What's wrong with Democrats who support Harris?

I heard at the "All In" Podcast (193) that the media have given Harris 84% positive coverage and Trump 89% negative coverage. No bias there. What a disservice to Democrats! That means media want Democrats to vote for higher taxes, for losing all private health insurance, for taxing unrealized capital gains, for being priced out of home ownership, for price controls, for more inflation, for candidates Harris/Walz both of whom have had zip/nada/zilch employment in the private sector when technically we are a free market, capitalist economy, and a candidate, Kamala Harris, raised in Berkeley and Montreal with parents who were Communists swamped in the lies of socialism from conception to the last one in the room when Biden made his awful decisions.

 
And don't kid yourself that Harris/Walz are just going after envy vote--want to only tax the rich. It always falls to the Middle class. The poor don't pay taxes, they receive subsidies. The rich have so many tax lawyers they probably won't even notice, especially when they move their assets out of the country. Lots of countries are looking for their money--our government tries to drive them out! It will all fall to the middle class to keep the tax hungry Harris away from the door.

Does anyone with a brain work in the legacy media?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSpGiFqL8_E I think this is episode 193. Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social & poker.

Pew Report January 2020 on incomes and prosperity

It must have hurt to have to say good things about the Trump economy or the nation in general in this Pew (left of center) Report, which came out in Jan 2020 before Trump halted some travel from China in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus. (In hindsight lab leaked viruses laughed at those regulations, just like Pelosi did.) The report does take the long view going back decades to find slow growth and little change. But I did notice that the report noted the shrinking middle class--because people were moving up, not down.

"The unemployment rate in November 2019 was 3.5%, a level not seen since the 1960s."
". . . household incomes, which have rebounded in recent years."

"In 2018, the median income of U.S. households stood at $74,600. This was 49% higher than its level in 1970, when the median income was $50,200." (Incomes are expressed in 2018 dollars.)

"On balance, there was more movement up the income ladder than down the income ladder. [since 1970]"

"Since 1980, incomes have increased faster for the most affluent families – those in the top 5% – than for families in the income strata below them." (If you look at the inflation adjusted charts, this doesn't seem to be so, but if wealth creates wealth and there's been a huge increase in dual income families in the last 40 years, I would agree. In the long run, wealth transfers from the government from the middle class to the lower class may help consumption, but it doesn't build wealth to be passed along by generations.)

Several paragraphs in the report note the rising incomes of the upper income, without noting the disparity in marriage rates. Obviously a three person household of a single mother and two children, is going to be less than a three person household of a married mother, father and child. Income gaps between white and Asian households can usually be adjusted for marriage and number of family members. Childhood poverty can almost all be explained by the difference in marriage rates.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/?

How Black, Hispanic, Asian, White households compare in wealth | Pew Research Center

Poverty simulation workshop at Ohio State

Another way for poverty pimps to earn a living--put on workshops for churches, non-profits, and academe. OSU is promoting yet another one. Participants get to feel virtuous by planning a budget using government programs guaranteed to keep people in their place--including the ones who sign up. It's an industry supporting the middle class.

There's nothing like a job to pull someone out of poverty, but consciousness raising never reduced single motherhood, or a poor education, or a prison record, or mental health challenges. Unmarried parents is the primary cause of childhood poverty. Back in the day (early 80s) when I worked for the state of Ohio and either attended or planned these gatherings (we didn't call it simulation then, just information on state and federal resources) we were told by those above us, our experts and leaders who lived on government grants, that one needed to earn at least $10/hour to go beyond what the state/federal programs could offer. For 1983 that was unheard of! Those of us earning our living doing this didn't make that unattainable salary. I don't know what the figure is today, but the 2019 median income for middle class was $68,703. The government, btw, has no official definition for middle class.

Leanne Brown is not a poverty pimp, but she wrote a hugely successful cookbook on eating well on $4/day SNAP budget. And she made it free. She's a Canadian. https://www.leannebrown.com/cookbooks/... I don't know if the OSU poverty simulation teachers will tell you, but I'm telling you, these are really great, nutritious and cheap.

