Joe the Plumber: Plunge the IRS for good
April 8, 2009 · Filed under: News
Campaign icon’s website urges America to switch to FairTax
“Are you sick and tired of being forced to file a tax return every year?” asks Wurzelbacher on his IRSvote.com website. “I’m here to ask my fellow Americans to join me to me to make this the last year we ever have to file a tax return. I’m going to give the American people the opportunity to vote the IRS out.”
13 Responses to “Joe the Plumber: Plunge the IRS for good”
Please please please...if you want someone to take FairTax seriously, leave this moron off the page. As a Democrat who happens to very much like the FairTax idea, has read both books and done a ton of research...I would NEVER send anyone to this site to actually learn more about it if Joe the Dumbass Plumber is sitting on the home page. It just totally nullifies the fact that anything intelligent is going to be on this site.
Luckily, I got to this site from another link and was poking around reading BEFORE I hit the home page link...
Please, for the love of God...take him off the homepage so I can use this site to send people to for more information.
I’m not sure if this is the best site to learn about the FairTax. Pointing them to FairTax.org or Wikipedia may be more informative to new comers. It’s more of a discussion and debate blog. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Joe the Plumber may or may not be the good, but seems worthy of discussion. I got a good laugh out of your post... if others feel the same way. I have no problem with pulling it. Or perhaps I’ll create a new post to push it further down the list as to not turn off new visitors. His call for a donation makes his site sound like a scam to fill his pocket.
I tend to agree with Phluffie on this one. I certainly can’t fault any businessman for supporting the Fairtax, but I’m not sure Joe has any idea of the reporting requirements he will have to put up with?
Not much to discuss about Joe based on his one minute spot, except his point about there being 67000 pages in the IRC. According to the Tax Foundation’s research, the number of words in the IRC plus the supporting regulations could fit on 7500 double sided pages? And it might be worth noting that the original Income Tax legislation was printed on 38 pages including the forms and instructions for completing them. Compare that to the 135 pages in HR25?
Sending this guy money would be sheer madness, imho!
I like Joe the Plumber, and I think that Phluffie is going a bit off the deep end here. However, seeing as how Phluffie self-identified as a Dem I can understand the dislike for Joe. Joe the Plumber has become a rather divisive figure in American politics. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but I think a FairTax advocacy site should do everything reasonable to not immediately turn off a huge segment of the potential visitors.
I also have to agree with Hank here. The money pitch does seems a bit suspect, and I even believe in the FairTax. Of course I can also disagree with Hank on a couple of points... First off, 7500 pages front and back is 15000 pages of text, granted this is a far cry from 67000 but I think that particular number includes court decisions or some other non-sense. Additionally, today’s HR25 should absolutely be more complicated than the original Income Tax legislation. Today’s economy is much more complicated than that of 70 or so years ago. Also, HR25 has to deal with issues like the prebate, the education exemption, service/interest taxation, etc. These are all issues that the original Income Tax legislation did not have. One final thought on this, was the original Income Tax legislation double space typed like HR25? If not, this would make that legislation about 70 pages.
Scott,
I agree that today’s world is much more complex that when the income tax was developed 100 years ago! As for your question, my copy of the original legislation that fits on 38 double sided pages is spaced in an identical manner to HR25. That is, single spacing except for paragraph and numbering double spaces.
If you are interested, you can also obtain a 2003 Commemorative copy of the 1913 law by calling 1-800-344-3734. The Corporation Trust Company published this document to commemorate their 90th year of providing tax law information. Perhaps Aaron Russo should have consulted with them prior to making his infamous film documentary about his failed search for the income tax law??
Please, don’t use Joe the Plumber as a spokesperson. Seriously. I realize he was meaningful during the election, but he’s an awful face for this cause.
I almost feel sorry for my friends that suppoort the FairTax. Having Joe-the-Plumber as a 900-number pitchman almost surely dooms the proposal to the firnges.
