Glenn Reynolds doesn’t think so — though he does think the race is much closer than we’re being led to believe — whereas US News’ James Pethokoukis isn’t so sure:
Barack Obama actually told that Joe the Plumber guy that he wants to “spread the wealth around.” What, did Obama just get done reading the Wikipedia entry on Huey “Share the Wealth” Long or something? Was he somehow channeling that left-wing populist from the Depression? Talk about playing into the most extreme stereotype of your party, that it is infested with socialists.
A while back I chatted with a University of Chicago professor who was a frequent lunch companion of Obama’s. This professor said that Obama was as close to a full-out Marxist as anyone who has ever run for president of the United States. Now, I tend to quickly dismiss that kind of talk as way over the top. My working assumption is that Obama is firmly within the mainstream of Democratic politics. But if he is as free with that sort of redistributive philosophy in private as he was on the campaign trail this week, I have no doubt that U of C professor really does figure him as a radical. And after last night’s debate, a few more Americans might think that way, too. McCain’s best line: “Now, of all times in America, we need to cut people’s taxes. We need to encourage business, create jobs, not spread the wealth around.”
And by the way, I just noticed that the IBD/TIPP poll, the most accurate in 2004, has McCain down by just 3 points. If the contest is perceived by the voters as a contest between a wealth redistributor and a wealth creator, then it could be a long night come Nov. 4. This is still a center-right country, gang.
Well, hope springs eternal, I guess.
Whereas Hopeyness? May just be losing some of its luster now that Obama has been so bold as to tie it almost directly to a basic tenet of socialism.
Unfortunately for the US, the kinds of people who’d vote for a guy like Obama aren’t likely to mind a little cold socialism, so long as it comes with a nice big side dish of World Approval…
****
update: It’s all the rage in Obama’s new Unitey Nation: track down the dissenters, reveal their personal information (including SSN and home address) on the web, and then contact the authorities to make sure they’re well and truly fucked.
It is to giggle!
Had the media spent half the energy vetting Obama as they have digging into Trig Palin’s conception, Sarah Palin’s tanning habits, or Joe the Plumber’s licensing status, we may not be near electing a President who would be better suited to run Venezuela.
But then, that’s the point, isn’t it?
Joe the Plumber saves the Nation.
I’m afraid there’s an alarmingly large percentage of the population who will vote for Teh One thinking they’ll have a little of that wealth spread on them.
O!conomics – Joe the Plumber now unemployed.
Share the wealth equals “expropriation”. In a Weatherman way.
Unemployed like a fox dre. That Joe the Plumber is a plumb fucking genius! He’s branded, he’s got a following, and now Obama’s going to shut him up.
Say it is so Joe!
You gotta be kidding me, dre.
Well, fk it. Joe: collect the unemployment and get addicted to crack. Its a resume enhancement these days. fk having skillz, fk work.
It’s scary what a socialist president and Nancy and Harry could do with unfettered power and a compliant media. Baracky keeps saying fundamental change fundamental change fundamental change cause that’s what he wants his mandate to be understood to be. I’m not ok with that.
Congrats leftoids!
Baracky won’t let you go back to your old lives, uninformed and uninvolved, Joe
Oh no. Never.
Um, guys. The communists are not coming.
We won’t see Swedish style tax rates. Your guns will not be prayed from your fingers. The pretense that you’re some kind of bulwark against a Maoist takeover is silly, depressing, and has little to do with reality.
After the election America will return to its normally schedule programing (though hopefully with less idiotic foreign wars and general incompotence.)
“…people who’d vote for a guy like Obama aren’t likely to mind a little cold socialism, so long as it comes with a nice big side dish of World Approval…”
That’s why I read The Jeff.
Oh, Hlem. Thank you. I feel so much better. See, Happy? There’s nothing to worry about.
PEOPLE. LISTEN TO HLEM. WHAT HE SAYS IS TRUE. BECAUSE HE SAYS IT. GO BACK TO YOUR HUTS.
I agree with you hlem – the communists are not coming. They’re already here.
Bring us your tired, your hungry, your poor, so they may vote for us to tax the living shit outa you.
>>We won’t see Swedish style tax rates.
Talk to New Yorkers about that.
“though hopefully with less idiotic foreign wars and general incompotence.”
O!, Reid , Pelosi: general incompetence is a BULL market.
Too bad you aren’t an illegal immigrant, Joe.
I’m thinking all those rich, Obama-supporting Hollywood types need to start spreading their wealth. Making 12 million for a picture? Sounds like “Windfall profits” to me. Things are falling through with the oil companies, so I think we need to focus on Hollywood.
Hlem:
No, but it’s another step closer. And another step away from life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Hmmm…I wonder if unborn babies would like that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness thing…..nahhhh.
That innavigable complex of laws and regulations no one can possibly comply with (but if you’re the right sort you’re not obligated to) was made for this.
There’s, like, a famous quote.
No for real, hlem, when Baracky says he wants you to live within your means what that means is he has a plan to see to it. Cause he’s a fucking monster. An evil fucking monster.
Leave Joe the Plumber alone!!
“GO BACK TO YOUR HUTS.”
I’m sending O!’s half brother a “Hut Sweet Hut” poster.
Dark Knight made over $550 million this summer. I want my share of WB’s Windfall Profits.
This professor said that Obama was as close to a full-out Marxist as anyone who has ever run for president of the United States. Now, I tend to quickly dismiss that kind of talk as way over the top. My working assumption is that Obama is firmly within the mainstream of Democratic politics.
Zeus on a zamboni, Pethokoukis! On what basis do you assume that Obama is mainstream Dem? When in his life has he NOT supported far-left causes? Who were his parents, what was his educational milieu, with whom did he choose to ally himself after graduation?
I really don’t get why people keep indulging in this fantasy about “Moderate Obama” when there’s absolutely no evidence to support such a supposition.
Criminey. I had the guy pegged clear back when he explained that wearing a flag lapel pin was “false patriotism” (read: jingoism). No moderate would have said such a thing.
EVER.
And no moderate would utter the term “redistribute wealth” in public. Nor would a moderate indulge in the “false consciousness” theory of why people don’t vote for O!
Just because he’s charming and photogenic, right? Don’t you people get that narcissists are often exceptionally skilled at fooling people? Didn’t Obama boast in his memoir that he had a knack for Not Scaring The White People even though deep down he was more radical than he let on?
Cheeze, Pethokoukis. “I think to call someone a Marxist, you have to provide some evidence that he 1) believes capitalism is based on exploitation and 2) is calling for a worker’s revolution.”
Well? What do you think Community Organizers do except start up revolutions? Who cares about the precise makeup of his ideas? It’s only the result that matters, and Obama wants to CHANGE the country so that Michelle can be proud of it all the time. And no socialist/Marxist/fascist/totalitarian/authoritarian can be proud of a country where the mob rules, because the mod inevitably refuses to recognize that O! is God.
Dude, it looks like you’re rubbing elbows with too many people whose opinion you value but who will not give you that good opinion unless you concede that O! is at least a minor deity.
Wake up! Obama + Pelosi + Reid = runaway Utopian legislation, a “living document” SCOTUS, and the mother of all screwed-up economies.
He’s going to spread the wealth and gosh darnit, health care is a right. So if you don’t provide it, you are violating MY civil rights. Hallelujah!
Truly, though, I could very easily see an Obama administraton completely screwing the pooch on the war thing. He’ll lead us into bigger wars than Dubya ever would. And far dumber ones, too. Pawkeestawn is already on the table and he’s pretty much going to let Israel get butt-raped, and we all know Israel isn’t going to go quietly.
My only consolation in that is maybe he’ll do a draft and wind up killing shitloads of his supporters as cannon fodder.
Hell I have already served my time bring back the fuckin draft baby!!111!!