Comrade Bernie is 50 years behind

“Europeans, then, having learned that socialism does not work, are trying to narrow our gap with the United States with various reforms—just as Bernie Sanders, 50 years too late, seeks to emulate Europe. Doesn’t Sanders know that his program has been applied in Europe, and failed? He must: and this would mean that his true ambition is not free health care or free college, but a deeper transformation of the United States. Perhaps he hates the free-market society and wants to replace it with a socialist, egalitarian one, overseen by the “tyranny of the benevolent,” which Tocqueville warned against.

Why would so many American voters find Sanders’s socialism attractive? For the same reasons that socialism was once popular in Europe: the love for equality over individual freedom; the illusion of a safe life, guaranteed by a benevolent state; the allure of transferring personal responsibility to a public nurse. Then as now, these offers exert a strong psychological appeal; the answer to them is reality. Socialism does not work—but perhaps one needs to live through it to be convinced.”

https://www.city-journal.org/bernie-sanders-socialist-vision

The middle class isn't going to disappear

"America’s middle class is disappearing but it’s because they are moving into higher income groups not moving into lower income groups. Between 1969 and 2017, the share of US households making $100,000 or more (in constant 2017 dollars) has more than tripled from 9% to 29.2%, while the share of households making $35,000 to $100,000 decreased from 53.8% to 41.3%. And the share of households making $35,000 or less decreased from 37.2% to 29.5%." Carpe Diem

 https://www.aei.org/publication/monday-morning-links-29/?

The Middle Class Yarn spun to frighten you

It's not exactly fake news, but it's misleading--the story you hear that the middle class is shrinking and so many more people are using government benefits because of the gap between the very wealthy and the "others." There are three things to consider:

1) demographics/age,

2) marriage or the lack of it, and

3) expansion of federal benefits from the poor and deserving to the middle class.

Rejoice, patriots. It's not true. The middle class is only shrinking because so many people have moved up to the next quintile! Have you ever driven to the suburban areas of Columbus (or the city where you live)--I can't believe the homes, schools, shopping centers, churches, gyms, parts, etc. And the new high rise housing in the central city for all those millennials willing to pay the apartment costs.

Also, as the boomers retire, they are now living on their pensions and investments (the very wealth Elizabeth Warren wants to go after), plus they are drawing Social Security. And guess what, a two parent household with both adults working has a much higher income than a one parent household who is most likely a woman. Two adults in a home have more time to distribute to the children to see to it they are educated and well-fed. It's amazing how many "experts" in socialist think tanks switch to "household" to show poverty rates and don't factor in $30,000 in transferred benefits like EITC, SNAP and Section 8.

We've been in 4 of the 5 quintiles in our 58 years together, as have many our age. We have 5 streams of income, as do many our age--some if they have military benefits have 6 or 7. We're certainly not suffering, but as retirees, we have less INCOME than when we were DINKs, but more WEALTH because we have lived frugally and invested or lived on one income. Warren wants to punish us for living on less when we were in our 40s.

Left of center think tanks crunch the numbers and in horror say, the sky if falling. There's a gap that wasn't there in 1979. We need a more "progressive" system--higher taxes. Well, duh. You mean when we lived in an upper middle class neighborhood of the 70s in a home with 1.5 bathrooms, 2 TVs, 1 phone, 1 car, 1 income, and lived month to month with 2 growing children in our home? Do you mean when we had 1 week vacation, which we spent at Mom's farm, and paid our own health insurance? Do you mean when we had a mortgage and a car payment, but no credit card or college debt (never had that because we never borrowed). Do you mean when FICA withdrawals from our 1 check ended at $22,900 and there was no Medicare tax (now is $127,200 FICA + 1.45% for Medicare)? And the personal exemption? Much higher then. Don't have the exact figure for 1979, but if the 1913 rate (year of modern income tax) of $3000 were adjusted for inflation it would be about $72,000--anyone getting that?

