WHY OBAMA MUST DESTROY JOE THE PLUMBER

The news media can do investigative reporting when the spirit so moves.  Consider the proctological exam journalists gave Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber," within a day of Sen. John McCain having referred to him in the final presidential debate.

We now know that Joe, 34, does not have a plumber's license and does not belong to the plumbers' union. He's divorced, earned just $40,000 in 2006, and had a tax lien against him.

Joe says he doesn't need a license to do residential work in the two-person firm (A.W. Newell Corp.) for whom he works, because Al Newell has a license.  That's kopasetic within the city of Toledo, but Joe would need a license of his own to do work elsewhere in Lucas County, county officIals say.  Only about a third of all plumbers in the U.S. belong to the plumbers' union, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Absolutely none of this information is relevant to the question Joe asked when Barack Obama approached him on a rope line in the Toledo suburb of Holland Oct. 12, or to the impolitic answer Sen. Obama gave to it.

"Who gives a damn how pure Joe the Plumber is anyway?" asked law professor and Web logger Ann Althouse.  "He just by chance provided the occasion for Obama to say something that deserves attention."

Joe had told Sen. Obama he'd like to buy the plumbing firm where he worked.  "You're going to tax me more?" he asked.  Sen. Obama responded that he wanted to "spread the wealth around."

"'Spread the wealth around' is regular Joe speak for redistributionist tax policy, in which the government takes from the Joes, and keeps a fee for handling Joe's money, then gives it out to other folks who want Joe's money, so other folks will love the politicians who run the government and vote for them again and again," wrote Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass.  "This is a system that works remarkably well for politicians, government workers with fat pensions, and others who get Joe's money."

This wasn't the first time Sen. Obama expressed redistributionist sentiments.  He's proposed nearly doubling the tax on capital gains.  In the Democratic debate April 17, ABC's Charles Gibson reminded him that every time the capital gains rate has been cut, revenues from the tax have increased.  Sen. Obama indicated he still favored increasing the capital gains tax, because "fairness" was more important to him than the additional revenue.

Sen. Obama's income tax cut plan is another example of redistribution, since most of the money would go to people who do not pay income tax.

Joe the Plumber doesn't like Sen. Obama's plan.  "Because you're successful, you have to pay more than everybody else? " he told ABC's Diane Sawyer.  "We all live in this country.  It's a basic right.  And Obama wants to take that basic right and penalize me for it, is what it comes down to.  That's a basically socialistic view, and it's incredibly wrong.  I mean, $250,000 now.  What if he decides, well, you know, $150,000, you're pretty rich too.  Let's go ahead and lower it again.  You know it's a slippery slope?"

Perhaps because he had expressed criticism of Obamanomics more succinctly than John McCain ever has, Sen. McCain mentioned Joe the Plumber 16 times in the final presidential debate.  The 15 minutes of fame he had never sought had arrived.

The best evidence Joe has struck a responsive chord with many in America are the attacks the news media has made on him.  He asked a question Sen. Obama fluffed.  Therefore Joe must be destroyed.

Barack Obama is running for president.  Joe the Plumber is not.  Yet Barack Obama has been subjected to less media scrutiny in 19 months than Joe the Plumber has been in the last week.  Why, for instance, is it important for us to know that Joe the Plumber has a tax lien, but not worth reporting that Sen. Obama's campaign treasurer, Martin Nesbitt, has several against him?

Sen. Obama calls any question he'd prefer not to answer a "distraction."  Most in the news media think it more important to protect Sen. Obama from such "distractions" than to report the truth.