The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Hits: 76

You maybe remember Trump’s promise to simplify your taxes. Said he’d make em fit on a postcard. Well sir, he kept his promise, at least the part about fitting on a postcard. My 1040 really would fit on a postcard. At least page 1. Page 2 would fit on one too, maybe the back side. Course there was the Schedule C for my so-called bizness and don’t forget the Schedule SE for paying my own part of Social Security most folks’ employers pay. And Schedule B that showed interest on savings. Big whoop, that, considering that interest on a savings account or a CD is lower than inflation and inflation is pretty damn low. Then there was Schedule 1, additional income and adjustments where I got to deduct half of those self- employment taxes, and don’t forget Schedule E for supplemental income and losses.

Half of these would fit on a postcard, the others not really. All together they add up to a vacation that lasted a month with a postcard to everyone you know sent every few days. A lot of forms. A lot more than the good old days where most of that was on a 1040 somewhere but now is fairly obscure and way harder to find. Line 17 on form X goes to Line 54 on form E, then that gets moved after a subtraction or two to Line 22 on the 1040. It’s a little like picnicking in a woods that has 3 or 4 trails and poor signage. Although to be fair, you can go online and dig out the trail from a PDF. Again and again.

Now I know, being a small biznessman, one of those vertebrae in the backbone of the American economic engine, that my taxes are probably nearly as complex as Amazon’s. Even if I actually pay something and they do not. Fair is fair and I don’t want to come off as a Whiner. But … even though some of my taxes fit on a postcard they are not simpler. They got a lot more convoluted and complex. I ended up doing them twice because I screwed up a critical component early in the calculations and since I don’t have Turbo or Turgid Tax to redo the math, I spent half a day figuring out all those corollary tangents that octopused out into fiduciary hell.

What you figure out along the way, kind of like Dorothy on her way to Oz, is things aren’t as they seem. All those caveats and loopholes and deductions for this and depreciations for that, they’re in there for a very good reason and the reason is not simplification or transparency. They’re there for obfuscation. You’d have to be a forensic accountant to follow all these threads and when you got to the other side, surprise, surprise as Gomer used to say, shezam, the rich get richer. Is that simple enough for ya….?

Hits: 164

Hits: 32

I know my many Republican friends were more than happy to accept Attorney General Barr’s terse summary of the Mueller investigation as a total and absolute vindication of Trump. They’re the same folks who smell smoke but refuse to see fire. I get that. After all, I’m the boy who smelled smoke behind my electrical panel, called 911 and waited to see if they’d arrive before my old house burned to the ground. Never did see flame, but when we crowbarred the old barnwood off the walls, we could see melted wiring, gooey roofing asphalt and scorched metal. I don’t think the assumption was that nothing was going on behind those shorted out breakers.

Barr wrote a letter to Trump before he was nominated to be the next Attorney General that set out the argument that a sitting president couldn’t be guilty of obstruction of justice. He was, if you follow the logic, head of the Justice Department and therefore immune to the laws that govern other bureaucrats. I think Kings have this same inoculation. As do Dictators and Fuhrers. Needless to say, that kind of argument will get you a nomination from a President under siege.

Mr. Barr says he will offer up a redacted report sometime soon. Meanwhile he’s interested in investigating the spying that was done by the intelligence community on Trump’s campaign. As Roy Cohn taught Joe McCarthy and Trump years ago, the best defense is a hard kick to the groin. If anyone but the Republican Enablers thought the Attorney General might remain unbiased, well, we were disabused of that notion after the genital karate chop by the Attorney General.

Ditto the President’s tax returns. Not gonna see em, the Trumpster sez. Won the election so it proves nobody is interested. And anyway, they’re under audit and as everyone knows, the IRS can’t release them while they’re under audit. Long audits, all those years back, and no, the IRS tells us they can be released even if they were under audit.

I’ve spent the past three weeks putting my electrical back together. New wiring, new panel box, electrical inspections, nice new digital meter, conduits, new siding, new interior paneling, discontinued circuits, a long lament of remodeling and anguish. The place didn’t burn down … but plenty of damage was done. I’m hoping the government under Trump manages to survive these years, but I suspect that smoke we’re smelling is a lot more than partisan imagination. There’s plenty to see here. Whether we get to see it is another matter altogether.

Hits: 31

Hits: 48

At the entrance to an LAX restaurant stands a white robot with a round head, eyeballs with red sensors, blue eyes that blink in cute humanoid fashion as the head swivels to find its audience while it answers questions two kids about its same size ask by pressing a dozen or so prompts in the android’s chest. The kids are totally enthralled. Not so much by the voiced answers — they got gizmos and devices galore that do that — but by the creature’s white plastic androgynous physical self. It’s practically one of them.

The kids’ dad catches me watching this futuristic scene and we lock eyes momentarily and both smile. Kids, ya know? Cute. I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking: it won’t be long, couple of years maybe, and they’ll have the real thing, a thinking talking responsive version, a parental substitute, a pet, a playmate, a helper, a babysitter, a counselor, a friend, all of the above. Cute.

Not too far back we had Chatty Cathy, pull the string in her back and she’d croak out a few inane comments. Even had one doll that would wet herself, if I remember right, so odd now I wonder if I’ve conjured a fake memory. Who wants a doll that pisses itself?

