If you watch Fox news or the Fox Business Channel, I'm sure you've heard that Barack Obama's economic policy would ruin the economy, which of course...is sound because of Bush's tax cuts.

Let's take a look at reality shall we?. Seven years ago, the Republicans had control of the House, the Senate and the White House. They had already controlled the House and Senate for since 1996 and spent the four years between '96 and 2000 ranting about the poor family values of Bill Clinton instead of working on policy. Not before joining forces with Bill Clinton in deregulating the Mortgage industry and setting the stage for the biggest scam on the American people in it's history.

In 2000, they lowered taxes in a giant promotional campaign of elitist propaganda. The details were never really talked about because the biggest gains came primarily for those in the top economic brackets. They then wildly and irresponsibly expanded the deregulation of the financial markets. Oh yes, they gave us working stiffs a couple of "rebates" (always during election years) to keep us from digging any deeper into the con. They kept interest rates at a record low, so that banks would loan money, (and earn a shitload of interest) and then started to borrow an unimaginable amount of money, mainly from countries that really would like to see the American continent wiped off the face of the earth.

You and I will be paying the interest on those loans for generations. They turned a blind eye when banks and mortgage companies made loans to people without the resources to pay them back and smilingly touted the "ownership" society, often boasting about how robust the economy was doing and how "more people own homes today than at any time in American history". Have you been to Florida lately? How about Las Vegas, or the Central Valley of California?

This, my friends, is the economic elite version of the three card monty. It's the beautiful shell game of Wall Street and the global uber-wealthy, but instead of losing $5 dollars to a con artist on the street corner, the USA was on the fast track to losing it's footing at the edge of a cliff.

Today, the piper is being paid, again with your tax dollars. Bailouts of investment bankers, mortgage companies and Wall Street scam artists and just tonight, on a Friday of course, the bailout of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. The CEO's of these companies have lifetime health benefits (and we're not talking garden variety HMOs) and multi-million dollar retirement benefits. All because they made their company, some politicians and themselves very wealthy, very fast and then drove it into the ground. The secretaries, janitors and low to mid level employees who busted their asses for their so called leaders are now looking for non-existent jobs. The CEO's on the other hand are purchasing the homes that were foreclosed on and renting them out to...well....you.

Beware!!! The Devil Obama is going to raise your taxes!!!!!! Well, that is true...if you happen to make over $250,000. per year.

If you're reading this, you probably don't make over $250,000 per year, and I'd be willing to bet that you know how many homes you own...or that your spouse owns.

Now, the economy is largely based on consumer spending. That means that our trips to the grocery store and the gas station (food and energy were taken out of the inflation index during the Reagan years) and Target drive the economy.

So, what happens when we lose our jobs? We can't spend money, and the economy slows down. What happens when inflation outpaces our cost of living increases? Our standard of living goes down. What happens when the dollar slides against the Euro or the Yen? It means that other countries can buy our products cheaper than they can in their own country. Hallelujah!!!! They buy the stuff we make!!!!...Oh...I forgot, we don't make a heck of a lot of stuff anymore. So what do they buy? They buy our companies, they buy our airports, they buy our freeways, they buy our office and apartment buildings. Hallelujah!!!! This is fantastic if you happen to own a 50 story office tower or 20 50 unit apartment buildings. Not so fantastic if you are like most Americans and own the one home that you live in.

Today unemployment is up above 6 percent, not counting the people who have given up trying to find a job. If you factor that in, you're probably talking in the mid 7 percentage bracket.

The Republicans tell us that if we raise taxes on the top 10 percent, that we won't have job creation.
Well, that's another falsehood. Most of the jobs in this country are in small businesses. I have a small business myself. I don't make over $250,000 a year, so my taxes won't be going up under Obama's plan. Nor will they be going down under McCain's plan. A very small amount of small business owners make $250,000 per year and under McCain's plan, I won't be able to hire more employees. They tell you I will, but the numbers don't even come close to adding up.

They want you to believe that more jobs will be created with his insurance policy. He wants to privatize all insurance and deregulate the labor laws so that large businesses no longer must provide health benefits.

This means that you will be paying your own health benefits. "You'll have CHOICE!!!" they tell you. The talking point goes something like this. Without the expense of having to pay employee insurance benefits, they will hire more people. Yes, in some cases this may be true, but in most cases, it will mean that the CEO will simply be able to purchase that BMW for their kid to drive to a private school (isn't that elitist?). But you will have a VOUCHER!!!! More FREEDOM OF CHOICE!!!!. That voucher won't pay for dick.

So...Promote Home Schooling!!!! It's big on their agenda. Why? Because it's damn cheap...that's why..and THEY don't have to pay for it. You will. Instead of your tax dollars paying for your kids school, it will pay to help Halliburton move to Dubai...where they don't have to pay taxes and can get that cheap Indian labor.

They make you shiver in fear about universal health care. This line of B.S. goes something like this.
"Do you want your health care decided by a bureaucrat in Washington DC?!!!". Well, under privatized insurance, who do you think determines the quality of your health care? A bureaucrat working for a publicly owned company who's mission in life is to save the company money so that it looks better to Wall Street and they can sell more stock to Saudi Arabia. The mission of an insurance company IS to cut cut their costs...that means...your benefits and getting rid of more employees. They could give a damn about your health as long as they make their quarterly earnings statement. Most likely, that cousin of yours who makes a living crunching numbers for the insurance company will be losing their job to a kid in China making $30 per day. Your brother in law who sells insurance? He'll be gone before long...they'll sell you insurance through "the googles" on the "internets".

But, they will tell you..."we'll give you the choice you deserve". What they don't tell you is that the choice is between paying for your ever increasing insurance premiums, or paying for your kid's college tuition, or even more likely, the school you will have to go to since your job was outsourced to China or Dubai...funded by the corporate welfare that you paid for.

This is the trickle down economic policy of the Republicans. You DO realize that we all cannot be CEOs..there DOES have to be someone DOING something at the company.

Or...we can just start another war and instead of asking us to sacrifice for the country...we can "go shopping".
They would LOVE that.

And THAT my friends, is why I am not voting for John McCain and the woman who would be the supreme leader of the great western theocracy.