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Friday October 17, 2008 10:28 am

Some Advice For Joe The Plumber




Posted by Sal Traina Categories: Editorials, Elections, Media, Taxes,

Joe The Plumber

If you don’t know who Joe The Plumber is, you must not watch the news, read the paper, or listen to talk radio. The guy, whose now famous meeting with Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, is the talk of the town. You can see who he is, and why he’s so popular now, in one of my earlier blogs.

I found an interesting article that would interest Joe The Plumber, who’s real name is Joe Wurzelbacher. It basically states that if Wurzelbacher wants to achieve his goal of buying the business he’s working for, he’s going to have trouble competing for federal contracts.

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Market Watch

I think Joe should read this Market Watch article closely.

Joe the Plumber talked about wanting to buy the company he was working for. If he was thinking about getting a Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed loan like thousands of small business owners do every year, he had better vote for Senator Obama. Senator McCain will maintain Bush Administration anti-small business policies, close the SBA, and end all federal programs designed for small businesses, and firms owned by women, minorities and veterans, including all the loan programs.

After Joe the plumber starts his own small business, he might want to think about trying to bid on federal small business contracts. The United States government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the world. He could get a small business contract selling plumbing fixtures and supplies to the government or government contractors. He could get a service contract to do plumbing work on the various federal buildings in the area around Toledo, Ohio.
If Joe does start to try and bid on government small business contracts he is going to be stunned when he finds out that under current Bush Administration policy, he will have to compete head-to-head with Fortune 1000 corporations, their subsidiaries and thousands of other large businesses for even the smallest orders for goods and services. He might even find himself competing with the U.S. subsidiaries of many of the largest corporations in Europe.

I’m not sure who Joe should vote for if he wants to try and land government small business contracts, because neither Senator McCain, nor Senator Obama have come out publicly and said they would do anything to address this problem. There have now been 15 federal investigations released since 2003, which have found that billions of dollars in federal small business contracts have been diverted to Fortune 1000 firms. It has been estimated that up to $100 billion a year in government small business contracts actually go to many of the largest companies in the United States and Europe.

Today, it would be easier for Joe to find Jimmy Hoffa’s body than it would be to find anything on either Senator Obama or Senator McCain’s websites regarding their plans to stop the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.

The Joe The Plumber story interests me because my wife is in the same situation. She’s currently working at an upscale hair salon, and she will eventually buy it. Now, if Rikki The Hairstylist finally makes her wish come true, and buys the salon, she’ll be getting taxed a hell of a lot more. Right now, my wife and I are supposedly in the range of not being affected by his tax plans. In 2010, however, when Obama lets President George Bush’s tax cuts expire, I’ll be making around 2000 dollars less per year. How much harder should the government make it on small business owners in times like these? I can’t see businesses making 250k a year doing well when two-thirds of their profits are going to be confiscated, and given to people making less, “to make things fair.”

In an unrelated story about Joe The Plumber, in 24 hours, the mainstream media dug up everything about Joe Wurzelbacher’s life, and reported it in order to smear him. In two years, I still have no clue who the real Barack Obama is. If you read my posts, I’m sure by now, you know I have it out for the media.

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