Uh, dicentra, haven’t you been paying attention?
Marxism is mainstream Dem politics. Its just not polite to talk about it in front of the kids.
That means YOU.
The point though is there’s no point in finding out ever just how evil fucking and monstrous Baracky is. No reason at all.
re: #3
I really hope someone is misreading that Toledo Code, my experience tells me they are doing just that-misreading.
On it’s face it’s a stupid idea to suggest that the local code doesn’t allow for Joe to work as a plumber without a Plumbers Contracting License. If this were true, it would mean that every single technician that ever looked into a shitter in Toledo would have to be a contractor, and that just don’t fly.
Typically a business has a certification and holds a license in the name of one or more person(s), and this license is transferable when the attached person no longer works for the company holding that license (sometimes it’s transferred into a new name with nothing more than a phone interview with local code enforcement).
Anyway, (to paraphrase a classic Happyfeet comment) if attacking Joe the Plumber from Ohio and putting him out of work for his questioning of Obama is the type of change that Barracky and his political supporters have in mind, I’ll personally see to it that every single one of their houses is burnt to the fucking ground- because I’m stupid like that.
Most people don’t like to be lied to. Even less when the lie is brazen and straight to their faces, as though they are to be taken for imbeciles. The usual reaction to this sort of behavior is extremely negative, with a demand the liar cease lying and own up to the truth. Denied this, the follow-on reaction is to shun the liar, mistrusting his every future act and claim.
Barack Obama does little but lie, openly and brazenly, from sunup to sundown, all day, every day, on just about every subject on which he speaks. Yet he is heralded as a great leader by a third of our population. These people give him their time, their money and their adulation. Give him. Are they calculating a return on their invested money and time and thus a benefit to themselves? A benefit great enough to overlook Obama’s lies, assuming that somehow, when it comes to the payoff, he hasn’t lied to them as well? Really? Could they be that simpleminded?
What is going on with these people? Do they fail to recognize Obama’s open, obvious lying? If they do recognize his lying, why do they react as though nothing significant about Obama has been revealed, a fact about him that will, with some certainty, materially affect their future prospects? Or is their risk premium, the possession of power — of which they assure themselves — so great, no thought of failure need enter their heads?
Like dudes, did dicentra’s x part series on Alinsky teach us nothing? Classic isolation of the target, make him seem like the impostor, even though Vic @ 32 makes a convincing case otherwise, because Joe THE PLUMBER MUST BE STOPPED! BURN LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN. continue.
Hell, take any Left position of maybe 20 years ago and you’ll see it matches exactly with what is Rightwing, right now. Politics always goes Left. All we do is slow it down some in order to save cultural artifacts. Sometimes I think just let them have it so the whole thing blows to Hell and we can start over. Its my own Year Zero Plan
“I really hope someone is misreading that Toledo Code, my experience tells me they are doing just that-misreading.”
The Demorats in O!hio are ruthless. See Sec. Brumehilda
I don’t think Sen Obama blew the election with that comment. I think that he was just reflecting on his recent viewing of the Hello Dolly movie and was moved by Dolly’s comment about money being like manure — it doesn’t do any good unless you spread it around. Of course she was looking to spread Horace Vandergelder’s money around… And we won’t mention about how much manure is being spread around by the Democratic Party apparatchiks.
Breaking: DKos published Joe the Plumber’s home address, the progosphere went into attack mode, and now the city of Toledo has put him out of business.
A preview of what will happen to Obama’s critics under his administration?
And if we started rummaging around the private lives of the Michael Moores or Sarah Bernhardts who confuse their self-indulgent nonsense with ‘speaking truth to power’ there’d be no end to the whining about ‘stifling of dissent.’
Recordings and information leading to recent API story on Michelle Obama’s telephone call is now being cleared for release
Aldo: Think these are the ‘digital brownshirts’ Algore had in mind?
Wonder how the purges will shake out after O takes power. Kos as Ernst Roehm on the Night of the Long Knives . . . has a certain appealing symetry . . .
I think an O!dinga moment is coming.
Who is proposing nationalizing the banking system? $700B+ to Wall Street? Who brought us the medicare drug program? Fucking dumb shits have to be in a tizzy over impending communism/fascism that reality never even makes a dent. There is a reason you are on the fringe – all you know is rhetoric and fear.
If you’d ever stopped in here before over the last few years, you might have seen that a lot of people around here weren’t exactly happy about that kind of stuff. See you again in another four years!
“all you know is rhetoric and fear.”
Are you going to see “W”?
oh, I’ve been here over the years. I know you aren’t happy about that those things. But why be upset at what Obama might, could, possibly do (even without evidence he even wants to do more than reform our medical system)? Be upset at YOUR OWN FUCKING PARTY. Nah, they aren’t Democrats, right?
Yeah hoot, you utter moron, who’s proposing nationalizing the banking system? Who sent $700B+ to Wall Street? Who’s standing by with $300B more? Who’s proposing sharing the wealth?
No, I will not see W. Oliver Stone is a hack.
Pray tell, hoot, which GSE’s were at the nexus of said catastrophe precipitating the current liquidity crisis? A complete answer requires you idenitfy the four largest recipients of monies from said institutions. Bonus points: name the congressman who slept with the head of one GSE while charing the committee overseeing it.
Why does this whole thing feel like a scene from ‘Joe Versus the Volcano’.
“My working assumption is that Obama is firmly within the mainstream of Democratic politics.”
Which would make him a full-out Marxist, right?
I’ll answer for you hoot: the socialist policies (subprime lending) now have a socialist ‘solution,’ which was passed by the socialist Dem congress and endorsed by the not so conservative president.
I thought owls were smart.
Comment by hoot on 10/16 @ 6:09 pm #
Oh, joy.
owlshit is back.
whoppty-dooo.
joe the plumber down in flames…effing lying crapweasel
Senator Biden, if you are going to post here, please include more punctuation.
Set the example. It’s for the children.
You’re wasting your time, Dash.
Oh, and go pound sand, datadave. Because Joe had the audacity to ask a question he must be destroyed?
>>>>Yeah hoot, you utter moron, who’s proposing nationalizing the banking system? Who sent $700B+ to Wall Street? Who’s standing by with $300B more? Who’s proposing sharing the wealth?
Barak Obama?
Dash, you are stupid. Nobody thinks the GSEs are responsible for the financial crisis. To believe that several huge banking institutions were taken down because minorities went into foreclosure is complete idiocy. It doesn’t work that way, fuckwit.
Baracky is already responsible for one man losing his job – that we know of, anyway
You guys ain’t see nothing yet. Remember how the Congressional Black Caucus shut down any criticism of Fannie CEO Franklin Raines? “You’re trying to lynch a successful black man!!, etc”
The race card us into the $700B mess on Wall Street.
Fannie/Freddie backed these crap mortgages. No bank would have given these unworthy loans (and the subsquent subprime loans) if Fannie/Freddie and the Congress Black Caucus hadn’t backed them.
No, because Joe had the audacity to ask a question he must be an “effing lying crapweasel”. I think that means being within earshot of an involuntary public Obama bowel evacuation on collectivism makes you dishonest.
Let me know if that makes sense to you either…
“To believe that several huge banking institutions were taken down because minorities went into foreclosure is complete idiocy.”
A few million “minorities” defaulting on their loans affects nothing. Yea right.
Yeah, worthless paper had nothing to do with it, hoot. Right-o.
“#
Comment by hoot on 10/16 @ 6:23 pm #
Dash, you are stupid. Nobody thinks the GSEs are responsible for the financial crisis. To believe that several huge banking institutions were taken down because minorities went into foreclosure is complete idiocy. It doesn’t work that way, fuckwit.”
Do you realize what a fucking idiot you are, fucknozzle?
Subprime Lending is socialist? Here I thought it was capitalists making money by charging higher interest rates for higher risks.
Don’t even think, hoot, if that’s possible, of originalizing monetary issues without going back to, you guessed it, FDR.
You pointless delusional chimp.
“Subprime Lending is socialist?”
Social engineering, social ism, same difference.
Well, hoot’s got me convinced.
“Here I thought it was capitalists making money by charging higher interest rates for higher risks.”
Forced by the fucking GOVERNMENT to make said loans.
by the way, hoot is most likely shirtless and in sweatpants embroiled in a rousing Guitar Hero session – level medium. Rock on hoot!
Oh and hoot, if they’re still selling homes when you get yourself together enough to attempt a mortgage, you’ll begin to understand how foreclosures effect surrounding property values. In the mean time, take a stab at Detroit Rock City
joe the plumber down in flames…effing lying crapweasel
I’m going to go re-read “Animal Farm,” this time as prophecy.
Just gotta love how these idiots are equating opposing subprime mortgages and the resulting financial problems as racism on our part. Love the moby too by the way.
Racism racism racism racism racism. fuck racism fuck you racist racisms rasicmts.
“Forced by the fucking GOVERNMENT to make said loans.”
Oh there was a lot of lending that wasn’t forced. You may have heard the term ‘predatory lending.’?
Probably he’ll never get how paying citizens to recover them from their idiocy costs some ninety cents of every freshly printed dollar…to effect everything in the neo-Keynesian market. Or how an entire subset of the population has gamed eviction laws designed to, you guessed it, protect the minority.
THE NATIONAL DEBT! CONSTITUTIONALITY! MCHITLERWALLSTREET!
Oh there was a lot of lending that wasn’t forced. You may have heard the term ‘predatory lending.’?
Now, let’s ask ourselves why a company would knowingly make a loan that will not be paid back. C’mon, you know the answer…
“Nobody thinks the GSEs are responsible for the financial crisis.”
Nobody thinks the GSE’s with $1.5 trillion of mortgage debt? Except for the people that know things which have the added value of being true.
So lay it out the cause then, owlman.
Comment by meya on 10/16 @ 6:43 pm #
“Forced by the fucking GOVERNMENT to make said loans.â€Â
Oh there was a lot of lending that wasn’t forced. You may have heard the term ‘predatory lending.’?
Yeah, Obama suing Citibank so that they can exercise predatory lending. Why does Barack hate poor people?
You may have heard the term “fractional reserve”?
We won’t see Swedish style tax rates.
No, dumbass, our corporate tax rate surpasses Sweden’s and is second only to Japan’s.
Meya,
for all our sakes, just lay it all out. All of it. Why do the GSE’s have no responsibility for the crisis?
>>>> Meya, for all our sakes, just lay it all out. All of it. Why do the GSE’s have no responsibility for the crisis?
Because Fannie was headed by the first black CEO, you racist. Trying to reign in the GSEs = Lynching black people.
First black CEO = epic fail
First black prez = epic socialist fail
“Why do the GSE’s have no responsibility for the crisis?”
Oh I aint talking responsibility, I’m talking about how it aint socialism when I see lots of capitalists offering risky loans at high interest rates.
Now, the government buying out loans at full price when these risks come due? That I call spreading the wealth.
It’s not just the “spread the wealth” bullshit–check out the youtube video where the smarmy little prick asks, “How many plumbers do you know make a quarter-million a year?”
For a small trade business, $250,000 a year is about right. These people don’t have to live in fucking palaces to have a respectable income, nor do all plumbers look like Larry the Cable Guy.
If you slapped this fucker, his brains would rattle around like a BB in a boxcar.
“How many plumbers do you know make a quarter-million a year?â€Â
You would think “How many plumbers do you know?” would be sufficient for an Obama rally.
If there were one great American who could get in a rally and ask Obama “How much does a plumber make?”, I think it would be his George H. W. Bush loaf of bread moment.
[…] “Did Barack ‘Spread the Wealth’ Obama Just Blow the Election?†[…]
– If McCain had aby advisors in his fucktwit campaign that had a pair, what they’d do is hire Joe forthwith and put Him out there front and center in Ads and at every Palin rally.
– Here’s the future you have to look forward too under an Obama administration. Let him tell his story in short simple terms.
– Absolute gold, expecially when the Obama-freaks start demonizing Joe. Every pitch outta the park for ole Joe.
Nobody thinks the GSEs are responsible for the financial crisis. To believe that several huge banking institutions were taken down because minorities went into foreclosure is complete idiocy.
Er, no. But the fact that FM/FM used fraudulent accounting to falsely inflate their stock value might have something to do with it.
When Ken Lay at Enron did this, you might remember that it was kind of a big deal, what with a state Attorney General saying they wanted him raped in prison and everyone pointing fingers at a sitting president who did exactly nothing to help Lay out.
But Franklin Raines does it, and he’s some kind of folk hero, taking calls from the presidential candidate who is the prime beneficiary of the economic mess. Curious, that.
“You would think “How many plumbers do you know?†would be sufficient for an Obama rally.”
Not in front of these guys:
http://www.ua.org/ua_endorses.asp
Many plumbers probably make $250,000/yr. but once they get done paying all of their taxes: on gas, on their employees, on income, on inventory…
Not in front of these guys:
What? A union endorsed a Democrat? Well, that settles it, then.
You know who”always has a gorgeous tan”Bernadine Dohrn
I think she may have been visiting the Caribeann, though, in 1993
Wow meya. I read your link. Thanks!
Obama sure has a great relationship with the Illinois Plumber’s Union. Refinery contracts, new construction plumbing deals. Sounds like he’s really close to the plumbers.
And with all he’s done for those Illinois plumbers that he knows so well, he’s still managed to prevent every single one of them from earning more than 250K per year.
Bully!
In Ohio that’s called a backfire.
“Many plumbers probably make $250,000/yr. but once they get done paying all of their taxes: on gas, on their employees, on income, on inventory…”
The BLS reports that the median plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter makes $44,090.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htm
“The BLS reports that the median plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter makes $44,090.”
Asshole: EMPLOYER vs EMPLOYEE
”
And with all he’s done for those Illinois plumbers that he knows so well, he’s still managed to prevent every single one of them from earning more than 250K per year. ”
Hey that BLS link also has Illinois as the top paying state for plumbers. Sorry Joe, move to Illinois!
Now dre, you can’t expect it to make those kinds of distinctions, donchaknow, were are proles we are.
As spokesman for the UA of Pipefitters, I’d like to announce that from now on, none of our member plumbing contractors will clear over 80k.
“Sorry Joe, move to Illinois!”
Ahh the leftist mentality encapsulated. Nope, you shouldn’t be able to be an entrepreneur in your home state cuz the gov’t owns your doh, donchaknow.
“Ahh the leftist mentality encapsulated. Nope, you shouldn’t be able to be an entrepreneur in your home state cuz the gov’t owns your doh, donchaknow.”
Hey, as a plumbing employee, he might like to know where they make the most money: In Obama’s state.
Oh hey meya, on you ua link Stephen Kelly – Assistant General President is also a pipefitter. You know, a plumber. And I’ll bet he knows Obama personally. Hmmmmm, I wonder what the salary of a big union boss is these days. Declared or undeclared – it matters not. I’m thinking north of 300k
So Obama does know a couple plumbers who make over 250K. What else is he lying about?
*straight face*
*straight face*
hee
Meya has it hit you yet that to continue with your ideology that you have to do the following?
Excuse membership in a racist church
Excuse voter fraud by Acorn
Destroy a random US citizen because he asked a question
I think a normal person would draw the line at the first one.
I’m guessing union plumbers make more in Illinois so they have the same net as union plumbers in Kansas.
Let’s talk non-union tradesmen, that eschew the guaranteed wage and benies the brethern get, but leaves himself more opportunity through free-lance long hours, hard work, and yes, sacrifice.
Guy’s like that can make some money, they can also end up having far less then a union guy after 20 years.
Obamas policies are from the perspective of wanting good worker bees to maintain their station happily.
Social climbing not allowed.
It appears that meya is absolutely okay with someone’s livelihood and career aspirations being threatened because they dared question the Dear Leader. The ghost of Goebbels loves you, sugartits.
Does anyone second lee’s proposal?
SECOND
“Comment by meya on 10/16 @ 6:57 pm #
“Why do the GSE’s have no responsibility for the crisis?â€Â
Oh I aint talking responsibility, I’m talking about how it aint socialism when I see lots of capitalists offering risky loans at high interest rates.”
It takes a whole lot of stooopid to outdo owlshit, but boy, you just won the special olympics of idiocy.
“The BLS reports that the median plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter makes $44,090.”
How do I get into THAT fucking union?
“The BLS reports that the median plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter makes $44,090.”
Oh, now I get it, the unionized plumbers DON’T OWN THEIR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.
I’m bettin’ those plumbers unions keep out blacks.
And if you make more you’ll get a beat down for making all the others look bad.
Just like the Davis-Bacon Act does.
Betcha!
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
-Winston Churchill
What would THEY be doing to YOU if you had the AUDACITY to ask Obama a similar question?
This is fucking ridiculous.
But do Plumber have lovely tans? Inquiring minds want to know!
This passage from that 1993 article I linked above, I find no end of irksome:
Bernardine Dohrn. small-boned and delicate, with hazel eyes and sun-streaked hair. The Swedish genes inherited from her mother showâ€â€and she has a tan. “She always has a gorgeous tan,” says a lawyer who has worked with her.
A sad commentary, that speaking his mind should cost him his job.
ONE simple reason to NOT vote for the One.
OK meya,
let’s run some numbers-using your figure of 45000/yr for median plumber salary; not an outlandish figure in NYC nor Washington DC where I lived for many years…
Let’s say your the owner of a small plumbing company, with 6 mechanics. Based on an average work year of approximately 2000 hrs the following estimates can be worked up…
I’ve been a self employed tradesman in the past-in many trades. Let’s say your billable hrs to clients are 1,500 hrs/man-year. For the entire force that = 9,000 billable hrs/year; and let’s assume a billable rate of 80$/hr, again, not outlandish for an American city… So in labor billings your gross is 720,000/yr. WRT plumbing, it is not a stretch to imagine that for each 8 hours labor billed you could expect to profit 100$ off of the associated parts you sold along with that labor-this is profits, after costs!. 9,000/8=1,125, 1,125x$100=$112,500 profit from parts. Gross revenue then=$832,500/yr…
Now we know that your help is costing you $45,000/tr-man. For 6 mechanic that’s $270,000/yr. And, let’s say each mechanic’s truck, gas, and vehicle insurance costs 1,000$/mo; so for 6 mechanics=$6,000/mo and 12 mosx6,000/mo=$72,000 for yearly fleet vehicle expenses. I don’t know the costs of health, unemployment, and liability insurances in Ohio, but let’s use a figure of an additional $1,000/mechanic-month which adds another $72,000/year. So it sounds like total costs=$414,000/yr.
Revenue-cost=profits; $832,500-$414,000= $418,000/yr profit! Well over the 250,000/yr O!-zone…
And while there may have been some small expenses I underestimated, they certainly don’t amount to $168,000/yr!
Once again, O! and his minions are proved factually wrong…
Not to mention the effed-up “lose your job for asking a question/speaking your mind” stuff”…
Two wrongs don’t make a right, like in this case, it just makes them extra-wrong!
I urge anyone who is bothered by what Obama said to go watch the video or read transcript.. Here’s the gist:
Joe the plumber asks: wouldn’t I, a guy who is thinking of buying a business with a little over $250,000 in revenue, pay more under Obama’s plan? After Obama explains what his plan does, Joe says: look, I have worked hard, and I’m just getting taxed more and more. Obama replies: well, there are two ways of looking at it. One is that you’ve worked hard, you’re successful, and now you’re being penalized for your success. But here’s another: you were probably working just as hard earlier, when you were starting out. And under my plan, you would have gotten more money then, and so you would have been able to save more, and you would have gotten to where you are today more quickly.
Obama then points out that taxes have been cut a lot for people who are doing well, but that ordinary folks are not doing nearly so well — in fact, their average income has gone down over the last eight years. And (after a bit about the flat tax) he says:
“For folks like me who have worked hard, but frankly also been lucky, I don’t mind paying just a little bit more than the waitress that I just met over there who’s — things are slow and she can barely make the rent.
My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re going to be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody, and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Obama did not say that he wanted to spread Joe’s wealth around. He certainly did not say that he thought he was entitled to simply expropriate Joe’s wealth and distribute it to poor people, like Robin Hood. He said he wanted to spread the wealth: i.e., to have a tax code that is less skewed towards the wealthy. That’s Obama’s radical idea: progressive taxation.
Hand me my smelling salts!
If any change in people’s proportionate tax burdens counts as expropriating the money of those who end up paying a greater share and giving it to those who pay a lower one, then any President who has ever enacted changes in the tax code has expropriated people’s wealth. George Bush, for instance: in 2004, his tax cuts gave a 2.3% increase in after-tax income to the middle 20%, but a 6.3% increase to millionaires. This shift of tax burdens from the rich to the poor is obviously just an attempt to take poor people’s money and “spread” it to rich people. And Ronald Reagan: he raised payroll taxes while cutting the top marginal rates: more expropriation!
Moreover, Reagan signed the 1986 tax reform bill into law: that bill eliminated a lot of corporate tax loopholes that had allowed some major corporations to pay “little or nothing in income taxes”. In other words, these corporations’ share of taxes went from zero (or near zero) to the same rate as other corporations, for no better reason than some misguided notion of “fairness.” Socialist expropriation!
And don’t even get me started on the monstrous socialist transfer of wealth that increases in the child tax credit or education credits involve. Socialist, the lot of them.
Changing the tax code in such a way that the proportional burdens of different groups of people also change is not socialism. It’s just a change in tax policy.
* Someone might say: but Bush’s tax cuts didn’t raise anyone’s taxes, so he can hardly be expropriating anything. This is wrong: by increasing the deficit, Bush’s tax cuts will cause us all to pay more later, and will also lower our standard of living over time. There is no free lunch.
hilzoy at OW
um, so?
the median household income for the U.S. in 2007 was $50,233. so I guess no individual is really making that much money, huh?
Life in a socialist country is degrading. I can’t even tell you. It’s even worse for the children.
Abandon Hope, all ye who enter.
“Revenue-cost=profits; $832,500-$414,000= $418,000/yr profit! Well over the 250,000/yr O!-zone…”
So you’ve described me a business where 414K in cost gets 418K in profit, an over 100% margin. And you want me to worry about tax policy? Shit man, take that baby to wall street! they could use the help.
“Not to mention the effed-up “lose your job for asking a question/speaking your mind†stuffâ€Â…”
I hadn’t heard this, but I did see the daily show cover him being on the natural law party. Great aint it? Nice job making him the centerpiece of our discussion.
Repubs, you can have him .
By noon, Joe the plumber was shown to be “not undecided”, “practicing plumbing without a license”, “not in any position to buy any sort of business”, “completely clueless as to what Obama’s tax proposals are”, “a tax cheat” (as he has a lien on his house), and an “overall fraudulent, right-wing scammer”.
He asked Obama a loaded question, based on what he dreams about making. Not on any solid plan he has in the works. Just happened to be the cut off figure for Obama’s proposal.
Seriously, where’s “Joe, The Broke-Ass, Nut-Wing Partisan, Tax Cheat, Fraud That Couldn’t Even Bother To Get A License, Or Vote, After All These Years” going to get someone to extend him some credit in this “Bush economy/credit crunch”?
