Joe The Plumber or Sam The Con Man?

In the final death throws of the McCain election campaign, Joe The Plumber has been used by McCain and Palin as what they hope will be the magic bullet to turn things around.

Unfortunately those pesky facts keep cropping up that detract from the lies they are trying to sell to the American people.

They have tried to paint Joe The Plumber as a good old working man, who is frightened of Obama's radical plan to pay for stuff, using taxes. Perhaps they prefer the Bush approach of simply borrowing money from foreign countries, not paying them back, and bilking poor people out of as much as they can get off them. Thus continuing to widen the gap between rich and poor.

So now that Joe The Plumber has had his 15 minutes of fame, this is what the media have discovered about him:

• Joe The Plumber is not a plumber. In so far as he doesn't have a license to be a plumber (despite over a decade in the industry). Until he obtains one, he would not be able to buy a plumbing business and operate it, as he described in his fantasy to Barack Obama.
• Joe The Plumber is not called Joe. His name is in fact Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. Not quite as catchy as Joe The Plumber.
• He told a conservative web site that trying to catch Barack Obama off guard was his intent, it was not just a chance meeting, he had a specific agenda.
• It turns out that his worries about tax may go beyond the story. Because apparently he has underpaid his own taxes by about $1,200. In fact this matter is so serious, the state has put a lien on his home.
  
• It seems he could also benefit from some Obama help with health care, since he owes $1,200 to a hospital, and has not paid them.
• When it was first discovered he was not a licensed plumber, Joe The Plumber claimed he worked under his bosses plumbing license. But under Ohio building regulations Joe The Plumber cannot do plumbing work without getting a plumbers license. So Joe The Plumber may in fact be working illegally.
  
• Although he is now a registered Republican, he was up until 2007 registered with the Natural Law Party.
• Comic Bill Maher pointed out, in his 15 minutes of fame, Wurzelbacher has already done more interviews than Palin.

So it seems that the McCain campaign vetted Joe The Plumber about as thoroughly as McCain vetted Palin.

This guy they are trying to elevate to hero status, is clearly no hero. But he is a tax dodging con man who masquerades as a plumber, but in fact breaks the law if he does any actual plumbing.

Joe The Plumber isn't even close to his fantasy of earning in the top 5% of Americans. He is sadly using the same old logic that causes millions of poor people to vote for the Bush and McCain's of this world. The belief that if they vote against their own interests for long enough, they will get lucky and get rich. At which point they can be a part of the 'trickle down' theory that Bush and McCain support.

The fact is, Joe The Plumber would have benefited from Obama's policies, had they been in effect for the past few years. Maybe with lower taxes he would not have run up that tax bill that now sits as a lien on his home. Maybe with better medical coverage he wouldn't owe that hospital $1,200. Perhaps with the other initiatives Obama has suggested, he could have obtained his plumber's license, so he didn't have to break the law.

John McCain stated that the winner of the last presidential debate was Joe The Plumber. Let's hope that's true. Let's hope that the Joe The Plumbers of this country begin to see that they are making a mistake by electing someone who wants to copy Bush's fiscal policy.

UPDATE: According to this article, it has been suggested that Samuel The Fake Plumber actually makes somewhere between $40K and $70K, and so would face a tax cut under President Obama not the tax hike he fears.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2006 National Compensation Survey, pipelayers, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters nationwide made an average of $23 an hour, or about $46,000 annually for a typical 40-hour workweek.

Say It Ain't So Joe

Having watched the debate last night, I decided to take a look for the facts this morning. Given the obvious bias of this blog, I've decided to only include Palin's lies and deliberate distortions here in the blog. But if you want 'fair and balanced' you can read the source article here.

I will say this. Palin was not the train wreck I had hoped she would be. But that said, can she spare us the good ole local gal bullshit? She is not a good ole hockey mom, she is the Governor of Alaska. She is not from some blue collar working class family, they are millionaires.

Back in the day the Bush administration hijacked the Christian right to gain power. Today the McCain ticket is trying to play the role of maverick working class heroes. But if you are a millionaire with this kind of political power (like having so much power you refuse to testify for Troopergate), you are simply not just another working class family. So stop trying to insult the intelligence of the country.

Anyway, here are the facts:

PALIN: Said of Democratic presidential candidate Obama: "94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction."

THE FACTS: The dubious count includes repetitive votes as well as votes to cut taxes for the middle class while raising them on the rich. An analysis by factcheck.org found that 23 of the votes were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all, seven were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, 11 would have increased taxes on only those making more than $1 million a year.

PALIN: Criticized Obama's "plan to mandate health care coverage and have universal government run program" for health care, and added: "I don't think it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the Feds."

THE FACTS: Wrong on several counts. Obama's plan does not provide for universal coverage, only mandates insurance for children and doesn't turn the system over to the government. Most people would still get private insurance through their work. Obama proposes that the government subsidize the cost of health coverage for millions who have trouble affording it and he'd set up an exchange to negotiate prices and benefits with private insurers — with one option being a government-run plan.

PALIN: "Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. He sounded that warning bell."

THE FACTS: Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska led an effort in 2005 to tighten regulation on the mortgage underwriters — McCain joined as a co-sponsor a year later. The legislation was never taken up by the full Senate, then under Republican control.

PALIN: Said the United States has reduced its troop level in Iraq to a number below where it was when the troop increase began in early 2007.

THE FACTS: Not correct. The Pentagon says there are currently 152,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, about 17,000 more than there were before the 2007 military buildup began.

PALIN: Said natural gas pipeline, which is North America's largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets."

THE FACTS: Not quite. Construction is at least six years away. So far the state has only awarded a license to Trans Canada Corp., that comes with $500 million in seed money in exchange for commitments toward a lengthy and costly process to getting a federal certificate. At an August news conference after the state Legislature approved the license, Palin said, "It's not a done deal."

PALIN: "Barack Obama even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year."

BIDEN: "The charge is absolutely not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes."

THE FACTS: The vote was on a nonbinding budget resolution that assumed that President Bush's tax cuts would expire, as scheduled, in 2011. If that actually happened, it could mean higher taxes for people making as little as about $42,000. But Obama is proposing tax increases only on the wealthy, and would cut taxes for most others.

PALIN: Said a McCain-Palin administration "will support Israel," including "building our embassy ... in Jerusalem."

THE FACTS: Moving the U.S. Embassy from its present location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a perennial promise of presidential candidates courting the Jewish-American vote. In fact, moving the embassy is actually required by U.S. law. But successive administrations of both parties, including George W. Bush's, have made the same pledge only to find that the realities of Middle East peacemaking have forced them to invoke a waiver to delay it. Jerusalem is claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians and Israel's occupation of east Jerusalem is not internationally recognized. The city's status is one of the key issues of disagreement in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.