I was kind to McCain in yesterday's post because it's not smart to piss off crazy people when I said that it was okay that he didn't know the answer to Ron Paul's question. His "expertise" is in the area of war and so people can't expect him to know about all the economic tools available to the President.
Looking into it more, I found out that prior to Ron Paul's question being asked, McCain was touting his economic experience. Politically, I guess he has to because that's the number one concern right now.
So, now my take on it is, if you're gonna lie, I can't feel bad for you when you get caught.
Speaking of lying. I reported some time back that the tax rate for the Fair Tax that Huckabee keeps putting forth was 23%. It's actually 30%.
He's selling it as 23% so it doesn't sound so bad. In order to try to conceal the deception, they use a little play on numbers. If you bought something and the total price with tax came to $100, $23 dollars of that would go to taxes. That's where the 23% comes from.
The truth is that if you bought something for $77, a sales tax amount of $23 would be added to the purchase, which is of course a 30% tax.
Huckabee's tricky and he had me going for a couple weeks.
California farmers, especially rice and tomato producers, are going to let much of their crops die this year. The government gives them subsidized water and the new plan for the farmers is to buy the water at the subsidized rate and then jack up the price 3 to 4 times and sell it to Southern California. The water is sold as rights so the farmers won't have to actually ship or do anything. The water will go to Southern California and the money will go to Mid-California.
The cost of rice, tomatoes, and everything grown in Southern California will probably go up.
Chavez is claiming that the United States is working with Columbia to cause problems in Venezuela and is threatening to stop exporting oil. I don't trust Chavez but you can't dismiss his claim outright either because the United States has a long and glorious record of destroying governments that won't cooperate with them.
Chavez claims that if shuts off the spigot to America, oil prices would probably climb to $300 a barrel.