{"id":722,"date":"2012-12-30T22:17:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-30T22:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/12\/30\/mainstream-thought-becomes-outdated"},"modified":"2012-12-30T22:17:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T22:17:00","slug":"mainstream-thought-becomes-outdated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=722","title":{"rendered":"Mainstream thought becomes outdated"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I listened to President Obama this morning on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d defend his position on the so-called \u201cfiscal cliff\u201d negotiations and came away with a single notion.<\/p>\n<p>It is what he said about tax cuts for the middle class. He wants to preserve them, rather than let them increase if the White House and Congress drive us over the cliff. He said that keeping taxes low for middle-income Americans used to be a \u201cmainstream Republican\u201d idea, but now it appears that the GOP is willing to sacrifice those reduced rates to preserve the low rates for the wealthier among us.<\/p>\n<p>If the Democrats and Republicans don\u2019t strike a deal by midnight Monday, we\u2019re all going to get kicked in the teeth with tax increases. I don\u2019t want to pay more in taxes than I do already. I\u2019m also quite sure no one who shares my economic standing wants to pay more, either. <\/p>\n<p>The Capitol Hill negotiators now seem stuck on what qualifies as \u201cwealthy.\u201d Congressional Democrats put the figure at $250,000 annually; Republicans put it at $1 million. How about this? Let\u2019s split the difference at, say, $600,000 annual income. Everyone who earns less than that can keep their taxes low, while the rest of Americans can pay a little more. Does anyone remember that during the Clinton years, taxes went up for the richest Americans and that kicked off a huge economic expansion, despite warnings from some Republicans, such as then-Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, who said the country would implode?<\/p>\n<p>From my standpoint, 600K a year is a pretty nice income.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the clock is still ticking. <\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I listened to President Obama this morning on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d defend his position on the so-called \u201cfiscal cliff\u201d negotiations and came away with a single notion. It is what he said about tax cuts for the middle class. He wants to preserve them, rather than let them increase if the White House and Congress &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=722\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mainstream thought becomes outdated<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}