The First Black President Destroys The Black Middle Class

And that’s not from some right-wing mouthpiece, that’s from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Millions of Americans endured financial calamities in the recession. But for many in the black community, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty. And some experts warn of a historic reversal of hard-won economic gains that took black people decades to achieve.

“History is going to say the black middle class was decimated” over the past few years, said Maya Wiley, director of the Center for Social Inclusion. “But we’re not done writing history.”

Adds Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy: “The recession is not over for black folks.”

In 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median net worth for black households had fallen 83 percent to $2,170, according to the institute.

Despite this, I confidently predict 75% or more of blacks will vote for Obama in 2012. Talk about voting against your own interests!

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Boehner Walks Away From Tax-Hike Deal

Score it Boehner 1, Obama 0.

“Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes,” Boehner said in a statement Saturday. “I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.”

[…]

Boehner had initially backed an effort to pursue a comprehensive agreement said to include more than $4 trillion in budget savings over 10 to 12 years. His top lieutenant, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), had opposed the plan because, an aide said, it would include more than $1 trillion in tax increases that Republicans have ruled out.

Obama can’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that when Boehner and Cantor say “no tax increases,” they mean it, and thus, everyone is back more or less to their starting positions.

For Obama, this is really bad news, because his starting position has the looming debt and spending problems squarely in the face of the public coming into the 2012 elections. Taking them out of the public eye is likely to boost his re-election prospects, but it’s beginning to look like it ain’t gonna happen.

Another blunder Obama has made is demanding new taxes in a struggling economy. His $1 trillion demand is actually $300 million more than the $700 million package known as the “Bush Tax Cuts,” which also makes it another broken promise by Obama and the Democrats… after all, they promised to leave the lower “Bush Tax Cuts” rates in place for two years, and that time isn’t up yet.

The White House is, of course, trying to spin it, but they have a real uphill battle on their hands… the public doesn’t want to send more of their hard-earned dollars to DC, and so Obama’s insistence on tax hikes is not going to play well at all. Even prominent lefties like Bono and John Kerry do all they can to avoid high taxation, even while hypocritically proclaiming that they support higher taxes for everyone else.

Lefties are also proclaiming that you can’t fix a budget shortfall without new revenues, but thanks to the Obamanomic economy, millions of Americans now have first hand experience with doing just that in their own household budgets, and the first step is to cut spending, another thing the Obamacrats refuse to do.

Boehner may have finally realized that he, not Obama, has the upper hand in these talks, especially with a solidly GOP House, which almost certainly won’t pass any tax hike deal. Let’s hope he continues to use it.