To be my own middle-class big brother

Earlier this year in March, I wrote a blogflection asking the question of who needs a middle-class big brother. It was my tongue-in-cheek expression of what a waste of time was emerging with a new White House Task Force of Middle Class Working Families, a major initiative by President Obama targeted at raising the living standards of middle-class, working families in America. You can read what I had to say here: Who needs a middle-class big brother?

Well since this middle-class middle-age man still seems to be standing still with the same two quarters in his front pants’ pocket that he had six months ago, I decided to visit the task force’s website and see what the people who make it up have been doing. You can visit the website here: White House Middle Class Task Force website.

Goals of this task force include:

• Expanding education and lifelong training opportunities
  
• Improving work and family balance
  
• Restoring labor standards, including workplace safety
  
• Helping to protect middle-class working family incomes
  
• Protecting retirement security
  

How have these folks been doing in pursuing these goals on our behalf?

A power skim on the front page on the task force’s website found a blog with three recent entries, the most recent being a yawn-producing essay about reforming Wall Street to protect Main Street and how imperative regulatory reform is to the middle class. My assessment of this discourse is that it does provide something to us middle-class – a guaranteed cure for late night insomnia.

In a golden opportunity test of my patience, I’ve decided to give these big-shot members of the White House Task Force of Middle-Class Working Families a chance to do their job and earn their keep by sparing them of any further criticism for another six months. My concluding thought is a message to these folks that I prefer to be my own middle-class big brother.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum