Comments on: Reality Checking "Joe The Plumber"

CBS Evening News: Now Famous Ohio Man Owes Back-Taxes; Was Called By Campaign Officials

[gippybear]

Joe The Plumber is kickin'' Senator Stinky''s arse!

Keep makin'' fun of this guy! Everyone in America is watching!

Senator Stinky is "fighting for the middle class", and at the same time POKING US IN THE EYE!

How stupid! And that''s a Harvard Education? Keep the Change!

[newsjunky5]

Explain to me how giving Joe a tax cut is better, while you are making the businesses and customers he is dependent on less able to buy his services?
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Joe makes $40K/yr. He is strapped. People in his position go into foreclosure if prices rise just a little. Oil jumping 400% in price, for example. He has no home, maybe can''t keep his car going to get to work. When the same thing happens to a real person with a $250K/yr+ income life goes on, only maybe without the luxury car. They buy an economy model instead. This is much less harmful to the economy. The wealthy guy''s tax wouldn''t have to go up either, if the guys running the country weren''t spending $1Billion just to ferry diplomats around Iraq by Blackwater, to repay a contribution favor.
And besides, a small OR large business is better off not buying Joe''s services, because HE''S NOT REALLY A PLUMBER!

[gippybear]

Senator Stinky''s wife is eating steamed lobster and Iranian caviar, and the Drive-Bys are worried about Poor Joe!
Hey, how ''bout that Charlie (I can''t speak spanish) Wrangle? I hear he has some TAX PROBLEMS, too!

[martel_v]

Senator Stinky is still a mystery; but we know all about this guy! LOL - Posted by gippybear

Sure he''s stinky, but some people just sweat more than others. Besides, he went 5 years without a bathtub or shower in the Hanoi Hilton.

[mike_c_nh]

ibsteve2u

I have to head out and pick up the wife. Had a great time conversing with you.

One thing about your plan...who decides the value of all these assets? Property, Cars , etc. We already have the proof that that unchecked agencies, govt or public, will screw that up.


I''ll look for your reply a bit later.

Last Thought....No matter what our political differences folks...Please Vote!

It is shame that we elect our president (dem or repub) with barely half of the eligible people in the country voting. Everyone get out and cast a ballot on Nov. 4.

[martel_v]

If you have a better solution , plase offer it up. It is always easy to critisize when you have no solution yourself. - Posted by Mike_C_NH

I have a decidedly non-flat tax solution; but you want rich people to pay a lower tax rate in order that you and all of the rest of us who aren''t rich can pay a higher tax rate, so no matter what I described for you, it would fall on deaf ears such that you could say the same thing to the next person who understood the result of a flat tax scenario.

My solution is to go back to a graduated tax rate instead of the nearly flat tax rate we now have. I wouldn''t propose that we go back to the 90% plus top tax rate of the Eisenhower administration, but on the other hand, that was the fastest period of growth in the last 60 years.

Contrary to the propaganda of fantasy-voodoo Reaganomics ideologues, relatively high tax rates for those who earn the highest salaries produce faster (and, btw, REAL) economic growth. This is precisely because it makes more sense under those circumstances to limit one''s own income and keep it invested in business enterprise growth instead of converting it to personal income and then investing that in the stock market (which produces virtually no business growth).

And for the record, I apparently make more money than you do.

[strangeworld]

Obamas tax proposals will not "redistribute" the wealth...they''ll just return the balance of wealth to where it was before the republicans took over and made getting rid of the middle class their goal. Under republican administrations since Reagan, the tax burden has shifted to the middle class and away from business while at the same time the wealth in the US has shifted to the wealthy. Those shifts are partly to blame for our financial crisis. We need to get back to where we were just a few short years ago.

