McCainomics: A Double Dose of the Same Poison
On Wall Street, the masters of the universe have turned to prayer and worry beads. At the Federal Reserve, a full night's sleep is a fading memory. Across Main Street, the recession is starting to hit, stores are shutting down, bankruptcies are spreading, houses are being foreclosed or abandoned. The pain of the recession is just beginning to hit.
But John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, owner of 10 homes and, by marriage, one of the wealthiest men in the Senate, simply doesn't get it. Today, he delivered what the campaign billed as a major address on the economy. And while McCain says he understands people are hurting, he hasn't allowed this to clutter his thinking.
States across the country are starting to slash spending on Medicaid and schools, as declining tax revenues force harsh budget cuts which in turn will add to the recession. But John McCain offers not one word about emergency aid to states and cities, dollar for dollar the most efficient counter to recessionary pressures.
Over 250,000 workers have lost their jobs in recent months and face dim prospects, and an unemployment system with more holes than net. Not one word from John McCain about extending unemployment benefits or covering those left in the cold.
Over 2 million manufacturing jobs have been lost over the last seven years; wages aren't keeping up with the costs of basics. America is selling off assets or borrowing from abroad at the rate of $2 billion a day to cover unsustainable trade deficits. John McCain shovels up only the same corporate trade policies that dug us into this hole.
A shadow banking system, stoned on risk and complexity, threatens to bring down the whole shebang. Already the Federal Reserve has thrown up about half a trillion dollars in guarantees to stave off the furies. McCain offers nothing about how to bring this system under accountability and control.
What is McCain concerned about?
First, foremost and repeatedly, he is outraged by earmarked spending by the Congress which he vows to veto if president. This is cute, but a joke. Earmarks total less than $15 billion a year in a $2.7 trillion budget. Erasing them all will make utterly no difference in our economic posture.
Second, the Senator believes that the US spends too little on its military and too much on domestic programs such as education, the environment, and public health. He believes George Bush hasn't lowered the taxes of corporations and the wealthy enough.
The reality is that we already spend more than the rest of the world on our military which is the largest source of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. Domestic investment has been starved by conservative presidents and congresses over the last thirty years. Corporate loopholes riddle the tax code. Billionaire hedge fund operators already pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Inequality has reached levels not seen since just before the Great Depression. Yet McCain's proposed tax cuts would increase our national debt to lavish billions on oil and pharmaceutical companies already enjoying record profits.
While offering up another round of tax cuts for the wealthy, he does say that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and their ilk can pay for their own prescription drugs. He then goes on to define as rich anyone making $80,000 a year or more, all of whom will be on their own.
Otherwise, Senator McCain, like George Bush, recycles the old platitudes of the market fundamentalists -- about lower taxes, free trade, smaller government, less spending. Forget the global debt, the $12 billion a month squandered in Iraq, the financial crisis, the deepening recession. For Senator John McCain, Bush's only mistake has been that he hasn't been extreme enough. The Senator should do well with all of those Americans who are yearning for even more of the same.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Robert, I think his PRIMARY CONCERN right now is being elected PREZ. That is truly all he is really concerned about because if it doesn't happen this time for him, he will never have another chance - and the funny thing is that he actually KNOWS it. When are we going to see his medical records and his tax returns? I bet he's scared for the american public to see these documents and he is trying to avoid releasing them until he absolutely has no other choice. He could care less about all the other real issues facing the public - don't anyone kid themselves about that. All he cares about is being elected PREZ - he does not have to worry about finances or the war that he loves so much in Iraq. Its for damned sure that he has no concern about money and he doesn't have to go to Iraq (except to stay inside the green zone where he is completely protected), so he has no concerns except his possible win to give this country another 4 or 8 years of Bushco. God help us all if this occurs!
EVERYONE should read David Cay Johnson's "Free Lunch". It documents the extremes to which this government is controlled by the top few percent of the wealthy, by corporations and lobbyists. Once the invisible subsidies to those groups have been taken out of the budget, precious little remains for the good of the rest of the people - education, social programs, infrastructure, research and so on.
