david merriman - with university of illinois says the 2 solutions are deeper cuts to services or large tax increases he says both will be even more painful next year... because states will not be able to rely on stimulus money from the federal government.california able to pass a budget without higher taxes illinois: likely to raise taxes later this year or next year david merriman says he's pretty optimistic that higher state taxes will *not hurt an economic recovery for the nation: state tax rate small relative to federal taxes ... business taxes are small part of their bills.. income and sales taxes relatively minor in scheme of things. i don't think it will have a major role - in fact having structurally sound system.. more to encourage development.. than higher taxes busiensses don't know wha ttax burdens going to be.. those kinds of things make it difficult for state to operate.. personal hardship as well this could be a real issue.. in some sense.. most leverage to get states get house in order if they downgrading bonds... cause a lot of costs to state.. raise cost of borrowing

but merriman, i think you're right. i looked at the personal spending numbers, the pce report, and gasoline consumption spending and total energy spending as a share of wage and salary income has it hard to move. >> it's tiny. >> you're right. so this is much ado about nothing. i've got to tell you another thing. what really annoys me, i mean, really annoys me, is that every time something happens, blame the market. all these government geniuses blame the market. so, fine, let the markets be taken over by the government. it will be like ge. it will be like gm and chrysler and aig and fannie and freddie and health care and cap-and-trade. let's just take over the market, fine. nothing works according to these geniuses in washington, just blame the market. >> you know what that is? my letters for that? bs. and you can fill in the blank. >> i actually agree with you, larry. i don't think there are efficient ways for government to get involved and fix this, so -- >> government is much smarter than the market. government is m

and the editor at the time, dearly departed, beloved john merriman, came up with what seemed like a reasonablesaid walter should name his both assignment, and over night during the three-month hiatus, we would say he was on assignment. walter never thought that was funny. and the last thing i'd say is, on the day he left cbs news and became a cbs special correspondent, which moved him out of the news area, he accepted an invitation to something called bohemian grove, which was a camp in northern california for grown-up men, establishment men, bankers, politicians, serious scholars, who went -- and it was an off the record situation, and they acted like teenage boys, peing on trees and all that sort of stuff. and walter left the news in march of 1981, and my god, the following week, he announced he was going to bohemian grove that simple we discovered he'd been invited for years previous, but felt it was not acceptable gven his role in news to go. but once he felt free of the news, he was out there and we want there every year. of course, we don't know what happened, but acted like a teenager.

merriman kernan ford they like the future of prevent so much they're giving a price target of 49 to 50moving forward into 2010. i love looking at that chart. that year-to-date chart is unbelievable. some weaknessar you figure oil down. well, people maybe don't figure an investment in solar is as big a deal with oil on its way down. take a look at solar stocks getting hit hard. and with that segue let's go to sharon epperson at the nymex. >> oil has been down for four straight sessions and the slide that we've seen more than $10, or thereabouts, since the highs that we hit for 2009. that was just last week that we were over $73 a barrel. we can point to the fact that risk appetite seems to be waning and we can point to the fact that demand seems to be dwindling. but keep in mind the places you really see this is going to be in the gasoline market. we're looking at gasoline prices that had been the leader for 2009, being among the worst performers in the commodity complex for the past month, down about 10% in that period of time. thankfully, that means prices at the pump have stabilized

. >> thank you merriman next, we have sandy freeman, also currently a member of the and our a board ofectors since 1992. in 2007, unanimously elected to a lifetime appointment on the n r h council. a graduate of stanford university and harvard law school, this froman speaks and writes regularlymiss froman spe writes regularly on the second amendment. >> thank you for the opportunity to talk about the nomination of judge sonia sotomayor. it is critical the supreme court justice understand and appreciate your engine of the meaning of the right of the people to keeping and bearing arms, valued by almost ninety million american gun owners. judge sonia sotomayor's record on the second amendment and her unwillingness or inability to engage in any meaningful analysis of this enumerated right when twice given the opportunity to do so suggests lack of understanding of second amendment jurisprudence or hostility to the right. in 2004, judge sonia sotomayor and two colleagues discuss the second amendment claim in a one sentence footnote holding without any analysis that the right for a gun is not