bill gates 2. go down the list a tie for seventh place between dalai lama and george w. bush. on the woman s side, malala yousafzai and oprah winfrey. none came close to president obama. and we re giving the award to pontiff and me and the pope. new ad buy. that s after he criticizes them giving the most to the president. all right. coming up a quarter million dollar salary doesn t sound like middle class to a lot of working voters but hillary clinton making that number a financial benchmark for a lot of her economic policy. we ll dig into why ahead. plus three very big cover stories on new stands they cover everything from blair de blasio to isis recruitment to some of the lives we lost in 2015. we ll bring in the writers of
between policy and perception. andrew rice thank you for coming in. the latest edition of new york magnificent on you for coming in. still to come, the luminaries we lost in 2015. we ll have more on morning joe in just a moment. tucson. blew an amp.but good nights. sure,music s why we do this,but it s still our business. we spend days booking gigs, then we ve gotta put in the miles to get there. but it s not without its perks. like seeing our album sales go through the roof enough to finally start paying meg s little brother- i mean,our new tour manager-with real,actual money. we run on quickbooks.that s how we own it.
right. so those are the people in the exact middle making the exact middle income in this country. it s far, far lower. on top of that, if you make this limit, you make $250,000, you re actually in the top 5% of americans. in a time of growing income inequality that group at the top is pulling further and further away from those people who are actually in the middle. it doesn t make a lot of sense on the numbers and then as policy it really boxes you in. just to defend bill and hillary clinton on this, this is about tax policy. this isn t about an arbitrary definition of middle class. i think they were both talking about tax cuts and tax relief should be targeted to stimulate growth. isn t that a bit of a misrepresentation to suggest hillary clinton is somehow defining the middle class. what she keeps saying over and over i won t raise taxes on the middle class. i would argue those making $250,000 and under the bracket is designed to
craft tax policy. the middle class will be a swath of people. if we re talking about median income around $50,000 that swath can t be that wide. you re grabbing so many people into that group that it doesn t have any meaning any more. let me ask steve this who is here as well. let s be blunt about what the real issue here is which is influence pedlers in media and politicians live in areas where the income is far higher so to them $250,000 does seem more like the middle class than i want does to average americans. my question to you steve does that influence the debate we re having here and if so, why? there might be something to be said for that. at the same time what she is are saying, think back to the 1990s and bill clinton and where the origin of that s $250,000 figure. that came from bill clinton in the 1992 campaign. he waged at the time what was a fairly populace campaign on taxes and on economic policy. he was talking about asking the
against isis which we need to more seriously contemplate, it would also force us to look at the cost, short term and long term of the conflict that we are already well into against isis. senator, a question from gene robinson. senator, why isn t congress taking a vote? why isn t congress voting to support, to fund the war? is it pure politics? is it disagreement with the policy? why? well, we did take up and pass an aumf, declaration of war through the foreign relations committee late in the last congress. it didn t make to it the floor. under this current republican controlled congress we have not taken it up and debated it. gene, centrally there s a disagreement. a group of us, republicans and democrats on the foreign relations committee have tried to coble together a bipartisan coalition. there s legitimate concern by our chairman and ranking member we wouldn t be able to get a