-By Warner Todd Huston
So much for Obama being the “President of the middle class”…
According to the Census Bureau, income for the middle class fell 8 percent to its lowest level since 1995. “The New York Times” severely understates the case saying that this “poses a challenge” for Barack Obama as he vies for a second term
According to the report, middle class income has fallen to a national average of $50,054 annually, close to what it was back in 1995. The Times finds this troublesome for the President.
That drop poses a political challenge for President Obama as he presents himself as a champion of the middle class and defends his economic stewardship in a tightly fought presidential race. The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, is likely to seize on the decline as evidence of the president’s failure to fix an ailing economy. Mr. Obama, for his part, has emphasized the potentially damaging effects of Republican policies on the middle class.
Revealing a lopsided recovery, the same Census Bureau report does note that the top 5 percent of households have seen some recovery of lost income even as they “took a whack in the recession.”
The Obama administration points to these statistics claiming that the “rich” need to be taxed more. But others disagree.
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Recovery Lagging for Middle Class”
The Midwest has been suffering a major drought this year, one that will surely cost us all in 
Over the past month our team has reported live from corn fields already lost to the drought, irrigated fields with corn plants over your head, a grain elevator that expanded to hold what was expected to be a record harvest, and a dairy farm using fans and spraying cows with water to keep their herds cool. I’ve also been to the corn and bean pits at the CME where traders have bid up both commodities to record levels. And I’ve also reported from a chopper 1200 feet in the air over the drought-baked Midwest landscape. 
On Friday, July 20, Politico reported that GOP leadership in the House beat back an attempt by recalcitrant members of their own caucus to continue to quietly support the sort of pork spending that gave us Solyndra in the first place.
As one of his 
Last week the news of the $2 billion trading loss suffered by J.P.Morgan Chase hit the country like another nasty slap in the face to a nation already facing an economic downturn that is the worst one in a lifetime.
Ten years ago this month the 
The price of gasoline getting you down, bunkie? I don’t blame you because it is hitting us all hard in the wallet. Oh, there’s lots of finger pointing, to be sure. The left wants to blame the Republicans sold out to the oil industry, the right blames Obama for refusing to allow us to explore for and go after our own sources of energy because he is sold out to the disastrously failed “green energy” sector.
One of the reasons that our economic recovery has been so slow is that the Obama administration has opened a continuous avalanche of regulations affecting jobs, hampering businesses, and costing all of us billions in lost revenue, taxation, and waste. But there is a bill in the House called the REINS Act that could help tamp down this avalanche, save us all money, help bring back the creation of jobs that aren’t being created now. 
On November 30, CNN’s T. J. Holmes gave us a great example of how the Old Media is soft peddling the law breaking going on at the Occupy events in order to make these events seem far less dangerous and illicit than they are. Like many in the Old Media, Holmes seems desperate to give lawbreaking Occupiers as much cover as possible — a benefit they never offered the Tea Partiers.
With this week’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of American Airlines, we again see the results of unions having a hand in destroying American businesses. We also saw GM laid low by union demands costing Americans billions in bailouts. But despite these lessons of the recalcitrance of Big Labor forcing even worse calamities on our jobs climate in this dismal economy, Obama is about to make matters worse by using his powers to regulate to further harm both our business sector and our economy.
Tis the season for buying books for your loved ones and as always the The New York Times Sunday Book Review is 
Government Motors has finally found its hottest car and the Chevy Volt is it. Unfortunately for Chevy, it isn’t because it is popular. It’s because the car seems to catch on fire a lot. Industry watchers are preparing for the Volt to undergo a recall to fix whatever problem the car’s lithium-ion battery pack has that seems to be causing the vehicles to spontaneously burst into flames.
It’s hard to believe but Frank Rich’s latest exercise in the 
On November 25, Fox Business Network’s Eric Bolling will be hosting a Black Friday special to kick off the holiday season this year titled, Follow the Money: The Investor’s Holiday Portfolio. The program will air at 10PM eastern.
General Motors was too big to fail. This is why President Obama had to ride in on his white steed with billions of taxpayers dollars in hand to bailout GM rechristening it Government Motors. Besides, we were told it would be a great deal, a money maker, right? Well, not so much. The Administration has reported a dramatic increase in the money We The People have lost on the GM bailout.
Patten Industries has been guided by four generations of Pattens, the company having been founded by B. C. Patten, Sr. in 1933. But Illinois has not been good to the company or its employees over the last decade or so. Unfortunately, the company has gone from employing some 700 employees in 2006 to only about 400 today due to the harsh economic climate in the Land of Lincoln.
Warning, here you will see me praise President Barack Obama. Last week the President issued a directive for his various agencies to cut down department spending and one of those ways he targeted to achieve that was to cut out “swag” — items such as coffee mugs, pens, or other items with department logos that are given away for free, items we are paying for with our tax money.