Stan Geiger

Say it ain't so, Joe

Joe Biden just got his butt kicked.

Biden tried to grab the reins early by saying Palin didn't answer a question to his liking. Palin slapped Biden down early by saying she wasn't going to play Katie Couric games. She was going to speak not to Joe Biden or the media but to the American people. And good for her.

Palin made an excellent point when she noted the Democratic ticket---that claims to be about the future and change and such---keeps pointing to the past. George Bush is done. He's not running for anything. So why keep bringing him up in this election?

I understand the politics of the matter. Bush is unpopular. But you know what? Congress is at least as unpopular as Bush. Congress is loaded with Democrats. And Congress has the real power.

As far as the particulars of the debate, I continue to be taken aback by the fact that nobody, in the group of four, seems interested at all in the working class. I hear chatter about the rich and I hear chatter about the middle class, but nobody ever mentions the "servant class." Big mistake.

What lawyer could survive without a secretary? What doctor's office could function without the people that make the appointments, send out the bills and file the data? Who wants to go to a restaurant and not have a server? Who wants to go the store and not have someone there to ring up the sale?

This economy runs because of the working class, period. Yet no one seems to give a hoot about the well-being of said class. Big mistake.

The IRS says half of the tax returns filed in this country show an adjusted gross income of about 30 grand or less. That's no small number. We're talking about some 69 million people and/or households.

John McCain, for example, talks of a $5,000 tax credit so people can buy health insurance with the money. But IRS stats say the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers pay little or no income tax. So tell me, what good does a 5k tax credit do for someone that isn't paying income taxes?

The working class in this country has become the forgotten class in this country. Big mistake.

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