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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."
Another difference is that the protagonist of 1984 was pretty resourceful. Joe the plumber just says the same stupid cringe-inducing nonsense that I get to hear every day at the office.
I doubt the government cares, since he's just parroting half of Bush's talking points from 4 years ago. "I'm not going to apologize for being an American, this is the greatest country on earth", etc etc.
He'd fit right in over at IngSoc. The only lesson I think we can take away from this guy is that a lot of us are so dumb that the media can get away with painting someone medium-dumb as a person with "something to say".
Somehow I doubt his lies are due entirely to daydreams. He is related (by marriage) to Keating, of the Keating Five scandal. And old buddy of McCain's, and one of the skeletons in his closet. He was a plant.
"Joe" was a plant. I have little sympathy for him. He was brought up by McCain to try to be the example he couldn't actually find for some 'small guy' being screwed over by Obama's plan.
Don't you think it's just a tiny bit strange that the one person McCain uses as an example in the last presidential campaign, someone he brings up over and over, lied about everything about his situation? And out of the thousands and thousands of constituents Obama has talked to during the past two years of campaigning, this one guy just happens to be related to Keating, of the Keating Five Scandal?
Class warfare HAS been going on already and when you complain or point out that the emperor has no clothes you get accused of having no clothes yourself!
Big Oil TOOK our money from us by force and one way to get that back is to have government do something about it. During a CRISIS they exploited us being the scum that they are and I don't see why we can't use OUR public institutions to get some justice. Its not like other markets, oil is a necessity.
Exon had ALL TIME RECORD PROFITS-- for the whole history of the stock market (as I heard multiple times.)
The biggest welfare is CORPORATE welfare and that was before the blackmail bailout. You have to be pretty ignorant to think they don't burden the system; its probably quite proportional-- they benefit and use the system the most they should pay for what they use and benefit from. Corporate socialism with increasing corporatism has been the direction of the USA for generations now.
% tax means it hurts as much for everybody; its relative to the individual
TODAY your dollar is being fundamentally screwed over and at a GREATER rate than the interest rates your bank gives you. Republicans talk about taxes while undermining the dollar and shifting shortfalls to others (including bridges collapsing.) New Democrats are not much different; it reflects the populace's irresponsibility. (Which is what leads to despotism, ask Ben Franklin.)
Much of the infrastructure in the USA was build during the new deal while going into debt jump starting the economy. People refuse to deal with the reality that it cost tax dollars to maintain their expectations. Politicians have to play childish games because they are dammed if they fund stuff and dammed when stuff doesn't work. FYI: highways cost MORE the faster the driving speed is for them (and for the weight loads put on them!)
Furthermore, much of the tax hike is to undo Bush's voodoo economic tax cut that helped contribute to the mess.
BTW, parent is using a slippery slope fallacy on the last sentence.
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We're subsidizing the oil companies by sending thousands of American soldiers to fight in Iraq to guarantee them access to cheap foreign oil, not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars we're spending. Seeing as how the oil companies are currently experiencing record profits, don't you think it only fair that they help out with some of the monetary expenses? To be completely fair, the oil companies should recruit their own armies and put their own executives on the front line, but that's not going to happen...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's truly extraordinary that you chose to call yourself Gandhi_2. Your viewpoint and his are hugely different. You propose that you should keep your all your money and only give away what you want to. Presumably that means that you are happy to have poor people live shitty lives and die young; in fact, the current setup in the US isn't tough enough for you. If some eighty-five year old pauper in Buttfuck, Alabama is able to have some protein in their main meal because they got food stamps from the government, you'd presumably think that was a Socialist Disgrace. You'd far rather see them die on principle than claim money from the government which might have come from someone else's income. What a shame you couldn't have lived in Victorian times in England. You'd have so enjoyed that muscular form of laissez-faire capitalism.
Damn, why do people fall for this shit?
Because the Republicans thought they could hold onto the power.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I don't know about you, but that's an awful lot of money for most of Ohio, forget about what is essentially a blue collar job.
From the looks of the agencies who investigated him, it could very well be that at least some of those agencies(child support for instance) might be looking to see if he's declared all that income he's supposedly earning appropriately.
That's not to say they might not have just been sticky beaks, but I'd want to take a closer look at a plumber in Ohio earning that kind of dosh, and at least verify that he's paying the correct amount of child support if applicable.
Regardless of how buffet made his cash, the point is that he pays as much in taxes as his secretary, and he recognizes the injustice - he's rich and knows he should pay more taxes. Pirate he may be, but even he realizes that there's a problem, while a lot of people who will never reach his level whinge about paying more taxes than the average guy. We call these people republicans.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"