Ask a difficult question
And the authorities will try to destroy your livelihood.
I am amazed at the Democrats’ and the press’ (but I repeat myself) reaction to Joe the plumber. They’re basically trying to destroy your average middle American.
Update: Yup: [the press has] done more investigations into Joe the Plumber in 24 hours than they’ve done on Barack Obama in two years
October 17th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Should have said “…Barack in 15 years.”
October 17th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I think that will backfire on them.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:37 am
The funny thing is, Joe the Plumber was playing football in his own front yard when Obama walked into his neighborhood.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081016/NEWS09/810160418
Quote:
But that will not prevent people from claiming that this is some kind of McCain operation. Insane Andrew Sullivan is already on the case.
And since he isn’t a licensed plumber, the City of Toledo Plumbing Board of Control may consider a punishment for Wurzelbacher. That should teach him about speaking up to his betters:
http://nbc24.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=207948
The plumber asked candidate Obama a legitimate question about his economic plan and it was Obama who put his foot in his mouth and revealed that he wanted to Spread. The. Wealth. I think this is what has stuck a needle deep into the lefty psyche. The lefties are going bananas over this guy. On other blogs, folks have pulled up his divorce records and found that he was – gasp! divorced. They found a “connection” (probably bogus) to the infamous Charles Keating based upon a common last name. They’ve found that he owes some back taxes on his property tax. They’ve found speeding tickets dating back to 1993. They’ve posted his home address and mortgage. This is all from the party of the “little people”.
The press has dug deeper into his background in hours than they have into Obama’s background in months. This guy is going to regret ever opening his mouth and asking Obama a legitimate question.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:59 am
As for his license, he is apprenticed to the owner of the company and works under the supervision of a licensed plumber. This is standard all over the country. Apprentices don’t get licenses, are not eligible for licensure until a certificate of completion has been presented and the apprentice becomes a journeyman.
But what the Hell are facts? Just obstructions to be overcome, evidently. Many a contractor will withhold a certificate of completion as long as possible to a) retain the services of the apprentice even if he is technically qualified to be a journeyman. b) to avoid having to pay journeyman wages as long as possible.
Don’t know if that is the case here, but it’s damn sure nobody looked into it. Apprenticeships are usually for five years, Joe apprenticed to his plumber/owner in 2004. 2008 minus 2004 is only 4, go figure. This higher math seems too tough for Toledo or the MSM. Perhaps we should be investigating their credentials.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Great point Straightarrow. I thought it was common knowledge that people worked under their bosses license. It just goes to show how little the Left knows(or cares)about working people.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:58 am
First off, its not Obama that made this guy a star, it was McCain mentioning the guy 21 times in the debate. Perhaps he should have talked to the guy first before making him the star of the debate (and apparently the winner). Most of what’s been found out is stuff that is readily available online.
And frankly, when one looks at the swiftboating of Graeme Frost, this is nothing. I still haven’t heard anything about the state of Joe the Plumber’s counter tops.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Sorry, manish, but so?
October 17th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Hmmmmm.
@ Manish
“First off, its not Obama that made this guy a star, it was McCain mentioning the guy 21 times in the debate.”
BS.
Joe the Plumber was made a star by the -media- and nobody else because this happened days before the debate.
So push off loser.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
And through all this, Joe doesn’t matter. Joe is not someone who is an example of people needing a government program. Joe is just a guy with a hopes for a better future and working toward a change in his present circumstances.
Note to the Lefties: There are a lot of people in America who operate small businesses, work for small businesses or hope to start a small business. These are the people you are attacking. These are the people you can’t fathom making $250,000 a year without a Harvard degree and powerful friends in the political machine. Or a husband to give your employer a grant of tax dollars. But it is okay, who needs a small business when you got Walmart to shop at.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
The implication (though you didn’t mention it in your post, though others have) is that Joe the Plumber had the audacity to question the one, and as a result was torn down by the Democrats/media/whomever. The reality is that Joe the Plumber had his opportunity to ask his question and was even on Fox News and other outlets and nobody cared. It was only after the debate and McCain making Joe the centerpiece of his latest stunt (even calling Joe the winner of the debate), that people started looking into him.
Beyond that, what about the concept of personal responsibility? Joe apparently is not allowed to be a plumber (even working under a master plumber) as things stand in Toledo, Ohio. It was Joe’s responsibility to make sure that he could legally work and apparently he can’t. And its Joe that decided not to pay his taxes and have a lien put on his house.
Personally, I think a lot of the digging into his life has gone too far. Having said that, it is legit to ask if he really would be subject to Obama’s tax on higher income people and apparently he isn’t and he will see a tax cut under Obama (as will the company he works for) that he wouldn’t see under McCain.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Joe the Plumber was made a star by the -media- and nobody else because this happened days before the debate.