The robots aren’t going to piss their pants. If they even wear pants. Or clothes. They’re going to make us love them. We already love our smartphones and they aren’t cute, just useful, although watching 90% of my fellow airport travelers thumbing the gizmos, I’d say they’ve become indispensable, babysitters for the bored. Not too hard a leap to our own personal android, a smarty pants without pants, turning on the lights, adjusting the thermostat, playing our favorite tunes, using its GPS to give us directions from the backseat of the car, tucking us in at night, locking the doors and activating the alarm systems, doing our banking, dialing phone numbers, cooking dinner, cleaning the toilet. Permanent companion. Sex slave too, I’m betting, for those who can afford the premium price.

Those two kids have seen the future. Just not very much of it. Dad and me? Probably we’ve seen more than we wanted.

Hits: 427

Hits: 34

Check out the dude chillin in the LAX airport. Got his feet up on his suitcase, shoes off, got his hat tilted down over his eyes, got this little notebook and a pen. Goin home, goin home on the next flight out, finished with pitching his proposal for the biggest sheriff station in America, nice fat art budget, no telling if he won or lost.

You think he’s stressin, you’d be guessin. But you’d be wrong. The dude isn’t stressin, the dude is chillin, glad to leave sunny Southern California and its 10 lane freeways crawling 5 mph for 50 miles the day before. Which IS stress inducing when the dude wants to catch that next plane home with little room for delays at the car rental or the shuttle bus or the TSA line, any one of which would make him miss that flight with none until the following day.

What Joe Cool here knows — and you don’t — is these competitions are always crapshoots. The deck is stacked with jokers in hidden cards. A project you think you’ve won hands down goes to some dark horse. One you’re certain you lost lands in your lap. Joe’s been to this rodeo before. Joe doesn’t even mind mixing metaphors the way a blind bartender mixes drinks. Joe’s just glad to be chillin. Goin home. Getting the hell out.

If he wins the commission, swell. If he loses it, another will come along. The days when it seemed like life and death, succeed or get a minimum wage job, win or lose the farm, those are just memories gladly forgotten.

Oh, a small part of Joe Cool misses the tension, the excitement, the hunt. He misses the thrill of competing all-out. And he misses the elation of winning, but not the agony of defeat. He misses those but only a little. This is a blood sport, competing against other artists, some nationally known, but now he doesn’t bleed. He doesn’t even carry band-aids, not with ice water in those veins. Check him out, he’s chillin. He’s goin home. Later on he’ll find out if he’s a Loser…. But not right now.

Hits: 19

Hits: 344

Wandering cluelessly into the swamps of sexual harassment should make any of us men more than slightly wary. In fact it should scare the bejeebers out of any but the most hardened of my brethren who suffer from toxic masculinity, a malady most likely not treatable with pharmacological remedies or conversion therapy. For the rest of us feminine scientists, a wise man might just avoid the subject altogether and keep his hands in his pockets.

But … I am obviously not a wise man nor do I have deep pockets. So with some trepidation, let me opine about Uncle Joe. I happen to like Joe Biden. I would even vote for the guy under the right circumstances, although honestly, I think the country needs new ideas, not Joe’s call for comity and a genial hug all around. Joe is an old white guy who says he learns his lessons, but geez, c’mon Joe, you let those creeps tear up Anita Hill without much protest. Apologize all you want, you let her dangle in the wind while that committee gave her a hundred lashes. And for that and a few other latter day come-to-jesuses, I really have some qualms about your judgement. Nobody is going to heal the divisions in this country so let’s stop thinking you’re the one. I just want someone decent and intelligent and mostly ready to fight for a new vision for this backass country we’ve become. Not too much to ask, is it?

And yeah, I get it too, Joe. Some folks don’t like to be touched, hugged, kissed or otherwise have their personal space violated. Don’t care how touchy-feely, good natured you are, there are boundaries. Personally I don’t see you as a groper. At least not like our President who even boasts about groping women, then mocks you for harmless hair kissing. And for all those GOP who suddenly find their partisan sanctimoniousness, I have nothing but the utmost contempt.

But here’s the thing. I’m still pissed off about Al Franken being forced out of his Senate seat. Uncle Joe, well, this may cost him a serious run at the Presidency, something he should have taken a shot at four years ago. Al Franken, give me a break. The man was horsing around for the cameras, pretty juvenile comedy, but hey, the guy was a comedian. He didn’t harass. He didn’t grope. He didn’t even kiss hair. And yet, in the frenzy of the MeToo moment, Gillibrand and her colleagues demanded he step off the gangplank, as if his malfeasance rose to the level of a Weinstein or a Kavanaugh or a Trump … and the man, decent beyond the bounds, stepped off.

Gillibrand will not get my vote, trust me on that. Al Franken was a good and honorable senator. And funny as a boatload of monkeys. Go back and read his books, if you haven’t. You’ll laugh out loud. If there were justice in this world, and you know lately there is none, Al would be running for President in 2020, not banished as a scapegoat to political correctness run amok. At some point we have to more narrowly define the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Uncle Joe, from my vantage point, is not a monster and not a harasser, but he’s probably not going to be President either, okay by me. And Al, if you’re reading this instead of working on your next book, throw your hat in the ring. You got my vote and I didn’t need an apology.

Hits: 362