So what has the government done for the poor and low income with all the tax money and safety net money we've sent in the last 40 years? Well, the so-called safety net expanded so much that the middle class now qualifies for many entitlement programs meant for the poor. The middle class voter now screams if there's no COLA for Social Security (which originally was for the poor widows and orphans) and Medicare.

Now 55% of the U.S. population are receiving some sort of entitlement--and it's not because we're poor, it's because we're middle class and wealthy. It's because for every election the politicians dangle an increase for the population served by Social Security, or one of our 5 health insurance programs. Government programs NEVER get smaller--they always expand, and since there are so few poor people in America, they expand into the middle class. There are people earning over $100,000 who qualify for government benefits--even Obamacare.

The socialists are lying to you about the "shrinking middle class."

"The American middle class has been doing just fine. In 1967, 33.7 percent of all American households earned between $50,000 and $100,000; by 2014, that number (in constant 2014 dollars) had fallen to 28.5 percent of American households. That means the death of the middle class, right? Wrong. It turns out that everybody just got wealthier. In 1967, the households earning an annual income of $50,000 or less constituted 58.2 percent of all Americans; as of the end of 2014, just 46.8 percent fell into this group. And while only 8.1 percent of American households earned more than $100,000 a year in 1967, today, 24.7 percent do. That’s not a collapsing middle class. That’s a growing upper middle class."
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/01/middle-class-income-not-stagnating/
Yes, the middle class is moving up, to upper middle class, and socialists hate that and lie to you, like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.
And let's not forget how many Americans are now retired--like the Bruces. Socialists want you to forget that figure. "If we compare full-time workers ages 25 to 64 in 1979 with that same subset of workers in 2013, income exceeded inflation and grew 33 percent total."
A lot of these figures are from the Obama era--they even lie to you about that!

Consumerism--then and now

Government statistics drive me crazy. USDA and Federal Reserve (yes, I know the Fed isn't government) don't always line up. The information I look for is sometimes percent, sometimes rate of increase, or numbers, or Hispanics are whites in one table, but not in another, or it's divided by age group, etc. But as near as I can figure, the year my father entered the Marines in 1943, 41.2% of the family budget was for food. (It was 35.4% in 1939, which was still the Depression.) Imagine--and everyone who could had "victory gardens," sugar and coffee were rationed (we had little coupon books for each family member), every scrap of fat was saved, and no one was eating in restaurants. "Eating out" in my family was visiting grandma, or walking to Zickuhr's for a 5 cent ice cream cone. But in 2016 only 12.9% of a household budget for children and parents was for food, only slightly more of that was at home, than eating out. And I've seen figures much lower than that--can't find it now. USDA publishes food plans that run from Thrifty to Liberal. When I used to track costs (haven't for years) the Bruce Household was always below Thrifty, and eating out was going to Friendly's for breakfast on Sunday, $5.00 for the whole family.

2017 food plans, https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/CostofFoodFeb2017.pdf

Between our sermons on affluenza at church and the myths, fairy tales and wishful thinking about federal taxes, I've been pondering the 1970s. I called us upper middle class because we had way too much "stuff" when others didn't have enough. One income, one SAHM, 2 small children; 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath home, slab on grade; 2 TVs one 1960 and one 1967; 1 phone attached to wall with a 50 ft cord so I could keep an eye on Phil; 1 1968 car bought used; no AC, no microwave, no computer, no VHS player (yes, some of our wealthy friends had those); no savings, no retirement, 1 week vacation, cash for doctors, and too much month left at the end of the money. Our gross income in 1972 was $17,211, well above the average of $11,419. I didn't work, but 37% of American women did. I'm not complaining by any means; we lived in a beautiful neighborhood and had great friends through our church and community activities. But our lifestyle in 1972 is considered poverty today. 

1972-73 Bureau of Labor statistics. https://www.bls.gov/opub/uscs/1972-73.pdf

I told my husband this when he came down for breakfast, and he listened quietly as his eyes become glassy, and then said what he always does, "I'm sure glad I married you instead of that other woman." That's sort of a standing joke when he gets a boatload of statistics with breakfast. But it's better than the Madalyn Murray O'Hare gruesome story he got on Saturday.

