Raising taxes (on the rich or otherwise) during a recession is NEVER a good idea.  You need to wait until the economy recovers before you even consider raising any taxes.

The first thing that we need is a solid plan from the administration.  We need a strict set of rules that outline when the government will and will not get involved in "bailing out" companies.  Part of the reason the economy is continuing to tank is because no one knows what the government plans to do.  Will it intervene and bailout a company or will it let them go bankrupt?  In the midst of bailing out all the banks letting Lehman Brothers fall was the worst decision the Bush administration could have made.  They either needed to bail them all out or none of them.  What they did was fuel uncertainty which has caused all banks to contract and thus bring out economy to a screeching halt.  Don't get me wrong I am against bailouts of any kind but if the decision was made to bailout one it needed to apply to all.

So what we need now is a set of guidelines from the administration that are publicly available to outline what they plan to do.  That will start to bring some amount of confidence back into the market and help fuel a recovery.

Next we need to cut spending.  Part of the reason that we are in this mess is that we have been spending beyond our means as a country.  This means making some potentially unpopular decisions but it is necessary.  Obviously in tough times like this you don't cut unemployment funding, but we should be cutting funding to foriegn countries, we need to take care of ourselves before we can help others.

And finally we need to make tax cuts across the board.  This has been discussed numerous times on this site so I won't go into details but taxes need to be cut.

Once we have seen a year or so of economic growth then you can start thinking about increasing taxes and whatnot, but not until the economy actually recovers a bit.