[krisconser]

How does anyone know that Obama won''t tax the value of business? Has anyone asked him? Pinned him down on it? Most of the businesses defined as "small" make over $250,000.Obama''s liberal and Marxist views scare me. If he wants power in a Marxist society, he should run for election in Russia or Cuba. Better yet, he should take his family and live over there for about a year (with only $500) and then come back and we''ll see if he still has those views. With $500 he would probably still be the richest guy there. Of course, he would have to give that money to the Russian or Cuban gvt and let them decide how to distibute that wealth. If he became president, inflation would go up (can you say Carter?), people would be so overburdened by taxes, people would be layed off, even more companies would go overseas for less taxes and cheaper labor (no unions overseas), and you would also see persection of Christians and Jews like never before. Also voices will be silenced to implement that(no more talk radio). If we get universal health care, life will be cheapened. After all, why should the gvt pay for an older person to have a necessary transplant, when a younger, more ablebodied worker (taxpayer) should get it? Our founding fathers and mothers understood that our rights come from God, and the state''s job was to protect those rights. We are headed to a society that worships gvt as god, and if the states give rights, they can take them away.

[gippybear]

Senator Stinky is still a mystery; but we know all about this guy!

LOL

[mike_c_nh]

Barbi,

Rangel is in charge of the Tax Code for the United States! And he fails to report $75,000 income over 20 years!! but you dont have any idea about it. Why is that?

[mike_c_nh]

For You Barbi

WASHINGTON (AP) %u2014 Even when Rep. Charles Rangel tries to explain how he got into his tax mess, he mangles the facts so much it''s easy to see how his accounts %u2014 and accountants %u2014 are muddled. This from the lawmaker who has such a big say in determining who pays taxes and how much. The chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee spent the past week reeling from a series of embarrassing revelations: He failed to report about $75,000 in rental income over two decades from a beach villa he owns in the Dominican Republic; he owes about $5,000 in back taxes to the government; he never knew he paid no interest on the villa''s mortgage for more than a decade. The New York Democrat is resisting calls from Republicans that he should lose his committee post, among the most coveted on Capitol Hill.[3] Rep. Charles B. Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, owes more than $10,000 in unpaid taxes - a sum that may increase, his attorneys said Wednesday. Attorney Lanny Davis said Mr. Rangel, New York Democrat, plans to file amended federal, state and city tax returns for 2004 through 2006, and will work to obtain and review his tax returns for the past 20 years to determine if he has further tax liability. Mr. Rangel''s tax problems are the result of his failing to disclose $75,000 in rental income he received on a villa he has owned for two decades in a Dominican Republic resort.

[mbourn2]

lollll..way to evade the question of whether all Americans receive the same value from expenditures upon the nation''''s defense, social programs, and infrastructure.

As much fun as it has been attempting to get you Republicans to think outside of your wallets, duty calls.

Bye.


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Posted by ibsteve2u

It has been fun my friend. These pages would be a lot better if there was more of this level of discussion and less of the name calling. Take care.

[missingamerica]

A common defense is one of the few legitimate roles our founding fathers intended for the federal government. A common defense to provide the safe free environment I mentioned. Again, what you do with the freedom you are given is up to you.

Posted by mbourn2 at 03:07 PM : Oct 17, 2008


lollll..way to evade the question of whether all Americans receive the same value from expenditures upon the nation''s defense, social programs, and infrastructure.

As much fun as it has been attempting to get you Republicans to think outside of your wallets, duty calls.

Bye.

[sem042004]

You call this a "Reality Check". Joe the Plumber admitting that he will get a tax cut by Obama is not a reality check. Reality is that Obama will raise taxes on the "rich" and businesses and redistribute wealth (the entire premise). Businesses are where we buy products and services. Taxes come straight out of their bottom line and go right back into the prices of products and services, or by cutting jobs, cutting costs, moving production to other nations, etc. Rich people own businesses and own stock in businesses. The higher taxes they are charged will only move them to require higher dividends from the businesses they invest in. Or even worse, they will just move their investment capital and themselves otu of our country and into more tax friendly nations. In the end, the consumer always pays for tax increases. It''s a closed loop.

Explain to me how giving Joe a tax cut is better, while you are making the businesses and customers he is dependent on less able to buy his services?

