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This fake plumber is a real tool

Post on June 4, 2009 by 11 Comments »

At a rally Wednesday, Samuel Wurzelbacher of Ohio, better known as “Joe the Plumber,” urged  North Carolina’s legislature not to expand the sales tax to help balance our budget.

Well, Wurzelbacher might be America’s most famous “plumber,” but he doesn’t even have his plumbing license.

It’s tough to see why we should listen to a plumber from Ohio about what to do with our state’s budget. But it’s even more of a challenge to understand why we should listen to someone who is not even qualified to do his own job.

“It’s the wrong way of doing things,” Wurzelbacher said of adding taxes on services. “You can’t keep taking away from people.”

Instead, he thinks we should take away opportunities for children whose parents don’t qualify for Medicaid to receive health care through NC Health Choice for Children.

He thinks we should take away jobs in the public sector, one of the few areas of our state’s economy with increasing demand and jobs, thus cutting demand and boosting unemployment even further.

And he thinks we should take more than 10,000 teachers away from our state’s children — enough teachers to line U.S. 15-501 from Chapel Hill to Durham, and still have almost a thousand teachers left over.

If that’s his logic, I’m not sure I’d even want him to fix my toilet (not that he’s qualified).

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Comments (Closed):10

  1. Dallas
    June 4, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    First of all why should anybody have to have a plumbing license, that is just another tax. Having a license does not mean you are qualified.

    How can you be in support of a service tax that only (as written by the nc senate) hits services that middle and lower class folks already struggle to pay?

    Some poor guy living in Wendell would have to pay 6% on labor to get his car fixed, but the service tax does not hit legal and accounting services?

    What about the poor people who pay the taxes who have lost jobs and large chucks of their incomes? So they have to pay more so government can not take part in the shared sacrifice?

    The people of North Carolina are hurting too much to suffer a tax increase

  2. Jerimee
    June 4, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Dalllas I’m glad to hear that you prefer to tax wealthy individuals more than working class families.

    Perhaps you might consider joining us in working toward that goal rather than continuing your blanket opposition to every solution proposed?

  3. James
    June 4, 2009 at 3:26 pm

    Dallas didn’t mean that, Jerimee. What he meant to say was, “I’ll use any half-baked hammer to drive home my anti-tax agenda, even a moron like Joe the whatever.”

    More to the point, Dallas, would you be willing to expand service taxes to all services, including legal, professional, accounting, etc.? Would that solve the problem for you?

  4. Dallas Woodhouse
    June 4, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    as long as it is revenue netural

  5. Dallas Woodhouse
    June 4, 2009 at 8:42 pm

    And by the way….I love how the author of the headline is goes after a human being who decided to question tax policy…thanks Caroline Phillips for the politics of personal destruction

  6. Stephanie Bass
    June 4, 2009 at 9:27 pm

    hmmmm— he’s a human being who decided to question tax policy. golly, he is a member of our species! And I guess he DECIDED to question tax policy because you paid him to do it (or somebody did– his booking agent doesn’t advertise any free rides). But it doesn’t appear that he’s personally destroyed– he’s just been outed as being a fake plumber with no expertise on budget and tax policy, or any real connection to North Carolina. Other than that I’m sure he’s a fine fellow.

  7. Jeff an American overseas
    June 5, 2009 at 12:17 am

    Good article. it is amazing how this man continues to try and stay in the limelight. Anyone who has heard his comments can tell he really does not have the level of understanding he wishes he had. I agree, this guy is a total tool. It is amazing to watch people cheer his comments such as what he said about Obama and the death of Isreal. His intereview with Shepard Smith shows clearly that this man knows NOTHING about foreign policy and when faced with admiting that he knows nothing… he would rather lie than tell the truth and disclose his ignorance.

  8. Greg Flynn
    June 5, 2009 at 12:21 am

    As long as you don’t mind floaters in your drinking water, a plumbing license is superfluous. Otherwise it’s a matter of basic sanitation and, for a plumbing contractor in North Carolina, a matter of law.

    To protect the public health, safety and welfare by prescribing the standard of competence, experience and efficiency of applicants for license by examination.

    General Statutes, Chapter 87, Article 2

    The word “plumbing” is hereby defined to be the system of pipes, fixtures, apparatus and appurtenances, installed upon the premises, or in a building, to supply water thereto and to convey sewage or other waste there from.

    In order to protect the public health, comfort and safety, the Board shall establish two classes of licenses: Class I covering all plumbing, heating, and fire sprinkler systems for all structures, and Class II covering plumbing and heating systems in single-family detached residential dwellings.

    As long as you drink, cook and wash with bottled water, you should be OK without a plumbing license but you might want to make explore your sewage options before committing to plumbing deregulation.

  9. GuyP
    June 5, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    Greg, are you seriously suggesting that it is literally impossible to do a good plumbing job if you do not possess a plumbing license? If so, it is amazing the human race has survived as long as it has!

  10. Kimberly
    June 5, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    Thanks for writing and posting this article, I completely agree with you. As far as business licensing goes, I am a firm believer in business licensing because I have seen far too many service techs, whether it be plumbers, electricians, hvac, or appliance techs that are untrained, uneducated, and unskilled cause serious damage to consumers and their property. I have been hoping that our state would create an appliance repair licensing structure, even though I am in that business, because I have seen what unskilled, untrained, and uneducated techs can do and we have ran too many “second opinion” and “clean up” calls to fix what those techs have done. My opinion is that if you don’t have the education, training, skill, and necessary licensing then you don’t need to touch it because you can hurt yourself, someone else, or damage property.