Reflections on health and the economy

This winter/spring in treatment for shingles (face and eye) I've had a lot of medical appointments. Some days it was my only time out of the house. Today I sat in the parking lot to read because I was a little early, and I counted the health related buildings around my ophthalmologist's location. Ten. I'm not sure I'd ever been in that area of our suburb before 2 months ago, and we've lived here 50 years.  The buildings all appeared to be 10-20 years old--health is a booming business.  I was reading Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal." Buy it for your children.  You need to know about illness, hospitals, hospice and death, and how much it costs.

The evening before surgery the father and daughter talked. She was a palliative care specialist, but it's hard to talk to your own parent and she realized they'd never had that "what if" conversation. It's like the "where babies come from" talk with your kids, only more complicated.  His neurosurgeon told him if they didn't remove the mass he had a 100% chance of being a quadriplegic; if they did remove it, a 20% chance. What makes being alive tolerable, the daughter asked. "If I'm able to eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV then I'm willing to stay alive," was the shocking answer of this professor emeritus. She had no idea he even watched football. For the rest of the story, p. 184-185.

Dr. Gawande's book was published in 2014. He reported changes in health care and said 1/2 to 2/3 of the global population would be middle class by 2030 and they would be facing (or already are) many of the same problems as the West. So I checked that (he gave no citation). I was surprised to see in a Brookings Report that figure had already been surpassed by 2016. Max Roser reports in 1820 the share of the global population living in poverty was 94 percent while 84 percent lived in "extreme" poverty. By 1992, the poverty rate had dropped to 51 percent, while the "extreme" poverty rate had dropped to 24 percent. Using a different measure of international poverty, the rate has dropped from 53 percent in 1981 to 17 percent in 2011 – representing the most rapid reduction in poverty in world history. 

Why? Capitalism. And that's why the black clad antifa and anti-American rioters who are burning buildings and harassing police are so scared. Without poverty or the threat of it for leverage they have no power. If children are educated and learn the truth about socialist economies, the anarchists lose their hold on them. They must destroy and lie.

 https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/global_20170228_global-middle-class.pdf

 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/amazing-chart-shows-thanks-to-capitalism-global-poverty-is-at-its-lowest-rate-in-history/article/2562224

The protests in Detroit

Do Trump supporters disrupt Hillary's speeches? I watched on TV some protests at a Detroit church. Apparently it went well. The media really took him over the coals for this one.  Imagine, a Republican going for black votes, when blacks went 99% for Obama in 2008. And in the primaries that election year, they didn't like Hillary.  Is it worth checking to see if she spoke at black churches?  Nah.

This is one area I think Donald sounds way too much like a Democrat-- that he can, from the White House, fix everything that is wrong. Really, that should be the state and local governments' responsibility to fix the schools and attract the employers. Then it should be the homes and churches that prepare the young people to be good employees and loving parents.

Candidates all spend too much time treating blacks as victims, when in reality, in the 21st century they've done extremely well.  The poverty rate for married black families is no different than whites. Their college enrollment rate (not graduation rate) has been higher than whites for almost 2 decades.  We've got a black president, attorney generals, senators, governors, businessmen, and even a pouty football player with white parents making millions a year who is protesting white privilege.

http://blackdemographics.com/households/middle-class/

Black and white incomes are not outrageously different, but in household wealth there is quite a gap.  I think lack of marriage (smaller households, fewer incomes) accounts for a lot of this.  Also, there seems to be a distrust in investing outside one's home and community. Blacks tend to rely more on family and friends for financing.  Only blacks can change that perception. Also blacks more commonly have their wealth tied up in home ownership, and that took a big hit in 2008 due to government fiddling in the housing market.  But I'm sure a Democrat president would decide it's unfair that whites have saved and invested for our old age, and should have our wealth "redistributed."

http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/stalled-struggling-black-middle-class

Who is middle class?