[mbourn2]

You Republicans are quite fond of charging "what the market will bear" and demand "fair market value".

If the military were privatized, and the task was turned over to a Republican running a mercenary outfit - say, Blackwater, for example - would you or would you not expect Blackwater to charge the wealthier individual with more assets a higher fee for their protection?

Now be careful in how you wiggle...if you trap yourself in a web of deceit about how business owners would charge a flat fee to everyone, you will make all of your arguments laughable....

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If each individual were going out and hiring his own personal security guard to watch his house, that might be true but that is not how it works. I don''t know too many Republicans who believe that government has no legitimate function. A common defense is one of the few legitimate roles our founding fathers intended for the federal government. A common defense to provide the safe free environment I mentioned. Again, what you do with the freedom you are given is up to you.

[missingamerica]

under that, are you up for elimating sales taxes real estate taxes...etc And applying your same formula to your state & local tax burdens ?

Posted by Mike_C_NH at 02:59 PM : Oct 17, 2008

Food should never be taxed, so a sales tax on food is out of the question.

To some extent the rest happens now at the local level; most schools are funded by real estate taxes, so the people with the higher assets have the best schools.

I would insist that all schools receive Federal funding to make up the difference, in that case.

Why?

Because creating a hereditary class of people who get ALL of the advantages ALL of the time yields us one group of people who know from the evidence that America is NOT the land of "equal opportunity", and on the other hand yields us people like those who comprise the leadership of the Republican Party.

As current events make clear, the latter''s credo of not allowing anything - not religion, not morality, not ethics, not patriotism, not even the law (in the form of a license to practice plumbing, for instance) come between themselves and wealth accumulation is destroying America.

[mike_c_nh]

barbi,

are you actually paying attention to what is happening in this country, or is "joe" the biggest thing on the entire polical landscape to you.

ACORN is under FBI invetigation in 11 states for possible voter registration fraud.

I appologize to Congressmen Rangle for mis-spelling his name. But again are you so blinded by partisanship than you only see things on the other side of the street?

[bcdwriter]

Oh, for God sakes, Joe is a liar - McCain and Palin are liars - the Republicans are liars - and ALL OF THESE LIARS ARE BEING REVEALED FOR WHO THEY REALLY ARE IN AMERICA! EVERYTHING these people do, or say, it BACKFIRES on them! People like ''Joe,'' and every other lying racist American in the U.S.A would rather "cut-off-their-nose-to-spite-their-face" by preferring to live BELOW what they have THAN TO VOTE FOR A BLACK MAN WHO HAS THE ANSWERS TO MAKE THEIR, AND EVERY AMERICAN LIVES BETTERS! Who in the hell do YOU think is responsible for these revelations? There IS a HIGHER POWER than ourselves that MAN CANNOT CONTROL!

[missingamerica]

I respectfully disagree with your point of view. A firefighter gets paid to provide a "fire free" environment for everyone. What you do with it is up to you.

Posted by mbourn2 at 02:57 PM : Oct 17, 2008

Riddle me this:

You Republicans are quite fond of charging "what the market will bear" and demand "fair market value".

If the military were privatized, and the task was turned over to a Republican running a mercenary outfit - say, Blackwater, for example - would you or would you not expect Blackwater to charge the wealthier individual with more assets a higher fee for their protection?

Now be careful in how you wiggle...if you trap yourself in a web of deceit about how business owners would charge a flat fee to everyone, you will make all of your arguments laughable....

[mike_c_nh]

ibsteve2u,

Sinc eI am under Mr. Obama''s supposed line, I am not avoiding.

I fully believe in paying taxes for what we really need. I dont believe that the government needs to collect it and re-distribute it in whatever means they feel are right. They should get what they need to do the coutry''s fundamental buisness. I was looking at your propsal...not too bad (i have not had a chance to cryunch any numbers yet, but not bad)...under that, are you up for elimating sales taxes real estate taxes...etc And applying your same formula to your state & local tax burdens ?