Column by Rob Kall
Reprinted from OpEdNews.com
Joe the plumber talks like your average right wing libertarian. He doesn’t want to pay his way.
Joe talks like corporate polluters have historically acted – avoiding paying for the damage they’ve done by dumping or spewing.
Joe wants to have it easier than his father did -to pay less of the freight than his dad. Joe’s father lived during the time when Franklin Roosevelt’s taxes were in place, the same taxes that Dwight Eisenhower felt were appropriate. Back then, if a rich person earned more than a certain amount, he or she paid taxes of 90 percent on the amount above the limit. Now, that number might be $10 or $10 million dollars a year. So, if you earned $20 million, you’d pay the maximum now, about 35 percent, on the first ten million, then, on the amount over $10 million, you’d pay 90 percent. Poor Joe, paying all that tax on that fat paycheck. It’s what the wealthy of your father’s generation and grandfather’s generation did – you know, when the middle class was treated decently.
You say, Joe, that not paying taxes is the American way. No, that’s the weasel talk of right-wing enemies of middle class – wealthy people, big corporations and their surrogates … and dupes like you. I’m talking about right-wingers like Joe Scarborough, who likes to pretend he’s a moderate, or who, like right-winger Lou Dobbs, tries to hide behind the libertarian label. Scarborough suggests that Obama’s tax will prevent Joe from starting or running that business Joe wants to start, that it will keep Joe from providing jobs to potential employees. What a pile of crap. Joe can start that business and even get extra tax breaks for hiring American, and he’s not penalized.
If Joe takes a salary out of the business of more than $250,000, then he’ll pay more. Of course, if Joe’s small business does pay him that much, he’ll be in the upper 2 percent of small businesses. Now, let’s say there is a higher tax, and it makes Joe reconsider crossing that $250,000 threshold. What else can Joe do with the money? Invest in the business in new services? Expand marketing? Hire more employees? The other side of the decision helps the economy. Oooh, that sound so un-American, so socialist, as Joe accused.
Sorry, Joe. You want to talk about socialism, point the finger at Henry Paulson’s bailout and investment at gift rates to bankers. Paulson gave them such a good deal that the Banks that cut deals with Gordon Brown and are now complaining and talking about rebelling.
No, Joe, you’re not a typical American. You’re a leech who wants to beat the rest of the hard-working Americans who worked hard to build a country where you can make a good living. You’re a parasite who’s bought the message of the Newt Gingrich-Ronald Reagan right-wingers who have worked hard to destroy the U.S. government one regulation, one agency at a time.
And let’s talk a bit more about WHY you should pay more if you’re making more.
When you earn more, through your small business, you USE more of the USA’s resources – the business-friendly laws, the school system that educated your employees, the roads that your trucks travel upon, without hitting ruts and holes, like businesses in other countries have to deal with. These add up. And then there’s that thing your father and grandfather did – whether they paid higher taxes or not – they lived and worked in a system that charged higher taxes to those at the high income end; they paid into the system to help raise the rest of the people in the system. What an un-American idea!
What we don’t know about you, Joe, is if you just don’t get it, that part of being a patriot is paying your share and not ripping the nation off, or if you’ve drank enough of the toxic right-wing koolaid, spewed by right-wing talk radio and the likes of other false patriots, like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol and the right-wing echo chamber, to be an ideologue like them.
No, if you take my line of thinking one step further, if you’re not a patriot, what does that make you, besides a parasitic leech? Sorry if I’m running this rant aimed at you, Joe, but you were referred to in the debate because you’re a modern archetype for right-wing libertarian parasitic leeches – and everything I’m saying about YOU is true for millions of other parasitic leeches who would let people die rather than support the universal health care that every other first world nation provides.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com and president of Futurehealth, Inc. He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com.
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