There is no definition of middle class by the U.S. government.  There are approximately 117 million households in America, 36% of households fall in the poverty range (Under $15 – $35K annual income), 43% of households are between $35K to $100K. 16% are between $100K and $200K and nearly 4% are above $200K annual income levels as of 2009. After 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that the upper open-ended interval for which to assist in calculating the median income is $250,000, being that is the considered upper class income. So Middle Class could safely be considered above $35K and below $100K annual income levels, which is 43% of American Households.  The Black alone households total 14.7 million. Of that, approximately 38.4% are in the middle class, with earnings between $35K – $100K annually.  Their household income has gone down under Obama.  Because the Census looks at Households, the middle class, if shrinking, is doing so because of single women raising families with no husband. I’m no math whiz, but two incomes equal more than one income in most cases. Marriage of their parents who have finished high school, and have a job, any job, almost guarantees that children will not grow up in poverty. Not growing up in poverty, is probably the single best way to achieve Middle Class status, better than any socialist or government transfer program, which tends to keep people down and “in their place.”

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009, Current Population Reports, Consumer Income

Unequal childhoods and unequal adulthoods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xq_iCMgP2Q

It will take about an hour to watch this lecture by Annette Lareau as she follows up her original research (early 2000s) on children in middle class and working class families, with how they did as young adults. I’d noticed in stores how differently some parents talk to their children (who may be in the shopping cart).  Although these days, they may be talking on the phone!  Often I wish they’d just shut up.  My goodness, they talk and talk and talk.  But some don’t.  Low income parents talk much less to their children, and by the time kids get to school there is an enormous gap in vocabulary.  But her research goes a lot deeper—about how middle class families “untie knots,” research ways to do things better, get the better school, or teacher, or activity. They have different social networks, they marry different people, and live in different neighborhoods which have different schools.

It’s worth watching.  But I don’t buy any government solution for this which we’ll hear from the academics.   The common complaint will increasingly be “white privilege,” but Lareau found similar attitudes in black and white families who are in the same socio-economic class. Fathers are more likely to be present in the middle class families; parents have more education; more sibling rivalry in middle class families; more talking; more boredom among middle class kids; and middle class kids stay “younger” longer with fewer responsibilities.  Race was not as big an issue as values and attitudes. Many middle class teaching approaches are the opposite of what works with low income kids. Drilling and memorization work well for them—just not for the teachers. Immigrant parents seem to have stronger academic standards for their children which may be lost by the 3rd generation.

Don’t believe the leftist chefs cooking the economic soup with jiggered figures about the suffering middle class

“Measured in 2013 dollars, after-tax median income rose briskly from $46,998 in 1983 to $70,393 in 2008 but remained below that 2008 peak in 2011. The sizable increase before 2008 is partly because the average of all federal taxes paid by the middle fifth has almost been cut in half since 1981—from 19.2% that year to 17.7% in 1989, 16.5% in 2000, 13.6% in 2003 and 11.2% in 2011.” Because people have lost income under Obama, he wants it to look like a 40 year tradition. Nonsense.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/alan-reynolds-the-mumbo-jumbo-of-middle-class-economics-1425340903/

Minimum wage? What about middle wage?

Don't be fooled by sob stories about minimum wage.  It's a tiny percentage of American workers—4.3% of hourly wage earners and 2.9% of all workers.  The whines and finger wagging at the teleprompter keep us distracted from the fact that Obama demonizes business, capitalism and wealth, and that means the middle class wages are flat. The economy is stagnant. It is the middle class not getting a raise. By talking about minimums he doesn't have to address your business or investments squashed by oppressive taxes and regulations. 78% of minimum wage earners are white and 63% are female.  The average family income of a minimum wage earner is $53,113 and they are more likely to have some college than the average American worker. Why?  They are not the primary earner of the family!

“Perhaps surprisingly, not very many people earn minimum wage, and they make up a smaller share of the workforce than they used to. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last year 1.532 million hourly workers earned the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour; nearly 1.8 million more earned less than that because they fell under one of several exemptions (tipped employees, full-time students, certain disabled workers and others), for a total of 3.3 million hourly workers at or below the federal minimum.”