Aren’t the Repubs always deriding people that don’t have their shit together. He’s one of them . One of many hypocrites, I’m sure.
Own him if you like, repubs..
Plumbing without a license?!
That sounds serious…
Yes, it’s way worse than turning in hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voter registrations or setting off nail bombs, lee.
hadn’t heard this, but I did see the daily show cover him being on the natural law party.
What does his tax status, his political affiliation, or his licensure, or lack of same have to do with a) his question or b) Obama’s answer?
Explain or STFU.
Thanks.
Shorter sashal:
“Gloopty gloop Joe snargle wingnut robble robble house lien mwop mwop blargh…”
Whatever.
If the media had put as much energy into investigating Obama’s Chicago buddies as the left has with ol’ Joe Nobody Obama would be cratering.
Nothing at all
So you admit that you’ve been yammering on about side issues in an attempt to deflect attention from the real issue, and will there be shutting the fuck up about it now?
Thanks!
The guy looks like hes the median plumber of BLS statistics and would get a tax cut from obama. Thats real.
It’s only “real” if you’re stupid enough to believe that Obama isn’t lying out his ass.
Which he is.
Maybe you should put those arithmetic skills to work adding up Obama’s numbers, meya.
You might get an unpleasant surprise.
Which is why you won’t do it.
meya and sashal,
The nature of questioner doesn’t change the answer to the question. That guy Joe said he was planning to buy the business and that it would probably make more than 250k/year.
O! has made a lot of claims that are patently false WRT his past history, both legislative and general. Does this render every answer he’s given to every question invalid? Does his sweetheart real estate dealings with Tony Rezko effect all of his pronouncements and plans regarding the housing bubble collapse? Does his ineffective executorship at CAC render any pronouncements he has made with respect to education null and void? I could go on, but I think you get my point…
The fact remains that he asked O! why would he be forced to pay more taxes if he achieved his goal of buying the business and made more than 250K/yr. And the incontrovertable fact remains that part of O!s answer was, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody…”
And, there is absolutely no reason why a fellow should lose his job and have his life destroyed simply because he asked O! a question that O! didn’t like his own answer to! For 8 years we have had to listen to the wailing about the fascism of BusHitler; but this move by O!s blogosphere and MSM brownshirts was more insidious than anything that Boooooooosh! has ever done…
You lefties contend that Ayers, a former terrorist and current communist, is a model effin’ citizen that has been rehabilitated simply by marking time as a radical education theory professor. But, this guy Joe’s tax lein, tickets, party affiliation, and lack of professional credential damns him forever. Not even your crazy maral relativism can get you out of this logical disconnect…
It’s just another example of the usual hypocritical double standard employed by the fightin’ nutroots. Left wing= good, no matter what; right wing = eeeeeevil RethugliKKKan, no matter what…
And meta,
In my earlier hypothetical, that was the gross profit. Tax would be paid on that figure before the net wouold be arrived at…
Not to mention that despite the worthiness of your back of the envelope quick calculations and figures, Bob, lots of things get left out — (shop space rent or mortgage payments, parking fees, professional services like accountant and lawyer, business association fees, license fees, books, estimator, and too many other costs to mention) — in the process, so mocking from the uninformed is only to be expected.
They’re ignorant and determined to stay that way. Let ’em have at it. But good on you for the attempt anyhow.
Yes, good job, Bob.
Pity it was wasted on a cult member with the Will to Believe.
”
In my earlier hypothetical, that was the gross profit. Tax would be paid on that figure before the net wouold be arrived at…”
Over 100% dude. I’m sold! I’m taking business advice from you from now on.
QED
Yep, she goes right back to yammering on her talking point.
Obama knows what you can afford to pay, Meya. And you will pay.
That’s the issue behind all of this. That’s what is really hurting Obama.
The brownshirts going after Joe are really just a glimpse into the future. You do know what “card check”, is right? That’s the number one item on the Democrat controlled congressional calendar; they intend, once the Chosen One ascends the throne, to make Union voting a public act – no more secret ballots. So, you can vote for the union for better wages, to get better benefits, to pay dues that will go to the Democrats.
Or you can get your tires slashed. Or your kids fucked with at school. Or, if you are a real pain in the Union’s ass, get fired. Or kneecapped. Lord knows that there won’t be in interest in an Obama DoJ to look at Union/Mob thuggery. No money in that.
Joe. He’s a monument, you know. To the stupidity that is the necessary base component of Marxism.
I feel better right now than I have in the last month.
A flat tax and an I.D. requirement at polling places would kill the Democrat party deader than Lenin, wouldn’t it?
Jonah Goldberg cites A. Shlaes and quotes William Graham Sumner who coined “the Forgotten Man” to great effect on Joe the Plumber.
sashal
unless you know anything about S-corporations and other small businesses …and The One and his Biden delusional sidekick who have never even run a lemonade stand are almost criminally ignorant about… SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Obama and Biden spent the day sneering at Joe and siccing their syphocants out to destroy this guy. The MSM which cannot spend one minute looking into Obama’s background or even noting Biden’s jaw-dropping senile remarks, can within 24 hours try to help destroy Joe W.
Liberal Fascists, indeed.
Tmj
it’s more than just card check, it’s getting rid of “right to work” states.
The point being missed here isn’t that Joe the plumber is making or is going to make “X” number of dollars a year. The point is that the government undeer the “O” is not going to permit you to make more than a set number of dollars a year. The “O” is going to tell you how much money you can have. Because we have to spread the wealth around. The marketplace is so unfair. There is only so much money to go around you know.
Once again maya and the others; Taxation is one of the police powers of the state. Taxation is legal theft.
– Guys, save your fingers. No point. Yhing “low imagination, under achieving, fear of competition, lack of self image, mild to severe paranoia, constantly at war with the fact of human nature, social alienation, and you have a pretty good profile of the “griefers/haters” that populate the Left.
– You can’t talk sense to people who are missing certain gears from their brains, or have those gears replaced with other morally bankrupt or asocial ones.
– They simply cam’t “hear” you.
– Just to gibe you a single example, which can generally be expanded and applied to everyone of their so-called compassionate “spread the wealth ideas, psychology has known for over a century that people are born with a certain inner drive, which generally doesn’t change throughout their lifetimes, exvept in a small percentage of cases. Yhat is, if you have a given tendency to self achievement, whatever level you are at will usually stay with you all your life. Like mental acuity, the populace distribution tends to a bell curve.
– You therefore find that the “nishi” groups, Ayers groups, and “Bundy” groups are small and would be found out on the 3 sigma edge, and why the Left always has a struggle. Its not by accident they henerally peak at about a third of any society, and without help from the moderate populace, fail to achieve lasting power. Even on those occasions when they do gain a modicum of temporary power, its always doomed to failure because of the lowered expectations/achievement they seek, which cannot compete with the higher levels of expectation and achievement at the other end of the curve.
– Obama’s spread the wealth idea would be aimed, in his own words, “to those that have the least”, the inner cities. A very small percentage of those people would use the improved chances to actually achieve something with it. They were truly held down by their economic situation. The vast majority will spend it on gold jewelry and large screens, because they have no drive to do anything more than they already are. So the wealth would be spread in toatlly limited ways, and end up benefiting hardly anyone.
– Anyone who has worked in human services for more than a month knows this is the facts. But again, you’re dealing with human nature, and when something makes your whole ideology futile, you either ignore it, or you try to force the issue. That’s what the Left is doing.
– Not only will the nannystate not generally improve things for the losers, but people like Joe the plumber will look at his efforts being basically stolen and given away, and just say fuck it. So the entire system falls apart.
– As Ric has outlined on numerous occasions, the only thing that produces wealth is either the sale of some tangible items or resource of value, or some critical service. That’s it. Nothing else on this planet produces wealth.
