Barack Obama says his tax plan will not affect anyone earning less than $250,000. Since my paycheck is not close to that, I am to conclude it does not affect me.

Yet it does affect me exactly as it affects you. It attacks the opportunity of our children to aspire to greater success than we ourselves have achieved. It does this by setting a cap on the highest level of success that our government will allow.

The American Dream includes that an individual can envision and create their own future. No one can hold you back except yourself. Yes, some are born with greater and lesser abilities and some are disabled. A merciful people will provide some relief for their less fortunate brothers and sisters. Yet we do not have to destroy the core American Dream to provide this relief.

Rather it can flow from the abundance of the majority who do achieve - if not every hope, enough to create an ample life.

John McCain will protect the American Dream and its engine of wealth creation that has given us all some amount of prosperity and a continual hope for the future.

JOHN FRENCH

Contoocook