Middle Class

Re "I Think, Therefore I Am," Jan. 4, Commentary (or as we "middle class" prefer to say, cogito, ergo sum ): I am a member of Adela de la Torre's victimized "middle class." I am terribly sorry that De la Torre bemoans the middle-class focus on emotions rather than reason. However, it happens to be the middle class that provides the means for De la Torre to pontificate from her ivory tower. De la Torre should be aware that it is both unwise and ignorant to generalize about classes (or races)

ATHENS - Eva, a well-groomed pensioner, grasps her creamy white purse, glancing impatiently at her gold Cartier watch as she waits for the manager of an Athens bank. She is offered tea, cookies and orange juice, none of which the state bank usually provides, and none of which Eva accepts. "I'm concerned," says the 82-year-old, who declined to give her last name because she was involved in a private transaction. "I'm thinking of withdrawing all my savings. " Greek banks have been bleeding money since inconclusive elections this month, and the rise of a Marxist-Leninist leader bent on bustingBerlin'sausterity crusade, plunged the country into the biggest political crisis in decades and raised the specter of a devastating default.

On Wednesday, Bill Clinton will give--for the third time in the past eight months--the Speech of His Life. In truth, this is the big one-- more significant than the conven tion speech, more important than the inaugural. Even his advisers privately acknowledge that the fate of the Clinton presidency likely rides on the economic program he will present.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Vice President Joe Biden today is traveling to this working-class city to amplify the Obama campaign's tough attack on Mitt Romney's economic credentials, accusing the Republican of profiting at the expense of laid-off manufacturing workers. It's the follow-through of a one-two punch from the president's reelection team concerning Romney's ties to Bain Capital, the private equity firm he controlled for 15 years. A campaign ad that aired in key battleground states told the story of a Kansas City steel plant that went bankrupt and laid off workers after Bain took control.

Re "L.A. Area Going to Extremes as the Middle Class Shrinks," July 23 It took a while to stop laughing after reading the shrinking-middle-class article. The solution proposed is government action? The problem in Southern California is the result of NIMBY housing policy; local government hostility to almost any business that provides jobs for the middle class (under the guise of environmental or traffic mitigation issues); pandering to the elitist show business, software and multimedia industries; and succumbing to punishing the middle class to assuage the guilt of the rich by spending millions on the "poor" while offering them a ladder with the third through sixth rungs missing -- those middle-class jobs.

Re "Middle-class jobless run into a welfare wall," March 26 In your article, one of the people interviewed was wondering what happens to the middle-class families who were making good money. Perhaps sounding coldhearted here, one can repeat the ubiquitous statement being tossed around these days -- what has happened to personal responsibility? We hear of the plight of the middle class or above, people who have had no foresight. It appears they have not saved a dime, never mind the eight to 10 months of monthly income needed these days to hold them over after a job loss or health problem.

Granted, your special report "The Next California" (Sept. 12) related to the entire state, not any one region. It minimizes, however, the reality of what is happening in Los Angeles County today on a socioeconomic level. Los Angeles County, a middle-class bastion for over 50 years, is undergoing a profound social shock, with apparently no end in sight. Assume that there are roughly 6 million truly middle-class residents living here. There also appear to be about 3 million truly low-income or poor immigrants who have come to the county in the past 15 years.

In "The Incredible Shrinking Middle Class" (Commentary, May 19), John Balzar deplores the shrinkage of our middle class. His statement was one of the most powerful commentaries that I have read in The Times. I wish such a man would lead Americans in a fight to avert a government by money. The citizen has the strength to redress grievances with the initiative and recall process, peaceful assembly and the vote. Let us all stop saying "ain't it awful" and take action. America can unite to fight war; why not unite to free ourselves from the tyranny of big money?

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

Gov. Jerry Brown warned that his stark budget proposal, if adopted as is, would hit all Californians hard but that it would reflect the state's values. In fact, it would be a better proposal, and would do a better job of reflecting the values that have served us well, if it spread the pain further and held fewer Californians harmless. Too many of the cuts fall on the neediest people who have been hurt most deeply by the economic downturn, and will cost the state more even after recovery.

