As Uncle Hugh used to say, “Never get into a piss-fight with a skunk.”

I am back.

Only occasionally, mind.

I had retired to devote full time to decades of losing the struggle to write a novel. I say losing because I finally wrote it. Some people might like it. I don’t.

In the age of Trump, I have been forced back among the columns.

Not that I should join the cacophony of outrage that we have elected an amoral, ignorant clown. (You just don’t get it, do you? They voted for him because he’s and amoral ignorant clown, for gods’ sakes! Polls showed people though he was more dishonest and less qualified. We have come to revere dishonest and incompetent. It reminds us of us.) But the offended news shows have responded in kind. Instead of letting the big tent catch fire with dignity and reason, news people simply cannot resist the invitation to join a bad act in the center ring. Madness in self defense.

Worst thing you can do to an newsie: accuse him or her of being unfair.

The news business will give you publicity you never dreamed of trying to prove they’re not prejudiced.

Attack the news business, however, and they throw away the rule book.

So, I do not return in the name of Trump.

Not that I don’t think he’s a New York real estate salesman, an amoral ignorant clown with the uncanny ability to sell a dream state, Ozzie and Harriet with real cultured pearls, to people who have gotten a pretty poopy stick-end in this country.

Those who would rescue the downtrodden in the United States are among the country’s most enduring purveyors of racism.

We see the long-suffering as some shade of brown.

And we have assigned colors to a universal struggle and argue for those we deem most pitiful.

Middle income white people struggle with less success for their efforts than any other ethnic group: less likely to fully educate their children, ever own their homes or cars, and die with any reasonable kind of care and comfort.

Poor people get public help with everything from illness to tuition.

Middle income white people simply can’t afford such gratuity. They are unworthy of sympathy because they live in a state of comparative comfort. Comfort mortgaged to the eyeballs.
They are condemned to work for banks all their lives not because they must resort different solutions. Their conception of public policy is that their lives don’t get any better unless they go over to the self-serving dark side: Reaganomics.

We have all ignored them.

Until the real estate hustler promised to.

Yet, we continue our ignorance.

If we would all stop watching the show, we might make those who so desperately believe him aware that he hasn’t.

And won’t.

He doesn’t know how.

NOTICE: It is now legal to hunt wild hogs from hot air balloons in Texas. Can’t imagine anything that could go wrong with that.

Younger than Kennedy . . .

Senator, I knew Blake Farenthold. Blake Farenthold was my congressman. Blake Farenthold’s staff helped me resolve a Social Security problem. Blake Farenthold takes care of crap like that for people in his district.

Senator, you are no Blake Farenthold.

For which I’m sure you are both grateful.

That said, Senator, yeah, he is pretty unattractive little guy, who you would expect should be one of those unnerving, sort of puffy guys from IT who keep hanging around your office long after he’s fixed your network problems, and then you find out it’s because he wants to proselytize about being born again or decry UFO non-believing heretics or assure all comers that Obamacare will propagate the global realization of the last 20 minutes of Cecil B. DeMille’s “Samson and Delilah”.

Actually, Hedy Lamar would almost be worth it.

Blake’s just a nice person with the politics of a Gobi Desert warlord.

And who hasn’t seen that silly picture, for gods’ sakes.

As a public service . . .

But in case you’re a fan of the Farenthold Fatal Arbitration Method. Here’s a link to the Code Duello , the rules for dueling. Irish version, of course.

Po’ Texas . . .

Arguments about improving health care or education in Texas are senseless.

The state can’t afford either.

Unless, of course, we do something about the franchise tax, and I don’t mean repealing it, as the Necktie Know-Nothings are wont. (In case you don’t get that tie reference, see, Texas legislators have to wear neckties in session, unless she is one of the rare feminine fascists of the breed, at which point you may substitute a can of Spray Net — Walmart aisle display giant economy size — for a Windsor knot, and back in the 1840s and ‘50s the American Party, known as the Know Nothing Party because they refused to answer any policy questions, promoted a platform decrying immigrants, Catholics and any government policy not ending with at least one lynching, so I made up this obscure word-funny about ties and . . . oh never mind.)

Back to the franchise tax.

Big corporations in Texas don’t pay taxes.

There is no state income tax, so partnerships and corporations, i.e., law firms, stock market brokerages and Walmart, pay no taxes other than the franchise tax, which no one with gross receipts less than $1.1 million per annum (adjusted for inflation) is required to pay. Even then, it cannot amount to more than .5 to one percent of the adjusted gross receipts margin, which is roughly defined as some difference between the net and the gross denoted in terms that only a CPA in an incomprehensible argument with the state comptroller can divine, usually determined to be a sum somewhere between diddly and squat.