– In other words production. Socialism must always fail in the long run, simply because it contains constantly increasing dis-incentives.
– The fact that the Left/Progressives/Democrats, and all the ism’s that are Socialist based, refuse to deal with that weakness in their ideology, tells you all you need to know.
– The Democratic party feeds on that disconnect. Race card, Class card, victimhood, identity politics, faux Feminism, responsibility avoidance, Theism, all designed to play on the low achievers side of the bell curve.
Is Mort Kondracke now on staff over at Obama 08?
– He’s been edging toward that for a long time now. The only difference between him and Geraldo, is his greater self control over his Liberal partisan venting on the air.
In a related story: Fox News is in HD yet Gretchen’s arms still look fat.
“A flat tax and an I.D. requirement at polling places would kill the Democrat party deader than Lenin, wouldn’t it?”
Joe certainly wouldn’t be voting: his ID don’t match his voter registration.
“Obama knows what you can afford to pay, Meya. And you will pay.”
The wall street journal has the plumbing business making a 6% profit margin and calculates that revenues of something like 5 million are needed before they’re in the territory to have their taxes incrased. Up till then, they get breaks. So go on Joe the Plumber, get your tax breaks. If the republicans let you vote:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122418790649541967.html
“A flat tax and an I.D. requirement at polling places would kill the Democrat party deader than Lenin, wouldn’t it?â€Â
Joe certainly wouldn’t be voting: his ID don’t match his voter registration.
And, the fact that the media got to the fucking bottom of that story doesn’t … bother you in the least?
The media can’t find one college chum to reveal character ticks about Obama, and no one seems interested enough to interview Ayers … but JOE THE PLUMBER’s life is turned inside-out for daring to ask a question.
Wow meya! 6%! that’s getting dangerously close to Big Oil Windfall levels. Great investigative work!
just kidding
stupid laptop
meya: “The wall street journal has the plumbing business making a 6% profit margin and calculates that revenues of something like 5 million are needed before they’re in the territory to have their taxes incrased. Up till then, they get breaks. So go on Joe the Plumber, get your tax break.”
Now, as a matter of course, it would be halfway important to define what a “small business” is when we start discussing the Obamessiah’s decree on taxation.
The government defines a small business as an independently owned business that is not dominant in its field. They also supplement this broad definition with a table of “standard sizes,” with some businesses defined in terms of their $ in business and others in terms of the number of employees. The $ figure for plumbing is 14,000,000, which appears to be standard for the specialty trade category.
As an additional aside, a great many sectors define small businesses not in terms of gross receipts, but in terms of the number of employees. These sectors include most natural resource areas (mining, lumber, etc.) and manufacturing concerns.
Without going into too much inside baseball, Obama’s “95%” argument would seem to be so much bunk… the simple stringing together of pretty sounding words to placate an ignorant electorate, akin to elevator muzak.
The SBA standard size definition:
http://www.sba.gov/services/contractingopportunities/sizestandardstopics/size/index.html
The SBA table of standard sizes:
http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/serv_sstd_tablepdf.pdf
Except that that’s a lie.
IT.CANNOT.BE.DONE. Simple. Flat. Unequivocal. and true.
Every socialist-inspired (including populist and fascist) proposal to “spread the wealth around” depends on soaking the rich. I recommend that anybody planning on soaking the rich look up a guy called Hernando de Soto — the recent Peruvian economist, not the long-ago Spanish imperialist. What de Soto established, and has the statistics to prove, is that while “the rich” individually have a lot of money compared to “the poor”, in the aggregate they have very little compared to the needs of the society. If you took everything Bill Gates has, for instance, you wouldn’t get a tenth of what they’re planning to spend for the so-called “bailout”, especially since a huge chunk of it is in stock value, and selling all that stock at once for cash would cut the price enormously.
The only people who, in the aggregate, have enough money to pay for the Government are the middle class, and the bulk of that are workers and mini-entrepreneurs, who are lower middle class in our system. If you’re gonna get more money from taxes, those are the people you have to get it from. Soaking the rich gets you a dribble, once, and then nothing — and that’s not counting the fact that they’re already rich, and are guaranteed to use their wealth to influence the political process and get tax breaks.
“Rich corporations”? Suuuuure. A business — an entity that buys and sells, whether it’s a corporation or an individual proprietorship — has exactly one source of money: customers. Every penny you take from a business means that either the customer pays more, or the employees, suppliers, and others who get money from the business get less. That includes suppliers of capital goods, the stuff needed to make a business run — buildings and trucks and machines and ballpoint pens — all of which has to be made or built, by workers using materials, all of which has to be paid for. Less money = less capital = fewer employees, less business, less tax paid.
Of course, tax collectors are anxious to obfuscate that, because corporations aren’t tax payers, they’re tax collectors, but if people are unclear on the subject that isn’t evident, so the amount of tax actually being collected isn’t obvious. That’s what corporations were invented for, and the fact that we’ve found other, more profitable, uses for the form since then doesn’t change that in any way. A tax on a corporation (or any other business) is a tax on its customers, employees, and suppliers.
Now I have no doubt that Obama thinks he can do it and is absolutely sincere in his promises. All that means is that he’s too ignorant to pound sand on the subject. ANY tax hike, regardless of how structured, falls mainly on the middle class because they’re the only ones who actually pay taxes in any real sense. That’s why taking money out of the economy invariably reduces its scope. It always happens, it always happens the same way, and it always happens despite clever “structuring” of “progressive” taxation, and it always comes as a huge surprise to the leftoids who expected windfalls from “soaking the rich.” That’s what will happen this time, too.
Regards,
Ric
In a lifeboat that’s 10 days away from land, holding one man and 9 babies, with enough food on board to feed the babies for 20 days or the man and the babies for 10, I suggest feeding the man pulling the oars. If you feed only the babies, they’ll never grow to pull their own.
This has been another Lifeboat Babies Parable by alppuccino
Ric –
Bravo, sir.
Joe certainly wouldn’t be voting: his ID don’t match his voter registration.
Notice that meya is STILL on Joe and his alleged shortcomings.
Trollhammered.
(@Post #157)
That’s a simple economic fact, taught in most colleges around the country (at least in the two I attended), the sheer fact that most leftists don’t understand that is just mind boggling, but at the same time, fits.
See, this is why I’m somewhat optimistic even if the Stuttering Prick wins – he and the press won’t be able to cover O!’s (and his cult members’) innate arrogant nastiness forever, and it will come back to bite them. Hard. Right on the collective reproductive organs.
terran, I have long been convinced that leftoids fall into two categories: those who don’t know or realize that and are therefore easily swayed by the second group, who do know it and don’t give a s*t, considering that their goals are more important and that it’ll all work out in the end. Consider Robert Mugabe, as an extreme example. The man couldn’t have got where he is if he was stupid, and it would take a gobbling cretin not to realize that his policies have enormously reduced the wealth available to everyone in Zimbabwe, including the poor, but he persists. It is the awful other side of Louis L’Amour’s observation: There’s no stopping a man who knows he’s in the right and keeps on coming.
There is, of course, a third group: Opportunists. It would be wrong to call them “leftists” despite the fact that they can utter the slogans with fine ringing sincerity. They have observed that the system provides enormous rewards for power-seekers, and are therefore drawn to it like flies to rotting meat. It is a remarkable fact that, in the long run, such cynical crooks do less damage than the sincere — they are, after all, looking for self-aggrandizement, and presiding over a population of peasants eating grass out of the road gets you no points when you meet with your fellow rulers and despots.
Regards,
Ric
…if he
waswere stupid…The subjunctive is an ill mood.
