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Weather.... Published: Sunday, 12/11/2011   A little help,
Congress, for the rest of us   If you're lucky enough to have a
job covered by Social Security, your payroll taxes are scheduled
to go up Jan. 1. If you're a typical middle-class worker, that
would cost your family nearly $1,000 next year.  If you're
unlucky enough to have been out of work for more than six
months, you could lose your extended federal unemployment
benefits at the end of December. As many as 77,000 Ohioans and
61,000 Michiganians face that prospect.  Happy holidays!  Relax,
a little. President Obama and Congress are likely to find some
way to extend, and maybe even expand, the cut in Social Security
payroll taxes for another (election) year. And it's hard to
imagine that even the most hard-core Scrooges on Capitol Hill
would cut off extended benefits at a time when the nation's
jobless rate remains so high and the average duration of
unemployment is 10 months -- a heartbreakin