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Gov't Computers Used to Find Info on "Joe the Plumber"
After Joe Wurzelbacher of Ohio gained fame as "Joe the Plumber" in the course of the current presidential campaign, it seems that he's drawn more than idle curiosity from people with access to what should probably be confidential information. An anonymous reader writes with a story from The Columbus Dispatch that "government insiders accessed Joe the Plumber's records soon after the McCain-Obama debate. 'Public records requested by The Dispatch disclose that information on Wurzelbacher's driver's license or his sport-utility vehicle was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database three times shortly after the debate. Information on Wurzelbacher was accessed by accounts assigned to the office of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rogers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and the Toledo Police Department.' Welcome to 1984."
Because someone made a wild guess that Joe owed a bunch of child support, and this would have been very fun to discover that and leak it to the press to be splashed all over front pages everywhere. Child Support Enforcement Agency obvious knows things in some cases that aren't part of the public record. This is frightening.
You live in a country that has a government that provides services. Roads, schools, hospitals etc. etc.
Roads.... Paid for by: gas taxes, yearly vehicle tag renews, vehicle purchase taxes, etc..
Schools... Paid for by property taxes
Hospitals... Paid for by drug and medical insurance companies, aka back pocketing, seriously...
Also don't forget we pay special taxes on food and on all other items we have higher taxes to pay on them.
Now its getting to the point where you want to cross that publicly built bridge (which was paid for by our taxes) you'll have to pay again at the toll booth.
We're getting taxed and tolled to death. Now on top of it we already have federal taxes and some states are wanting to jump on board with income taxes at the state level. Talk about highway robbery.
People like you, and Joe the Plumber are either seriously selfish and don't see the common good in everyone being helped in a prosperous nation, or seriously dense in that you just don't get how it's fair, and instead just see the simpleton's equation of: I earn money, it's mine, not yours.
So we're being selfish by not wanting to get bent over and raped out of the money we've earned which was made by working our fucking asses off and instead have a rather large portion given to the majority of whom are just lazy dipshits that have nothing better to do, but drop out of school and sit on their asses all day long and receive funding so they won't live out on the street. Gee yeah I see the error of my ways.... NOT!
Besides, Obama will be raising everyone's taxes. He admits as much. He wants to repeal all the tax cuts put in place over the last eight years. When he says he won't be raising taxes on the 95% of the public, he's referring to any increases above and beyond that increase.
That is why he says you "won't be paying any more than you were under Clinton." We are currently ALL paying less than we were under Clinton. I know I may be modded down for saying something negative about Obama, but it's true... go look it up.
No, this time it is illegal: Both the Ohio AG and all of the Cuyahoga County offices are run by Democrats.
I am officially gone from
The point wasn't the question - however dishonest the man who asked it.
It was the answer. And, by proxy, how those who dare to ask a question can expect to be treated by the press and, apparently, the government, under an Obama administration.
Hope and change indeed.
I'm sorry, but using good investigative reporting to expose an outright fraud and slander on the order of swiftboat perpetrated against the obama campaign and the general political discourse in america has nothing to do with oppression.
This is not the government trumping up charges to silence a critic (for that, please see bill clinton, sheehan, the dixie chicks, the countless people "disappeared" to gitmo). It's the press and the obama campaign calling a spade a spade, and competently defending themselves
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Arguing that the question should not have been asked based on the personal qualifications of the questioner is petty and absurd - just like a certain poster I know on Slashdot, come to think of it...
Did I hit a nerve pointing out an obvious swiftboat?
No, it's not. The guy was claiming to be someone he was not, someone that requires a great deal of knowledge he does not have in the slightest, someone that requires licenses he does not have. Heck, he doesnt even have a license to be the rank-and-file plumber he claims to be, so he doesn't even have the most basic knowledge about the business he was claiming to be interested in purchasing.
He has no standing to talk about the 'issues' he raised.
You'd certainly dismiss ted stevens if he stood up in a debate concerning the internet and started blabbering on.
I, for example, do not own a firearm at this time. But I am still quite concerned about Obama's policies regarding firearms,
Talk about absurdity. Businesses have complicated financial dynamics which are arcane to anyone not running that business, even most of the employees. Let me know when running a business equates to pulling a trigger and putting a hole in something.
The complexity and arcane nature (to most of the public) of business administration within a given sector can best be compared to computer technology, and, once again, you would not consider ted stevens credible if he stood up and berated steve job's software design processes.
If you would like to see the U.S. become a socialist paradise, then this doesn't concern you.
Oh, so it's perfectly ok to you that the wealth of the poor and middle class gets redistributed to the rich, but trying to equalize that situation by introducing higher taxes so the wealthy actually have to pay their fair share equates to "socialism".
If you don't mind when government computers are used for unauthorized purposes to dig up dirt on a person who dares to affront The One by daring to question him on a plank of his campaign, then by all means, go for Obama!
Spurious argument. The information on joe's qualifications and history are a matter of public record.
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