How many homes do you have, Senator McCain?

[Joanne98]

I did find this quite funny. McCain was asked how many homes he and his very wealthy wife owned and he didn't know. There doesn't even seem to be much consensus on it either. Here are the counts:


McCain - "I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told us in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you."

McCain's staff - "At least four."

Newsweek - Seven

Actual Count - Ten

I don't care that he owns ten homes and is wealthier than I will likely ever be in my lifetime. Yay for McCain for being opportunistic enough to cheat on his car crash-disfigured first wife and marry an heiress. I do find it both funny and infuriating that he owns so many that he doesn't even know what they all are to be able to give a number in an interview. It must be nice to have that kind of wealth.

I hate hypocrisy. McCain has the gall to call Senator Obama an elitist but can't remember how many multi-million dollar properties that he owns? That's not Straight Talk and is incredibly dishonest. Yet, McCain keeps trying to pass himself as Just Plain Folks by stunts like offering up his wife in a topless contest at a motorcyclist convention. How is this Presidential? I think it's especially unseemly for McCain to back preserving the Bush tax cuts that are disproportionally benefiting his and his wife's tax bracket while claiming to understand the plight of the many much-less-wealthy Americans who are losing homes and suffering high inflation - especially at a time when the government has a near 10 trillion dollar national debt and 400+ billion dollar deficits!

First, trickle-down economics do not work simply because it assumes that the gross amount of wealth reallocated to the top 1% of the population gets reinvested back into the economy in the form of stocks and personal expenditures. This simply doesn't happen because this population not only can afford the lawyers and accounts who hide or disguise the wealth to avoid taxation from an underfunded IRS or they invest outside of the country or they simply save the money and finally because even an incredibly wealthy individual can only consume so much. Market economics depend on a flow of capital conducted in as many transactions as possible. An unregulated free market eventually concentrates wealth in the hands of a few top performers (monopolies). In the American economy, things like CEO salaries, stock fraud, real estate fraud, lotteries, mergers, and so on are concentrating wealth in a manner disproportionate to what the economy can support and to what solid business principles would dictate. This wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, reduces the number and size of likely transactions in the entire marketplace. If a CEO is getting $90 million dollars a year, that's $89 or so million dollars that's very likely not getting invested back into that company in the form of more employees, equipment, property, resources, or whatever. In addition, vast differences between the highest and lowest paid employees at a company do nothing to engender employee loyalty. In fact, the opposite happens as the employees often find themselves on the chopping blocks way before anyone looks at cutting salaries at the top - producing fear, resentment, and antagonistic labor negotiations. You could say the CEO is being paid competitively except that the people who decide their salaries are other CEOs sitting on the company boards. The generous contracts produced by this elite "band of brothers" include provisions that allow the CEO to be paid even in the case of abject, company-bankrupting failure. We've also seen wealth invested on artifically overvalued properties (dot-coms, real estate, mortgage bonds, fraudulent investments like Enron) that have enriched only a few people and criminals lucky enough to get out in time then those investments have promptly evaporated (Freddie and Fannie). Yet the Republicans still want to claim that the federal government has too much regulation and oversight that interfere with American competitiveness. A McCain presidency, responsive only to its wealthy supporters like those in the oil industry, would likely continue this deregulation.

Second, McCain argues that any tax increases would be irresponsible during a time of economic crisis. I would argue that the failure to address our financial debt is incredibly irresponsible. The Republicans and Democrats both subscribe to the idea that government spending should increase during hard economic times. However, during boom times - shortly after Bush took office and during short periods of economic expansion during the housing bubble - when government should be making up the shortfalls as the other half of the economic stimulus equation, the Republican-controlled Congress and Executive Branch pushed for decreasing government revenues and increasing government spending directed at specific friends / lobbyists / special interests. Now we are in a rough economic patch with no leeway in our treasury, forcing us to put ourselves increasingly in debt to foreign nations who do not have our best interests in mind. Part of the weakening of the American economy and dollar has to do with international perception that we have no serious interest in paying off our debts and are at the risk of defaulting on our loans.

I would think about voting for McCain if he came out and said that his great wealth meant that he has a greater responsibility to help his country out and that part of bringing the country back on track means that everyone in the country has to contribute as much as they can. This would mean rescinding the tax cuts on at least those people who could most afford it, including himself. At least this would demonstrate some knowledge of economic fundamentals and also resembles the successful call to arms that President Franklin Roosevelt asked of the country for the Great Depression and for World War II. Unfortunately, what we have is men of great power and wealth, like McCain's top economic advisor Sen. Phil Gramm, telling ordinary Americans to suck it up and stop whining is infuriating. Watching Senator McCain himself simultaneously pander to the mighty while patronizing everyone else is simply unworthy of the office he aspires to hold some day.

(To be somewhat fair, Senator Obama's stand on the economy is marginally better because he calls for repealing the Bush tax cuts, but only marginally as it does not do nearly enough to address the problems that the country will face with its aging population. However, Obama demonstrates a much better grasp of economics and just about everything than McCain has.)

http://cosmicironymag.livejournal.com/49695.html