Time for shared sacrifice

The working poor and middle class, including small business owners, are paying more in taxes for fewer services, either paying out of pocket or living without, while using ever more of their take home pay for medical care and saving for school and retirement (if they can). Public workers across the country are basically taking pay cuts, paying more for health and pension benefits, as fewer taxpayers have salaries that can afford higher taxes while good jobs continue to bleed overseas, benefiting no one but stockholders. These workers, most of whom are us, have made sacrifices for the greater good, even though they didn't want. And these people are the lucky ones in an economy where the unemployment rate remains high. Meanwhile the rich are not asked to do anything. Heaven forbid they, whether they be individuals or corporations, be asked to pay more taxes since they then might export the jobs they are already exporting overseas.

Why must taxes be raised on the rich? Because, despite an economy that's twice as large as it was 30 years ago, most Americans can't afford higher taxes since almost all the new wealth has gone to the rich. Worse, rather then investing this extra money in new jobs for Americans, they are sending this money overseas and creating jobs in other countries. Now you can argue that it is not the rich sending jobs overseas but corporations. However, I have never seen a corporation big enough to export jobs being run by somebody earning minimum wage. Time for those who benefited most from the tax loopholes to pay up.

Wienergate: What a Putz

With all that is going on, I can't believe Weinergate is continuing.

I've read that Andrew Breitbart and company are the ones who first found the mistweeted picture and ran with it. For those who forget, Mr. Breitbart is the same "journalist" who essentially got an Obama aide fired by purposefully manipulating video of a speech she gave to suggest she was racist against white people. After that stunt I would not believe Breitbart if he said the sun was strong today while I was getting sun burned. He is somebody who successfully gets the people and media wound up over trivial things so we don't pay attention to what is really important. Men like him are the true danger to this country, not some putz who can't keep his pants on.

At this point it is sounding like Rep.Wiener, or someone on his staff, accidentally tweeted a private picture of him (whoever him ends up being) in his underwear to all his followers which was then exploited by Breitbart or one of his allies on Breitbart's site. Embarrassing? Yes. Stupid? Yes. And is Wiener making things worse by not firmly denying or admitting the picture is or is not of him? Yes. But this does not warrant the amount of coverage you are providing. Nothing illegal happened. Men wear less on the beach.

We've had our fun, time to move on to all the news that really is fit to tweet. With three wars going on, the debt ceiling hitting its limit, debates about Medicare going on or housing prices continuing to decline, I'm sure the media can find something. As to the picture itself, if it turns out to be Rep. Wiener, that should be between Rep. Wiener, his wife, the college student who was supposed to have received his tweet and the voters of his district in Nov. 2012.