The End of the Middle Class

Marc Fitten, New York Times Op-Ed Contributor, wrote an excellent article for the Sunday edition titled Life Underwater In the article he writes about being a good boy, following the rules, living conservatively, never living on credit, and hoping to send his kids to college one day. Over the last few years he has seen the value of his home drop $70k, wiping out all of his equity. He classifies himself as part of the new suburban poor.

That was on page 10; on page 4 the Prime Number is 345 Follow the link because you will find a cornucopia of interesting data in this little paragraph. The basic premise is this:
•$345 million is the average earned by the 400 highest earning households
•The number is up from $263 million
•The average tax rate these households paid was 16.6% the lowest since the IRS started keeping track
•The top 400 households earned $138 billion in 2007, that's a 76% increase over the previous year.

So middle class homeowners are completely underwater and the top earning households are making more money than ever and paying the lowest taxes ever.

Welcome Back Real Time

Bill Maher roared back from hiatus and I couldn't be happier. He started the show by talking to Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. Warren said the financial system is so broken that it's literally banking lobbyists against American Families.
His panel Elliot Spitzer, former Governor of New York; Norah O'Donnell, MSNBC correspondent; and Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy; were hilarious. Finally Wanda Sykes came out and talked about being black and being gay. It was a great show and you can watch and join the discussions here Real Time.
If you don't have time to watch here are the main points:
1. Bank Lobbyists are destroying any chance of real financial reform
2. Everything that caused the Financial Melt-Down is still happening
3. Eight of the ten new rules to protect consumers from predatory creditors have been subverted
4. Sarah Palin knows how to fain righteous anger and Bill O'Reilly is a douche. Seth McFarlane hired an actress with Down's Syndrome and O'Reilly labeled him as a hater...

The episode features the character Chris falling for a girl with Down syndrome. On a date, he asks what her parents do. She replies: "My dad's an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska."

Last night, Palin appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and said, "This world is full of cruel, cold-hearted people" and asked, "When are we going to say this stuff isn't really funny?"

O'Reilly then asked her why she called for the resignation of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel but didn't come down on Rush Limbaugh even though both men used the "r word?"

Of Course we know that it is OK for Limbaugh to use the r word because HE is a satirist...
5. Obama and the Democrats are PUSSIES. They are on the right side of every issue and still let the Republicans frame the debate.
6. Teabaggers are idiots Only 12 percent of the public say that the Obama administration has lowered their taxes since coming to office, despite the fact that the White House's stimulus package cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, a new opinion survey found.
7. DADT needs to be repealed.
There's more but you'll have to watch clips to get the real deal.