Regards,
Ric
Obama’s Goon Squads Attempt to Destroy Joe the Plumber…
Remind me again why the media is spending so much time vetting a guy who simply asked a question and not the Senator and his answer? Especially since the answer is the real story here, as it clearly shows Obama’s well known but under reported Mar…
Because they Can? Because it fits their agenda?
I wonder what would happen to me if I asked a tough question of the O! and he flubbed it? I think I owe 75 bucks in back property taxes, I have a couple drunk in publics back in the late 90’s, and I probably have a couple choice comments on the internet that could be used to embarrass the hell outa me. Hmmmmm well least I don’t have any underage daughters that are pregnant.
In response to the spectacle of a man being hounded out of his job because he had the temerity, as a US citizen, to ask a question of a presidential candidate the LAT sees no parallel to the theme of “nasty Republicans†that they have been hammering for two weeks. LAT writers Robin Abcarian and P.J. Huffstutter breezily dismiss the McCarthyite tactics against Wurzelbacher with this line: “Fames comes at a price.â€Â
Really? Did fame come at a price for Bill Ayers?
I mean is Ayers up to date on his taxes? What does Ayers teach in his classrooms? What is Ayers reading list for his classes? What did he do with that 150 million? When did he meet Obama and how do their ideologies contrast?
Fuck all that though does a plumber in Ohio have a tanning bed? Is he up to date on his taxes? BURN HIM!!!!111!!!
This is no longer bias it is fuckin advocacy and propaganda.
Really? Did fame come at a price for Bill Ayers?
Strange that an interview with Bill Ayers would probably be one of the highest rated tv segments in history, yet it doesn’t seem to be an interview aggressively sought by those trying to sell advertising. Bad business people. Weird.
I’d probably watch.
Even Dan Rather tickled Saddam’s balls for TV.
I think, regardless of who wins, we can expect to see some meta-propaganda soon, i.e. propaganda about the propaganda. The NYT (or some other analogous institution) will report on “some” conservative pundits complaining of “liberal bias” and will put on its most-bestest-serious journalist face, commission a study group to investigate the allegations, and then find their coverage fair and balanced, appropriate to the times, etc. Fox however, will get the same shaft treatment as always. Every paper in the country will carry the results front page. Books will be written by Bob Woodward and maybe even Donna Brazille. It will be the final Orwellian attempt to purge conservatives from the media landscape, similar to the way they attempted to downplay Islamic Radicalism as a figment of the winger imagination.
Too ignorant, you say? What about your specific ignorance and the collective ignorance of the Rightoids (“oids”-added for Sir Ignorant Doventails benefit)?
I’ve urged you to continue to extol the virtues of the perfect market, specifically with respect to oil futures. Moreover, I believe you not-so-long-ago posted toward I your explanation of “markets” assuming I was the equivalent of the average Rightoid who posts here on PW, a typical member of the “Duuuuuuh squadron,” as I like to refer to the to home field ignorant.
As I recall I responded that I believed the “noise” in the markets would only reveal themselves after a rather harsh downturn occurred in the markets, or what we Leftoids call the “hissing sound” of air leaving the market’s Magnum XX-sized Trojan which is now broken and discarded bedside. And whose ass is in the air, cheeks splayed, in my sexualized metaphor?
A hint, Sir Ric: Yours. Mine. Jeff’s. Most certainly DD-Darleen’s. Every last American’s once-tight happy-puckering sphincter winkers!
Pointing to $147 per barrel oil, what was it, above all else, the emptied the U.S. economy of its discretionary income? What was it that oh-so recently drove down consumer spending on Chinese made electronics, which we’re now being re-told by George Bush is the very goddamn heartbeat of our precious consumer economy? How many trillions were flushed because stuttering morons, like yourself, have nothing much in your inflated heads but dumb B-school cliches of perfect markets?
Try beating yourself in the face, around the ears and all about the noggin until you come up a list of corrective measures for your “markets.” Consider the broad stroke of pissing away an additional $1-trillion on dumbass banks and stock brokerage houses, and jimmying the M-1 to Great Depression levels as having been tried and failed. Try, fuckin’ R-wingered third-world currency inflation inducing dumbass, give it your best bruised-face shot.
I’ll wait.
Problem with babies is they can’t swim. That’s what we’ve been told anyway.
Problem with babies is they can’t swim. That’s what we’ve been told anyway.
You are exactly right happy, as per usual. Another problem – the man can swim and the babies crap all over themselves and others and yet they are certain that the man will row, instead of jumping out and swimming home.
This is another one of those John Galt stories isn’t it? Like a fable. That whole genre is sort of predicated on the idea that there are lessons what people can learn. People stopped doing that after Katrina I think.
I was kind of going for a cottage industry of econ books, t-shirts and maybe fake baby poop.
Except for that pink floyd baby. I think they gave him acid or something.
“or what we Leftoids”
Is this a watershed moment for PW/thor relations? Did he finally drop the false veneer of his self described “libertarianism”? He finally admitted to being a lefty. I wonder how far left? Soviet communism left? Chinese communism left? European soft socilaist left? Eh, no matter. But the ensuing tossing around of thor by Ric will be fun, I’m guessing.
Ah, one of the fabled Duuuuuuuh squadron has chosen to respond in Ric’s place.
I don’t think Ric will respond, frankly, because he himself hasn’t a fuckin’, like you, clue.
The Duuuuh Squadron does what it’s told, parrots what it hears, and when asked a question replies with a blank stare. Except for Darleen, who points and screams at dark-skinned people.
Well, thor, in the first place your little screed is a bit off base. The subject was taxation, not markets. In the second place, the screed itself is not targeted at me, but at some bigoted caricature you carry around in your head. I am at least as contemptuous as you are of Pure Market theorists, I just don’t get counterproductively insulting when chatting with them. Ric’s Rule No. 1 is It ain’t that simple.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful to present fundamentals to people who may not understand them, nor does it mean that such discussions have to be interlarded with qualifiers and complications that inflate them to MEGO proportions. Nor does it mean that I’m not going to push back against people who are deliberately introducing complications for the specific purpose of hiding or obfuscating the truth. Shouting “tree! tree! Look, another tree! Look at the leaves closely!” is a form of lying when the subject is “forest”.
The one verity that I accept without question in economics and politics I learned under the tutelage of one James J. Ling, who charged me an amount I cannot accurately reckon but which exceeds $100,000 for the instruction. It is this: Strong central control at best does not scale, and at worst does not work at all. There is no human enterprise a bean counter cannot determine would be more efficient if all the overhead, management, and direction came from a single source. There is no record anywhere, any time, of that strategy working for more than a trivially short time. This is the difference between a “bean counter” and an “accountant”.
Libertarian free-marketeers are full of s*t. A corporation can properly be understood as an agency of Government which is allowed to operate with minimal interference and oversight by the central Authority. “Minimal” does not mean “none”. The system will not and cannot work without direction — “regulation”. At the same time, “minimal” is important, because excessive regulation and oversight pulls the corporation directly into the Government, violating the independence and freedom of action that makes it work in the first place. The corporation was originally invented as a way to tax the untaxable — the King of England couldn’t tax Russian peasants, but he could form a Company of Friends to sell stuff to Russian peasants, then tax the Company, and the result was that money flowed from Russian peasants to the King’s coffers. The fact that we have found other uses for that form over time neither obviates nor hides its original purpose, nor should it be allowed to hide the fact that a tax on corporations is a flat or regressive tax. When a poor person buys a gallon of gas from Exxon, five cents or so goes to pay Exxon’s taxes; a rich person pays exactly the same nickel, and yammering about “rich corporations” and “greedy financiers” doesn’t change that in any way.
So you can stop waving colored handkerchiefs around and shouting “look over there!” in an attempt to redirect attention. I used to be a fair amateur stage magician, and it won’t work, at least on me, for very long.
Regards,
Ric
Sendero Luminoso?
