The Urban Grind

Via the Powerline Forum

I AM Jane the Plumber

My husband and I don’t make $250K but we hope to someday.

We’ve lived below our means in order to save money beyond the 401Ks we have.

I’ve been going to cooking school in hopes of starting a small food business in the next year or two.

My hopes have been dashed by the prospect of an Obama Presidency.

We’d be risking so much of our money to start the business. Someone forgot to tell Obama that most small businesses fail. To think that if I were actually successful at it (can earn more than $250K) I’d be taxed out of existence, makes the risks way too high to be worth it. Therefore, no new small business for me.

Here’s another one, via The Armchair Energist

I am a high school graduate.

I didn’t have enough money to go to college.

I worked side jobs until I saw a commercial for computer programming school. I applied to go, got a small grant, took out a student loan and went there to learn to program.

I got my first ‘computer’ job at a small company on the second shift and made $2.75 per hour.

I was able to work my way through a few lowly computer jobs until I became a partner of a small computer programming firm.

Three years after I graduated programming school, I started my own programming company.

During the 80’s, I had as many as 50 clients and 4 employees.

Toward the end of the 1980’s, the economic recession took hold and I lost practically everything.

I took a job with a former client. I spent nearly ten years as an employee until I stalled at position #5. I left to pursue other interests.

I was a part-time consultant as I planned to open a food franchise. I secured the exclusive rights for the franchise in New York and New Jersey.

Three years after I left my staff job, I opened a restaurant and added the franchise component. We opened to rave reviews.

After a seventeen year run-up in the restaurant market in New Jersey, the market turned. Business started to fall off and by late 2007, we could no longer sustain the restaurant and sold the business a few months later.

As you know, today, I am a blogger. It was a natural progression of a person who is a mix of entrepreneur, IT professional and political junkie. I am not making a ton of cash, but I see a path and I am following it. I am passionate about what I do and see a way to make some money doing it. I have the support of my family and am in the best of health.

Much like Joe, I am a ‘regular guy’. I wish I was doing better and perhaps, with my drive and dedication, I may improve my lot in life. What I don’t need is to see a country in an economic crisis that if a candidate wins, will cap my success and insert an I.V. as soon as I get back on better footing. When I failed in business, where was MY bailout? I guess I wasn’t “too big to fail.”

I believe that this chaos is the perfect time for an unscrupulous person or person, using the pretense of the government help, to reorganize and socialize government programs. I must caution everyone, income redistribution DOES NOT WORK! It forces everyone to move to the lowest output and maximum gain – it’s a race to the bottom. It kills incentive.

I, like Joe the Plumber, am in a position that I have been before – lower than I want. I DO want to achieve more. I am willing to work for it. I am determined to do it. And I certainly do not want my prize to be that you take away my incentive once I cross the next finish line.

Are YOU Joe the Plumber? I bet many of you are.

Take the shackles off…free your spirit, an fly.

The ‘hope’ I have is that no one wants to control me because HE sees fit to give the spoils of my effort to another.

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard about Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher, who asked Obama about why he would be penalized in an Obama presidency for starting a plumbing business making over 250,000 a year. Obama justified his proposed looting by saying that wanted to “spread the wealth around.”

Anyway, the MSM and pro-Obama plumbing unions are not taking kindly to their black supremacist Muslim, Marxist Messiah even being questioned.

Here’s one hit piece from the New York Times Caucus blog.

An official at Local 50 of the plumber’s union, based in Toledo, said Mr. Wurzelbacher does not hold a license. He also has never served an apprenticeship and does not belong to the union. (The national plumber’s union, the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters, and Service Mechanics, endorsed Mr. Obama, it should be noted.)

“He’s basically playing games with the world,” Thomas Joseph, the local’s business manager, said in a telephone interview Thursday morning.

{snip}

Unlike some other states, Ohio does not have a formal statewide licensing system for plumbers. But the city of Toledo and other municipalities do, Mr. Joseph said, and Mr. Wurzelbacher has not met those requirements.

“All contractors are licensed, and he does not have a license, either as a contractor or a plumber,” the union official said, citing a search of government records. “I can’t find that he’s ever even applied for any kind of apprenticeship, and he has never belonged to local 189 in Columbus, which is what he claims on his Facebook page.”

