Taxed

It’s a Paine to say it, but these are the times that tax men’s souls. (Women’s too.)

What this country needs is more affordability in the purchase, care  and maintenance of members of Congress. I am but a handful of percentage points from billionaire Charles Koch’s tax bracket. If that isn’t the ultimate in horse pucky, I’ll be Go-To-Hell.

Perhaps we need to pool money; buy a Solon or two. I’ll volunteer as the bagman. I’m just shooting spit wads here. Big bidness done bought them up. The pharmaceutical guys bought the best, if not the brightest, which is why the news on NBC, ABC and CBS is saturated with drug commercials for every malady known to humankind, and then some. Some of those maladies are plenty exotic and make you wonder what came first, the disease or the cure?

Oddly enough in these taxing times, doing my taxes this year has been like being keel hauled by Captain Bligh. I wish I could say my absence from da blog was because I have been on a trip — someplace exotic like the stockyard at Stanfield or the casino at Why or a Toltec truck stop. But I have been chained to TurboTax, which this year has been the worst version ever. The Terror of the Return was like HAL telling Keir Dullea’s character, “I’m sorry, Dave, but I can’t do that.”

I shall scour the ends of the Earth for an alternative next year. This year’s software has been as hinky and annoying as George W. Bush’s smirk.