Re Popper: Obama’s tax plan is a breathtakingly naked offer of cold cash to 60% of the population to be extracted from 40%. Since USA has fooled around and let the income tax get so steeply progressive that a majority of voters can be convinced that they have no stake in the interests of the 40% already paying 95% of the income taxes, the situation is ripe for the political unrest predicted by the Russian strategists and served to their diplomats in the July speeches –”unrest” if not might as well be precisely the objective (Obama to McCain yesterday “You have no idea what you’re up against”), especially in that the spending side of the tax plan is so patently unsustainable, so clearly an economy-buster, that no sane economists could be seriously proposing it as something good for the existing 230 year-old model of an America switching back and forth per elections but always consensually near the center line.