According to public records, Mr. Wurzelbacher has been subject to two liens, each over $1,000, one of which — a personal tax lien — is still outstanding.

And his question to Mr. Obama about paying taxes? According to some tax analysts, if Mr. Wurzelbacher’s gross receipts from his business is $250,000 — and not his taxable income — then he would not have to pay higher taxes under Mr. Obama’s plan, and probably would be eligible for a tax cut.

Now I should think this whole business of whether or not Wurzelbacher has a license should be between him and his current employer. Apparently, his boss saw fit to hire the man. So I don’t understand why this whole licensing business means the man can’t ask Obama a question about his tax plan.

But that’s not how the Obamunists see it. A few weeks ago, I posted about the truth squads in Missouri, to counter claims that Obama is not a Christian. Now the same kind of harassment is going on here, and Obama hasn’t even been elected.

The plumbers union in Toledo, who by the way, supports Obama, is is moving to shut down Joe the Plumber. And for some reason, Allahpundit thinks it’s a good thing.

Of course the left wing blogosphere has joined the fray as well.

And we have that hag Joy Behar of The View belittling Joe

During last night’s debate, Obama stressed that his tax plan would provide relief to 95% of Americans. But according to the Wall St. Journal, that’s simply not the case.

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase “tax credit.” Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to “make work pay” that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

- A “savings” tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

- A “clean car” tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable “tax credits” would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as “tax credits,” the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

{snip}

here’s another catch: Because Mr. Obama’s tax credits are phased out as incomes rise, they impose a huge “marginal” tax rate increase on low-income workers. The marginal tax rate refers to the rate on the next dollar of income earned. As the nearby chart illustrates, the marginal rate for millions of low- and middle-income workers would spike as they earn more income.

Some families with an income of $40,000 could lose up to 40 cents in vanishing credits for every additional dollar earned from working overtime or taking a new job. As public policy, this is contradictory. The tax credits are sold in the name of “making work pay,” but in practice they can be a disincentive to working harder, especially if you’re a lower-income couple getting raises of $1,000 or $2,000 a year. One mystery — among many — of the McCain campaign is why it has allowed Mr. Obama’s 95% illusion to go unanswered.

Also, check out Philip Klein’s conversation with Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe about the article linked to above.

James Johnson was the CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. He also served as the head of Barack Obama’s VP search effort until June 2008. Johnson resigned from that position when it was revealed that he received a low cost home load from Countrywide Financial’s CEO.

Anyway, when Johnson was CEO of Fannie Mae, he set up a goal of buying one trillion dollars in low income mortgage loans.

Of course Johnson adamantly opposed any government attempt to monitor Fannie Mae.

Fannie Mae opposed any attempt to regulate or monitor that business. In 1992, Congress considered a proposal requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to disclose their debt to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Public disclosure of Fannie’s and Freddie’s debt would have allowed the SEC to monitor their business and ensure that these “government-sponsored enterprises,” which were exempt from federal taxes, and had a line of credit with the U.S. Treasury, did not overextend themselves.

He also opposed the use of credit scoring, which is used to determine likelihood of a person repaying a loan.

Johnson told a 1995 conference of mortgage lenders in Chicago that credit-scoring was “a vehicle to do more, not an excuse to do less.”

“We abhor the use of credit scoring as a way to deny housing finance to those people who need help the most,” Johnson said. “We won’t put mechanical systems and arbitrary numbers above our faith in your [local lenders’] judgment and we won’t go back and second guess loans you’ve already made…if they don’t match up to a new way of assessing risks or doing business.”

What a piece of work!

Johnson called the higher interest rates paid by sub-prime borrowers a “tremendous burden” for families and said “it seems we can make A’s out of B’s and C’s in many circumstances” by giving less weight to factors such as divorce or job loss, which would normally lower credit scores.

This Johnson is a clone of James Taggart. He never seemed to care about whether or not these loans could be repaid. All he cared about the *need* of the borrowers.

Check out this video

I think it’s also important to remember how Obama’s beloved ACORN contributed to this crisis.

WHAT exactly does a “community organizer” do? Barack Obama’s rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here’s a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

{snip}

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today’s financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act – a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in “subprime” loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA – and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.

