Middle Class

Hoboken, New Jersey. -- This was America's deal with me:If I kept my nose clean and paid attention in school, I could go to college, even if I had to work in the summers and part-time during the school year to pay for it. Then, if I worked for a few years, I could afford to buy a house and one day make enough money to make sure my own kids got through college.And that's what happened, for which I am very grateful. That deal, and the fact that if one screwed it up the first time there was almost always a second and third chance in the land of the free, are a good part of the reason I have always thought this a great country.

Years ago it was unthinkable that smart, ambitious and college-educated young people would have trouble finding entry level work ("Slow start," May 12). Today, this youthful demographic has been simultaneously dumped on a shrinking employment market and also burdened with horrendous student loans. To me, it's just another example of our country's war on the middle class. Considering this glut of a highly trained, highly motivated generation, why is there a need to add immigration reform to the mix as it will only increase competition?

If you're a member of the middle class -- and you probably think you are -- Congress, President Bush and the presidential candidates have two words for you: tax cut."Sounds great," you say. But are you really a member of the middle class?To the folks at Shirley's Restaurant & Bar, a corner tavern in the heart of Curtis Bay in South Baltimore, that's an easy question. The waitress says the middle class begins somewhere in the $20,000 range and ends at $28,000 for a single earner. Her boss says the middle class stops at the $50,000 mark for a family.

I'm not a shill for the Obama administration, but I must disagree with reporter David Lauter's analysis of the president's State of the Union Address ("In singular speech, a split approach to power," Feb.13). Mr. Lauter writes that early in his first term, President Barack Obama "appeared to believe that he could sway the country, including members of the opposition, by delivering a carefully crafted speech. " My public policy and advocacy work promoting economic security for low-income communities, families and individuals leads me to a different conclusion.

As a card-carrying member of the middle class, I couldn't be happier.A few days ago, I was forgotten.Now, out of the blue, I'm hotter than a hunky TV emergency-room doctor.Suddenly, everyone in Washington wants to know not what he can do for his country, not what he can do for his party, but what he can do for me. Move over, Al Franken. This is my decade.(If you want to know the truth, what I desperately need right now is somebody to clean my gutters. Maybe I'll put a call in to Dick Gephardt.

ATLANTA -- A recent poll has found that 61 percent of black Americans believe that the values of poor blacks have become "more different" from the values of middle-class blacks in recent years. With the possible exception of Bill O'Reilly - who professed astonishment at the good manners of black patrons at a Harlem restaurant - no one should be surprised at those findings. There have long been two Americas - both black. One is inhabited by the accomplished, the educated, the pragmatic.

THEY TEACH America's children. They build our bridges and highways. They keep our streets safe and our factories running. They fight our wars and protect our peace. They raise the children who will be America's future. And they should be the centerpiece of presidential and congressional campaigns across the country. They are America's middle class. And they are in trouble. Since 2000, family incomes have remained stagnant while costs for the basics - a home, health insurance, utilities, gasoline, day care, college tuition - have surged by an average of 24 percent.

BOWIE -- Strutting into her 1992 re-election bid yesterday, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., boasted of her efforts to keep federal dollars flowing to Maryland -- and vowed to reduce the number of federal dollars leaving the wallets of middle-class taxpayers.During the first of six scheduled campaign kickoffs, the Baltimore lawmaker climbed atop the crowded bandwagon of middle-class tax relief."We see middle-class families taxed like the rich but disenfranchised like the poor," she said. "I'm convinced it's time to listen again to the middle class.

WASHINGTON - In a presidential election year, everybody loves the middle class. That's because nearly nine in 10 Americans consider themselves part of that vast segment of society that strives for wages to enable them to send their children to college, care for their parents in old age and retire comfortably after years in the work force. They are a part of the ritual appeal by Republicans and Democrats in each presidential election. But both parties have long spoken to this group in distinctly different ways, with varying prescriptions for help.

WASHINGTON -- Acknowledging that Democrats "have spent too much time whining and rubbing hands and worrying what our message should be," Sen Barbara A. Mikulski says theDemocratic Party should return to its middle-class roots."