The people at the New York Times Magazine must think that nobody has ever read Ayn Rand, or maybe even Adam Smith. Their cover story on Sunday - misleadingly titled, "Are the Rich Worth a Damn?" - reports breathlessly that there is this fellow named Edward Conard who not only believes in free-market capitalism but is willing to say publicly that what America needs is more inequality, not less. (He's even written a book.) The argument is basically Smith's, carried to extremes: The invisible hand of free-market capitalism turns individual greed into prosperity for all. But Conard also shares Ayn Rand's conviction that the successful businessman is a hero, the alpha male at his finest, while the rest of us are deadbeats and leeches.

COLUMBUS, Ohio--President Obama officially kicked off his reelection campaign Saturday afternoon by blasting the economic policies of Republican Mitt Romney and pronouncing the prospect of his election a threat to the middle class. Speaking before a crowd of about 14,000 at Ohio State University, Obama said the former Massachusetts governor stands for trickle-down economics and would “rubber-stamp” the economic proposals of the Republicans in Congress. A successful investor and business executive, Romney has drawn “the wrong lesson from those experiences,” Obama said.

Detroit: A Biography Scott Martelle Chicago Review Press: 288 pp., $24.95 In February 1863, Thomas Faulkner, a Detroit saloon owner of mixed-race background, was arrested on the charge of raping a 9-year-old white girl. Despite his protestations of innocence, Faulkner was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The Civil War-era incident incited a white mob to burn 35 homes, kill at least two black people and injure numerous others. It's a chilling story - all the more so because there was no rape.

NEW DELHI - The children didn't notice the ravens and occasional vulture circling overhead, or the stream of black ooze that flowed nearby, or the inescapable stench of decay. They were squealing over a 4-cent ride on a small, hand-powered Ferris wheel. The kids are growing up in New Delhi's 70-acre Ghazipur landfill, a post-apocalyptic world where hundreds of pickers climb a 100-foot-high trash pile daily, dodging and occasionally dying beneath belching bulldozers that reshape the putrid landscape.

The son of a railroad worker, Earl Warren came from a family keeping a desperate finger hold on a working-class existence at the turn of the last century. Yet when he left high school in Bakersfield in 1908, there was no question where he was headed: to Berkeley and a free education at the University of California. There he proved an indifferent student scholastically but an enthusiastic absorber of "the new life, the freedom, the companionship, the romance of the university," Warren recalled years later.

President Obama preached a message about tax fairness to students at a Florida college this afternoon, speaking only indirectly of Republican candidates for president and deriding their party's commitment to “trickle down” economic policies that he says hurt the middle class. Obama spoke less than an hour after Rick Santorum announced he is suspending his campaign for the Republican nomination, a development many consider to be the unofficial beginning of the general election race between Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

President Obama today gave the nation a preview of his State of the Union address by outlining new policies to help the middle class cope with lower expectations and loss of faith in achieving the American dream. In televised remarks aimed at his task force that studied middle-class issues, Obama said his administration was committed to creating more jobs, increasing incomes and helping the battered middle class to grow. The task force is chaired by Vice President Joe Biden, who introduced the president.

It's no wonder the University of California regents delayed serious consideration of a plan that calls for annual tuition to rise as high as $22,000 within five years if the state does not increase the university's budget. Such a steep increase, from about $12,000 this year, would do more than strain the wallets of families across California. It would change the nature of the university in profound ways. UC would still be cheaper than most private universities, but the price difference would not be so striking — it would cost about two-thirds as much instead of one-third.

MILWAUKEE - The shape of a general election battle between Mitt Romney and President Obama came into sharper focus Sunday as Vice President Joe Biden led an administration assault on the potential Republican nominee. Biden took on Romney across a wide array of topics in a television interview, describing him as out of touch with the middle class and out of his depth on foreign affairs. And in a rare break from her retreat from partisan politics, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Romney's perspective on Russia "somewhat dated.

Vice President Joe Biden called Mitt Romney "out of touch" with the concerns of the middle class, the latest signal of how the Obama reelection campaign plans to target the leading Republican hopeful in November. "This is about the middle class. And none of what he's offering does anything. It's just returning to the same policies," Biden said in an interview for CBS' "Face The Nation" that aired Sunday morning. "I can't remember a presidential candidate in the recent past who seems not to understand by what he says what ordinary middle-class people are thinking about and are concerned about.