chart porn!
Here's a great WaPo chart mentioned by Mike Lux at OpenLeft, who notes that it's "worth getting around to all your friends who don't make over $603,403 a year:"
McCain claimed on Tuesday:
"Under Senator Obama's tax plan, Americans of every background would see their taxes rise -- seniors, parents, small business owners, and just about everyone who has even a modest investment in the market."
No aspect of the tax code has anything to do with anyone's "background," but rather with their income, their spending, and their property. If your family is among the top 1% (and making upwards of $600K per year) you shouldn't be complaining that you'll have to start paying your fair share after all the breaks you've gotten. As MediaMatters observed months ago:
If the media applied to John McCain the standards they have applied to Democratic presidential candidates over the years, they would report constantly on his personal financial interest in the tax plan he now advocates and once denounced as skewed toward the wealthy. They would clamor for the release of his tax returns. They would mock him for living in an estate with a pool and a guest house -- and then mock him some more for having married into money.But, as has long been clear, the media do not cover John McCain the way they have covered countless Democratic presidential candidates. And so they don't say a word about his personal wealth. They remain silent about his tax returns. And they refer to his [million-dollar] "rustic cabin."
That's without mentioning the rest of McCain's eight houses, the campaign flights on his wife's corporate jet, and his admission that "economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." (I suppose that dumping his first wife for an heiress shows some financial acumen on McCain's part, but that doesn't excuse him from lying about Obama's tax plan.)