There is absolutely nothing bold about forcing the working class to pay for the sins of rent seekers and predatory capitalists. The mayor has once more proven, in her State of the City address, that her only concern is protecting and advancing the interests of developers, corporations and financiers ("Mayor calls for trash pickup fee, 10 percent cut in city workforce" Feb. 11). The focus of the mayor's comments on the city's economy reflect a neo-liberal fixation on privatization, erosion of the middle class, and depriving city residents of services all in the name of "fiscal responsibility" and solving a "crisis" which is, at best, a possibility.

The anticipated verbal duel Tuesday evening between President Barack Obama and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida -- the former in his State of the Union address and the latter in the official Republican response -- was an obvious mismatch. It seemed a case of man vs. boy, and of a perhaps overly ambitious agenda for the future vs. the same old GOP naysaying. The president, invoking all the pomp and power of his office, had one of politics' best platforms from which to preach optimistically of progress at home and withdrawal from combat abroad.

We are in the most anemic recovery in modern history. The president is talking about boosting the economy and rebuilding the middle class, but Washington isn't doing squat. In fact, apart from the Fed -- which continues to hold down interest rates in the quixotic hope that banks will begin lending again to average people -- the government is heading in exactly the wrong direction: raising taxes on the middle class and cutting public spending. It's called austerity economics. Washington is still acting as if the budget deficit were the most important economic problem.

The first State of the Union address of President Barack Obama's second term offered a list of new initiatives if not new ideas. Mr. Obama focused on improving the economic lot of the middle class, reforming the nation's immigration system, addressing climate change and finding a balanced approach to solving our budget problems. Aside from gun control - an issue thrust on the president's agenda by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre - and a new, ominous nuclear test in North Korea, all of the themes from the speech could have had a home in any of President Obama's previous State of the Union addresses.

President Barack Obama used the first State of the Union address of his second term to try to breathe new life into his economic agenda, reviving modest measures to spur growth and trying to create fresh momentum in the all-but-stagnant talks over deficit reduction. Entering his fifth year presiding over a flagging economy, the president on Tuesday declared the restoration of a strong middle class "our unfinished task" and called on a deeply divided Congress to find "reasonable compromise" to solve the nation's lingering fiscal ills.

I take issue with much of Lane Windham's recent commentary ("If not labor unions, then what?" Jan. 29) beginning with the fundamental premise that it was the unions that provided us with economic redistribution. Like many other academicians, Ms. Windham confuses correlation with causation throughout her thought process. The simple presence of unions in the United States during our rise as the undisputed economic world leader does not establish them as the cause of a better or fairer distribution of wealth.

In his campaign speeches, Vice President Al Gore tells audiences that he wants "middle-class tax cuts." Lest there be any doubt, he promises that his economic plan has "one guiding purpose: to help the middle-class families." When George W. Bush speaks of cutting taxes, he rhetorically targets the same crowd. One of his fundamental goals if elected president, Bush says, will be "to treat the middle class more fairly." But what is this middle class? Jeff Bradley, who makes $20,000 a year working for Sam's Shoe Service, a repair shop in Columbus, Ohio, has five children who receive their health insurance through Medicaid.

It's just before lunchtime at Shirley's Restaurant & Bar on Curtis Avenue. Waitresses serve up coffee and soup while two corner televisions compete with "Perry Mason" and "The Price is Right."Rose Brady, a 30-year-old waitress, is asked what price is right to get you into the middle class."At least in the 20s," she said.And where does the middle class end? "Probably about $28,000," she said. "Probably you're in the upper class, especially if two people are earning that."She is told that some congressional middle-class tax bills would reserve most benefits for those families with yearly incomes greater than $50,000.

In what might have been President Barack Obama's most progressive speech, his second inaugural address Monday marked a distinct change from the so-called New Democrat ideology of pragmatism and compromise to a full embrace of the principles that once put the Democratic Party squarely on the side of the middle class and the poor. Better late than never. It is only because the tea party has pushed the Republican Party further to the far right - and perhaps off the cliff - that Barack Obama is seen by some as a liberal.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: COXCOMB Some words pop into the language and then flicker out, while others fade over a long span. Given the abundance of conceited fools among us, it is a pity that a fine old word for them, coxcomb , has fallen into disuse. It was originally cockscomb (pronounced CAKHS-com)