US Presidential elections - McCainomics: A Double Dose of the Same Poison - by Robert Borosage
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. 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.
The Republican 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 the US already spend more than the rest of the world on its 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.
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