Over the years I have noticed a tendency of folks to vote for a free lunch. A lot of citizens dont seem to put 2 and 2 together and think about the consequences of their vote or what it really means. Candidates certainly dont want to tell them.

If you voted for Bush in 2004 and you voted for the Iraq war, you also voted for higher taxes.

In the past 6 years we have borrowed an unprecedented amount of money -- you, me and our children are going to have to pay it back. Most of it went to pay for our "go it alone!" war in Iraq and the massive wave of privatized military contractors. Some of it went to support our current account deficit (the fact that we buy more imports than the rest of the world buys our exports).

What that money did not pay for is infrastructure (public schools, our crumbling roads, dwindling fresh water supplies, or decaying power grid) nor did it go for medicaid, medicare, or social security. There are people who want to stop Federal "entitlement" programs and believe the only way to do that is to bankrupt the federal government so that they have no choice. We are well down that road now.

If you are voting against immigrants, legal or otherwise, in the next election, you are voting for higher prices.

If you want citizens to work in meat packing plants or farms or fast food restaurants, you need to pay them more. Remember that whole "living wage" thing you didnt want to vote for? For good or bad, immigrants do the jobs no one wants to do (including them) because they are desperate. By taking advantage of them, we benefit with a BigMac that costs $3 instead of $5. If you vote against immigrants, I hope you are also saving money more lunch money.

As domestic prices go up, companies will step into the gap with lower prices from imported goods. If you vote for trade restrictions, you are voting for higher prices.

Maybe it is worth it, but if we restrict trade and limit more imports, prices will rise. So if you vote against trade thinking it will create American jobs, just be aware that it will also increase your household costs. And you can forget shopping at Wal-Mart or their low-low prices; Wal-Mart is an empire built on the very cheapest imports from other countries. They have probably done more than any single company to bring in cheap imports and shut down American jobs. (They should put that on signs in their stores; kind of a happy-joy-joy message for the holidays.)

And then there is the biggest vote of all. If you vote for a candidate who is not serious about global warming, god help us.