The Impact of Raising Middle Class Taxes

With all the Sturm und Drang over the budget crisis, the fiscal cliff and now sequestration, there's on indisputable fact: the payroll tax increase is having an affect on Wal-Mart.

Sales were soft at the retail behemoth in late January. This could cause ripples all along their supply chain, with lost sales and possible layoffs.

This finally proves that trickle-down economics don't work as well as trickle up economics. Cutting taxes on the rich doesn't stimulate the economy, they just get to keep more of their money. But when you raise our taxes, we spend less.

How much influence does TV really have?

I am old.  

So when I tell you that the whole "violence in the media inspires violence on the street" argument has been done to death.

Back in the 1970s there were a lot of cop shows on TV: Baretta, Starsky and Hutch, and Cade's County (which I remember because Glenn Ford drove a Jeep, which I thought was really cool at the time). In the mid 70s, there was a a great hue and cry about violence on TV. So one news outlet decided to interview some of the worst offenders. I vividly remember Robert Blake (long before he had his own gun issues) earnestly tell the reporter that if TV cut out violence, TV would be about who's sleeping with who. A few years later, here comes Dallas.

Look, I haven't seen a single credible study proving what's on TV or the movie screen to violence on the street. Nor have I seen studies that can prove video games cause violence. But that hasn't stopped TV programmers from pulling Bugs Bunny cartoons from the airwaves.

But I have seen Wayne LaPierre say that's the reason there's so much gun violence. And that if we had armed teachers, janitors, principals, secretaries, crossing guards--in fact if everyone was armed, there would be no gun violence.

And yet, Chris Kyle is dead. Killed at a gun range with a weapon in his hand.

I've been reading about gun companies threatening to stop selling their product to state and local governments who enact gun bans. In Colorado, a legislator argued against the gun ban saying that if an ammo company leaves, thousands of jobs will be lost.

So it comes down to money.

Again.