Is the Hollywood and Westside Pot Market in crisis? No, it is not the DEA or FBI this time hampering marijuana sales, this time a major group of customers have stopped buying. But why you ask? Well the Hollywood Writers must have been on something when they decided to strike recently, as they already are over paid by any free-market standard, they are indeed the highest paid writers on the Planet. Of course, some people think Hollywood is in a World of its own?

What do Marijuana Growers think of all this? Well, they must be very upset because if these writers are on strike, then they are not being paid and will not be able to buy the quality marijuana grown in the hills of Los Angeles or imported from Northern California. Some TV watchers think this is good because maybe if the writers stop doing drugs, then the content will improve on TV?

You can obviously see that the Hollywood Writer's strike is affecting more than just the Movie and TV industry, it is affecting local drug sales, which is a major underground industry in Los Angeles and 12,000 fewer marijuana buyers in LA is sure to hurt small business distributors there of the popular pot products. Worse off growers are worried that the Hollywood Writers might try to grow their own crops at home for personal consumption to make ends meet.

One grower of the product is said to have said: "I do not think the Hollywood Writers have the patience it takes to grow quality weed, most of them are on Prozac and are ADHD - so I am not worried" but for the meantime we have seen a huge drop in sales and that makes for a tough Christmas for my family and some pretty crummy TV re-runs too.

By: Lance W.
My name is Lance Winslow and I am a semi-retired entrepreneur, retired Franchisor and now I am a consultant brain-4-hire, internet writer and author. I got bored in retirement so I founded the Online Think Tank - http://www.worldthinktank.net.

Already the liberal-democrat Presidential candidates are showing their lust to loot “the rich” to pay for more big government. John Edwards wants to increase taxes on the rich to pay for socialized medicine. Hillary Clinton also lusts for socialized medicine. She is also setting her sights on the “greedy” oil companies. She said in a recent speech, “I want to take those [oil company] profits and put them into an alternative energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy alternatives that will actually begin to move us toward the direction of independence.”

Notice the word “take,” as in loot or steal from oil companies through confiscatory taxes. I’m sure millions of oil-company shareholders will appreciate government simply stealing their company’s profits in the liberal’s version of the “land of the free.”

What’s the moral premise here?—that government has the right to loot “the rich” to help the not-rich or middle class. It is the sick communist notion of “from each according to his ability to each according to his need.”

Do “rich” people have a moral duty to submit to this legalized theft? Will the middle-class benefit from this looting? No, they will not. If you are middle-class, look over your shoulder, because the same government looters will soon come after you.

If it’s true that helping others is a moral duty rather than a personal choice, then it’s reasonable to loot the rich. They have more money and therefore should “give” their money to people who have less. But progressive income taxes hurt the middle class more than the rich. The middle class is the bulk of our population, and they pay most of the taxes.

To balance the budget on the backs of the top-earning two percent of Americans, we would have to tax 100 percent of the income of everyone who made over $300,000 a year. If this outright expropriation is too extreme even for liberals, we would have to double the income taxes of households earning over $85,000 a year.

Stealing from “the rich” won’t prop up our exploding welfare-entitlement state much longer. But it does satisfy liberals’ secret desire to punish people who are rich. It helps satisfy that green monster called envy. The progressive income tax rears it’s ugly head from liberals’ malicious envy and their desire to feel morally superior, with other people’s money.

Middle-income taxpayers might think the progressive income tax gets them something for nothing. But looting the rich only sets them up for slaughter by the same scheme. Why? Because everyone below the middle class on the economic totem pole will be looting them.

To poor people, the middle class seems rich, though the middle class is struggling to keep its head above water. Since only about two percent of taxpayers make over $300,000 a year (my arbitrary definition of rich), welfare-entitlement beneficiaries (including big farmers and corporations who get subsidies) have to knock on the middle class’s door for their “benefits.” After the rich, the middle class is next in line for the guillotine because it pays almost 80 percent of the taxes that support the welfare-entitlement State.

If you’re middle class and support higher income taxes for the rich, look over your shoulder. Someone poorer than you is breathing down your neck. If you support government’s right to loot the rich, you support government’s right to loot you. You can’t have your cake and eat it too—either we respect each other’s rights and property, or government loots us all in the end. Once government loots one person’s property with progressive income taxes, then we all become victims in the end.

You may think that looting the rich is moral because we have a duty to help others less fortunate than us. But if you believe this, you become vulnerable to the liberals’ propaganda. Your conscience shames you into helping others.

However, if you were consistent, you would feel morally obligated to give all your surplus income to the poor. You would feel immoral spending money on your children’s future while people are starving in Appalachia. Too bad that your kids can’t go to college now after you give all your money away.

But “compassion” can’t stop there. Many poor people in America are rich by comparison to the poor in underdeveloped countries. Mexican illegal aliens who sneak across the Rio Grande at night to work for minimum wages in the fields of California know this. If helping others is a moral duty (forced down out throats by tax collectors), it would be immoral to stop at America’s borders. We would then have to tax America’s poor to feed the rest of the world. After all, America’s poor are rich compared to millions of starving people in Africa.

