Why We Can't Afford McCain

It is amazing to me how many so-called experts do not look at real values for the monetary investments they tout. The US Dollar Index was going up when Clinton was paying down the deficit. It immediately started down when Bush cut taxes and began off-budget war expenditures by printing unsupported dollars. I call them "country-feit" money.

The Index fell steadily during Bush's continuing deficits from 120 to almost 70. The value facts are even worse. The two "surrogate money" commodities, gold and oil, cost about three times as much now as when Bush started debasing our currency. We could have all paid the necessary taxes to prevent such deficits, and still be far better off in real wealth today.

All of our savings, our earnings, and assets are worth about one-third in real value as a result of these Republican economics. How does it feel to be fooled by a bunch of crooks who can only pander to our ignorance by saying "we'll cut your taxes"? We cannot afford another Republican president who will continue this policy.

I notice that many “financial advisers” are rabid Republicans. Think about why. Inflation of the dollar makes their job easy. They point to the U.S. stock market indexes going up for the last 75 years as a mark of their success. However, if you convert those indexes to real values in almost any commodity you name, the only people to make anything out of that false picture in the last 20-30 years are the financial advisers who take their cuts whether they make money or not for you. My numbers are higher, but my real worth is lower today in what I can buy than when Bush took office.

Other Republican shills claim that “our” big businesses pay the second highest tax rates in the world. What they don’t say is that they have put so many loopholes in our tax code that 60 percent of our businesses pay no taxes at all. And they can be called “our” U.S. businesses less and less. Many have moved to off-shore tax refuges, like Cheney’s did — to Dubai.

When the companies that make money from U.S. citizens are “multinational” they no longer feel responsibilities to maintain the infrastructure of America, so why pay taxes? Just take profits. We cannot afford to have another president funded by lobbyists of these businesses like McCain.

Our only hope is to elect an idealist Democrat like Obama who may be able to reverse some of these frauds before he too gets co-opted by the self-serving interests.

J.W. Moore is a reformed Republican who is now a registered Democrat. He is CEO of Optimer, Inc.