NEWSFLASH – John McCain is a Rich Man!
He’s so rich that he can’t even keep track of how many houses he and his wife Cindy own. When asked about it by Poltico.com yesterday, he said:
“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you. It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”
He later told Politico that they have at least four in three states – Arizona, California and Virginia.
McCain and his family appear to own at least eight homes: A ranch and two condos in Arizona; three condos in Coronado, Calif.; a condo in La Jolla, Calif.; and another in Arlington, Va. The number of houses is a bit trickier to determine since the ranch has at least four houses and a two-story cabin on it.
This story – this gift to Obama – is what is finally getting people to take a good look at the wealth of the two candidates. When they read the papers today, they might actually pay attention to this:
McCain earned a Senate salary of $161,708 and royalties of $176,508 last year from his books. His wife earned about $6 million in income from salary, dividends, capital gains and payments from trusts on her 2006 federal tax return.
Cindy McCain’s worth is estimated at as much as $100 million. She is the chairwoman of Hensley & Co., a privately held Phoenix-based distributor of Anheuser-Busch beer that she inherited from her father.
And they might recall that just last weekend when asked by Rick Warren what level of income he would define as “rich,” McCain replied:
“I think if you’re just talking about income, how about $5 million?”
The Arizona Republican quickly added that he was “sure that comment will be distorted,” and his campaign said Sunday that he was joking.
But he didn’t elaborate any further by offering a more reasonable number, whereas Obama’s answer was much more realistic and more direct:
“I would argue that if you are making more than $250,000, then you are in the top 3, 4 percent of this country,” he said. “You are doing well.”
So what’s the point? Well it has a lot to do with how in touch politicians are with the middle class. McCain’s wealth puts him far above all but the very few super rich. Obama isn’t poor by any means. He’s made a few million from sales of his books, but he’s not so wealthy or so old that he’s lost track of how many houses he owns.
So which one of these guys do you trust to come up with a tax policy to clean up the huge mess that Bush will leave behind? Paul Krugman has the answer:
Mr. McCain wants to preserve almost all the Bush tax cuts, and add to them by cutting taxes on corporations. Mr. Obama wants to roll back the high-end Bush tax cuts — the cuts in tax rates on the top two income brackets and the cuts in tax rates on income from dividends and capital gains — and use some of that money to reduce taxes lower down the scale.
According to estimates prepared by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, those Obama tax increases would fall overwhelmingly on people with incomes of more than $200,000 a year. Are such people rich? Well, maybe not: some of those Mr. Obama proposes taxing are only denizens of lower Richistan, although the really big tax increases would fall on upper Richistan. But one thing’s for sure: Mr. Obama isn’t planning to raise taxes on the middle class, by any reasonable definition — even that of the Bush administration.
