'Joe' The 'Plumber' Becomes Sam The 'Journalist'

The clock ticks, the fifteen minutes of fame would seem to be up, and yet still 'Joe' the 'Plumber' AKA Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is still in the news and shows no sign of going away.

In his latest attempt to cash in on his unwarranted fame from last years election, the fake plumber has put on a new fake hat; that of a journalist.

Paid by some publicity seeking company he is on a trip to Israel to report back to ordinary Americans what is going on there. Of his mission he said, "I have thousands of questions but I can't think of the right one."

He also claimed to be unbiased, "an expert on media bias," and that he had "no agenda but the truth." (Well the 'truth' and a fist full of dollars).

Ultimately I just wish this moron would go fuck himself. He is a fraud, a fake, and an opportunist. He lied and misrepresented himself during the 2008 election. He is now shamelessly trying to cash in on his 15 minutes of fame, while simultaneously pretending to be just the average American Joe.

Well sorry, but I'd like to think that the average America is not this dumb. There are thousands of people with qualifications in journalism who could go abroad and report the news. But in America, the news channels are interested in ratings and spectacle. They don't give a shit about reporting what is really going on.

This latest debacle is an insult to the intelligence of everyone. This asshole worked in the plumbing industry for ten years and never even bothered to become licensed as a plumber. Now he is exploiting the stupid to masquerade as a journalist, when all he really wants is to cash in.

Please fuck off 'Joe.' Only the stupid are buying the shit you are peddling.

"Joe" the "Plumber" Goes Rogue

Will the real Joe The Plumber please stand up?

He was supposed to attend a rally with old man McCain yesterday, but apparently McCain's staff were too incompetent to arrange it. And irritated by the lack of professional courtesy, Samuel The Diva decided to stay home, leaving McCain to look embarrassed and then declare that the entire audience was Joe The Plumber.

A more in depth report can be found here.

Sarah The Hypocrite Meets Sam The Con Man

Just when you think the McCain campaign cannot stoup any lower, they have now decided to take "Joe" The "Plumber" out on the road and show him off to the media to prove how non-elitist they are.

Samuel (Joe's real name) on the other hand is trying hang on to his 15 minutes of fame with a death grip (maybe his dream of owning a plumbing company wasn't really his dream). Quick to cash in Samuel has already signed with a Nashville public relations and management firm to organize his public appearances. He is reported to be pursuing a music career. Apparently, as well as plumbing without a license, he enjoys country and western singing although admits (through a spokesperson) that he is not an accomplished musician or song writer.

But although he is not much of a song writer, it turns out the idea of writing a book is already being kicked around.

However, fear not, if the music or book writing falls through, maybe he could get a job as a political pundit. Yesterday after being exploited by Sarah Palin at a rally, they even allowed him to answer some audience questions (which is weird given that they try to avoid letting Palin do that), and he agreed with some audience rant about Palestine, which even made some pundits at Fox News cringe.

I thought that John Kerry ran a crappy political campaign. But John McCain seems to be trying to show us new levels of pathetic.

Joe The Plumber: The Saga Continues

I recently had a disagreement with a friend of mine. Sadly that disagreement was over "Joe" the "Plumber."

In response to this post on his blog, I had quite a lot to say, and felt that it merited an entire post in itself:

Obama did not go knocking on the guy's door. Samuel (his real name), went looking for Obama. You can do the research yourself. The media was originally mistaken on that front. Samuel even admitted in a later interview that he went looking for Obama, to have a specific confrontation. It wasn't a coincidence. It wasn't a random chance meeting. And given the overzealous exploitation of the man by McCain in the debate that followed, I wouldn't be surprised if he was a plant.

The issue I have with the man, I have outlined in my blog already. But what it boils down to is that the man is essentially really selfish, and somewhat misguided. If you really listened to one of his interviews all he talks about is ME ME ME.

What if I buy this business? What if I make more than $250K? Why should I pay more, even though I can afford to?

Because someone has to.

George Bush has taken all the money and given it to the rich. He has charged his war and mismanagement of the economy on the American credit card. Someone has to pay for it. If we continue down the path that George Bush has started, we will bankrupt our nation and everyone will suffer.

We've been giving tax cuts to the super rich elite now for the past eight years. Money to rich CEOs and corporations that don't need it.

Obama is merely suggesting that the poor and middle class could use a break. The average family could probably do better if they were not taxed as much.

He is suggesting that people who make over $250K a year could afford to pay a tiny bit more in taxes, so that relief could be given to working families.

Even though this would benefit people like Samuel, there are those who would vote against their own self interests, on the pipe dream that one day they will be making $250K a year, and they'd like to hoard a few extra dollars rather than pay it in tax.

