It's such typical McCain-campaign rush to gimmickry without vetting the facts.
When the media checked out the peg on which John McCain hung Wednesday's debate.... Joe the Plumber.... well, he didn't. Check out, that is.
Turns out Joe is Sam.... Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Springfield Township, Ohio. He is a registered Republican. Joe isn't licensed or registered as a plumber anywhere in Ohio, so.... he isn't a plumber.
Joe doesn't own a plumbing business, and it doesn't seem like he might any time soon since his divorce papers show he earned $40,000 in 2006 according to an article in today's Toledo Blade.
So, how did the myth that is Joe the Plumber come about?
Joe was playing football in his front yard with his son, Joey, on Sunday afternoon when Barack Obama made an unscheduled stop to go door to door greeting voters and asking for their support.
In his conversation with Joe, Obama tried explained his plan for tax breaks to 95 percent of Americans while raising taxes on incomes above $250,000.
Obama said his plan would improve the economy for people trying to get a start in small business, and "spread the wealth".... meaning to give a break to the middle class for a change, not those at the top of the heap like the GOP's trickle-down Reaganomics benefited.
The "spread the wealth" phrase was quickly picked up by conservative bloggers, commentators and then the McCain campaign... and, McCain seized on Joe the Plumber as his debate catch-phrase, gleefully accusing Obama in their debate of wanting to "redistribute" Joe's wealth.
It seems Joe doesn't worry too much about sharing the tax load anyway, there is a lien of $1,183 on his modest home for nonpayment of personal property taxes.
While Joe didn't say who he was going to vote for in November, he did say he liked McCain's other unvetted campaign gimmick, Sarah Palin.
Note to McCain: Someone in your campaign needs to learn how to Google-check basic facts before launch.
Note to Joe: You're exactly the type of middle-class American that Obama's tax policies would benefit. Think about it.
Note to voters: November 4!
Showing posts with label trickle down. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trickle down. Show all posts
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Friday, October 03, 2008
McBush's Fundamentals Weren't Strong
Listening to the debate going on in the House right now on the $700+ bailout bill, the refrain (excuse) repeated over and over is.... it would be a better bill if only we had more time.
It's true, time has run out on dithering. Credit, the grease that keeps the economy moving, has dried up.
But, no one is acknowledging the elephant in the room.... there would have been more time to keep our economy off of the shoals if The Decider and John McCain hadn't kept assuring the country that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."
Even though the country was drowning in debt, the middle-class was losing jobs, wages were declining, and housing bankruptcies reached historic proportions.
Just hours before Treasury Secretary Paulson crashed the corporate profiteering party with his emergency proposal, McSame was still mindlessly parroting the administration's talking point.... the "fundamentals of our economy are strong."
The reason this is a lousy bill is because the country has lousy, manipulating leadership who wouldn't acknowledge that their "trickle down" Reaganomics didn't work for anyone but bloated, and now bailed-out, corporations and what trickles down is pain to the middle class.
Never again.
November 4.
It's true, time has run out on dithering. Credit, the grease that keeps the economy moving, has dried up.
But, no one is acknowledging the elephant in the room.... there would have been more time to keep our economy off of the shoals if The Decider and John McCain hadn't kept assuring the country that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."
Even though the country was drowning in debt, the middle-class was losing jobs, wages were declining, and housing bankruptcies reached historic proportions.
Just hours before Treasury Secretary Paulson crashed the corporate profiteering party with his emergency proposal, McSame was still mindlessly parroting the administration's talking point.... the "fundamentals of our economy are strong."
The reason this is a lousy bill is because the country has lousy, manipulating leadership who wouldn't acknowledge that their "trickle down" Reaganomics didn't work for anyone but bloated, and now bailed-out, corporations and what trickles down is pain to the middle class.
Never again.
November 4.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
McCain's "Contingencies"
John McCain is now in full soap-box mode, loudly calling for strong regulation of Wall Street financial institutions.... the Bush administration's poster-children of "trickle-down" economics.... because of the so-far trillion-dollar bailout caused largely by banking's creative and reckless subprime mortgage lending schemes unhindered by regulation or oversight.
Yet.... McCain's article in the just-released issue of the well-respected actuarial magazine Contingencies contains this gem regarding his proposals for health insurance.... page 30:
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."
Regardless of what he now says.... just moments ago he wanted to craft our health insurance market on the banking model, with "innovative products," less burdened by state regulation.
November.
