Al, I've seen those statistics before and I believe the 49% was credited to the IRS' own data. It's definitely govt data and no one has ever refuted it. I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone that doesn't pay taxes is on the govt dole, but it stands to reason that some form of support is likely. Even so, the point is that nearlyl 1/2 this country isn't paying their fair share.

I agree with a progressive tax structure, but not one so steep and one that removes the responsibility of sharing the load from such a wide swath of society.

I'm not sure how you draw the conclusion that he's prejudiced against a large swath of people. Anyway, your guy never put his foot in his mouth? If you're a small business, you didn't build that? And don't say it's out of context, because it was reported in context (I'm just taking the one inflammatory sentence here). He's also on the record as agreeing that upping the upper tax bracket won't do much, if any good, but it's all in the interest of his definition of "fairness". And all his badmouthing of businesses? That's not prejudiced? Really, Al.