In Ohio, a concerned middle-class plumber asked Barack Obama the toughest question he has been asked in 21 months.
He failed the test.
Obama's answer (besides the fact that it was confusing, misleading, filled with empty promises, and was an attempt to play to the cameras) was as close to Socialism as you can get without actually saying the word. Obama even said that he would eliminate the capital gains tax. However, during this presidential campaign, Mr. Obama has vowed to increase the capital gains tax from 15% to 20-28%. How many lies does this guy have up his sleeves?
It took a hard-working plumber to show us the inaccuracies, and frankly the dangerous mindset, of Obama's political mindset when it comes to our tax dollars.
Obama is promising us the moon, but he needs our money to make it happen. His spending plan has trickled into the 1.3 trillion dollar range as of yesterday. Don't believe he will raise your taxes? Look at his record. He hasn't found a tax increase he hasn't liked.
Listen to the whole conversation as Obama rambles on and pulls ideas out of thin air. Need a vote? Make stuff up! Listen especially to his view of "spreading the wealth around."
Listen to Joe the Plumber's take on this conversation. It takes an average man to breakthrough the rhetoric and expose a dangerous political mindset.
7 comments:
SOCIALISM is not an evil word, Ryan.
Please get real.
The bailout plan is socialist.
Our current heath system is socialist.
Full on socialism with a central controls on the economy is bad because it takes away incentives to produce more. That is not happening in the US. Neither Obama nor McCain are proposing policies to bring this about. Conservatives can just keep yelling "socialism" or "communist" without really having any idea what is going on. Some aspects work (Sweden's health care system - before the Iraq war and the massive influx of refugees) while others don't. Economics is a crazy science. There's no real reason to run around screaming "Capitalism Good, Socialism Bad" like some caveman.
Republican ideology is stale because of their misplaced reverence for Reagan. He was a PRAGMATIST. The economic climate during his presidency called for broad deregulation. Inefficient and cumbersome regulations were strangling the market. Now, things are different. Deregulation is not always the key, it was a pragmatic policy. It worked great in THAT situation, but it's not just a foolproof panacea to jumpstart economic growth. McCain thinks the key to everything is to deregulate. It's not. In some situations, yes, but not all.
Trickle-down is economic acupuncture. Great in theory, but there's no real evidence that it works because you can't insure that people at the top will invest it in the right economies. What if they buy capital with it? It just doesn't work that way. The rich pay more because they have benefited more from the economic and security conditions of the market and the state. They pay more in taxes to support both government programs that will continue to encourage the situations that allowed them to make money and to help create opportunities for those that have been dealt a worse hand.
McCain is nuts to keep saying American corporations have a massive tax burden. That's absurd. The government knows most corporations don't even pay taxes because of massive loopholes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1249465620080812?sp=true
Sorry about my biased source (since the entire media is a liberal bastion of pinko love).
Now of course, if you're one of those restorationists that is all about returning the American nation to the 1890s, I can't really argue against you. I refuse to even go down that path.
One candidate is responsible. One isn't. You can't possibly give across the board tax cuts and put a total freeze on spending like McCain wants. Guess why the economy is going to get even rougher. BECAUSE no one is spending. Balancing the budget is far more of a science than an across the board halt to spending and tax cuts for all.
When people don't have health care WE ALL PAY MORE. If you allow them to buy into a plan that offers preventative care, we won't pay so much in treating curable diseases. It's far more costly to treat people in the emergency room for ailments that could have been prevented by yearly doctor visits.
I'm really quite lost if you're really going to rally against Obama as a socialist and jump on McCain's deregulation train to stagnation and MASSIVE economic failure. You have to be nuanced, not dogmatic.
Josh,
I really don't know what else I can say in regards to Barack Obama and Socialism. I'm not even sure what it is that you see in his plans. How could anyone of sound intellect believe in the ideologies that roll of this man's tongue?
What do you call "spreading the wealth?" This philosophy of government has never worked. It destroys the middle-class. It produces a stagnate economy. It centralizes the government. It redistributes the citizens (raised) tax monies to government bureaucracies. It destroys free market capitalism that has proven to build the most successful, productive and longestlasting middle-class system. It breeds poverty. It preaches to the people that there are no reasons to further themselves because of a government that is used as a constant crutch. It expands government duties. It takes over individual powers and rests them in the State. It divides and conquers.
Barack Obama, with a naive nation intently listening, has tricked us into believing that the government is the cure-all, end-all. Somehow, with the advancement of liberalism, the American public has bought into the idea that the government owes us something. That everything under the sun is a right. Obama wants more government control of the economy, healthcare, education, social security, pension plans, payrolls, taxes, energy, and numerous other areas of government.
Obama endores comparable worth, which would subject the private sector to that of the federal civil service system. Government would classify our jobs, what we earn, what we are worth. He wants to spend 150 billion on an energy plan. Expand health insurance by 65 billion. Establish a 60 billion investment bank infastructure. He wants to REGULATE profits for drug companies, health insurers, and energy firms. Establish a mortgage-interest tax credit. Obama's plan, according to the Wall Street Journal, will add up to 39.6% personal income tax, 52% combined income and payroll tax, a 28% capital-gains tax, a 39.6% dividends tax, and a 55% estate tax.
