backups in processing returns from the past two filing seasons. While the tax collector typically has about about 1 million pieces of unopened mail, including tax returns, in its backlog when starting a new filing season, it had 6 million unprocessed indi-
vidual returns as of Dec. 23, the most recent date for which data is available on the agency’s web- site.
More than 150 million indi- vidual income tax returns typi-
cally roll in over the course of a few months.
Tax returns for 2021 are due April 18 for most individual fil- ers, a few days after the normal April 15 deadline due to a holi- day in Washington, D.C., though extensions can be requested. This year’s start and end dates, announced by the IRS on Mon- day, are more in line with his- torical norms, which have been upended since 2020 because of the pandemic.
Last year, the IRS held off the start date to Feb. 12, to give the agency extra time to reprogram operations based on tax law changes passed in late 2020.
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