Conservatives have largely had their way with the economy for the last 6 years and starting with Reagan, they have pretty much contolled the debate over what makes the economy tick. Lower taxes,(although they lie about actually doing this, try owning a small business and paying the "Reagan" tax which is FICA that he doubled) free market , less regulation
Not just the last 6 years, it is still going on...check this out
The bill, dubbed the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008, fell short of the two-thirds majority it needed to pass, even after clearing a House committee unanimously. The vote was 239-178 in favor, with all but two Democrats supporting it and all but 16 Republicans opposed.
The bill would have allowed states and jurisdictions to be reimbursed by the federal government for converting to a paper ballot system, offering emergency paper ballots or conducting audits by hand counts.
The measure was designed to ensure that every vote is properly counted. Voters in all or parts of 20 states including New Jersey now cast ballots electronically without backup paper verification, according to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.
Looks like the reps don't want all of the votes to count. Typical of a dictatorsh
Excellent point and very much appreciated. Thanks.
The economy is in trouble. So lets raise taxes and give the government even more of our dollars to waste . Yeah that makes lots of sense. If you're a class warfare liberal.
That's a false choice argument.
Warren Buffet recently made the comment that there is indeed class warfare, and his class is winning.
"so lets raise taxes and give the government even more of our dollars to waste".
... If you want to see some waste watch the Farm Bill come out of committee this week, or look at the 600 plus billion dollar spending bills passed in the last few months.
THE GOVERNMENT IS RUN BY AND FOR CORPORATIONS, so while you struggle to fill up your gas tank, go ahead and blame it on those tax and spend liberals;
or wake up and smell the coffee.
Chinaasskisser or whatever you call yourself,
I have a new concept for you right wing nut jobs out there in cyber space; it’s called reality!! The 'Raise Taxes" rule would only apply to the top .5% of earners, you know, the one's who have seen their wealth triple during the Bush years.
Least I remained you that under the Bush tax cuts if you made $50K you received a $1k tax cut, but if you made $1MM you got a $50K tax cut, or for the mentally challenged out there, you made 20 times the income but received 50 times the tax break!!!!
"The economy is in trouble". Who ran the economy into the ground? Who increased the national debt by fifty percent in seven years. Who flushed a trillion dollars down the Iraqi shithole? Was it a class warfare liberal? No, it was the the party in control of the ALL branches of the government for most of the last seven years. Funny how people like yourself can overlook that reality, isn't it? By the way, just so you wont be confused anymore, the class warfare party is the Republican party. If you are in the top two percent economically, they are fighting for you (and winning). Otherwise, if you support them, you are an idiot. You know, part of the 29% of the people who can be fooled all of the time.
I would be completely in favor of a "war tax" that forced the people in this country to actually pay for this war right fucking now. Not pass it on to people yet to be born. People born after Reagans folly of a presidency are paying for his tax cuts to the rich. Yes raise taxes to pay for this war now. You want your war, righty? Yous should be willing to pay for it.
Unfortunately, nobody is paying attention to the issues. It's all about the campaign horse race. We have turned presidential politics into a super American Idol competition that goes on seemingly forever. Pretty soon it will last all four years, smothering completely any real news that tries to bubble up from this pervasive layer of campaign manure.
What's this post got to do with "bittergate?" That's where the action is. Nobody cares about this stuff.
Here’s a few choice words about McCain's gas tax proposal in todays Crooks and Liars.
“McCain wants to shave 18 cents off the price of a gallon of gas by temporarily waving federal taxes. It would cost $11 billion a year.
This is a remarkably bad idea.
The federal gasoline tax represents a flat fee of 18.4 cents a gallon nationwide. With gasoline currently averaging $3.39 a gallon, the tax represents a mere 5 percent of today’s pump price. While that’s not trivial, consider that gasoline prices have more than doubled since 2004.
For that matter, federal gas taxes go towards rebuilding and maintaining roads and highways. Cutting the gas tax would mean less investment in infrastructure — a very dangerous approach right now — and fewer jobs.”
Like most of the McCain platform, this idea was created by pollsters not so concerned with what will work, but what will play with the American voter. McCain’s economics, as his politics, are for a lost era where the public would buy anything, and genuinely believed that what was good for General Motors WAS good for America.
Times have changed Senator. Time to come out of the bubble and take a long hard look at what remains of our infrastructural economy and start promoting what IS good for America; investment IN America.
McCain claims to be a "Teddy Roosevelt" Republican.
Nowhere is his hypocrisy brought into greater relief than in this statement.
TR was to the left of any of the Democrats today on social issues, unions and fairness in the labor market - i.e. he opposed all the "elite" in the economy - those in the stock market and corporate world and favored legislation that limit the formation of extreme wealth in any economic sector.
He crusaded for unions, child and other labor laws and against the exploitation by the wealthy.
And he feared that inequity in the distribution of income could injure the democracy and bring down the whole system - which it shortly was to do.
McCain is a product and ally of bankers, lobbyists, large corporations and the wealthy classes, exactly as Bush is.
Much of McCain’s economic platform seems to involve simplistic notions with a bow to the Holy Grail of Republican dogma, Reganism; this unwavering insistence that by making the Rich richer, the economy as a whole will be strengthened. The message seems to be designed for blind followers who have little knowledge of economics, or history, and will except a flawed premise on the weight of dogma alone.
Take for instance the McCain healthcare “plan”: Reduce taxes so Americans can afford insurance.
Only in Republicana, that mysterious Ayn Rand utopia, could a few hundred dollar tax reduction purchase full medical coverage, but no matter. We are left to believe that allowing the insurance industry to pick and choose participants on “pre-existing” conditions while pocketing 22 percent of the healthcare dollar is indeed the American way. Other systems are branded “socialist” even while employed in such capitalist bastions as Japan and Switzerland.
McCain’s message is old and stale and its result obvious across America; that is the America where one in ten Americans are expected to be on foodstamps by the end of the year. While FOX and Rush continue to preach that all is well in Republicana, at the end of the day being unable to fill the gas tank or put food on the table provides its own argument for change.
McCain scares the hell out of me. But what is even scarier is how the msm continues to give him a pass on his blunders and fail to challenge his assertions. I truely hope this time around that most Americans are not relying on the "news" reported by the msm. His so call reputation as a "maverick" is a joke. We will have a Bush 3rd term presidency if this man is elected.
Indeed.
Chris Matthews for one seems to be a regular McCain cheerleader.
Lately he's been constantly making the statement that McCain has a 50 percent chance of becoming President.
Apparently Matthews has been reading some insider poll not available to the rest of us.
McCain spews the same horse manure that every republican does about smaller government and cutting spending but they never have done it, not once. Why should we believe him? Only a complete moron or liar would. Oh wait, because this time he blames it on congress, you know, the congress that has been controlled by republicans for 6 of the last 7 years while we ran up half of our 10 trillion in debt. The same congress that he's been a member of for 20+ years while we ran up the rest of it. Holy crap Americans are stupid!!!
John McCain= Three trillion dollars for Baghdad, but not one red cent for Americans!
Just about everything in this entire post is apparently a well-kept secret. Why is it that the majority of Americans don't know they are economically oppressed by the greediest people on the planet?
daddysboy, they don't know it because the press is corporate owned and complicit in the scam. This country is in trouble, big trouble.
Senator McCain's response: "Hey you punks, get offa my google!"
The greediest people on the planet get good press. The American mythic ethos demands that you oppress yourself when you wonder of your economic problems.
Unlike bitter and resentful conservatives I do not allow people to become hurt, and I do not allow my thinking to become cluttered.
The US and the world cannot afford another 4 years of the same bankrupt policies.
To a true believer, conservative policies can never fail they can only be failed. That's why you now hear people on the right saying "Bush isn't really a conservative". It's not that the policies are screwed up, it's just that Bush wasn't enough of a true believer to make them work.
You are absolutely correct. I think this is because these 'believers' HAVE to believe this or they will be forced to acknowledge the true reality that they are simply greedy. Concepts like 'trickle down' are nothing more than smokescreens for hoarding.
While it is important for Democrats to undermine McCain--and his continued alignment with the failed policies of the Bush administration makes this pretty easy--let's keep some perspective: McCain is no George W. Bush. No matter how badly his policies make you squirm, he's not a criminal.
Yes he is. Google Keating 5.
It isn't mccain's current record that is of concern; it is his future record should he join forces with those that have proven themselves to be completely unconcerned with the rule of law. Since he is already in their club, it's hard to imagine anything but further collusion unless you believe that mccain has some kind of superb moral character that will set him apart from everyone else.
I thought your article was dead on, if hardly cheering. McCain is simply a second Bush, and after
the last seven+ years, how anyone could consider voting for this fool staggers my imagination.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
