Of Wal-Mart Workers and Cindy McCain's $300,000 Get Up

[babylonsister]

Hmmm. Seems the wrong person got branded with the elitist label.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1734

Of Wal-Mart Workers and Cindy McCain's $300,000 Get Up
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Sun, 09/07/2008

snip//

Can you guess how many Wal-Mart employees' annual salaries it would take to pay for the outfit that Cindy McCain wore on the opening night of the Republican Convention? You can't guess? I suppose I'll have to tell you: It would take more than the full year salary of 18 full time Wal-Mart employees, before taxes and deductions, just to pay for Cindy's dress, shoes and jewelry. In fact, the total price of those clothes, the necklace, and the earrings worn by Cindy McCain on the first night of the convention alone, was estimated to be over three hundred thousand dollars, just a little more than the average purchase price of a house in the United States in July of 2008, according to the government census bureau.

Cindy McCain's wardrobe is just a symbol of the Republican war on the working class. The multi-millionaire beer heiress, whose presidential candidate husband says that the middle class is anyone with an annual income of less than 5 million dollars, can't possibly get it. When John McCain says that tax-breaks for oil companies making tens of billions of dollars of profits are necessary because so many Americans' retirement savings are invested in those companies, while we're running up unprecedented deficits and reducing funding for social services, he's fighting against the working class. He doesn't get it because the working poor and the unemployed, people who rely on those social services, don't exist in the 7-sprawling-houses lifestyle of the McCains.

Republicans' claims of being the defenders of traditional values and the American Dream are hollow. They live in a world of limitless wealth and opulence. Wearing clothes and jewelry that cost more than most Americans' houses seems natural to the McCains, because they know of nothing else.

While millions of Americans are struggling to keep their homes in the midst of the mortgage crisis and the economic failures of the Bush years, and while hundreds of thousands have already lost their homes to foreclosure, McCain doesn't even remember how many homes he owns. The charade you saw at the Republican Convention had a message: The Republicans were, and remain, the party of mega-corporations and the very wealthy.

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http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/09/cindy-mccains-300000-outfit.html

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

Wow! No wonder McCain has so many houses: his wife has the price of a Scottsdale split-level hanging from her ears.