Uh, hf, they stopped before Katrina, not after, I think, which is sort of why Katrina in the first place, isn’t it?
And after? Well, yeah, from where I sit, I see people still willing to build and live in houses below sea level. That’s just dumb.
Thor’s emoting again. You figure out your “confusion” yet? You’re a full on socialist. Cool. Why you have been such a pussy for so long to come out and admit it is, well par for the course for you, though. BTW, he responded, dumbass.
Yada, yada, my man, talk taxes if you want, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The fact is when confronted with a scenario that reveals your received ideas as less than adequate you have no answer to a simple question concerning a market reality.
Just as with your assumption that I needed a lecture from you on the function of “markets,” your assumptions of the market as favored pricing apparatus to the core commodity of our economy are laughable, at best, and/or the exemplary logic-less constraint of stubborn ignorance so prevalent among the happily-fucked flag-waving crowd.
What happened to the fundamental metrics of your demand-driven market for $147-per-barrel oil? So quick to label me with your Obama-hippie crowd label, yet, what’s the truth? Who knows more, you or I? And who advised you of the willful-ignorance of the Bushian idiots and “market”-pimps? Was it a massive bubble driven by trading “lines” being offered by the likes of Lehman’s Prime Brokerage services of leverage players with Swiss trading accounts? When it was revealed that merely four Swiss oil-trading firms accounted for 30% of the buy-side trading activity where were your instincts? You have none. Admit it. Because instincts are not what jump from the pages of a textbook.
Slights and backhands aside, at least you fuckin’ try to understand which is the only reason I even bother responding to your posts and have don’t included you on the membership scroll of PW’s Duuuuuuh Squadron.
BTW, your corps-pass-taxation-costs along theory is not wholly correct for it depends if there’s enough pricing elasticity to do so.
Question what is presented to you sometimes.
After Katrina though was when the media decided things weren’t up for discussion no mores and they would just spoonfeed narrative so we wouldn’t get confused so much and Baracky said hey can I play too and NPR said well sure you can Baracky this is gonna be so great just hold one sec while we get rid of Hillary and then we can talk about how funtastic socialisms are in dulcet tones brought to you by Kaiser Permanente and Warner Home Video.
Yeah, I’m a Socialist/Marxist/ObamaCult/Vickian who could teach 99% of you here about capitalism and markets.
What’s that make you dumb-fucks? Dumber at the game than this Fuck, obviously.
I got my toe wet and bought 25M of a pre-refunded non-call tax-free with a 10.7 CY and a 10.5 YTM 17-years out last week. High future inflation rates are being priced into bonds right now, but I like those numbers enough to nibble.
#146 Rusty:
The point is that the government undeer the “O†is not going to permit you to make more than a set number of dollars a year.
At which point anyone with any sense will stop working (if possible) and relax. Why bother if you aren’t going to see anymore of it. Kind of reminds me of a scene in Belenko’s ‘MiG Pilot’ where he worked in a hanger with skilled mechanics who got their quota done in about three hours – then played cards and drank until it was time to go home. Why work harder when you won’t get anything more than a higher quota?
#157 Ric:
Sounds like the old ‘corporations don’t pay taxes, their customers pay taxes’.
Thor, your clown shoes are showing again. Try loosening the hem on your pants. I have never called you dumb. Ever. Matter of fact, I’ve commented on your intellect. There is no doubt, you are more educated than me and more well read. No doubt about this. Your emotional state, however is a fucking mess. All that intellect means squat, however, when you’re a basket case. You’re good at being the populist cheerleader, but I wonder with all that jack you have, what you have ever done, personally, to help the needy. Don’t bother with a recitation of philanthropic deeds as your fantastical series of “tales” undermines any attempt.
#184 Maj. John:
What I remember of Sendero Luminoso was that they were maoists when even the Chinese weren’t, and that woman Lori Berenson, who went down to Peru, worked for them, and got imprisoned for it. She put her money where her mouth was, and paid the price for working to overthrow the government of a country she was ‘just visiting’.
And she got two trials and was found guilty in both.
#188 Haps:
It is the ‘Perfectly Modulated Voice Of Reason’, something Mike Kelly wrote before he died.
‘And to our foreign source, Loathes America and Prays for its Imminent Destruction. What is your take, Loathes?’.
#194 Me:
I can’t find the column, but I think it was titled ‘All Is Lost’ at the WaPo. I’ll keep looking for it.
I miss Mike Kelly. I wish lots of other media people had died instead of him.
I have deliverables open in other windows. I could alt+tab over to them and work on them if I wanted to.
oh. Wrong thread. See this is my day.
#153
While you sit around with your family deciding how much you are going to make. Congress and the Treasury Department have people sitting around deciding how much they’re gonna let you keep.
“Notice that meya is STILL on Joe and his alleged shortcomings.”
Its not a shortcoming of Joe that he wouldn’t be able to vote in a world where your ID is checked against the poor records of the voter registration office. That’s someone else’s shortcoming. Nor is it his shortcoming that it turns out the obama tax plan gets him closer to his goal of making more money and buying out his partner.
Joe that he wouldn’t be able to vote in a world where your ID is checked against the poor records of the voter registration office.
Lie. Joe would have to cast a provisional ballot, which would still be counted.
And you’re still trying to change the subject. This has nothing to do with Joe, and everything to do with your messiah letting his mask slip.
it turns out the obama tax plan gets him closer to his goal of making more money
Too bad Obama’s “tax plan” is also a lie.
“This has nothing to do with Joe”
You aint noticed? Its all about Joe.
“Too bad Obama’s “tax plan†is also a lie.”
Well, no point discussing it then.
You aint noticed? Its all about Joe.
Liebot.
Well, no point discussing it then.
You’d like that, I’m sure.
Too bad it’s not going to happen, liebot.
You are really starting to take on a kind of creepy, stalker vibe, thor. The guy who won’t stop screaming at the girl about how stupid she is not to like him.
Seriously, you might need some help, dude.
“I’ve commented on your intellect. There is no doubt, you are more educated than me and more well read. No doubt about this. ”
FDR had a bunch of super-SMRT guys around him, too.
The economy kept not being fixed.
It’s like it wasn’t up to them or something.
Happy hunting on those investments, thor.
Maybe you should put those arithmetic skills to work adding up Obama’s numbers, meya. You might get an unpleasant surprise. Which is why you won’t do it.
Meya, if you’re still here, this would be a good place to start.
I mean, assuming you can squeeze it in to your busy schedule. I know that savaging some working stiff who had the temerity to ask your Messiah an embarassing question is way more important.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YNyn1XGyWg
Ric, this is a pretty good explanation of the basics of a MBS. It doesn’t explain payback windows or PSA speeds but at least it shows how a MBS is formed.
BMoe, hi, stupid.
Spies, get a job of some sort.
Spies, get a job of some sort.
Got one, leechboi.
Get a life of some sort. And a girlfriend. Preferably ones that aren’t being being financed by your daddy.
thor,
Grandmother. Egg. Sucking. You have this concept?
Regards,
Ric
Baracky’s tax plan is a redistributionist scheme to take money from productive people and give it to people who don’t pay any taxes. I would have thought this was clear. It’s the cornerstone of socialism like what they preach at that church Baracky went to for like forever.
ohnoes but if you get a second job we won’t get our sweet Baracky monies next year. oh. Good catch.
The saddest thing Happy, is that after the government takes a chunk for themselves, the stuff the end up sending to the 40% really isn’t gonna change anyone’s life that much.
Except, of course, those people who are dividing up the pie.
I know if I had a pie, I wouldn’t trust the likes of Charlie Rangel to divide it up.
Really very resouceful and informative post. Find your best Desoto Bankruptcy Attorney in Desoto, Texas.
Ha, I wouldn’t put Charlie Rangel anywhere near the pie.
Regards,
Shelby