up is the new down

When referring to Obama's tax policy, Sarah Palin said in an interview with CNN:

"I'm not going to call him a socialist, but as 'Joe the Plumber' has said, it looks like socialism to him," she said of Joe "the plumber" Wurzelbacher.

The GOP ticket and their supporters have invoked Joe the Plumber numerous times ever since the Ohio man confronted Obama about his tax policy in an impromptu campaign moment.

Palin said Wurzelbacher is representative of "Jane the engineer and Molly the dental hygienist and Chuck the teacher."

Where do I start?

1) According to the ever reliable Wikipedia, "Economically, socialism denotes an economic system of state ownership and / or worker ownership of the means of production and distribution."

How exactly is a 3% increase on the top tax bracket a move toward state and/or worker ownership of the means of production and distribution? Do they consider Bill Clinton a socialist? Because this is the very plan he implemented in the 1990s, the decade that left us with surpluses as far as the eye could see.

2) Does she really believe that Jane the engineer and Molly the dental hygienist and Chuck the teacher are making more than $250,000 a year? Can you say "out of touch"?

3) Let's assume Joe the Plumber really was a licensed plumber, who really was seeking "to buy a company that makes" (his words) up to $280,000 per year (none of which turns out to be true). Under Obama's tax plan, Joe would see tax breaks not tax increases.

Obama's plan is to restore Bill Clinton's tax on people making $250,000 per year in personal income not in gross business receipts. Assuming Joe's new company has expenses and investments exceeding $29,999 per year, it is safe to assume Joe will not yield a personal income higher than $250,000. Therefore, he would see no tax increase under Obama's plan and would see a tax cut if he makes less than $250,000. In addition, as a small business owner, he would receive a 50% tax credit for each employee's healthcare costs and would pay no capital gains tax on business investments.

Lastly, and most importantly, his customer base would also see personal income tax breaks making them more able to afford his services.

The real Joe Wurzelbacher, who makes closer to $40,000 per year would net a personal income tax break under Obama that's three to seven times larger the one he would net under McCain.

So how is it that Sarah Palin is still holding up Joe the Plumber as an example of the "real American" the McCain/Palin campaign is trying to help? You got me. But then this is the same woman who when found to have abused her power by violating the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act said, "I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there."

Up is indeed the new down in Palin World.

nobody does it better

couldn't have said it better myself

To the (New York Times) Editor:

Fair taxation isn’t about “redistributing the wealth” — it’s about giving back to the great country that gave you the opportunity to benefit so greatly.

It’s not about taking money from “Joe the Plumber.” It’s about making sure that “Joe’s Mega-Plumbing Incorporated” gives back to the country and the people who gave him:

• Roads and bridges for his trucks to roll on.
• Support for research for his latest plumbing equipment.
• Public education so he can have a well-trained work force.
• Markets so he can raise capital.
• Police and firefighters so his business is protected.
• Health care so the employees who helped him build his business can stay on the job.
• Freedom so that he can build his business creatively.

If “Joe” has been able to become wealthy because of the bounty of America, then he should pay his fair share back to America — that is patriotic.

Daryl Altman
Lynbrook, N.Y., Oct. 16, 2008

i want my country back!

John McCain and Sarah Palin desperately want us to see the danger in electing a risky, liberal, unknown Democrat as our next President. Someone who doesn't see the world as they see it. Someone who is so different from "us" that he can't be trusted. McCain went off the rails last night with his divisive politics in the last (thank God) presidential debate by trying to link Obama to Acorn, accusing Acorn, and by association Obama, as "now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." Seriously? A network of community organizations working to enfranchise poor people who are predominately minorities and first generation Americans by helping them get housing and voting rights? Who exactly is trying to undermine our democracy, Mr. McCain?

What happened to my America? My land of opportunity? What's happening to our huddled masses yearning to breathe free?

I have lived in the Northeast, the West and in the South. I have lived in Uganda, Indonesia, and France. And if there is one thing I have learned over and over and over again is that there is far more that unites us than divides us. People are people all over the world. And I am sick to death of the Republican Party trying to tell me otherwise.

From 1986 to 1999 I traveled extensively throughout the South, even living in New Orleans for a few months. But things changed after 2000. Life took me in a new direction, mostly overseas, but politics, too, took me away. We were no longer a rich, diverse country full of vibrant stories and varied experiences. We were red states and blue states, liberal coasts and a conservative South and heartland. We were divided by our different backgrounds, no longer united by love of our country and what it stood for.

