The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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From the New York Times: BIDEN’S PROPOSAL TO EMPOWER IRS RATTLES BANKS AND THEIR CUSTOMERS

This is the sort of story I love. Sleepy Joe wants to find folks who hide their assets, work under the table or just plain scam the tax folks. Billions of dollars are lost, meaning, you and me pick up an even larger share of the defense budget. The rich, the corporations, the Pandora folks, well, we’re happy to spare them the burden of helping with health care or cancer cures or infrastructure rebuilding or education or … well, almost everything. Spare the rich! The American motto these days. Amazon pay taxes? Gee, why, they’re the job creators.

So here’s the New York Times story that the Big Banks (oh, and their customers, at least the Big Boys) are rattled that the IRS might be peeking at their finances. It’s okay that they look at mine, I guess, but whoa, that’s an invasion of privacy when they check into folks with a helluva lot of money and lawyers who can hide it for them. The Republicans, those good fellas who keep harping about the deficits and the debt ceiling, asking how are we going to pay for these programs for the poor, for climate change mitigation, for new infrastructure, for safety needs, for all that stuff that looks like socialism to them, they’re unwilling to hire more IRS auditors to make sure the tax cheaters pay their fair share, oh no, not that! Better to forget about those programs than find an honest way to fund them.

I’m a customer of my bank and I can tell you with some certainty, I’m not rattled by empowering the IRS to collect taxes that aren’t being paid right now. It’s a little like telling the cops don’t arrest the folks in the mansions, better to go after the petty crooks. Wait, we basically do that now. The rich made the tax laws and even then there are plenty of them who want to keep all their money, to hell with the needs of the larger society. They’re privileged and they want to keep it that way. The debt ceiling the GOP doesn’t want to raise is, in good part, the debt incurred by reducing even further the taxes on the wealthy and the corporations. God forbid we audit them to see if they’re playing by the rules. So no, I’m not rattled, but … I wouldn’t mind rattling their cages.

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As much as I try, I can’t keep up with demographic distinctions like Millenial, Gen X or … hellfire, I can’t even remember the names of these categories. Apparently I’m a Boomer, one of those post-war babies spawned by a relief that the Great War was over and returning soldiers and sailors were happy to settle down in the newly built suburbs and raise a family. You know, a nuclear family, not really a reference to the atomic bomb although I’m not real sure.

We’re all old now, us Boomers, most of the WW2 folks have gone to their graves, buried with I LIKE IKE buttons, probably disappointed with us kids, selfish, spoiled brats who thought drugs were the answer, work was for suckers and the future was a cash machine. Some of us invented the internet, smartphones and social media — we thought it would make the world a better place and us a helluva lot richer. One out of two, I guess.

What am I spozed to tell the kids we’re leaving broken promises to? Rusting bridges, crumbling freeways, huge debts, lost wars, high health care costs, rampant homelessness, Covid crazies, tax breaks for the rich, a planet going to hell in a golf cart … that it’s not my fault? No mea culpa? Okay, Boomer, thanks for a few trillion to pay back.

Gotta say, I don’t have kids so I don’t have to look them in the eye and say What, me guilty? Sure tell the next generations we left them all the tools they need. Facebook, Instagram, Fox News, plenty of information combined with the world wide web, go forth and prosper. Pay off our planetary mortgage, figure out what to do with the homeless and the refugees, save the planet we used to power our jet skis and our big fin Cadillacs. We’ll leave you old Elvis records, fentanyl, arsenals of automatic weapons, no forwarding addresses and a hearty Good Luck! Adversity builds character, ask our Depression Era parents. No need to thank us. No need at all….

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Know Yourself

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Harry works down at the O-Zi-Ya Body Shop. He’s an artist with bondo, makes a ‘total’ look brand new after pulling the dents and replacing crushed quarter panels, has a real nice touch with an airless in the spray booth. Back about 4 years ago, Harry was a ‘he’. Six foot four, muscular in a lithe sort of way, moved car parts around like baskets of daisies. I didn’t know him real well, I guess, mostly because my beater cars never got treated to the Body Shop make-over. Dents, scratches, bullet holes —- I’m not spending money for pigs’ lipstick.

