Joe the Union Guy
Updated below.
This story, by Tom Troy of the Toledo Blade, is getting some Internet buzz:
Samuel 'Joe' Wurzelbacher - a.k.a., 'Joe the Plumber' - announced today on Facebook and earlier on his Web site that he has landed a union job with Chrysler Group LLC.
Mr. Wurzelbacher, 40, of Springfield Township, who once was vilified as an 'unlicensed plumber,' said he was on his fourth day today and taking a smoke break at the time, when he was accosted by a co-worker as a 'teabagger,' a derogatory term used for Tea Party members.
In [a] long message, Mr. Wurzelbacher said, 'I was just recently hired on at Chrysler,' and explained that while he's known as a conservative, he's not an enemy of private unions. 'In order to work for Chrysler, you are required to join the Union, in this case UAW. There's no choice -- it's a union shop -- the employees voted to have it that way and in America that's the way it is,' he wrote.
Some stories, like this one by Tom Kludt of TPM, concentrate on Joe's understanding of the term "teabagger."
Others, including Joe himself, are more interested in discussing how Joe the Anti-Union Guy can justify joining a union. One of Joe's odd jobs, after all, was making speeches against "the Employee Free Choice Act, the 'card check' bill supported by labor unions and fiercely opposed by the GOP." Joe's employer for that gig: the Koch-brothers-founded astroturf group Americans for Prosperity.
Joe tries to get around his apparent hypocrisy by arguing that "'there's a big difference between private unions and pubic (sic) unions," the latter of which he still opposes," Kludt writes. (Like most conservatives, Joe appears to be obsessed with sexuality, even in his typos.) But of course, the card-check bill concerned "private" as well as public employees unions.
Nonetheless, I would not fault Joe or other like-minded people for joining unions if that's what they had to do to get work. Most of us are willing to make compromises to put food on the table.
No, what I found most curious about the Blade story was this: "Mr. Wurzelbacher has said that he learned plumbing in the Air Force."
As Troy of the Blade reminds us, Joe "became famous in 2008 because of a chance encounter on his street with then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and has become a popular figure on the Tea Party right. Mr. Wurzelbacher and Mr. Obama engaged in a spirited debate about Mr. Obama's plans to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000, prompting Mr. Obama to say that his plan would help everyone because it would 'spread the wealth around.'
Joe hasn't forgotten this either. In his Facebook post, he writes, "Yes, I'm a Republican who was cast into the limelight for having the temerity to confront Barack Obama on the question of redistributing wealth." (Emphasis added.)
Here's the problem. Joe owes his entire career, save any gigs he got from winger organizations following his brush with Obama, to a major redistributive program -- the U.S. military. You and I paid for Joe's Air Force training, the training that led to his many years of work as an unlicensed plumber. In fact, Joe was so enamored of government jobs that he applied for one in 2012: he ran for a seat in Congress.
That's the real hypocrisy here: Joe thinks it is find and dandy for the government to teach him a trade and to employ him full-time, but he objects to government programs and policies that principally benefit others. The argument he had with Obama, of course, was silly and against Joe's own best interests: Obama planned to "redistribute the wealth" to people like Joe. But Joe, who planned to become a plumbing entrepreneur, obviously saw himself rising above his middle-class status. He was objecting to what Obama's proposals would do to him should he realize the American dream & become a well-to-do plumbing magnate. Meanwhile, you can bet Joe would have been happy to receive a Small Business Association loan & to benefit from any other small business programs federal and local governments might offer him. He would certainly have been glad, had he been able to realize his entrepreneurial dream, to accept government contracts.
Whether he is Joe the Unlicensed Plumber or Joe the Union Guy, Joe is still what is wrong with the Republican Party. It is a party of, by and for selfish people, people incapable of seeing the hypocrisy of their core political philosophies.
Update. Greg Sargent:
It appears plausible that Joe the Plumber may not have gotten this auto job if it weren't for the hated bailout of the auto industry, which was first championed by George W. Bush and then became a leading symbol for years of Obama's penchant for big-footed government intervention in the private market.
Sean McAlinden, who has studied the auto-bailout as the chief economist for the non-profit Center for Automotive Research, tells me it's likely Joe's new job is at one of two Chrysler plants currently operating in Toledo, Ohio, Joe's home town. (I've emailed Joe asking for more info.) 'He wouldn't have gotten a job in Toledo if Chrysler hadn't been bailed out,' McAlinden tells me. 'The unemployment rate in Toledo would have been at 15 percent.' ...
... As John Cole of Balloon Juice notes, in his 2012 race, Joe said he thought "the auto bailouts were an example of government overreach."
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Reader Comments (4)
Jon Stewart says "The biggest problem with the denizens of Bullshit Mountain is they act like their shit don't stink. If they have success, they built it. If they failed, the government ruined it for 'em. If they get a break, they deserve it. If you get a break, it's a handout and an entitlement. It's a baffling, willfully blind cognitive dissonance..."
People like Joe the Hypocrite don't see themselves as struggling to keep their heads above water, but rather as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Maybe if he becomes a successful entrepreneur he'll have some real clout and could affect changes in the tax code, but for now he's just another delusional schmoe caught in an emotional trap where anecdotes trump evidence and faith overrules fact.
Puzzling that Joe and so many others do not understand that the GOP does nothing for them.
Another in the looooong line of examples demonstrating conservatives' obsession with their rights, with what's owed them, and a complete blank on responsibilities, what they owe to the country and everyone else.
They didn't build anything on their own. They, like everyone else, benefit from infrastructure, law, regulations, public education, and economic opportunity created by the government with tax money raised from millions of other Americans and the political foresight and wisdom of enlightened leaders.
GOP leaders, way over at the other end of the spectrum (that's the one without light), desire nothing more than to dismantle the entire system that gave many of them, like Joe the Whatever the fuck he is now, their start in the world.
And the fact that he is still pining for a "white Republican president" (male, of course) is a clear indication of the blockiness of his head. The last few "white Republican presidents" made it one of their goals in life to screw workers.
"Hypocrite" doesn't begin to cover it.
Russ,
"Temporarily embarrassed millionaires"....might have to steal that one.