“Joe the Plumber is Rich”

“Joe” (formerly known as Sam) was seized upon by the McCain campaign because he said he was thinking about buying a business that will make more than $250,000: the ‘magic number’ beyond which Obama would tax a business 3% more than they are currently. That is, a lot LESS than they were taxed previous to the big biz tax cuts enacted under the Bush Administration. McCain mentioned “Joe the Plumber” 21 times during the debate last night under the pretense that a guy who could purchase such a business represents the average working or middle class American or even the typical small business owner.

Plumbers, licensed plumbers I should say, are among the most well-paid trade workers but new construction has nearly come to a standstill in the past couple of years. Precious few of these folks are anywhere near able to purchase a successful business that will pull in over a quarter million per year in the best of times.

Somewhere between 95 to 98 percent of Americans have a lower income than Sam was openly dreaming about having, and mostly, like Sam, a lot lower.

Is McCain honestly so sheltered as to be ignorant of the fact that what looks like a manual laborer representing the lower classes to him while plausibly owning a business that put the guy in the top five percent of the population income bracket, would then hardly be a ‘fitting’ example of the vast majority of Americans who, like Sam, might LIKE to identify with someone in the position to buy a business that pulls in a quarter mill a year? Whether it’s genuine or feigned ignorance, the truth is we cannot afford ANOTHER President EITHER that stupid or that dishonest.

In the second debate Obama mentioned some plans that sounded like the Roosevelt’s WPA that helped a lot of average joe’s a great deal in a very constructive way for the U.S. and I’d like to hear a lot more about those ideas.

Also to the point: I liked what Obama said about making and renegotiating international trade agreements to make them “fair” as in closing the ‘loopholes’ that have helped cause the mass exodus of American jobs due to American business owners being able to circumvent unions, labor laws, and environmental laws that don’t exist in other countries, to the collective detriment and peril of Joe U.S.A along with every other sam and joe on planet earth; even the fools like Sarah Palin who don’t get the connection, eh.

In the context of energy (environmental/economic) issues Obama also spoke to the independent yankee-spirit of Joe Bootstraps U.S.A. during the second debate when he said that the government needs to WORK WITH innovators and budding small business owners by removing the big-business favoring barriers  McCain has long represented.

I think the corporate employees who have lost their jobs, the Joe Bootstraps and wannabees of America and the future of America that the younger voters represent, would all be very interested to hear more in detail about these plans of Obama’s to provide incentives and opportunities for those already or bristling to work in the trenches toward a more self-sustaining and self-supporting America, toward self-generated job creation, economic growth and development in the diverse ways that will collectively solve the environmental sustainability and energy problem rather than hear one more word about McCain’s lame and half-baked plans to continue to favor well-established corporations that have LONG TRACK RECORD of suppressing the “energy independence” he likes to harp about.

McCain in reality is another dinosaur with a long-established voting record of supporting well-established corporations representing unsustainable industry, of favoring legislation that discourages new bootstraps businesses, suppresses sustainable development, job creation and economic growth with out of control trickle down theory policies that not only do not work but leave the real average american joe feeling helpless, victimized and frustratingly unable to put their elbows into helping to improve the situation.

Sustainable Presidential Material?

Staunchly ignoring the campaigning up until this point, I’ve been putting off having the subject of my strongest doubts concerning Obama addressed. Yes, I have been cringing a bit, in the darkest most dearly guarded corner of my hopes when it comes to the next president. The Big Question: Exactly how comprehensively informed vs. clueless is Obama on the economic/environmental sustainability issue, and if aware: How purposefully, decisively, intelligently, and dynamically might he address this problem, as president?

I peeled my blinders off to sit down and listen to Obama for the first time tonight and hey. I almost hate to say it: There IS hope. On the subject of energy and the environment in tonight’s presidential debate, Obama came very close to saying something in particular that I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear something about the environment and the economy in terms of peeling back the suppression of grassroots tinkering, experimentation, invention and innovation that corporate bullying (particularly from the auto/oil industry sector) has laid down over the last how many years, under the guise of ‘regulation’ among other forms. Laws and other astroturfish, pseudo-scientific maneuvers, well-funded anti-intellectual Limbaugh-esque ‘tree-hugger’ epithets and characterizations and such kind smoke and mirrors designed to obscure and discredit rational thought on the environment for decades.

I wanted to hear something about bringing down these blockades that continue to make it very difficult for anyone with good ideas to get off the ground with, gain support for and cultivate interest in sustainability-oriented innovations without being choked off by legalistic and logistic obstacles designed and created by the overkilling “competetive spirit” of established and unsustainable industries which have for too long had an upper hand, a hand full of well-paid all-too-comfortable lobbyists writing legislation in D.C. and state legislatures.

I am happy to see that Obama is thinking in a dynamic and comprehensive way on these issues, right along the lines that I am dying for our next president to be thinking. He has a clue.

McCain on the other hand didn’t seem to ‘get’ the simplest of points, nevermind the complexities involved. For example even after Obama clarified that domestic sources of oil constitute about 3% of the world’s oil supply while we consume approximately a quarter (25%) of the world’s oil, McCain continued to drill himself right down the drain drilling for more drilling, as if he simply cannot grasp the meaning of the word “alternatives” (other than the holy grail of nuclear energy) nor the magnitude of need for sustainable alternatives implicit in Obama’s clarification.

McCain just does not comprehend vital concepts such as ‘sustainability’ in it’s simplest sense nevermind in the presidentially requisite (at this point) sophisticated sense that Obama does; sustainability across the overlapping contexts of economics, energy, foreign policy, diplomacy, health and the environment. McCain does not seem to even “get” such basic economic concepts as the ‘supply vs. demand’ behind Obama’s point about oil. No, McCain continued to stubbornly stump for the McSame domination of unsustainable industry giants, unto our death.

Here’s the part of what Obama said that didn’t specifically spell out exactly what I wanted to hear as mentioned above, but came so close, and on top of that, surprised me with a lot more than I had hoped to hear:

“We’re going to have to come up with alternatives, and that means that the United States government is working with the private sector to fund the kind of innovation that we can then export to countries like China that also need energy and are setting up one coal power plant a week . . . ”

I think Obama GETS IT. I like where Obama puts his focus, and I like his capacity for meticulous detail, particularly in comparison to McCain, who can’t seem to even focus on anything but the most superficial and sentimental rhetoric of stick-figure talking points. McCain and Palin talk to the American people of the U.S. and the world as if we were kindergartners barely capable of adding 2 + 2, as if we were ruled by infantile emotions and the need for much nap time. I’d like to see a new wave of post-partisan politics and politicians that recognize and expect a helluva lot more than that of their people.