A close relative got spammed with the Cory the Digger email, which has already been dealt with rather effectively on Kos.
She asked me if I could rebut, which I did (below). Habits die hard. I told my loved one I doubt it does much good, but she said it made her and some of her friends feel better.
Today I'm toying with the thought that we really don't need to pay so much attention to people like this anymore. (See poll question)
My response, FWIW, appears below (cleaned up somewhat). I really would like to know, though: Are the wingnuts still a real threat, or a dormant threat, or something we can be done with?
See also tristero:
[A]s of 11:00 PM EST on November 4, 2008, I stopped caring about Sarah Palin.
I want to believe. Do progressives need to spend the rest of our lives swatting flies?
Well, this gentleman has become a favorite of conservative bloggers, I learned from the google. The letter was circulated before the election, apparently. I have to wonder why he hasn't made the leap to cable TV. Joe the Plumber worked out really well as a campaign ploy, didn't he?
I do have a few reactions:
- "The heart" is not necessarily accurate. Passion doesn't make you right. I see a lot of rambling, truthiness, and prejudice here.
- Despite the forwarder's disclaimer, this letter is all about politics. This gentleman gets a vote just like everybody else, and he can vote for or against whatever candidate or he wants. He's not happy Obama won fairly and decisively; I wasn't happy when Bush -- well, let's say Bush won. I don't like my taxes paying for the war; Cory doesn't like his taxes paying for -- whatever. Politics is how we settle differences and why we have elections. Win some, lose some.
- Joe the "plumber" is being persecuted with the threat of a book deal and a recording contract. For all the attention Joe got, nobody seems to have noticed that under Obama's tax proposal, Joe's taxes will go up 0%. People seemed to like him before it became clear that he was not who he and McCain made him out to be.
- I really don't have enough information to know whether Cory will pay more taxes or not. That information on his income is just not there. If he earns up to $250,000/year, my understanding is that his taxes will not go up. Joe the "plumber" didn't earn what he claimed, either, so I'd like to see some earnings statements.
- Obama destroyed the economy before he was elected president? In the U.S. Senate, Obama introduced the STOP FRAUD Act to increase penalties for mortgage fraud, well before the current subprime crisis began.
- Obama hasn't even been sworn in yet. Some of us think he should be given a chance to govern.
- The sub-prime crisis is all ACORN's fault? The only people who seem to think so are Republican operatives and talk-show hosts. It wasn't till a black guy had a good chance of becoming president that anybody made that charge. Most people seem to think the problem was the end of government oversight over the banking industry. Even Alan Greenspan admitted that. These weren't exactly liberal policies. Blaming low-income and minority people for the collapse of world banking is giving them a lot more power than they have. That really is class warfare. ACORN has been warning us for years about predatory lending practices.
- All this other stuff is just a rant about "socialism." You can argue the pros and cons of America vs. Europe in terms of culture, income, family time, leisure, health care, etc. To say they are in decline and have nothing to offer the world is overstating it, especially since we seem to want their help in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
- The idea that citizens need to pay some taxes is not a new one and certainly not invented by Obama. Neither is the idea that people with higher incomes should pay a little more. Recently on The Daily Show I heard what McCain were saying just a few years ago, and what Palin was saying just a couple months ago, but you can also find it in The New Yorker:
During the 2000 campaign, on MSNBC's "Hardball," a young woman asked him why her father, a doctor, should be "penalized" by being "in a huge tax bracket." McCain replied that "wealthy people can afford more" and that "the very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don't pay nearly as much as you think they do." The exchange continued:
YOUNG WOMAN: Are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and stuff?. . .
MCCAIN: Here's what I really believe: That when you reach a certain level of comfort, there's nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.
And Palin:
[W]e're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.
So they were for "socialism" before they were against it.
- Adam Smith, 1776:
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
There's rich and there's rich. There are people like W. who were born on third base and think they hit a triple. And then there are people who work for it. We all benefit to some extent from schools, roads, courts, etc., but the wealthy seem to get the most benefit out of them. That would include the ones who work for it.
- Who asked Cory to sweat and stress? He could try being an employee and see if he likes that. Or he could do what Ayn Rand's heroes do, and quit to see if anybody misses them.
- There are some pretty good critiques of this "open letter":
Last time I checked, Obama was not in charge of Cory the Well Driller's business. If Cory the Well Driller has such a problem with employees respecting him and has such a high turnover rate, that reflects on him, not on Obama. A good employer sings the praises of the employees who work for him. Yet here is Cory the Well Driller thumbing his nose up at virtually every person who ever worked for him, telling them they are lazy and worthless and no good.... His close is quite ironic -- he speaks out against what he calls whiners when his piece is one whine right after another.
- This argument is what McCain tried, and he lost. People heard it loud and clear, and they rejected it. I'm done with these people.
There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.
--Warren Buffett
And don't forget "A Day in the Life of a Republican."
The best thing about this whole minor, very minor, publicity grab is that it reminds me to look up and re-read John Cheever's short story "Artemis, the Honest Well-Digger."