Yet.... McCain's article in the just-released issue of the well-respected actuarial magazine Contingencies contains this gem regarding his proposals for health insurance.... page 30:
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."
Regardless of what he now says.... just moments ago he wanted to craft our health insurance market on the banking model, with "innovative products," less burdened by state regulation.
November.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
It's the Ordinary People, Stupid
You've heard The Decider parroting the phrase over and over.... "I say that the fundamentals of our nation's economy are strong."
Just what does that mean? What are the "fundamentals." Economists say the fundamentals for a strong economy are growth in jobs, incomes and number of new households.
Obviously, either The Decider doesn't understand the fundamentals, or he's purposely whistling past the graveyard of our economy.... 17,000 jobs were wiped out last month according to the Labor department, and real wages fell last year according to a just-released study by the Economic Policy Institute.
And, new households?.... how about existing households.... people are losing their homes as home values fall and bait-and-stick-it-to-them mortgages come due.
The GOP's one-note solution to this problem is to cut taxes. What these well-heeled politicians don't realize is... IT TAKES AN INCOME TO PAY EVEN THE LOWEST TAX!
Not that the Democrats are much better.... they swarmed to The Decider's stimulus package life boat, abandoning the mother-ship of fiscal responsibility and long term solutions like.... a return to progressive taxation, higher wages and real government oversight of lending and credit practices.
As Barbara Ehrenreich points out in today's "The Boom Was a Bust For Ordinary People." (WaPo) "For years now, that strange stimulus-crazed beast, the economy, has been going its own way, increasingly disconnected from the toils and troubles of ordinary Americans."
In a far-off time, before NAFTA and "trickle-down" economics, job-creating titans like Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy a Ford. No more.
Today, consumer behemoth's like Wall-Mart haven't figured out that their poverty wages will eventually curtail their own growth and profits, while Ford's once-thriving auto industry shipped manufacturing overseas and a rusting Detroit builds casinos to replace them.
It's the ordinary consumers.... the poor, and the struggling middle and working class.... who "have become a tripwire in the American economy - generating defaults on debts, depressed consumption and global market turmoil."
Our war-president Bush, and the GOP's next-in-line war president John McCain, can envision only spending hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars on their bloody crusades while at home the country is imploding.
It's this type of "leadership" that is the real threat. Fundamentally flawed policies that favor the wealthy and bloated corporations while "eating our seed corn".... the working middle-class.
A strong national economy depends on ordinary people.
Just what does that mean? What are the "fundamentals." Economists say the fundamentals for a strong economy are growth in jobs, incomes and number of new households.
Obviously, either The Decider doesn't understand the fundamentals, or he's purposely whistling past the graveyard of our economy.... 17,000 jobs were wiped out last month according to the Labor department, and real wages fell last year according to a just-released study by the Economic Policy Institute.
And, new households?.... how about existing households.... people are losing their homes as home values fall and bait-and-stick-it-to-them mortgages come due.
The GOP's one-note solution to this problem is to cut taxes. What these well-heeled politicians don't realize is... IT TAKES AN INCOME TO PAY EVEN THE LOWEST TAX!
Not that the Democrats are much better.... they swarmed to The Decider's stimulus package life boat, abandoning the mother-ship of fiscal responsibility and long term solutions like.... a return to progressive taxation, higher wages and real government oversight of lending and credit practices.
As Barbara Ehrenreich points out in today's "The Boom Was a Bust For Ordinary People." (WaPo) "For years now, that strange stimulus-crazed beast, the economy, has been going its own way, increasingly disconnected from the toils and troubles of ordinary Americans."
In a far-off time, before NAFTA and "trickle-down" economics, job-creating titans like Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy a Ford. No more.
Today, consumer behemoth's like Wall-Mart haven't figured out that their poverty wages will eventually curtail their own growth and profits, while Ford's once-thriving auto industry shipped manufacturing overseas and a rusting Detroit builds casinos to replace them.
It's the ordinary consumers.... the poor, and the struggling middle and working class.... who "have become a tripwire in the American economy - generating defaults on debts, depressed consumption and global market turmoil."
Our war-president Bush, and the GOP's next-in-line war president John McCain, can envision only spending hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars on their bloody crusades while at home the country is imploding.
It's this type of "leadership" that is the real threat. Fundamentally flawed policies that favor the wealthy and bloated corporations while "eating our seed corn".... the working middle-class.
A strong national economy depends on ordinary people.
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