Tyson Chandler On Taxing the Middle-Class

The New Orleans Hornets got to listen to Obama give a speech and were able to meet him and have some solid one on one time. Tyson Chandler blogged about it on his NBA.com blog. We all know Tyson from his days as a part of Jerry Krause's "Twin Towers Baby Bulls" rebuilding project. I always liked Tyson as a player and as a person. Though he always seemed to have that achy back in Chicago, he was putting forth 150% effort all the time. It really seeemed like he cared about winning and playing the game hard. It was fun to watch him get fired up on big plays (take a lesson Joakim, a made free throw in a meaningless game is not a time to thump your chest). Anywasys, The blog post is very interesting and I reccommend reading the whole thing. The part that struck me was his sober assessment of the two candidates tax plans. This makes me like him even more:

It's funny, because when Obama was giving his speech, he said he was gonna give a tax cut to 95 percent of the people. He says, "If you make under $250,000 a year, raise your hand." And everybody there raised their hand, except for this one small section of guys. That was our section. And everybody around us was laughing.

But you know what, it's a bigger cause. And the way I look at it is that I can afford to pay more in taxes. But my parents, my grandparents, my cousins ... with what they make, they can't afford to cut back in their household with what they're trying to survive with. I can afford to make cuts and still survive. They can't take that knock.

I think that's what's going on now and the reason why the middle class is struggling so much. The upper class, we can take that hit. Obviously, nobody wants to take it, but we still can. And we can afford to live nice lives.I've lived in both situations. And not only that, I'm obviously the only one in my family that can say that I'm a millionaire.

I've seen my entire family struggle. So, would I rather see my whole family struggle while I get a break, or have me not get a break while the rest of my family gets one? I'll take my entire family getting a break.