So it started with the gas tax holiday...
He said the average consumer would save a "quarter and a nickel" a day, and only $28 in three months.
McCain told a town-hall audience in Denver: "I want to give the American consumer a little bit of relief just for the summer. Maybe they'll be able to buy an additional textbook for their children when they go back to school this fall."
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$28? For a textbook? Would that my life were so easy.
According to the most recent data I could find, a college textbook is an average of $61.66. That figure is from 9 years ago.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that I pay through my nose every semester for textbooks, usually getting stuck with bills totaling over $300.
Shouldn't John McCain know better than this? The man has seven children. Surely he knows what a college textbook costs, right?
Perhaps not- his youngest son is in Iraq, and his other college-age child is in the Naval Academy. Maybe he's using hand-me-downs?
As it turns out, John McCain doesn't care that much about college students, and it follows that he doesn't know how much a modern textbook costs.
To whit:
When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees.
the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1.
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Any guesses where that $8486.42 would have gone, had it been paid on time?
The community college system.
By paying their taxes 5 years late, the McCains directly shortchanged California community college students.
A full-time student in California is expected to take 15 units, at $20 a unit. That means that the McCain's $8486.42 could have offset the student fees for 141 students.
Of course, those fees exclude textbooks, living expenses, childcare, and all of the other costs incurred by college students.
Currently, I have a fee waiver excusing me from my student fees, but I still have to work full-time to support myself during the semester. Barack Obama has a plan to help me out.
John McCain? He has some fine boilerplate, but like his gas tax holiday, it won't help me pay for my textbooks, or anything else.
All of this offers more proof of perhaps the central difference between Obama and McCain. Obama has an understanding of the problems currently facing regular Americans and has specific, innovative proposals to adress those problems. John McCain is doing nothing but attaching extra window dressing to the only idea Republicans have on education- school vouchers.
The next time someone tries to tell you that college students are naive, idealistic idiots blinded by the flashiness of the Obama campaign (as I've heard over and over and over again in all quarters), tell them the real reason- Barack Obama has a plan to help us, and John McCain hates us, and he has the back tax bills to prove it.