There we have it! Obama is just a slicker version of the ebonics ranting Jesse Jackson. Do we really want another Jesse Jackson in the White House?

ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct action” – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

{snip}

IT would be tough to find an “on the ground” community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early ’90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama’s legal services for a “motor voter” case and partnered with him on his 1992 “Project VOTE” registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago’s Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation’s board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers – and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

{snip}

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public’s eye. The Woods Fund’s claim to be “nonideological,” it says, has “enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government ‘establishments’ without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship.”

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

So much for the “failed policies of George Bush” leading to this mess.

For once, I’m grateful for the extremely stupid Democrats in the House (along with their smart Republican counterparts). Here’s why Democrats and Republicans said no to the 700 billion dollar bailout.

Some Democratic representatives said the rescue package could have and should have done more.

“I really do think there could have been a better deal,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Democrat from Texas. “There was no mark in the bill for specifically helping Americans — Mr. and Mrs. Main Street — get out of their mortgage foreclosure crisis.”

Jackson-Lee also cited bankruptcy provisions left out of the bill that would have allowed homeowners to restructure their loans. Those provisions were championed by some Democrats during the negotiation period before the vote, but left out because of Republican opposition.

Rep. Joe Baca, a Democrat from California and the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, warned on Sunday that the bill might not have enough Democratic votes to pass.

“There’s nothing in here that guarantees new jobs, nothing that guarantees salary increases,” he told The Hill newspaper. “And that’s a huge problem.”

Yeah right. So the government should have hit up taxpayers for more than 700 billion dollars? Hasn’t Jackson Lee ever heard the expression “quit while you’re ahead?”

Also, where in the Constitution does it say that jobs and salary increases are supposed to be guaranteed by the U.S. government? People have the right to look for a job and improve their skills so they become more marketable. This is just one example of why we need to at least raise the voting age.

{snip}

Many Republican House members who opposed the package said it expanded governmental powers and represented a drastic departure from free market principles.

“Congress took a stand for the American taxpayer and free markets. The American people rejected this corporate bailout and [Monday] the people’s House did likewise,” said Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence.

These Wall Street idiots remind me of the character James Taggart in Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus “Atlas Shrugged.” When all else fails get the government to loot the taxpayers on your behalf.

Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, echoed the sentiment during a speech on the House floor Monday afternoon. “The premise of this unprecedented government intervention is that the free market has failed and that government must come to its rescue,” he said. “In reality, the crisis we now face is a result of government intervention in the market.”

Referring to the long-standing governmental guarantee that founded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two mortgage giants that had to be rescued in a federal bailout earlier this year, Flake said, “Those who believe they can control and direct the market’s invisible hand will eventually be slapped by it.”

That’s exactly what Obama would have people believe, and many will take his word for it. The mantra of Obama and Democrats is that it’s all Bush, and capitalism are to blame.

Anyway, John McCain is now saying that President Bush could bypass Congress

I never really thought of what a community organizer really was until I listened to a podcast a few nights ago. The subject was that communist Saul Alinsky, who was also a community organizer like Obama. The speaker perfectly defined a community organizer as someone who hits up the local government and corporations for ever increasing benefits to welfare queens, drug addicts and criminals. So being that Obama’s main claim to fame, despite being a senator, was agitating for more handouts, it’s only natural that he would want to milk middle and upper class Americans like cows.

Obama tries to call it refundable tax credits, but it’s really just welfare. Here’s how he’ll raise taxes for his beloved welfare state.

* Obama would 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.

* Obama would raise the top capital gains tax rate by 33%, to 20%.

* He would also raise the top dividends tax rate by 33%, to 20% as well.

* 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.

* Obama’s protectionist trade policies would mean higher taxes and tariffs on trade.

* Obama tries to argue, crassly, that these tax increases would fall only on “the rich.” The tax increasers always start by saying that. But they always end up reaching down towards the middle class because that is where the big money is. The federal income tax was adopted almost 100 years ago with the promise it would only tax “the rich.”

