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JayBerg,

For two years, Obama has offered reducing SS/Medicare spending in return for Republicans agreeing to spreading the fiscal burden, more revenue, but Republicans won't budge. Now Obama is offering to cut spending on retirement programs and cancel out defense cuts in return for more revenue by reducing tax deductions. Paul Ryan says no deal because using revenue from reducing tax deductions to close the deficit wouldn't be available to reduce tax rates. Bipartisan tax reform could produce a half-trillion dollars or more in savings and go a long way to solving our so-called "debt crisis". It can't be much of a crisis to Republicans if every other fiscal priority must give way to giving the wealthy tax breaks they don't need. Where is Congress with the sequester to start in a couple of weeks? They've been on recess the past week.

Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans, 150 million people.

The 6 heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune own more wealth than the bottom 30%.

The top 1% own 40% of all wealth. The bottom 60% own less than 2%.

The bottom 40% own just 3/10 of 1% of the wealth in this country.

According to a new study from the Federal Reserve, median net worth for the middle class dropped nearly 40% from 2007 to 2010, the equivalent of 18 years of savings.

In 2010, 93% of all new income created from 2009 went to the top 1%. The bottom 99% got the remaining 7%.

In NE Minn, every Friday The United Way of NE MN packs 450 school children's backpacks with food for their weekend away from school breakfast and lunch programs.

Tax avoidance saves wealthiest Americans $3 trillion a year coming from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, loopholes and business subsidies.

Only 3% of taxpayers in the top 1% were classified as entrepreneurs. The great majority of entrepreneurs come from middle-class backgrounds with less than 1% coming from very rich or very poor backgrounds. It seems that the vast majority of those so-called job creators prefer to live on their investments.

The U.S ranks 43.2 in income inequality among almost 100 countries according to the CIA.

The largest tax break category is dividends, capital gains taxed at lower rate than wages, 55.5%. A new study showed that changes in tax law that reduced the capital gains income was by far the largest contributor to rising income inequality in the U.S. Capital gains and other investment income were taxed as regular wage income but reduced in 1996 and again as part of the Bush tax cuts.

Corporations paid an average of 22.5% taxes from 1987 to 2008, since then an annual rate of just 10% even though their profits have doubled in less than ten years.

There is no sales tax on U.S. financial transactions which have been estimated at about $3 quadrillion annually despite the high-risk "flash trading" that can lose entire pension funds in a few seconds. Just a half penny of every dollar of financial transactions would pay off not just the national debt but the whole $15 trillion debt. More conservative estimates revenues of a half-trillion dollars annually.

Light bulbs? Seriously? You must not have noticed the price of the non-incandescent bulbs have been steadily coming down and improving in quality and variety. I like that they last much longer and use less electricity. Did you lose your faith in good old american enterprise and competition?