Which sort of begs the question: With its billionaire backers, grass roots support, and talk show advocates, why is it that the FairTax cannot generate any support from mainstream Republican politicians? None of Romney, McCain, GWB, Gulliani or even Gingrich support the FairTax; yet the likes of Huckabee, Katherine Harris, and Joe-the-Plumber do.
Since the Wall Street Journal and National Review have each panned the FairTax, you can’t exactly blame it on the so-called “liberal media.” I know the standard explanation is that the mainstream politicians are “afraid of change,” “don’t want to relinquish the power of the IRS” or are “dependent on lobbyists.” But if the FairTax actually could deliver half of what its proponents promise, none of that would make a dime’s-worth-of-difference.
I am curious what the FairTax supporters on this board think.
Hayden, if anything, the FairTax is easy to negatively spin and demagogue to an uninformed public. At this point, I don’t think they see a large political advantage in promoting the plan, and see it as another attack point for their opponent, to which they would need to defend. I think they play it safe, which is like most politicians - don’t rock the boat and CYA.
Hayden, you MUST be kidding...
How could you possibly think that the career politicians in Washington are going to be just fine with derailing the gravy train they ride? Lobbyists spend big bucks, and that’s big with a B as in Billions every year. This is money that would be DRASTICALLY reduced by eliminating the ability of Congress to play games with the tax code. You think that the self-serving in Washington are going to want to mess with this meal ticket? There is a reason that incumbents have such an enormous advantage when running for re-election. You realize that at least 3 of the 5 names you mentioned are career politicians, and the other two are simply career politicians that haven’t stepped up to the big time meal ticket of Washington politics as of yet.
I’m not saying that all politicians are inherently evil or untrustworthy (though I make a pretty good case for this in another post) just that many in Washington have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The FairTax will be a HUGE change, and I’ll be the first to admit that a transition to this is NOT going to be all rosy smooth. There will be problems and hiccups if this is ever passed into law. I think that the benefits are far greater than the drawbacks, but I think most in Washington are going to sit on the sidelines where they could safely say “I didn’t do it, don’t blame me”.
The reason the fair tax doesnt catch on is because this country is full of sheep that just follow blindly along. Whenever I am promoting the fair tax I see them nodding their heads and saying what a good idea it sounds like as they fill out yet another W2 form for the second or third job that they need to pay all the taxes and still have enough left to feed the family!!!!
Hi Wendy — Just out of curisoity, to whom do you promote the FairTax? And how do you go about doing it?
The reason I’m asking is because there is a lot of information out there pro and con on the FairTax. It seems to me that when the main FairTax proponents push the FairTax they always leave out the negative aspects of the tax (or the studies questioning the numbers behind the FairTax), so the listeners get a very distoreted one-sided picture of the FairTax.
Now, perhaps you give a more balanced view in your promotions, an I certainly don’t mean to imply otherwise, but I’m really just curious how you would go about promoting it. (If you’ve read much on this board, you will know that there are many folks here that support the FairTax even though they are very faimiliar with all sides of the argument. My impression, however, is that most folks out there aren’t at all familiar with “the other side” of the debate.)
Joe’s right. America was hijacked by the international banking cartel back in 1913 when Congress passed the Income Tax Act, the Federal Reserve Act, and the 16th Amendment, all in less than a year. Governments that tax income have only slaves for citizens. Everything we have now we only have because the federal government has allowed us to have it. That includes our property, our liberties and our very lives. If you don’t pay up, they send men with assault rifles and full body armor to your house at three in the morning to terrorize your family and take you to prison. Income tax revenue doesn’t buy much anymore but it still gives Congress all the collateral it needs to get all the lines of unlimited credit it wants from the federal reserve and the central banks of other nations like China, of all places. That is why every lying, two-faced career criminal in public office refuses to support the Fair Tax.
The time to support the Fair Tax is now. There is a change happening in America and its bad for all the Progressives out there. The country is way more conservative then they ever what to let on. To time to take back both houses of congress is now and then the White House. America has spoken and its out with this administration and its up to us to put someone in there who can implement that Fair Tax once and for all.