{snip}

OBAMA TRIES TO HIDE these comprehensive tax increases with a slew of refundable tax credits he calls middle class tax cuts. The term “refundable” means that if the worker does not have enough tax liability to take advantage of the credit, the government sends the worker a check to cover the full amount of the credit anyway. So if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the credit covers the $200 tax bill and the government sends the taxpayer a check for the remaining $800. If the taxpayer pays nothing in federal income taxes, the government would send him a check for the whole $1,000.

{snip}

When “tax credits” primarily go to this group in the form of checks from the government rather than a reduction in their tax burden, such tax credits are not tax cuts. They are government spending programs hidden in the tax code. I call it The New Tax Welfare. Here is a complete litany of Obama’s proposed new spending programs disguised as tax cuts:

* The fully refundable Making Work Pay Tax Credit would pay $500 to each worker and $1,000 to couples. This is reminiscent of George McGovern’s 1972 election proposal for the government to send a $1,000 check to everyone.

* The Mortgage Interest Tax Credit would provide a 10% refundable credit to offset mortgage interest payments for lower and middle income families.

* The American Opportunity Tax Credit would provide a $4,000 fully refundable tax credit for the first $4,000 of college tuition expenses.

* The Obama campaign says, regarding Health Care Tax Credits, “Obama’s health plan centers around tax credits that…will ensure that health insurance is available and affordable for all families.” These include “a new refundable 50 percent health tax credit on employee premiums paid by employers.”

* The Savers Credit would be made fully refundable and would be expanded “to match 50% of the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn under $75,000.”

* The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit would be made refundable and expanded to allow “low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit on the first $6,000 of child care expenses.”

* The already refundable Earned Income Tax Credit would be expanded to “increase the number of working parents eligible for EITC benefits, increase the benefits available to noncustodial parents who fulfill their child support obligations, increase benefits for families with three or more children, and reduce the EITC marriage penalty, which hurts low-income families.” This, of course, is a welfare program, not a tax cut, because it doesn’t reduce anybody’s taxes, it pays money to low income tax filers.

* The Tax Credits for Clean Vehicles includes a $7,000 tax credit “for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles.” Presumably, this would be refundable as well because surely Obama would not deny it to the great majority of families.

Our Marxist Muslim presidential candidate is predictably looking to redistribute wealth produced by Americans, to poor countries.

And here’s what it will really cost.

Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.’s Financing for Development Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional $65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.

During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American taxpayer around $2,500.

Now he’s saying he would be open to increasing payroll taxes to pay for Social Security.

Mr. McCain’s shift has come in stages, catching some Republicans by surprise. Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security. “I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table,” he said.

He went a step farther Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” in response to a question about payroll tax increases.

“There is nothing that’s off the table. I have my positions, and I’ll articulate them. But nothing’s off the table,” Mr. McCain said. “I don’t want tax increases. But that doesn’t mean that anything is off the table.”

This senile old geezer, who really belongs in a nursing home, is doing his best to lose the election. At this rate, he won’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing Obama. Up until now, McCain has been sticking with the typically stupid, spineless Republican technique of accusing rivals of raising taxes. And even that he’s been doing half-heartedly. So I would like to know how else he’ll go after Obama. McCain certainly won’t hammer the point that Obama is a closet Muslim and terrorist sympathizer who hates America, along with his evil wife.

They’ve done this to give more money to programs for treating AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

The 80-16 vote committed America to spending up to $48 billion over the next five years for the most ambitious foreign public health program ever launched by the America.

The legislation would replace and expand the current $15 billion act that President Bush championed in a State of the Union address and Congress passed in 2003. That act expires at the end of September.

In a statement, Mr. Bush said that when the program was launched in 2003, about 50,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa were receiving anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS. Today, the program supports lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment for more than 1.7 million people around the world, he said. It also has supported treatment and prevention programs that have helped HIV-positive women give birth to nearly 200,000 infants who are HIV-free.

Uh, whatever happened to using good old DDT?

As for AIDS, what good will all that extra money do if those chronically tumescent men there refuse to either keep their pants zipped up, or wear condoms. Now lest you think that’s a gross generalization, keep in mind that Africa’s population has the highest growth rate in the world. What on earth is the logic of people living in awful conditions constantly having sex, passing on the AIDS virus, and then having more children when they can’t even care for the ones they already have?

Here’s one Irish writer’s very politically incorrect view of the situation in Africa.