So imagine my surprise when Harry walks up my drive during our annual Mother’s Day Studio Tour … in high heels, a tasteful above-the-knee pleated skirt, grey blouse and a matching handbag. “How you doing, man?” I ask nonchalantly and Harry explains, no doubt for the 1000th time, he’s no longer a man. Course, judging by the 5 o’clock shadow of a beard, he’s not quite a woman either. Which, he tells me earnestly, will take the hormone treatments some time to kick in.

Even on the live-and-let-live South End, this was, well , this was … different. And we’re accustomed to different. Harry toured the studio and we chatted it up and when he left I gave him a manly sort of hug and said, “Good luck, man,” and immediately corrected myself. Harry gave me a wink and a laugh and sallied forth down the drive.

Harry quit the Body Shop — not because the boyz couldn’t deal with The Change — they still speak fondly of him. Her. You know what I mean. She wanted a new life to go with the new her.

A couple of years ago I ran into Harry. Harriet now. She was installing fountains. Hauled the rocks, dug the ponds, wired the pumps, plumbed the waterfalls. “I’m an artist, Skeeter” she declared. She was welding sculptural components, creating light shows, running her own business. “Life’s good, then?” I asked.

She broke into a radiant smile, one I never saw at the Body Shop. Leaning down to whisper in my ear, she fairly bubbled, “It’s a joy my boy, it’s a joy!” All I can say is the path to happiness is a whole lot harder for some, even on the salty South End, but it isn’t impossible.

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I hear folks say all the time how the country no longer makes anything, everything’s outsourced, manufactured in China, then imported. Course, they’re running up to Wal-Mart or ordering on Amazon for all this cheap junk, save them a few bucks, half of it going back into gasoline on their SUV. Here on the self-sufficient South End, we still make stuff. Okay, mostly because we couldn’t afford to buy that stuff new. But partly because there’s still a vestige of pioneer pride. You make something yourself, you maybe understand how much work goes into it, you maybe understand the real worth of it, you maybe become a part of it and it becomes a part of you.

We got about 2 million artists down here who paint and sculpt and carve and you name it. They make stuff. That’s what art is. Creation. If they could sell it, they’d be ‘job creators’. Always that damn ‘if’. I admit, half of artistic inspiration is job avoidance, or, in my case, about 100% is. Workaphobia, almost a crippling malady. I’ve had friends, who fancy themselves psychotherapists, suggest that if I spent half as much time employed as I do avoiding work, I’d be rich. Course I explain that then I’d have to do taxes or hire an accountant, set up wills, keep records. I’m just a little too busy for that kind of complexity.

The thing is, see, if you do your own car repair, fix your own leaky pipes, dig your own garden, catch your own food, prune your own fruit trees, cook your dinners, play your own musical instrument, sing your own songs —- you don’t have time to work some silly crappy job. No way. You’d fall behind, the chores would gang up, the shack would rot, the whole she-bang would come undone, entropy would rule, chaos would ensue. Down here, you do not have the luxury of a job! What you got, as consolation, is making your own life yours. Not buying it on credit, piece by piece, from a factory filled with people paid next to nothing in a country that makes stuff for all of us who don’t have time to do it ourselves.

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James T. Kirk has left the planet. The captain is 90 years old, a tad overweight, but otherwise in great spirits, having actually loosed the bonds of earth, going where no old guy has gone before.

I can’t blame him for leaving. Lately I’ve been fantasizing about living on some other planet. Maybe one that believes in Spockian logic. One that doesn’t think it’s okay for 8 or 10 of its inhabitants to own most of the wealth. One that actually believes in the kind of democracy where my vote isn’t equal to a corporation’s, but is equal to everyone else’s. A planet that spends its money and intelligence on curing diseases instead of waging wars. One that lives in harmony with nature rather than ruin the atmosphere and the ocean and ravages the land. Maybe one that hasn’t advanced to the internet or social media or smart phones and computers even if it means a more primitive existence. Primitive is looking pretty good to me these days. And definitely a planet that doesn’t elect a baboon like Donald J. Trump as its leader. Really, is that too much to ask?

I know, that place doesn’t exist. So best next bet, grab a rocket ship and hurtle myself away from this doomed orb, up up and away from the pandemic mandate battles and the Koch brothers and the religious kooks and the climate change deniers and the Taliban and the great state of Texas, as far away as I can for as long as I can. Like Elton said: I think it’s gonna be a long, long time
‘Til touchdown brings me ’round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I’m a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

All I can say is Godspeed, Captain Kirk, godspeed! Beam me up too!

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