If by -media-, you mean Fox News and other right-wing outlets, then yes you are correct. Personally, I hadn’t heard of him until the debate. However, no one looked into him until after the debate.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Manish, it’s interesting to see that you favor the old guild system where citizens are not allowed to work in the profession of their choice without permission from the benevolent state. Would you like it if this applied to your profession?
I am a capitalist and encourage everyone to seek their own success in whatever field they choose without government interference. Licensing of plumbers and other trades does nothing to ensure quality of service. Instead, it raises the cost of entry to a field, thereby keeping rates high for the incumbent plumbers. Moreover, the people who tend to be kept out tend to be those who can’t afford the rigmarole and hassle of licensing – many minorities and poor people will be disproportionately affected.
The vast majority of workers in the free market provide services without licensing and government regulation and they do just fine. There are plenty of other safeguards to protect consumers.
You can support unlicensed plumbers and other tradesmen safely by asking for and checking references. You will be no worse off. In case you are wondering, when you pay for a “licensed” plumber, you may not actually get a licensed plumber – he may show up for 10 seconds onsite, while his unlicensed employee does the actual work. You may as well find the skilled and experienced employee directly and cut out the middle man.
And yes, I have put my money where my mouth is. No regrets. Good results.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Yep, because that evil nasty McCain dude mentioned him too much, that’s why it’s OK to destroy the man.
*So* much better.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Kevin..the rules are the rules. There are people who will use unlicensed plumbers and that’s fine. But there are also people who will insist on licensed plumbers (for a variety of reasons including insurance) and if you are a licensed plumber you have to play by the rules, including hiring people who are either journeymen or apprentices and Joe was neither.
Personally, if its a leaky toilet, I might go with an unlicensed plumber. If its major gas work (as I recently had to do), I would (and did) insist on a licensed plumber pulling a permit.
Yep, because that evil nasty McCain dude mentioned him too much, that’s why it’s OK to destroy the man.
If by destroy, you mean noting that he wasn’t being truthful in his question to Obama or that he has his own issues with the tax system. That’s not destroying.
Destroying is this BS about Ayers and by connection destroying every one else who has been associated with him including Walter Annenberg and the other Republicans on the board of the Annenberg Challenge. Destroying is inspecting the counter tops and the various other crap of Graeme Frost’s family. Funny how its the same characters who are in full outrage mode this time.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Manish,
Dude are you dense or what.
HE DOES NOT NEED A GODDAMN LICENSE BECAUSE HE IS WORKING UNDER A LICENSED PLUMBER.
Sorry to shout, but Jesus H. Christ.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Manish, you don’t understand the rules yourself. The City of Toledo requires licensing, but Joe’s plumbing company can and does operate outside the city of Toledo. It is in fact legal for Joe to be employed in a licensed plumbing business, even if he does not personally have a license. Do the research before willy nilly accusing other people of breaking the rules. There is a Toledo Blade link in the comments above where you can start. I doubt that you will be convinced by this however, since you seem to be an Obama partisan. Nobody can be allowed to pose any inconvenient question to the Messiah.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
And Manish, Martin Nesbitt, the treasurer of Obama’s campaign, has tax liens. Maybe you can take this up with him since he is in a position of vastly greater influence.
http://webofdeception.com/obama.html#nesbitt
Personally, I don’t pay much attention to this kind of stuff since everyone has some kind of problem or the other. If you dig deep enough, everyone has some kind of dirt. But Joe the Plumber is not running for public office. He is a citizen who asked a question of a candidate. It worries me about the intensity of Obama partisans when they will go to these lengths to smear a non-public figure.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
YS, Kevin: I read some where that he still needs to be a journeyman or an apprentice and he is neither, but that’s neither here nor there. He may be allowed to work legally or he may not and clearly that is going to sort itself out.
However, the most salient points are:
-he isn’t making over $250k and neither is his company that he aspires to buy
-he would get a tax cut under Obama as would his boss
-in connection to this whole business, someone on another thread (and this is a pretty common response): “God forbid anyone in this nation ever want to get ahead…”..well, isn’t giving a tax break to those that are struggling help them to get ahead? Wouldn’t it be easier for people like Joe to get a tax break now when they aren’t making much and then if they are so lucky as to get within the top 5% of incomes in this country that they then will have to pay a bit more? Wouldn’t that help people get ahead?
October 17th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Why are we talking about Joe anyway. It’s pure misdirection. The point is that Joe asked Obama a question and Obama answered that we need to spread the wealth around.