So there’s no end to it. If giving to those “in need” is our moral and political duty, then no one has a right to one penny of extra income or savings while another human being is worse off than we are. Each of us would be morally and financially responsible for human suffering in every miserable hellhole on Earth.

But if you believe that your life and paycheck are not other people’s property, then the progressive income tax is a moral obscenity. The progressive income tax becomes a burden and a punishment you don’t deserve and shouldn’t tolerate.

To reject the welfare-entitlement State, and the liberal looters who demand your hard-earned money, ask yourself these questions: Why is helping others a moral and political duty, instead of a personal choice? Why should government rob you for the sake of others? Why is their life more important than yours? Does government have the right to punish you because you work hard and are successful? Do your elected “representatives,” whose salary you pay, have the right to turn you into a sacrificial animal?

If you think that looting the rich is moral and “practical,” look over your shoulder.

By: Joel Turtel
Joel Turtel is an education policy analyst and syndicated columnist. He is also the author of “Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children" and “The Welfare State: No Mercy For the Middle Class.” Contact Information: Website: http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com/tws. Email: lbooksusa@aol.com Article Copyrighted © 2007 by Joel Turtel.

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"The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and deterrents to private initiative, which are imposed by our present tax system..." -John F. Kennedy Dec. 1962

The Left does not seem capable of coming to grips with the benefits of tax cuts, including reducing the cost of capital to business. One former president, however, understood perfectly.

The individual income tax cuts proposed by JFK took place, after his assassination. While JFK lived, however, and against the advice of many economic advisers, he enacted measures to lower the cost of capital, including an Investment Tax Credit for business, an easing of depreciation costs and an eventual lowering of corporate tax rates, from 52 to 48%.

JFK'S Tax Cuts For Individuals were, and "should be" as he said in a 1962 speech to the New York Economic Club, "across the board, top to bottom." In other words, no class warfare, even though the "reduction in payments" were far more advantageous to the rich under JFK, than those of President Bush.

Between 1952 and 1959, prior to JFK'S cuts, government revenue increased 1.2 percent a year.

From 1962 to 1969, after the cuts, government revenues increased 6.4 percent a year. The deficit fell from a high of $7.1 billion to $1.4 billion.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan inherited one of the worst economies the country has ever seen; an economy that might have been on the verge of collapse.

Reagan's Tax cuts, gave us the longest peacetime expansion in history up to that time. Like JFK'S cuts, there were no great secrets to President Reagan's cuts. A 25 percent across the board tax cut, for individuals, measures to reduce the cost of capital for business and under Paul Volcker's strong and steady hand at the Federal Reserve, the money supply was kept in check, bringing runaway inflation under control

During Reagan's presidency, real growth averaged 3.2%, a very strong eight year figure, when factoring in a serious recession of the early 80's. Real median family income increased by $4000.

Census Bureau data reveals Blacks and Hispanics made huge strides, the former moving 1/3 of families into the middle class.

IRS tax returns show that of those taxpayers, that started out in the lowest 20% at the beginning of the Reagan era, over half were in the top 20% at the end. The percentage of income taxes paid by the top 1% was 17.58% in President Reagan's first full year in office. In his last full year in office, the top 1% paid 27.58%. So lower tax rates worked to "soak the rich."

Still these gains did not thwart the leftist class warfare media and leftist agenda from creative accounting to turn the Reagan-Era positives into negatives. During the Reagan years, it was common to see shopping center businesses with signs everywhere that read Help Wanted, No Experience Necessary, Immediate Benefits and yet the media then and some still, use the moronic statement, that Ronald Reagan "nearly destroyed the middle class."

Now under George Bush, revenues have broken records for two successive years, 7 million new jobs have been created, unemployment is lower than the average of the last 30 years, the deficit has been cut in half, despite 9-11, the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.

Wages, even though they lagged temporarily, have had solid gains for the last two years. Incidentally a lag in wage gains is the norm. The average wage increase for non-supervisory employees in the last year is 2.8%. Adjusted for inflation that is almost $1200 per typical household and follows a 1.2% increase of the previous year.

Once again the lower rates are "soaking the rich." Latest IRS data shows that in 2002, before the final tax cuts, the share of the total income tax burden paid by the top 1 % was 33.71%. In 2004 the top 1% paid 36.89%.

Unfortunately, the benefits of tax cuts are always overwhelmed by excessive spending.

If you want your earnings to be much higher than they are for doing exactly what you are now doing, lower taxes and less government spending will get you there.

By: Mick McNesby
Mick McNesby is a former tax advisor, consultant and negotiator. He was a frequent guest on political talk shows in Atlantic City, N.J., discussing the benefits of the lower cost of government. He can be visited at http://conservative-politics-infofind.com.

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