There's nothing wrong with the dream of being rich (although spiritually, that could be a different ball game). But the Ebenezer Scrooge concept of hoarding money away and demanding that the government tax the poor instead, is simply unfair.

Under Bush the rich poor divide has grown considerably. If 95% of America is to have a better quality of life, then the top 5% need to pay a little more. And the beauty of that philosophy is that if you are super rich and you have to pay an extra $10,000 a year in taxes, it doesn't matter. Super rich people will not have to shop at WalMart because of it. They will still be just fine.

As for Samuel. If he voted for Obama, maybe his taxes would go down. Maybe he could pay off his back taxes, and get the lien off his home. Maybe Obama would allow him to afford health care again so he could pay off that hospital bill. Perhaps even with more money in his pocket, he could afford to obtain that plumbers license so he didn't have to work illegally, and could one day have a shot at that dream of owning the business.

Let's face facts here. Samuel is basically supporting the trickle down economics of the past eight years, and the very similar plans of McCain to continue with the same. But these philosophies haven't really worked out all that well for Samuel so far have they? Still can't afford to get his license after ten years. Still no closer to buying the business and realizing his dream. Struggling to make ends meet, and falling further and further behind with his bills.

Samuel needs help NOW. In fact he's been needing help for the past eight years. Yet no one was willing to give him that helping hand. He keeps slogging away, year in year out, hoping for the chance at his dream. But despite his hard work, he is no closer to achieving that now, than he was when Bush came to office.

Unless people like him, making a middle class income get some help, they will NEVER have that shot at the big time. However, if Samuel does well thanks to Obama, gets licensed, buys the business, and starts to make over $250K a year. Perhaps then he should be less selfish and willingly pay the few hundred dollars in extra tax, so that the next generation of Joe the Plumbers can have a shot at the chance that he had.

Samuel has lived through the past decade of doing that job without a license. He has nothing really to show for his effort. An income so low he can't afford his tax. Medical bills so high he can't afford to pay them. Credit crisis so bad he can't borrow the money to buy the business. Working from week to week without the time or money to obtain his license, meaning that his career growth is stunted.

Perhaps it is time to change. Perhaps it is time to accept that trickle down economics don't work. Perhaps it is time to accept that society needs to help Samuel and others like him realize their dreams.

But Samuel will never move forward while we keep taking his money and giving it to the richest people in our society. These elite rich people can afford to give back, and it's time they did.

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.

Meet Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher

Joe Wurzelbacher probably didn't know how his life was going to change when he approached Senator Obama at a rally and asked him questions about his tax policy.

In the presidential debate last night Joe was mentioned 23 times, as both politicians tried to use him as an example as to why their economic plans were best.

Joe had originally questioned Obama, because he says he wants to buy the business he works for. But the business makes between $250,000 and $280,000 a year so might be taxed a little more under Obama's plan.

The exact amount of tax that Obama would charge him is actually less than $1,100 more, even if he makes the larger of the two amounts he claims the business makes. With no increase at all towards the bottom end of his range.

Since the debate Joe The Plumber (who actually doesn't even have a license as a plumber), has been on TV, interviewed by the news networks. And although he won't admit he is going to vote for McCain (who would?), he has spouted various stupid opinions in the media.

Because the reality is that Joe The Plumber does not make that kind of money. Joe The Plumber would actually do better under President Obama. But like many Americans with the Horatio Alger myth in his head, he wants tax policy changed to help the richest 5% of Americans, just in case he makes it into that category! That's the same kind of trickle down bullshit that Bush has been peddling for eight years!

So to recap, Joe The Plumber, wants to screw himself by supporting McCain, just in case he gets his plumber's license, raises the money to buy the business (good luck with that after what Bush has done to the economy), and then manages to push his business over the quarter million dollar mark. Because then he might save himself a little bit of tax, which he could easily lose in other ways that the McCain administration would screw him.

Wow.

Joe The Plumber, in one of his interviews, even invoked the 'slippery slope' argument. He claimed that if Obama defines rich as making $250,000 a year, what is to stop him dropping that figure to $150K or even less.

It's about time Americans got a clue about tax. We can't fund the things we are doing indefinitely by borrowing money from China, and giving it to the Middle East. We are charging our countries' American Express card and we have to pay it back sooner or later.

Joe The Plumber tells us that the rich should not pay more, so where does the money come from Joe? How to we pay off the debt that Bush has left us without taxation?

Frankly the whole Joe The Plumber story is such bullshit. We have a guy too stupid to understand voting for his own best interests, getting prime time coverage, while our economy continues to tank, and Americans continue to die in Iraq policing a civil war we started. Even in the interview Joe gave, he basically admitted that all he is thinking about is his own future prosperity. He wants to get rich and hoard his money, while someone else picks up the bill for the failed policies of George W. Bush.

Say it ain't so Joe.