That means the state has to live on the eight percent sales tax, giving public services the income akin to that of a rheumy fry cook with a wooden leg.

And Order Up Texas has a lot of hungry mouths to feed, such as paving companies, state fund investment brokers, Alcoholic Beverage Commission party hosts and all those Rick Perry job holders who rely on public assistance to supplement our full employment.

Let’s face it, if Texas levied taxes to keep pace with its needs, we’d still be a republic.

Which it didn’t, and we aren’t.

And we’d probably never have found out that Jim Crow paid better than slavery.

And we’d still have a health care policy for the African-American community.

Granted, slavery was only marginally better than the health care policy advocated by Congressional Republicans.

At least slaves got a regular semi-monthly visit from the vet.

“Oh, she said she had pneumonia, Colonel, but one can hardly rely on the word of a slave! That’ll be four bits and a ham.”

Now there’s a health care plan only a true Republican could love.

We live from crisis to crisis in Texas government simply because we don’t have enough money.

Actually, to amend that, we have plenty of money in Texas.

The state government doesn’t have much of it, but it’s there.

In the hands of we, some of the people.

But then if there were anything to you, you’d have exercised your Texas-given right to con, weasel or covertly steal your way into a position to hate the franchise tax and all that goes with it, altruism out with the bath water.

Which is the ultimate reality of income distribution.

Oklahoma exists because early Texans needed someplace to flee.

Couple of decades, you could flee back.

All said, we don’t have enough money to take care of all the sick people in Texas, or teach children much more than one sees from the inside of a bubble.

Besides, most of them don’t vote.

Because we have a state constitutional amendment prohibiting an income tax, the franchise tax is about all we have.

And that sucks.

It’s sparsely levied, complicated to collect and almost certainly unfair.

For example, if I had a Texas business with a bunch of capital letters after its name, and I grossed a grand more than $1.1 mil, I guarantee my granddaughter would be getting braces, immediately after becoming a named partner.

Regardless of whether she wanted braces.

And regardless of whether the franchise tax is the second worst way for a state to collect money — sales tax being the worst, of course — it is the most likely tax that the political climate won’t go Category Five on.

We can expect political climate change in Texas after the iceberg sinks Kansas.

Naturally, with traditional forethought, at this writing the legislature is likely to do away with it.

The only reasonable political move would arise from the fact that it’s easier to amend the Texas Constitution than kick a cat. But it does have to be approved in a general election cycle.

No reasonable person likes an income tax, but it’s the only sensible way to afford corruption, bloated bureaucracy and a civilized standard of public service.

So the population of Texas is as likely to vote for an income tax as Black Sabbath highlighting a Baylor halftime.

Late bloomer . . .

Stephanie Quinn has found the Lord!

The New Braunfels public school teacher, who professed to vote Republican most of her life, faced with the prospect that Texas teachers are paid like field hands with benefits reminiscent of the horny toad sealed in the Capitol corner stone, launched a petition this week to demand health insurance like other state employees and better compensation for Texas teachers, active and retired.

She has, at this writing, sparked around 70,000 signatures.

God loves a Republican come to his understanding.

Now, if we can only convince the Democratic Party of Texas to come on down the the alter and rededicate its life . . .

Those who remember the Democratic state government will recall that the Big Pink was, perhaps, a bit more civil, but no less mendacious.

In all seriousness, thank you, Stephanie Quinn for convincing Texas teachers to stand up for themselves.

Head call . . .

Finally, even rich old pirates know that people who would hit on other people in restrooms have a problem, and it has nothing to do with gender.

That behavior should be against the law.

Oh, wait!

It is.

But as I say, that has nothing to do with gender.

The vast emotional wasteland that lies between who you are and who you were born is a trek most of us never make.

Those who do don’t need any more grief than comes with the territory.

But none of that matters.

If you profess to be a Christian, don’t be mean to people.

If you don’t profess, at least not in public, don’t be mean to people.

Seems pretty straightforward.

Frankly, I have no idea whether I’ve ever been in a public convenience with a transgender person.

I guess some public officials spend more time observing other people in public conveniences.

However, not-the-real-Dan Patrick, before you start wasting everyone’s time, at least find out whether your fears are really everyone’s problem.