Are you out of your mind? You JUMP from letting taxes rise on people who make $250,000 a year, to letting them rise only on people who make over a MILLION dollars a year? Why would you make such a huge jump as a first step?

$250,000 a YEAR — year after year — is already an awful lot of money. For one thing, it's a lot more than your U.S. Senate salary! It is also 17X what I get from Social Security — with no COLA increase for two years! The income tax rate on people in the highest bracket in 1978 was on the order of 78%. So why would you think that letting it rise to 39% is a hardship now? We had plenty of rich people in 1978. What we did NOT have is a distribution of wealth like the worst Latin American oligarchy, which we do have now. And each year it gets worse, as YOU blithely let the rich steal more and more money from the poor and middle class.

Simple negotiation mandates that you give NOTHING as your first bargaining move. You don't QUADRUPLE the present figure. Don't you have anyone in business around you to tell you that? My brother wrote a book, _Negotiate to Win: Gaining the Psychological Edge_, that you or someone on your staff might read: http://www.amazon.com/Negotiate-Win-Gaining-Psychological-Edge/dp/0136113850. But NOBODY opens by quadrupling the current figure.

It's this kind of weakness of will on the part of Liberals that caused the Democrats' midterm "shellacking", as Liberal voters saw NO DIFFERENCE between Republicans and Democrats important enuf to get them to vote. (We can talk about compulsory voting some other time.) If you sell us out again, you will see even fewer Democrats in Congress — and probably the White House — in 2012.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:47 PM