Middle Class

If Republicans are getting ready to turn an election-year corner, settle on a presidential nominee and begin broadening their political message beyond the reality-challenged segments of the GOP base, Rep. Paul Ryan clearly didn't get the message. The $3.5 trillion spending plan the House budget chairman released Tuesday morning is a great deal like what Mr. Ryan and his tea-party-endorsed colleagues in the House offered last year - with a bit less detail in areas that got him and his party in so much trouble last year, like cuts in Medicare benefits for senior citizens.

Rick Santorum called the president "a snob" for wanting everyone to get a college education. (In fact, President Barack Obama never actually called for universal college education but only for a year or more of training after high school.) Mr. Santorum needn't worry. America is already making it harder for young people of modest means to attend college. Public higher education is being starved, and the middle class will shrink even more as a result. Over the last year, 41 states have cut spending for public higher education.

January's increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story -- the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class. Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy -- hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain working only because they've agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they've lost.

As the Republican presidential race moves to Nevada, land of roulette wheels, craps tables and slot machines, where dreams of quick riches are often broken, Mitt Romneycontinues to struggle with the political consequences of the millions he's made through the sweat of his hard-earned investments. The release of his most recent tax returns revealed how he successfully gamed the tax system by virtue of the low 15 percent capital gains rate, allowing him legally to avoid the 35 percent many other Americans pay. At the same time, his tin ear on the plight of the nonrich still plagues him, giving him a Marie Antoinette tinge.

Not just the 1 percent invest in stocks. The Democrats would have you believe that the middle class don't get any income from the stocks, so we should double the tax rate on income derived from the stock market. Where exactly do they expect the "middle class" to put their money? Saving to put kids through college, or for retirement? How about those of us who have retired and have a small portfolio of blue chip stocks whose dividends augment Social Security?

The complaint that those of us who frequently refer to the nation's breathtaking disparity in wealth and income and to its 46 million poor are engaging in "class warfare" usually comes from people, like Mitt Romney, who live in the highest end of American class structure. They always throw the red flags. "I think it's dangerous, this class warfare," Mr. Romney said of the Occupy Wall Street protests last fall. Campaigning toward yesterday's presidential primary in South Carolina, he accused Newt Gingrich, a fellow multimillionaire, of sowing "class warfare" with his criticisms of Mr. Romney's legacy at Bain Capital.

If it takes the proverbial village to raise a child, it takes that same village to protect the elderly. Where was Mary Hines' village from July 2011, when her electricity was turned off, until her body was discovered, stabbed, in her burning rowhouse on Jan. 5, 2012? The 84-year old retired teacher was found murdered in a burning house and left for firefighters to clean up the ashes of her human tragedy. If the financially burdened widow were as beloved and as respected by family, neighbors and church leaders as has been reported, did this "village" observe her darkened home and her inability to refrigerate and cook nutritious meals for seven months without a twinge of guilt?

I was recently shown a picture from one of the Occupy protests taking place across the country. It featured a young woman surrounded by police. She was the only protester in the picture, but she didn't seem intimidated. All by herself, up against the police barricade, she held a handwritten sign saying simply, "I am a born again American. " I've never met this woman, but I think I know exactly what she's feeling. I had my first "born again American" moment 30 years ago, when I was moved to outrage and action by a group of hate-preaching televangelists who were trying to claim sole ownership of patriotism, faith and flag for the far right.

The three letters to the editor published in the December 27 edition of The Sun dealing with the recent series on the Homestead Property Tax Credit lead me to believe that either I or the writers of these letters are totally out of touch with what is going on in America, not just in Baltimore and Maryland. Bob Price states that tax codes should be "...simple, straightforward methods to generate revenue fairly and transparently. " Amen to that. But then he proceeds with the position that to accomplish this: "Programs that legislators deem to be worthwhile and affordable should be reviewed as part of the budgetary process, and each program's funding should be increased, decreased or suspended depending on the value of the program and the ability of the government in any given year to fund the program.

The defining political issue of 2012 won't be the government's size. It will be who government is for. Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government. But the surge of cynicism engulfing America isn't about how big government has become. It's a growing perception that our government is no longer working for average people. It's for big business, Wall Street and the very rich. In a recent Pew Foundation poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.