Joe the Plumber - working class hero?

Joe the Plumber.

Hannity, currently protraying himself as a wild-eyed loner on the last freedom moped out of Nowhere City (baby), had Joe the Plumber on the show today.  It proved interesting.

Joe is apparently an ordinary guy; he has money troubles, an estranged wife and son in said wife's custody.  He's studying to better himself, he's working hard and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time to ask Senator Obama a question.

Everyone has since started flapping like a good'un. 

The basic answer should have been that if Joe earned $260,000 a year his first quarter million would be taxed at 36%.  The next ten g's would be taxed at 39%.  This would mean that Joe would have had to withhold $93900 to pay his taxes, leaving him with a measly $166400 to live off.  So he might have to hold back on buying a Bugatti Veyron that year.

The real question is how Obama's tax plan affects Joe's business, because Obama is planning to put up things like Capital Gains tax and so forth, but if the business is going so well that it can afford to pay Joe over a quarter of a million a year, it can certainly afford a decent accountant.

In retrospect, Obama did not answer the question at all well.  In fact he couldn't have caused more glee in the Right if he'd said he was going to nationalise plumbers (or set the guy on fire).

Joe's question is hugely important, not because it wasn't well answered but because he asked it at all, and the media attention the poor guy has since caught has been completely out of order.  This is a country where you should be able to ask your presidential candidates just about anything (and good lord, it was an economic question and nothing to do with extremist connections or Islam) without fear of having your life dragged through the mud afterwards.

The Right has been screeching about how the Journalists are under the thumb of the liberal media elite, and this sort of behaviour plays directly into their hands.  Joe's personal finances are not a matter for debate or discussion here, nor is his private life a matter of public interest.  He's not a celebrity, he's not a candidate.  But by their treatment of him, the media has turned Joe into a poster-boy for the Republicans.  Joe is, by all accounts, just a hard working guy trying to make his way in the world.  Now, he's a minor celebrity.

Was it planned?  Oh, I hope not.  If he was a McCain plant, I fear for National Security under a McCain presidency.  He couldn't have chosen a less good spokesman for people's tax fears.

Never mind.  Colin Powell has endorsed Obama and cited Sarah Palin as one of the reasons he can't support McCain.  I think, unless John McCain does something really special, this one might be all but over.  Still, we find out in two weeks.

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