Thursday, October 16, 2008

Meet Joe the Plumber

Here he is:



I can see why McCain brought this up now, and how he probably wanted people to find this video on the internet and see it played on cable news.

Joe looks like he's pissed off (although maybe that's just the sun in his eyes) and that he's not buying any of what Obama's selling. Obama looks like he's filibustering the guy instead of talking to him, and he gives an incomprehensible answer to Joe's suggestion of a flat tax. Obama's core philosophy, which he repeats over and over, is that people who are successful should pay more. He believes in "progressive" taxation, and that's why he's against a flat tax.

Anyway, it looks like Obama recovers pretty well at the end, and actually gets a round of applause from the crowd. But this particular video ends before the exchange is complete.

UPDATE: I replaced the NY Post video with the one from YouTube, which is more complete. Thanks, Jill.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

here's the link for the complete exchange...I'm totally an Obama mama but I think Obama was great in the exchange

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPBxiVxVEw

and it's being reported that this guy isn't even registered to vote!

Kenny Wyland said...

Thanks for the video of this, I was just about to go looking for it. I don't think that Obama was filibustering him in the beginning, I thought all of his comments made sense. He told him that he'd pay the same taxes on the first $250,000 and then a little bit higher tax on the last $10,000 or $25,000. Then he tried to make the point that if Joe had been living under Obama's tax plan for the last 8 years he would have been able to get to this point in his career much faster and tries to explain that this is more about "us" than it is about "me."

In my opinion, if a person is making $250,000 a year (and in Joe's case, doing well enough to purchase a company who is making that much) then they really do have the revenue to sport an extra 3% on the amount above $250,000. In this very specific case, I'm pretty sure he's going to need to make a lot more than $250,000 to really trigger the extra tax because of the many tax deductions that are available to small businesses and home owners (assuming he owns a home).

Kenny Wyland said...

Apparently, Joe the Plumber doesn't and won't actually fall into the +$250,000 category of higher taxes but hopes to in the future. Don't we all? :)