{"id":4398,"date":"2008-08-19T00:03:30","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T23:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=4398"},"modified":"2008-08-19T00:03:30","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T23:03:30","slug":"mccain-betrays-himself-by-defining-rich-at-5-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/contributions\/mccain-betrays-himself-by-defining-rich-at-5-million\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain Betrays Himself By Defining Rich at $5 million"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressive.org\/mag\/wx081808.html\">Matthew Rothschild<\/a> | I don\u2019t know why a pastor was allowed to hold the first forum with the Presidential candidates\u2013in a church, no less\u2013but there was a revealing exchange between Rick Warren and John McCain Saturday night.<\/p>\n<p>Warren said, \u201cEverybody talks about, you know, taxing the rich, but not the poor, the middle class. At what point, give me a number, give me a specific number. Where do you move from middle class to rich?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As far as income goes, McCain said, \u201cHow about $5 million?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then he tired to fob it off, saying, \u201cno, seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s really not a laughing matter.<\/p>\n<p>This is either how out of it John McCain is, or how much he wants to obscure the class cleavages in this country.<\/p>\n<p>The top 1% of Americans, which by any definition, should be viewed as the rich or the upper class, make $450,000 or above.<\/p>\n<p>Only 0.3 percent of Americans make more than $1 million a year.<\/p>\n<p>Only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction makes $5 million.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe McCain wants to camouflage this because his own tax proposals, like Bush\u2019s, favor the richest of the rich.<\/p>\n<p>Under McCain\u2019s plan, those making more than $1 million would get an extra $195,000 next year, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxpolicycenter.org\/numbers\/displayatab.cfm?template=simulation&amp;SimID=266\" target=\"_blank\">the Tax Policy Center<\/a>. And the top 0.1 percent of Americans would get an extra $290,000.<\/p>\n<p>Obama, to his credit, said, \u201cIf you are making more than $250,000, then you are in the top 3, 4 percent in the county.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And Obama\u2019s tax policies would raise the rates on McCain\u2019s cherished 0.1 percent by $700,000 in 2009. Also by contrast, Obama would give more of a tax break to everyone in the lower 80 percent of income brackets than would McCain.<\/p>\n<p>But McCain, as most Republicans do, likes to pretend we don\u2019t live in a class society.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe he\u2019s just been hanging around his wife too long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Matthew Rothschild | I don\u2019t know why a pastor was allowed to hold the first forum with the Presidential candidates\u2013in a church, no less\u2013but there was a revealing exchange between Rick Warren and John McCain Saturday night. Warren said, \u201cEverybody talks about, you know, taxing the rich, but not the poor, the middle class. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,17,1616],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-4398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-contributions","7":"category-politics","8":"category-usa-news","9":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}