What gets me is that I grew up in the Buffalo suburbs with family in the city that lived in the older middle-class neighborhoods we would define as ‘poor’. You know, the ones a block from a factory? Just down the road from another one, with an old-line warehouse area within 5 minutes walking distance. My neighborhood was within a mile of the city line, and folks like Joe the Plumber were all over the place. Carpenters, electricians, plumbers… all hating the unions, hating the dues, hating the bureaucracy and just wanting to do GOOD WORK for a living. They often complained how the ‘code’ was set up to favor certain suppliers because of political favors… how unions forced their way in to favor the union leadership and make things worse for the guy on the shop floor. Do I have a problem with those ’standards’?

Hell, yes.

They are pure, political BS from the start, made to empower unions and punish workers and I’ve seen people in my family with nearly 15 years on the job get busted back because of some political nepotism in the union…not for their work, not for showing up on time, not for being late. No, just for not having political connections and be in the way of some nepotism going on to land a cushy job for someone who never did the work, never did the time and grafted their way up the ladder.

It was no wonder that the number of small shops, self-owned with maybe four or five guys working in it proliferated all over the place, and the politicians tried to set up the ‘code’ and ’standards’ to keep them from working and to give government money to ‘get licensed’. If you needed work done the question wasn’t ‘are they licensed?’. Nope. It was: can they do the job well at the price they give?

Under the table was just fine, thankyouverymuch.

That was the ‘word of mouth community’ so that if you didn’t need high-profile work done, you could get someone experienced, capable, trusted by your friends and family and get the damned work DONE WELL at a GOOD PRICE. These people didn’t need the BBB as, if they screwed up, everyone would know about it pretty damned quickly. They had the best credentials possible: they did good work for your friends and neighbors. Often they *were* your friends and neighbors, given the way the job situation was back in the ’70s.

Joe the Plumber was asked to ask a question: he did as is the right of any American.

Politicians make hay with it… so what?

He is asked to go on GMA, shrugs his shoulders and basically says ‘why the hell not, its a FREE COUNTRY, they want my opinion I will give it to them’. Note which part of the ‘limelight’ goes into that kind of thinking.

Zip.

I do not put ideas nor words into his mouth, he is doing what any citizen has the liberty to do and the right to do, and he is not running for political office, but trying to get a leg up in the world and ’spread the wealth around’ the old-fashioned way by growing a business to HIRE PEOPLE.

Heaven forbid he do so without some Leftist’s approval. That he has a tax lien that he may not be aware of because no one told him, or that the damned tax code is so complicated that a common citizen can’t figure it out easily if at all. That is creating a ‘code’ that only the elite can live by because they can hire lawyers and accountants and PR people to front for them and do the work they are forcing on ordinary Americans who do NOT have those resources.

I’ve got folks just like Joe the Plumber in my FAMILY in the construction and trucking industry, in the machine tools shop of a moderately small company, working in industrial facilities making parts for conveyor belts. Not glamorous jobs, not high paying jobs, not seeking any limelight, and figuring that if they ask a question they will not have their INTEGRITY QUESTIONED.

Yeah, I got a problem with the MSM and the Elites in this, and it is HUGE. If the working middle class can get hammered for a simple question, god help the working poor who have similar questions about why they bring home so little and government can’t even do the basics well and squanders their money. No ‘rebate’ at the end of the year helps when weekly deductions go out of your paycheck… paycheck to paycheck living doesn’t work that way. ‘Net effect’ effectively screws you over to get the ‘net effect’ because you can’t get it every week… doesn’t help to starve for 51 weeks and get minor feast on the 52nd.

When the MSM demonstrates as much inquisitiveness into the lives of the high and mighty in politics, journalism, banking, international finance, organized crime and the mover and shakers in business and industry, then you can start at the next rung down… which still doesn’t get you to Joe the Plumber. Until then, take all rationalizations and put them deep and dark into some recess and wall them up for a few centuries. The MSM no longer ‘afflicts the comfortable’ nor does it ‘comfort the afflicted’ – it does just the opposite. And those who help it are authoritarian and elitist in doing so and seeking to diminish the common man in the face of over-educated, under-knowledgeable Elites.

ajacksonian on October 17, 2008 at 7:24 AM