{"id":74397,"date":"2019-04-10T19:57:54","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T01:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=74397"},"modified":"2019-04-10T19:57:56","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T01:57:56","slug":"the-view-from-the-balcony-russian-interference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-view-from-the-balcony-russian-interference\/","title":{"rendered":"The View from the Balcony: Russian Interference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIn the Spring a US citizen\u2019s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of . . . taxes.\u201d<\/em> (Alfred Lord Taxemsome)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The now infamous Mueller Report confirmed that the Russians tinkered with our elections. Unbeknownst to most, the report also revealed that the Infernal Revenue Service is being run by the Russian spy agency, Kaos. Those with doubts should watch a few episodes of Kaos\u2019 highly successful propaganda films known as Get Smar<\/em>t. They chronicle Kaos\u2019 decades of meddling with America\u2019s taxes. Let me tell you how they messed with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe 1990s I did my own taxes. I used the form 1040-BS. It had one line: \u201cHow\nmuch did you make last year?\u201d That was followed by the instruction: \u201cSend it\nin\u201d. (I can hear my dear friend, No-Account Addie, rolling her eyes at me.\nSeriously. She\u2019s a tax expert. When she rolls her eyes it sounds like a\none-armed bandit in a casino. When she flutters those baby blues the neon and\nstrobe lights flash like a disco ball at a Bee Gee\u2019s tribute concert.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\nmy calculation I owed the US guv\u2019mint $963.36. I sent it in. Several weeks\nlater they refunded the money, saying I didn\u2019t owe it. I wrote them back and\nreturned the check, explaining that I did owe the money. A few weeks later they\nsent that check back to me, maintaining that I was wrong. So I capitulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nbought a brand spankin\u2019 new Sony Trinitron television\u2014state of the art. It cost\nexactly $963.36. Less than a week later I received another letter from the IRS\nstating that I was in fact correct, that I did owe the $963.36, and that they\nwanted it back\u2014pronto!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\nknow how the automobile manufacturers put the most likely part of the motor to\ngo bad first in the most difficult and costly place to repair and\/or replace?\nThe IRS does the same kind of thing. The kovert Kaos operatives mess with our\ntax returns just enough to p**s us off. In so doing, they plant seeds of\ndiscord in our culture that make us ripe for the pickin\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nfloated this idea to my cohorts on The Balcony recently. No-Account Addie\u2019s\nsweetheart, my good friend Leon\u2014a very inciteful man, recused himself. But on\nthe way out he surreptitiously slipped me a note scrawled on a napkin that\nread, \u201cBe careful who you say that stuff to, Weeks. The fans are wearing wires\u2014red\nones at that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My #2 son, Sir Sonny the Lady Killer, one\nof the Knights of the Long Table, said, \u201cHey, Daddy-O! That stuff\u2019s real.\u201d He\nwas about to tell me how real it was when Sir Martacus came out wearing a\nmonacle and slapping a riding crop in his left hand. He gave Sir Sonny the evil\neye. Z. Z. Bullfrog, a pythy man, jumped in and started spouting off statistics\nabout income taxes and Russian interference like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz<\/em> once he got a brain: \u201cThe\nstandard deduction, when multiplied by 79.8 and divided by 199.07 squared is\ninversely proportional to the square root of the number of foreign tax agents\nheld in Siberian prisons when Mercury is in retrograde.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sheik chimed in. Our ears were pricked.\nHe whispered. We leaned in. \u201cDid you know that the Russians are in the process\nof a financial takeover of Texas?\u201d We were on the edge of our seats. \u201cJust\nthink about this: the flag of Texas only has one star. How many stars does the\nflag of the Old Soviet Union have?\u201d he asked. We all gasped. The Sheik held up\none finger\u2014the middle one. He continued. \u201cAnd they\u2019re gonna change the name of\nTexas to Taxus. Hide and watch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOMG!\u201d shouted Miz McBleu, the Foul\nMouth of the South. But before she could let go a string of expletives that\nwould make a merchant marine blush, two Russian \u201cfriends\u201d appeared. Stone-cold\nsilence ensued. Vlad the Inhaler said to his comrade, Boris Tickmeoff, \u201cBoris!\nThey all look like people who haven\u2019t paid their taxes.\u201d Then they broke into\nsong: \u201cBack in the USSR\u201d to be exact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will\nRussia mess with our taxes this year? I don\u2019t know. All I know is that I\u2019m\ngetting a refund, so, thankfully, I won\u2019t be in the red\u2014or will I? Just to be\non the safe side, I\u2019m gonna brush up on my Beatles music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flew\nin from Miami Beach BOAC,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Didn\u2019t\nget to bed last night . . .<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the Spring a US citizen\u2019s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of . . . taxes.\u201d (Alfred Lord<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[10286,14297,11291,10878],"class_list":["post-74397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-randy-weeks","tag-russian-interference","tag-taxes","tag-the-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}