Eight Feet Deep

Why is the Texas Comptroller smiling with a crazed look on her face? It’s Tax-Free Weekend!

The mall was a madhouse this afternoon. It is because of the Tax-Free Weekend. That is when Texas consumers get to stiff the state on its sales tax for a lot of different items. I say different items. That does not mean every item.

For instance:

You can buy a belt with a buckle attached without sales tax but you get charged the tax if you only buy a buckle. One may purchase raincoats and ponchos (real or Sears either one) without being taxed but you got to pay that pesky tax if you buy rubber work boots or waders. There is no tax for baby clothes, dresses, jeans, jackets, pants or trousers. But if you want to buy buttons or zippers just in case the cheap, crappy excuse for a button on the garment you buy fails once you get it home, you will pay taxes for it. And so on.

This Tax-Free Weekend started in 1999. I don’t know whether Texas Comptroller (our state’s tax collector) Carole Keeton Rylander McClellan Strayhorn Foghorn Leghorn Desi Lucy Arnaz de Zavalla invented this weekend-long moratorium in the state but I’m sure she will be happy to take the credit for it even if she didn’t. Strayhorn, as we’ll caller her here and mother of my favorite White House press secretary Scott McClellan, is running for the Republican nomination for governor against Rick “The Coifmeister” Perry.

Strayhorn should be playing this tax-free puppy for all it’s worth this weekend while His Hairness begins to finally learn a physics lesson about immovable objects during this second — and no more successful than the first — special legislative session.

It’s nice to know Texans are out saving $8 for every $100 they spend this weekend. In the meantime we also get to pick up the $1.7 million tab for the special session while the legislature does nothing. But hey to the Lege, it’s OPM, Other People’s Money. That’s even better than saving a few bucks.

I try not to be too critical of the local news media. Goodness knows they have enough trouble from bitchy people who know nothing about news but still let their ignorant opinions spew forth. But a news story I heard last night on KBTV-4 just left me dumbfounded.

They reported how neighboring Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrested a 20-year-old deserter from the Marine Corps. Yeah, that’s it in case you were waiting for the punch line. I just had to e-mail my opinion to the channel’s news director on why I don’t think that is really a news story. Military personnel go AWOL all the time, whether a war is going on or not. A desertion includes situations such as when a person has been AWOL for more than 30 days or if he or she declared the intention to desert.

Paul Bergen, Channel 4’s news director, replied to my e-mail and linked to a “Houston Chronicle” story about two Fort Hood soldiers who committed suicide after returning from Iraq.

“So, would you consider this newsworthy then? Some viewers may perceive it to be a reflection of morale of troops,” Bergen wrote me, somewhat defensively it seems.

Yes I consider the two suicides a story. But I can’t for the life of me find any proof positive to link either those deaths or the desertion of a 20-year-old Marine to the current state of military morale. Show me some proof first.

While a deserter may get prison time for the offense, a good possibility exists that he or she won’t. In many instances the services simply discharge the individual and send them on their merry way. I asked Bergen in a reply to his reply if his station will report it if such a discharge is the outcome in this young Marine’s case. I’m not holding my breath that it will be reported.

So much angst I have. On the one hand I really have no desire to see the new “Dukes of Hazzard” movie. But on the other hand if it is a monstrous stinker then it just might be worth the price of a movie ticket. You know, it’s kind of like rubber-necking at a car wreck. You don’t want to do it. You just got to do it.

Our local daily The Beaumont Enterprise , has an online poll asking who is the better Daisy Duke, Catherine Bach or Jessica Simpson? It is showing this weird image that morphs back-and-forth between the old Daisy and the new. It’s really kind of creepy. So far the vote is 73-27 for the original article, Catherine Bach. I wholeheartedly agree.

Hey, it may be a stupid show but that doesn’t detract from Catherine Bach looking, as Billy Crystal’s Fernando would say, “mahvelous.”

It is a bit disconcerting to be traveling down a one way street only to find another automobile headed right at you. That happened to me this afternoon on the way back from the grocery store.

There I was, minding my own business, driving down the two-lane street and HELLO! here comes a green SUV driven by a fellow who has decided to rewrite his own traffic rules. Those rules say travel the way the sign tells you to jerk face. But oh no, I am so important that I can go whichever damn way I desire.

Actually, the guy wasn’t going very fast and he got off the road without incident. My guess is that he was lost. I have been in that same situation before and it is just as upsetting knowing you are going the wrong way. It may even be a little more unnerving because you realize that you screwed up and I don’t think a lot of people like to admit they have screwed up. I can’t say for certain that absolutely no one likes to acknowledge they’ve done something stupid because you see so many people doing dumb acts of which they are sometimes proud.

I was kind of nonchalant at one time about crossing one way streets. The building in Waco where I used to work was located on a four-lane, one way street. I got so used to looking for traffic coming toward downtown and hardly ever looked in the opposite direction. That changed one evening when, yet another SUV going the wrong way, was bearing down on me. What is it with SUVs going the wrong way? I think there should be a study on SUVs going the wrong way in traffic. Perhaps I should apply for some of those millions of dollars handed out by Congress just for those kind of things.

In other words: “Oink, oink please pass the pork!”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur was using a figure of speech when he said: “Old soldiers never die.” But the Pentagon literally wants some old soldiers in their midst. The Defense Department has asked Congress to boost the enlistment age from 35 to 42. Since I am knock, knock, knockin’ on 50’s door right now, I am not in any position to call someone who is 42 years young, old. But 42 is around the age many military people retire and it seems kind of high end to start a new career as a soldier.

Because of the military’s reliance on the National Guard in Iraq, it isn’t uncommon to see those in their 50s being called up. My brother told me about a classmate of his who was being recalled to duty in the Guard and sent to Iraq. My brother is 62!

I don’t know how I feel about this proposal. I’m sure a good many people could hack basic training and going to war at 42. I would not have been one of them, but I paid my military dues as a younger man. What I do know is the Pentagon’s request shows the fix the military is finding itself in with recruitment challenges against the backdrop of the situation in Iraq.

And I kind of cringed when I heard it was Dr. David Chu asking the House Armed Services Committee to raise the age. Chu is the Under Secretary of Defense for personnel matters who made the astonishing statement to The Wall Street Journal in January that the amount of money going toward benefits for military retirees and veterans was “hurtful” to the nation’s defense. I guess it’s okay with Chu, and the administration for that matter, for youngsters and the middle-aged to go off and risk getting killed in war just as long as the government doesn’t have to pay for those soldiers’ retirement. It is just mind-boggling.

Someone once said that the Army isn’t black or white. It’s green. Well, it may be gray too, along with the other services.