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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Palin Gives Obama A Nickname: 'Barack the Wealth Spender'

I love it.

Sarah Palin added a little something into her stump speech, something we mentioned yesterday after reading a piece at the NRO, about "Phil the bricklayer", "Rose the teacher" and hundreds of other people that identify with "Joe the Plumber".

Long story short for those that somehow missed the talk of who Joe The Plumber is, his name is Joe Wurzelbacher and when Barack Obama came to his street, his driveway, Joe asked Obama a simple question about his tax plan, to which Obama made the comment heard around the world in saying "spread the wealth" which means income redistribution.

Now at Rallies, people are all showing up, plumbers, construction workers, teachers and bricklayers as well as hundreds of other occupations, all wondering why Obama's answer wasn't spoken about by the media, but instead they all attacked "Joe" for asking the question.

Caught up? Good.

In that NRO piece yesterday, another name came up, Tito Munoz, a Colombian immigrant who came here and built his American dream. Tito was noticed at a recent rally when he took on the media angrily about their behavior toward Joe, their savaging him for daring ask Obama a question.

Sarah Palin noticed Tito as well it seems and she had some things to say about him.

Palin revealed the new moniker at an outdoor rally in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she also introduced a new working-class hero into the ever-expanding pantheon of “Joe the plumber”-types who oppose to Obama’s tax plan.

His name? Tito Munoz, christened by Palin as “Tito the builder.”

The McCain campaign discovered Munoz on Saturday at a rally in Woodbridge, Virginia, where the Colombian-born construction worker took on a group of reporters for digging into Joe Wurzelbacher’s background after the Toledo-based plumber questioned Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on workers making over $250,000 a year.

Munoz’s stand against the media was detailed by Byron York on the web site of the National Review magazine, and Palin was eager to thrust the tale into the political spotlight.

“Tito is not pleased with how the Barack Obama campaign and some of the media friends there have been roughing up Joe the Plumber,” Palin said, after accusing the Obama campaign of “investigating” Wurzelbacher’s background.

“He has a question of his own, and Barack Obama is not going to like this one either. Tito wants to know, and I quote, he asked, ‘Why the heck are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something greater. He wants to be something else. Why is that so wrong?’”

“Tito explained that he’s an immigrant from Colombia and he also had this reminder for us,” Palin continued. “He says, quote, ‘Everything is possible in America. I made it.’”



The best part though is the nickname Palin now has given Barack Obama. "Barack the Wealth Spender", what an appropriate name too. The man that wants to take other peoples hard earned wealth and spread it around, spend it as he sees fit and hand it out like welfare to those that did not earn it.

LA Times is talking about Tito as well:

At a John McCain rally in Virginia on Saturday, Tito Munoz had come to face the enemy: the news media, which had declared war on Joe Wurzelbacher.

"Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber?" he yelled at a group of reporters, including my National Review colleague, Byron York. "Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. ... I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A."


Lest fools think Obama's plan is not to take from hard working Americans to hand out to those that did not earn it, here is his tax plan broken down for you, via the Wall Street Journal:

Titled "Obama Talks Nonsense on Tax Cuts"

Now, if you have been following this so far, you have learned that people who pay no income tax will get an income tax refund. You have also learned that this check will represent relief for the payroll taxes these people do pay. And you have been assured that this rebate check won't actually come out of payroll taxes, lest we harm Social Security.

You have to admire the audacity. With one touch of the Obama magic, what otherwise would be described as taking money from Peter to pay Paul is now transformed into Paul's tax relief. Where a tax cut for payroll taxes paid will not in fact come from payroll taxes. And where all these plans come together under the rhetorical umbrella of "Making Work Pay."

Not everyone is persuaded. Andrew Biggs is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Social Security Administration official who has written a great deal about Mr. Obama's plans on his blog (AndrewBiggs.blogspot.com). He notes that to understand the unintended consequences, it helps to remember that while people at the bottom pay a higher percentage of their income in payroll taxes, they are accruing benefits in excess of what they pay in.

"It's interesting that Mr. Obama calls his plan 'Making Work Pay,'" says Mr. Biggs, "because the incentives are just the opposite. By expanding benefits for people whose benefits exceed their taxes, you're increasing their disincentive for work. And you're doing the same at the top of the income scale, where you are raising their taxes so you can distribute the revenue to others."

Even more interesting is what Mr. Obama's "tax cuts" do to Social Security financing. As Mr. Biggs notes, had Mr. Obama proposed to pay for payroll tax relief out of, well, payroll taxes, his plan would never have a chance in Congress. Most members would look at a plan that defunded a trust fund that seniors are counting on for their retirement as political suicide.

And that leads us to the heart of this problem. If the government is going to give tax cuts to 44% of American based on their Social Security taxes -- without actually refunding to them the money they are paying into Social Security -- Mr. Obama will have to get the funds elsewhere. And this is where "general revenues" turns out to be a more agreeable way of saying "Other People's Money."


That is just the beginning of looking into the "fine print" of Barack Obama's so-called "tax cuts". He seems to think if he simply changes the name of what he is doing to make it "sound" pretty, people will actually believe him and run around repeating it.

Some idiots actually do too, so he is right in thinking certain folks are too stupid to read the plan and understand the illusion he has created is nothing more than an illusion.



All previous WUA pieces about Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher found here.

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