Mission Accomplished! DISAPPEARING MIDDLE CLASS:

[midnight]

"It's been such a nightmare," LaRochelle told HuffPost. "I tried to work something out with Wells Fargo, but they wouldn't even talk to me until I was 30 days past due. We tried a deed in lieu three times because they 'lost the paperwork' twice, and then they turned it down because they said we hadn't advertised our property at fair market value. I had no idea that our property had dropped in value from 139K to 49K, and I didn't see how we could have advertised it for less than the 120K that we owed on it."

The LaRochelles are two of the nearly 2.4 million Americans who are seriously delinquent on their mortgage payments, thanks to plummeting property values and lingering unemployment. And according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research and policy group, as many as 9 million homeowners could go into foreclosure in the next two years.

Luckily, the LaRochelles still own their double-wide mobile home in rural Georgia, which will keep a roof over their heads for the near future while Debbie takes care of her ailing parents full-time and David searches for a new job. But he says the loss of their former middle class life hasn't been easy.

"I'm living about as cheap as you can live," he said. "I was used to stopping at the grocery store and buying whatever I wanted to buy, walking into hardware stores or Home Depot and getting whatever I wanted to get. We're definitely not middle class anymore. There basically isn't a middle class here -- there's wealthy landowners that were raised with it, and the poor people who do everything. It's like going into a Third World country."

Despite his frustrations with Wells Fargo and the pain of losing his house and job, LaRochelle says he and his wife are just grateful to be getting by. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/12/disappearing-middle-class_n_643352.html

[RKP5637]

1. And one of millions of unheard stories. This is like a twilight zone episode, except

we can't change the channel or turn off the TV.

[Donnachaidh]

2. and georgia media is bitching because there is construction clogging the roads into Atlanta

Not one whisper about what is happening to residents.

And my rep, Gingrey, is throwing his weight around protecting federal employees rights in Washington. He doesn't do shit for the dumbasses that keep voting his ass in.

[dem mba]

3. a Third World country?

ah man, I cringe when I see these comparisons. Things got to get much, much worse here before those kinds of comparisons have any meaning. It makes us all sound so entitled, so spoiled.

[Citizen Worker]

4. Not a third world country? You must not have seen Detroit, Flint,

Yougstown or Garry and the milltowns surrounding Pittsburgh.

[dem mba]

6. Billy Joel sang about Allentown a long time ago

but I would hardly call Pennsylvania a third world country back then or now.

And yes, I've been to Youngstown before. I'm originally from Ohio. I didn't see anyone dying from dehydration, starvation, malnutrition or the like. I must have missed it.

Look, it's in bad form to compare tragedies, I get it. But a depressed industrial city is still a far cry from a third world country. Let's not lose perspective in the midst of our crisis.

[Demeter]

5. We Got the Crony Politicians Already

It just takes some time for the infrastructure to completely deteriorate....