As for Obama no one should be disappointed. You should just feel fooled. I'm surprised that many people took Obama's rhetoric as serious. It was pretty clear that he was stealing a card from Edwards' play book and tossing in class warfare in the general election. It is likely that he never intended to raise taxes but it sounded good to VOTERS so he went with it. Wool over the eyes.

But let's say just for argument that he did intend to raise taxes. Well as I argued that would have been counter productive in the current economy, just as Hillary knew. Obviously he listened to people in his camp who knew what I knew.

I though it was politically savvy of Hillary to take that approach during the primaries.

However, in the current climate, I don't think it's wise for obama to reverse course and let the pigs continue feeding at the trough for the next 2-3 years.

Some Republicans might be won over should Mr. Obama decide not to repeal the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000...

Then there's this part, which makes NO sense:

Simply letting the cuts expire after 2010 could have economic and political benefits. Mr. Obama would not be open to the charge from Republicans and other critics that he is raising taxes in a recession...By letting the tax cuts expire, Mr. Obama would get the benefit of higher revenues in 2011 and beyond...

WTF, "economic and political benefits".

Evidently, the NYTimes is envisioning a purely Republican electorate since they fail to imagine that Democratic voters will be outraged with Obama, and the Democratic Congress, for betraying their own broad base and appeasing the marginal GOP.

They have more disposable income than they know what to do with.  They don't spend it.

If you think the economy needs the money, raise the taxes on the rich and cut the taxes on the average American.

We seem to have a bunch of trickle down economists here.

I would go beyond the Bush tax cuts and create a top bracket of 50% but with lots of graduated brackets to get there.  Then I would have a flip tax which would tax anyone who decided to  expatriate and remove all their assets from the US.  A 50% flip tax would stop that.  In other words, once they renounce their citizenship, they lose 1/2 their assets.  Desperate times require desperate actions and the prima donnas of the Plutocracy have gotten away with too much already.

I just heard Austan Goolsbee say that the Bush Tax Cuts will expire in 2010, which is not right because if someone dies in 2010, there is no estate tax.  You get a few wealthy Republicans dying because their children gave the DNR order to save taxes and we could lose hundreds of billions of dollars.  

Of course Obama had a campaign plane, sometimes hitting several states in one day.  You can't do that on commercial airlines...or even expect them to get you to 'the rally' on time (with baggage).

If the answer is few, which it is, then 5% on dividend income wouldn't mean any more or less than 20% on dividends would it?

And we just get screwed when the bad times come, over and over and over again. Especially in the state budgets, because the states can't "deficit spend".

And now the states have to take care of a lot of welfare-type payments that the federal government used to fund.

By doing nothing, and simply allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, Obama radically adjusts the terms of the tax debate in favor of the Democrats. The "starting point" becomes Clinton's tax policies, and W's misguided interregnum becomes an irrelevant memory.