Barack Obama wants to hike social security taxes, double the capital gains tax and restore the death tax to its highest levels. Why should the government decide what needs people need? Why should I give my money, that I worked hard for, so that an Obama administration can pass it along to abortion clinics, dead-beat dads, compulsive welfare recipients, and other broken programs?
The Urban Institute Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center says that McCain's policy would cut taxes by 628 billion over 10 years, while Obama's would raise them 734 billion over that same period. In Obama's Cook County, he voted for a sales tax of 10.25. The highest of any major city in the U.S. He voted to RAISE taxes on wage-earners 90 times.
Wall Street Journal: "Barack Obama's tax plan is the opposite of supply-side economics. He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities.
Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits "refundable." Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer pays nothing in federal income taxes, the government would pay him the whole $1,000."
Obama's tax plan alone would add 3.4 trillion dollars to the national debt in 10 years.
This is straight from his plan. Raise individual income taxes, increasing the top two income tax rates, with the top rate climbing by 13%, to almost 40%. This tax increase particularly hits small business, which creates the most new jobs in America. Raise the top capital gains tax rate by 33%, to 20%.He would raise Social Security payroll taxes by 16% to 32% for families earning over $250,000 a year. He would consequently arbitrarily punish these families with an effective real return from Social Security of less than 0%, while making only a minor dent in the long term Social Security deficit. Obama would reinstate the death tax (estate tax) now being phased out under current law, with a top tax rate of 45%. The Obama health plan includes a new payroll tax on employers to pay for health insurance. Obama would impose several specified tax increases on corporations, including a new so-called windfall profits tax on oil companies that would be carried over to the consumer, unless you don't use oil Josh. 97,065 carpenters, 110,908 police officers, 254,992 nurses, 208,562 postsecondary teachers and 237,000 dentists would see tax increases, if the earnings cap was successfully eliminated. 10.3 million workers would see an average of $5,650 taken from their paycheck and given to government programs.
It is a simple fact Josh. No matter how many times you try to spin it into something that is "progressive" for America. You said before that FDR spent, spent, spent. Last time I checked, America wasn't in a depression, or anything close to it. Hell, we aren't even in a recession yet.
You support a candidate that wants to GROW government. He wants to take contol of certain sectors of our economy and pay for them by taking from the guy who got lucky enough to be successful. You support a candidate who believes taxes and spending are the answers to economic success. You support a candidate who wants to socialize our medicine, our pensions, our education, our economic policies, and give central power to the government rather than power to you and I.
Seriously, I cannot even comprehend your political ideology. My money is my money. My voice is my voice. My decisions are my decisions.
Not Barack Obama's. Not the Democratic majority. Not the socialistic tendancies of the left.
I may need to get real, but someone needs to look reality in the face and see the truth for what it is.
Big government. Big spending. Big taxes. Big lower class. Bi problems.
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."
– Norman Thomas, American socialist
Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman agrees with me and Barack about government spending.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Oh seriously? Well, then that changes everything :/
Josh, I wouldn't care if Abraham Lincoln rose from the dead and agreed with you and Barack about government spending. We could sit here all day and play "He Agrees with me, He agrees with me not" and pluck our flower petals.
You believe in a theory that opens the door for the government to take MORE and MORE of our assets and control MORE and MORE of our civil liberties.
We do NOT need to grow government bureaucracy. We do NOT need to spend, spend, spend. We do NOT need to raise taxes...on ANYONE. I don't care how much money you have or how successful the government thinks you are. We do NOT need a centralized government that takes away the power of the individual (what the Founding Father's gave us) and give power to the State. We do NOT need a destabilized middle-class and class warfare. We DO not need a stagnate economy. We do NOT need a liberal administration that tells the American people what we need and tries to convince us that they owe us something for their "good" deeds.
We need less government.
Not a hard concept.
By the way, Paul Krugman has been a HUGE critic of Barack Obama for at least the last year or so.
Shall I post the several dozen Op-Ed articles?
Government in itself isn't bad. Bad government is bad. Krugman calls for spending on updated infrastructure among other things. Providing the option to buy into government provided health care is not infringing on civil liberties. Keeping Americans in fear and telling them we need total access to library records, nearly limitless phone tapping, searching laptops of Americans upon re-entry into the US is what you need to watch out for. Those are infringements on our liberty. The Republicans (and most of Congress sadly) don't care about our right to privacy or providing a warrant to illegally collect dirt on citizens. Torture, skirting due process, secret prisons? Vigilance is needed against true encroachments. Building bridges and making sure everyone has access to some sort of health care (so we can all save money in the long run) isn't treading upon our civil liberties. By the way, the Supreme Court has upheld that free access to abortion services falls under the umbrella of the inherent right to privacy. That's a woman's right to control her body.
I know Krugman has had his criticisms of Obama, as have I. But as far as this financial crisis goes this economic "whitecoat" is firmly with Obama.
Krugman may be with Obama, but so are socialists, communists, marxists, liberal Democrats and those "big government types."
That isn't great company. Not by any means.
As far as an Obama administration, I think my numbers speak for themselves. I'm not going to list (because you seem to be blind to those facts) about how an Obama administration will fringe on our individualism. Believe whatever political ideology you want. The Europeans would love you.
As far as abortion: You can't say that you are against abortions, but you preference choice. That is just morally irresponsible and not even logical. Again, I do not wish to debate this issue with you, but it is a child...not a choice.
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