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I am asking if the reason some of us vehmently do not want to tax earnings over, say.... $1 million per year, at 90 percent or 70 percent, when earnings over $400,000 were taxed at 90 percent in the 1950's, is because the objectors have faith that the extremely wealthy did not amass their wealth at the deliberate expense (or offense) to the rest of us, and, if so...where they get their opinion that this is so....

What changed since the 1950's to make taxing the wealthy less justified or necessary? Do they own a smaller amount of total wealth now, than they did then? Do they operate more magnanimously or less corruptly than they did in 1955, and are they rest of us in a better position to pay the taxes that they used to pay, but are not paying anymore?

I am asking specifically what to do about John McCain....has he forfeited his opportunity, in the eyes of the rest of us, to lead us as our president, because he looked the other way when he accepted and amassed a fortune of "dirty" money, because he was greedy and ethics deprived, or able to rationalize that he was committing no crime in taking the money from his in-law's, or because he was too stupid or incurious to know or to think about where the wealth came from?

If any of the answers about McCain are true, what does he stand for?

Arizona is the newest of the 48 states. It is unique in that two studies, "the Phoenix 40", and the "Arizona Project", tell us (no, scream at us....) that the wealthiest and most powerful in Arizona came to have what they have, almost to a man....via their relationships with each other, and with organized crime. Del Webb, for example, the contractor who built the Flamingo Hotel in Vegas in 1946, and who owned the NY Yankees for 20 years, and who built Sun City, the first retiement community in the US, was "mobbed up", his wealth and the growth of his businesses were directly related to his relationships with organized crime figures and their illegitmate and semi-legitimate businesses....

Other centers of wealth, in California, in Florida, and of course, in Chicago and in New York, are no different than what the studies of connections in Arizona have revealed, because the "players" in Arizona, are directly connected to the players in the other cities where US wealth is concentrated.

If you don't see and accept the idea that the collaberation of 18 of the welathiest US families to spend collectively, $150 million to push PR and a political agenda to first, rename inheritance taxes, "the death tax", and then to push incessantly for their repeal, because "they hurt family farmers", is an offense to the rest of us....we get saddled with making up for the inheritance taxes that they formerly paid, than you probably don't recognize much of the rest of what I am talking about.

Our "system" did not start yesterday or today. It began in the last century. When the taxes of the welathiest are reduced, as they were beginning in 2001, we move from an increased federal debt of $18 billion in 2000, to $700 billion this year...the wealthiest pay less, who makes up for it?

So, there are two problems, denial that there is an organzied mix of criminal or unethical collaberative activity of the wealthiest to make up for what they lack in numbers, by leveraging their connections and the influence that their money buys, to control our political system, weaken enforcement of rules implemented to contain their abusive activity, or to eliminate the rules themselves....see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act">Glass-Steagall Act</a>..... and the influence on our thinking that the wealthiest buy....ownership of the news media and funding of several hundred conservative or libertarian "think tanks"....are examples of this....

I'll settle for your thoughts on what to do about John McCain? Do you want him and his mob princess wife, stinking up the white house?