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McCain visits "war on poverty" Kentucky coal town
By Steve Holland
Wed Apr 23, 2:07 PM ET
Republican presidential hopeful
John McCain said on Wednesday Americans face a tough economic
outlook with high gasoline prices likely to remain and his
Democratic opponents would make matters worse.
McCain visited the tiny Kentucky coal town of Inez 44 years
after President Lyndon Johnson stood on a front porch here and
declared a "war on poverty" that McCain said failed because of
excessive government bureaucracy.
McCain was driven through the mountains to that woodframe
house Johnson visited but now it was padlocked with the front
porch fenced off, a "No Trespassing" sign posted and car parked
in a driveway with a blanket covering a broken window.
McCain said the home was "significant and symbolic that we
have a lot to do." Inez City Commissioner Eric Mills, a McCain
supporter traveling with reporters, was disappointed McCain
went there since economic progress has been made in the area.
"The war on poverty is in our past," he said.
Speaking earlier to a packed crowd in the Martin County
Courthouse, McCain gave an unvarnished view of the U.S.
economy, saying he believed it was already in recession
regardless of whether the technical definition of a recession
has been reached.
"Let's start out with acceptance of the fact that action
has to be taken," McCain said.
A day after Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania Democratic
contest, assuring a longer battle against rival Barack Obama
for the party's presidential nomination, McCain told reporters
he was not sure whether the extended campaign was helping or
hurting him, saying he had heard arguments from both sides.
"We've never seen this before so I don't think it's easy to
judge," he said on his campaign bus as it wound through the
coal-rich mountains of eastern Kentucky.
Facing a longer period of waiting for Democrats to decide
who will face him in the November election, he went after both
of them in Inez, a town of less than 500 people.
He accused Obama of seeking to increase the capital gains
tax on stock profits, saying that would affect millions of
Americans, not just the wealthy. He said Clinton would also
raise taxes to pay for ambitious promises.
"If you raise taxes on the American people, then I think it
will be very harmful to the economy. I believe that lower taxes
would stimulate the economy," McCain said....
Let me tell you a secret about little coal towns with less than 500 people. They don't give a shit about capital gains tax on stock profits, because MOST of them don't play the market or even have a 401K. They can't afford it after the rape of the region by coal corporations. I am sure his "War on Poverty is over" speech went over like a turd in a punchbowl.
