Keep The Change

When President Obama announced this evening that tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (as well as for the middle class) would be extended by two years, what the poor and the middle class got was an extension of meager unemployment benefits to last thirteen months and a 20 percent reduction of the payroll tax by only one year. So both sides got two halves of the pie.

The wealthy got seven slices. The rest of us got the leftover slice.

It is obvious that the system is set up to help the wealthiest Americans get everything they want. The rules favor the house - just not the White House. Obama compromised in an effort to save unemployment insurance and tax breaks for the vast number of Americans but did so under Republican extortion tactics. Chris Matthews found a method to Obama's madness, attempting to put the Republicans on the spot down the road when deficit reduction and tax reform are visited by the 112th Congress, but all I can see in giving rich people what they don't need at the expense of the needs of the country is just plain mad.

Change we can believe in? Not in this lifetime or in any other.