Getting cable and watching the political animals

July 26, 2012

By John Seiler

I’ve always been reluctant to get cable TV because it’s a big time waste. The Internet and a land-line phone are all I need, through Verizon’s FIOS fiberoptic system. Plus a cheap T-Mobile flip cell and a VCR-DVD player on which the DVD broke. But I wanted to upgrade FIOS to a faster Internet speed to save time with my writing and editing for CalWatchDog.com. With the deal, they threw in cave TV.

They UPS’d me a set-top box and I plugged the coaxial cable into the old VCR/DVD player. The player already was hooked into my ancient 19″ Mitsubishi TV that’s 25 years old and only has a coaxial cable. But the Mitsubishi is built like Yamato-class battleship, so I see no reason to get one of those flimsy new flat-panel displays. I’m not big on getting new technologies. I’ll probably still be watching the Mitsubishi when they cart me off to the Veterans’ home.

Yesterday was the first day watching the boob tube and, like most guys, I channel surfed. It’s from our genetic past as hunters. Supposedly. I saw two interesting things.

Janet

Janet Napolitano was testifying before Congress on how great drones will be to spy on Americans at major events, such as sports. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security looks like a Soviet-era commissar, a role she’s playing well in destroying our liberties.

Then I saw Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, blabbing about how great it will be to raise taxes on the “rich,” while supposedly leaving “middle class” Americans alone. Actually, the tax increases that he, President Obama and other Democrats are pushing would hit starting at $250,000 in income. That’s not “rich,” that’s middle class — upper middle class to be sure, but not rich. And in California, making $250,000 is the equivalent to making about $100,000 in Iowa or Michigan or some other state with a lower cost of living.

Worse, a lot of small businesses that are LLCs or S-corporations pay taxes as individual persons. The owner doesn’t get all that $250,000 to spend on himself. Rather, much of the money usually is plowed back into the company for expansion and jobs creation. So raising taxes on the “rich” would end up hurting small companies. And given that small companies are responsible for most jobs creation in America, the Schumer-Obama tax increase would kill jobs.

So would Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30, his $8.5 billion tax increase. It also would would dig in at $250,000 a year, slamming the middle class and killing jobs.

Obama, Schumer and Brown might understand that if they had worked for small businesses, instead of spending almost all their lives as political operatives.

These political animals were so obnoxious I thought I was watching a documentary about hyenas on the National Geographic channel.

You can learn a lot by watching TV. About our political parasites.