Which is exactly what Manish is saying is just fine.
So why attack Joe?
Because, the problem is that the majority of American people don’t agree with the sentiment that Obama articulated. They want to get rich and they don’t want their wealth spread around and given to others.
Why doesn’t Obama and the Left defend the spread the wealth statement instead of going after Joe. It’s like they want to hide something.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
It is funny how Obama loves the middle class, but two prominent members of that class, Joe and Palin, get savagely attacked and made fun of because of their middle class characteristics (like hunting and plumbing.)
But I guess this standard of whom gets a beating in the media does not apply to John Edwards.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
manish, you have been made aware of the facts, you deny them. If anybody ever needed Joe the Plumber, you do. Your shit is so impacted you had better ask him to bring a snake or a roto-rooter contractor. Nothing else will work for you.
I don’t mind you having a different opinion, but I certainly despise you for lying about the facts to support your position. Grow the fuck up!
October 18th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Why are we talking about Joe anyway
Joe asked his question and it got answered and everyone moved on. Fox News and some talk radio had him on and nobody cared. John McCain mentioned him 21 times in the debate, declared him to be the ultimate winner in the debate and then ran a commercial with his interaction with Obama. That’s when people are started talking about Joe…because McCain desperately wanted to changed the conversation to Joe the Plumber.
Because, the problem is that the majority of American people don’t agree with the sentiment that Obama articulated
Got any proof? Don’t look now, but the majority of Americans appear to be supporting Obama over McCain. That doesn’t mean that they support Obama on every issue, but they definitely support him in general.
If anybody ever needed Joe the Plumber, you do. Your shit is so impacted you had better ask him to bring a snake or a roto-rooter contractor. Nothing else will work for you.
That’s clever..did you make it up yourself?
Also, I like the fact that nobody addressed any of my salient points and want to focus on whether Joe was legally allowed to work or not as a plumber.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
you didn’t make any salient points, for them to have been salient there would have to be agreement to accept certain provable facts. You have not agreed to deal in the facts. Therefore the bases for your “salient points” is not just false but positioned in such a manner as to invalidate your conclusions.
One example, you replied “Joe asked his question and it got answered and everyone moved on. Fox News and some talk radio had him on and nobody cared. John McCain mentioned him 21 times in the debate, declared him to be the ultimate winner in the debate and then ran a commercial with his interaction with Obama. That’s when people are started talking about Joe…because McCain desperately wanted to changed the conversation to Joe the Plumber.”
What exactly does that reply have to do with the original issue of just why the MSM felt obligated to not move on, but instead spent more time examining Joe’s life than they ever have examining the life of the man who would be president? That was a deflection, simply because the truth destroys your position and therefore must be avoided. That is just one example, you have repeatedly done that or repeated falsehoods that you read in the MSM on subjects they either didn’t research or purposely lied about (e.g. licensure) I have given you the benefit of the doubt in that I assume you weren’t lying, but that you know nothing about the trade, so the falsehoods you repeated were not of your making. However, having said that, I will point out again that much of the truth has been displayed and you choose to ignore it if there is a possibility it contradicts your stance. That’s still dishonesty.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
What exactly does that reply have to do with the original issue of just why the MSM felt obligated to not move on
The MSM should have ignored Joe and just filed it under stunts that McCain attempted to pull. However, just like the “suspending my campaign” BS, the MSM decided to play along with the McCain campaign’s wishes to focus on things that have nothing to do with the issues. It was the McCain campaigns lack of basic vetting (i.e. that a 2 person plumbing business could reasonably be netting over $250k, when anyone with a basic semblance of what plumbing costs would realize that this isn’t likely) that caused it to blow up in their face.
The salient points again:
-he isn’t making over $250k and neither is his company that he aspires to buy
-he would get a tax cut under Obama as would his boss
-in connection to this whole business, someone on another thread (and this is a pretty common response): “God forbid anyone in this nation ever want to get ahead…”..well, isn’t giving a tax break to those that are struggling help them to get ahead? Wouldn’t it be easier for people like Joe to get a tax break now when they aren’t making much and then if they are so lucky as to get within the top 5% of incomes in this country that they then will have to pay a bit more? Wouldn’t that help people get ahead?
October 18th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
instead spent more time examining Joe’s life than they ever have examining the life of the man who would be president?
If you truly believe this I have a bridge in Alaska that you might be interested in. Do you somehow not remember coverage about Wright, Ayers and Resko in the MSM? I’ve seen articles from everything from how much pot Obama really smoked when he was younger to stories about his father and African relatives.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:31 am
You don’t even have a bridge to reality, forget Alaska.