In my college and post college days, the South was the land of Athens, Georgia, REM and the B-52s, The Indigo Girls' sweet ode Southland in the Springtime, Flannery O'Connor's Everything that Rises Must Converge, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Alice Walker's everything. It was muffalettas, The Maple Street Book Shop and the Neville Brothers at Tipitina's in New Orleans. It was the juicest fried chicken at Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room in Savannah. It was K.T. Oslin and Lyle Lovett, and Gordon Parks's gorgeous photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. It was my first Krispy Kreme donut, hot off the presses in North Carolina, and the mist that rose up and over the Habitat houses we were building in the Appalachian hills of Pikeville, Kentucky. It was flying over the New River in West Virginia with eighty-five-year old Five Dollar Frank, his one-engine Cessna, his two hearing aids, and my terrified sister. In 1986, I fell in love with the South. In 2000, we broke up.

In 2005, deep into the Bush and Karl Rove years, I drove with my sister and brother-in-law from Washington, DC to Hilton Head, South Carolina. Stopping at a roadside restaurant in North Carolina, my brother-in-law declared somewhat ominously, "this is Bush Country." At once, I felt dread that we would be exposed for the Northeast Liberals we were but also an overwhelming sense of loss. Because I once knew, even just a little, but since lost a place that holds so much magic and mystery, memories of struggle and despair from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, and yet also a persistent sense of hope and renewal. A place so rich with history, creativity, culture, and beauty it can leave you breathless.

But a place that didn't seem to want my blue self around anymore.

I miss my country. I want my country back. Not just the blue states, but the purple ones and yes, the red ones, too. I want the rugged coastlines of the Northwest and the raucous fun of New Orleans. I want the gentile and rhythmic life of Savannah and the Low Country. I want New York City jazz and Nashville, Tennessee country; Seattle, Washington mountain grandeur and small town Minnesota warmth. And I want to be accepted in all of these places as simply a fellow American.

I want this:

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too:

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States.

We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

-Barack Obama, 2004

I want my country back.

from the maelstrom, a way forward?

Conservatives are abandoning the increasingly reckless McCain/Palin ticket with, well, reckless abandon. George Will, David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, David Frum, Christopher Buckley (son of conservative icon William F. Buckley), among others, have all come out in recent weeks to denounce the selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate and/or the recent ugly attacks on Senator Obama. A battle between the social conservatives and intellectual conservatives threatens to divide the Republican Party in the runup to November 4.

In the midst of their own maelstrom, seeing the writing on the wall, many conservatives are now trying to panic voters with premonitions that their (their as in the conservatives') worst fear is about to be realized - socialism is at the gates! Democrats will bring big government! Spending! Higher Taxes! The New Deal 2.0 is upon us! With their dying gasp, and collapsing under the weight of the largest expansion of government in the last forty years (brought to us by a Republican President), they are warning us against evil, big government Democrats.

Deep breath, everyone (if you still can, that is). In the mind of at least this progressive, I have no desire to nationalize our country's banks. At least not permanently. As an omnivore, I am not opposed to hunting or gun-owning hunters. If a woman can't decide after six months (and her health, including mental, is not in jeopardy), I think she should go ahead and have the kid. I believe in free and fair trade and in competition - in business and in schools. I want an efficient government that doesn't interfere with my private life. I have been known to go to church.

I am in favor of short-term government spending to stimulate the economy, but I much prefer a vibrant, market-based economy that yields tax revenues through good jobs at good wages. I want universal healthcare, but I prefer it be supplied by the private sector through fair and transparent competition.

Surely, we can find some common ground.

We have all lived through (or heard about) the swing from an overregulated, overtaxed society (remember rotary dial telephones?) to the current crisis of deregulation, stagnant wages for the middle class and the moral hazzard of golden parachutes. We have all learned lessons.

Like most things, think feminism or free trade, the pendulum swings wildly from one end (no suffrage, chastity belts/Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act) to the other (women need men like fish need bicycles/massive plant closings) before settling in the moderate middle.

I suspect the same will occur with fair banking regulations and universal healthcare. And I believe Senator Obama is just the man to make that happen.

Obama is, at heart, a pragmatist. A man who relies on experts and research, but also on first hand accounts from the people affected. He is not penned in by ideology, which is why many liberals find him frustrating and many conservatives can't launch an effective attack against him.

And, contrary to McCain's attacks, he can take on his own party. After all, he took down the lions of the modern Democratic Party - Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Maybe we can finally look back together, see what has worked and what has not, and then look to the future to make a way forward.

lesson learned?

This is a very interesting article to re-read in light of recent events:
Confronting Ghosts of 2000 in South Carolina , by Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times, Octboer 19, 2007

In that fateful primary election, Senator McCain decided to go negative against then Governor Bush in response to the gutter level attacks he was under. The strategy backfired, as it has this time. But interestingly, this time McCain was not provoked to go negative. He was just losing. So what did he really learn in South Carolina?

if you want to live like a republican, vote democrat

Which political party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole? Here’s an experiment.