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-minimum-wage/

“The primary value of minimum-wage jobs is that they are learning jobs. They teach inexperienced employees basic employment skills that make them more productive and enable them to earn raises or move to better jobs.”

“The proposed minimum wage increase of $10.10 an hour would bring the minimum cost of hiring a full-time worker—including the Obamacare penalties—to $12.71 an hour.”

 http://www.heritage.org/research/factsheets/2014/01/facts-about-the-minimum-wage

Minimum wage “often holds back many of the workers its proponents want to help. Higher minimum wages both reduce overall employment and encourage relatively affluent workers to enter the labor force. Minimum wage increases often lead to employers replacing disadvantaged adults who need a job with suburban teenagers who do not.” 

http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/2013/06/what-is-minimum-wage-its-history-and-effects-on-the-economy

Transfer of wealth

Just heard a Social Security defender on Fox News say that for every $1 in benefits, Social Security payments generate $2 in the economy. What about the two workers paying in for every retiree drawing Social Security? Some working for minimum wage at Wal-Mart or McDonald’s.  How would they be spending that money taken from them? This is generational transfer from the young to the old, not drawing on an investment or "trust fund.”

Both the working poor and the upper income rich have their wealth transferred to the middle class, the group that is the beneficiary directly and indirectly of most government policies and taxes, many for the misnamed War on Poverty, (but Social Security is probably the oldest and best example). According to the catalog of federal domestic assistance, there are 2,199 Federal assistance programs and most benefit the middle class either directly, or by employment. HHS has 19 offices and 461 programs; each with its own bureaucracy. Please don't blame Obama for this, or any political party.

Does the federal government really need "To maintain and expand existing markets for dairy which are vital to the welfare of milk producers in the United States." We still have "separate but equal" when it comes to Indians and anyone who is 1/4 Indian, with federal grants galore, including Tribal Colleges and Universities. For 50 years the federal government has been funding "conciliation and mediation services" to local groups to reduce "tensions, conflicts, and civil disorders arising from actions, policies, and practices that are perceived to be based on race, ethnicity, or national origin." Imagine the community organizers who live well on that one! And yet 93% of murdered blacks are killed by other blacks, mostly young with no racial or ethnicity motives.

A tiny percentage of federal grant money goes to the poor; most goes to the middle class in the form of jobs, contracts, conferences, travel, research grants, academic salaries, indirect costs to the institution for utilities, staff, overhead (can be as high as 60% of the grant) and that doesn't even include the buildings that are required and the trades and unions who benefit. One Appalachian grant I read through (about $76,000,000 a year) supposedly was training 20,000 students a year; it’s been going on since 1965—why aren’t they all successful and free of poverty at that rate?  Because the money goes to the teachers, social workers, facilities, grant writers, conferences, etc.

I should know--I've made a very nice middle class living on special government contracts funneled through Ohio State or the state of Ohio. I have been employed on USAID funds, FIPSE money, JTPA,  Department of Aging of Ohio; I have published research funded by the state and federal government, which was then purchased by the institutions for which I worked, which were funded in part by the government; I have done some very nice travelling on your dime—Washington, DC, San Antonio, Kansas City, Seattle, Detroit and Chicago.  I also have a teacher's pension which pays far better than Social Security which non-government workers get. Don’t get me wrong--I worked hard, and you got your tax dollar’s worth, however, few poor people were lifted out of poverty.  Primarily the middle class benefited, including me.  Go to this website and type "library" or even something more exotic, like fashion or travel,  into the search window. https://www.cfda.gov/

As we roll off the fiscal cliff

Don't be fooled as we roll off the fiscal cliff. It's not about the wealth of the top 1 or 2 percent. The federal tax system is "progressive" and has been for close to 100 years--wealthier people pay taxes at a higher rate than others, but there just aren't enough of them to impact our debt. That plan he dangled during his campaign isn't enough to float the government even 2 weeks. You can't get blood out of a turnip--even the top 20% of households now pay more than 94 percent of income taxes. What he really wants is the wealth of the middle class, that middle bracket (20%) of the 5 quintiles. Now, there's something that really matters, and you all have it, so in this administration it obviously belongs to someone else--our government. (The 2 lowest quintiles--40%--pay no federal taxes--they get money and stuff from the gov't).