And you have deflected again. I truly do dislike you. I have never liked any man whom I have known to be a willful liar. Repeating the lies doesn’t make them more true. At first I gave you the benefit of what I had hoped was just your ignorance. I see now it is willful because you suffer an aversion to the truth when it doesn’t suit your purposes.
Before you start a new lie, NO, I will not be voting for McCain. That doesn’t mean I approve of dishonesty in his opponents, anymore than I approve of it in him.
October 19th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I truly do dislike you
I’m so hurt, you don’t like me. I feel so awful..please, please tell me how I can be your friend.
For real, I don’t care who you vote for. I have my own opinions, they may differ from yours, but I respect your opinion, but I’m also going to characterize your opinion as I see it. If you are going to call me a liar, then tell me what you think I’m saying that isn’t the truth.
I respect that you, in your own mind, truly think that the press has spent more time digging into Joe’s life than Obama’s life. At the same time, I disagree. Everything that has been brought up about Joe has been found with a little googling and no other real reporting. On the other hand, here is the New York Times page on Obama. You’ll see articles about his relationship to Ayers, his law school teaching career, his years as an organizer, his economic policies, his mother, Wright, the race issue, a whole page of articles on Rezko his drug use, his years in New York, and a bunch of other articles.
All I seem to know about Joe the Plumber is:
-he isn’t a licensed plumber (independent of whether he can work for a licensed plumber or not)
-he has a tax lien
-he lives in (or outside of) Toledo, Ohio
-the income of both himself and the owner of his company
Now please explain to me how all of this about Obama is somehow less than the amount of digging into Joe the Plumber.
October 19th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Three more really important facts you forgot to mention about Joe the Plumber. First, his first name isn’t really Joe. That’s his middle name, the sneaky bastard. Second, he’s a registered Republican who voted in the Republican primary. Third, he’s not registered to vote, and doesn’t vote at all (since we know no one votes illegally in Ohio).
Now kindly explain what any of this or the facts you mentioned about Joe already have to do with who anyone should vote for in this election cycle or any other. The answer, of course, is nothing. Joe is not the issue. The socialist answer Obama gave to Joe, is.
October 19th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
You can’t be my friend. Period. I know you were being sarcastic, but I make no friendships with people I don’t respect.
And no, I won’t explain to you anything. You have been responded to honestly and on every point you raised as to why it was ok to try to destroy a man’s livelihood because Obama stupidly revealed his real agenda while answering the man’s question. I had tried not to say anything much, simply because others here said it better.
I also realize that my previous comment to you was impolite, seriously lacking in courtesy. But you know what? It seemed appropriate since the discourtesy started with you. I probably shouldn’t be so sensitive to it, but dishonesty insults me and I usually respond discourteously. Disingenuousness is not entitled to courtesy.
Your turn, I have no more to say to you.
October 19th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Hey SA..
so sarcasm off for a second, I’ve personally never responded well to people telling me they hate me or what I perceive to be personal attacks on myself or stuff like that. This includes things like telling me that my shit is impacted, etc. and generally respond in kind. Commenting on conservative blogs, I’m pretty used to being called names like “anti-American”, “leftist”, “naive liberal”, etc. so I have a pretty thick skin and brush it off.
On the other hand, I can also say that I’ve been invited to a baseball game by a conservative blogger, and that I’ve had a couple of email conversations with conservative bloggers who have expressed feelings of friendship towards me. I don’t read blogs (or previously written my own) to make friends, but the experience has been positive when that has happened and for the record, I’ve had these interactions with far more conservatives than liberals. (Of course, you’ve already told me that you think I’m a liar, so you may think the above is a bunch of lies too..well, that’s fine with me).
I realize that the election is near and people are more partisan than they normally are…I do remember 4 years ago, a similar thing happening, before things cooled down after the election. If you want to hate me or whatever, that’s fine with me.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
There you go with that disingenuous shit again. Where did I say I hate you?
C’mon, times up!
You just can’t bear with the truth can you? I said I truly dislike you and made it clear I don’t respect you. That’s a long way from hate. But, of course, like damn near everything else you post, the truth doesn’t serve you as well as lies do. So to Hell with the truth.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I said I truly dislike you and made it clear I don’t respect you
hate, dislike, whatever..I don’t think there’s a huge difference between the two terms, but whatever dude. If you want to debate semantics, go ahead. If you want to feel however you want to feel thats fine with me…is that better? Oh and get a f***ing grip.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:01 pm
more with the disingenuousness, now you want to redefine the terms. You are a waste. I’m not doing this because I think you’re worth the time. I just love the fact that you keep exposing your hypocrisy to everybody.