http://taxfoundation.org/article/cbo-report-shows-increasing-redistribution-tax-code-despite-no-long-term-trend-income-inequality

Barack and Michelle—middle class kids going to Ivy League schools on your dime

Everyone agrees--Michelle Obama gave a flawless presentation. I've only seen a few clips, but I'd judge her a better speaker than her husband, with a rich, authentic voice. That said, some of it sounded a bit "hard luck" for such a middle class girl.

I had a nice life growing up in a small, midwestern town. My father owned a small business--2 trucks, one employee and a gas station, as I recall. What we called middle class in the 1950s, they call poverty today. No TV, no AC, one phone, one car, no health insurance, clothes made at home, and a garden for fresh produce. One thing I do know is Michelle and Barack Obama's parents/grandparents were far wealthier than mine, and I didn't finish my degrees at the University of Illinois (about a fourth the cost of Harvard) owing any money. What I couldn't earn in summers or after school, my parents paid. I know these "I came up from nothing and struggled and look what I've accomplished" memes are great for politics, but they really belong with those "I built that" stories. And neither one of them did that.

• 
  Fellow blogger LadyBug Crossing says:
  

  We were middle class, too. Dad worked as an engineer for a large company. Mom was a nurse - she worked weekends. We traveled the world with him. We lived in the same house (except when we were overseas and they rented it out) my whole life....

  We made do. We shopped the sale racks. Mom made our dress clothes. We kids didn't get cars when we turned 16. I went to public school. I went to college and graduated without debt thanks to Mom's nursing job providing the extra. I worked every minute I was home from school. I lived at home until I got married. My graduate degree was earned while i was working. It wasn't easy, but I did it! We scrimped and saved for our house. Our cars are 10 and 11 years old. We have no debt except the mortgage. If we can't pay for it, we don't buy it. imagine that? Will I apologize for having a great childhood? No. Will I apologize because I have a nice life? No. Will I apologize for giving my children a similar life? No. They know the value of a dollar, the value of their education, and that family is where it's at. :-)

P.S.
I won't show you photos of Michelle's wedding gown because there are probably copyright issues, but you can google. Gorgeous and she looked fabulous. Definitely the 1% type dress and the men wore tuxes, whether or not she had to skip a few school loan payments to pay for it.

At last, an honest Democrat

"Mr. [John] Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes [on the New Yorker web site]. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run." Review and Outlook, Nov. 10

I would modify that editorial just a wee bit. Democrats will benefit over the short run; and in the long run, they will destroy the country. Think about what they were celebrating at the Berlin wall site yesterday--and now we're building one.

Never believe a promise that they'll only tax the other guy

That's class warfare. Class envy. Obama can't reduce taxes for 95% of Americans, since about 1/3 don't pay taxes anyway. Here's what to remember the last time a charismatic candidate promised to tax the rich and give you a break.

“Back when Mr. Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, he made a pretty direct pitch: Raise taxes on people making more than $200,000, and use those revenues to fund tax relief for the "forgotten middle class."

In an October presidential debate, then-Gov. Clinton laid out the marginal-rate increase he wanted and some of his plans for the revenue that would be brought in. He followed with a pledge:

"Now, I'll tell you this," he said. "I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending, or we will slow down the phase-in of the programs."

Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise. At a Jan. 14, 1993, press conference in New Hampshire, he claimed that it was the media that had played up a middle-class tax cut, not him. A month later, he announced his actual plan before a joint session of Congress.

p. 1 NYT . . . "Families earning as little as $20,000 a year will also be asked to send more dollars to Washington under the President's plan." About That Middle-Class Tax Cut . . .

The high cost of living

or the cost of living high? The middle class isn't disappearing; it isn't endangered. We've been sold a myth.