Joe the Plumber has presented a bit of a problem on the way to Obama’s coronation. Faced with an unanticipated question about his tax policy, Obama let the socialist cat out of the bag:

Joe is Joe Wurzelbacher, a Toledo, Ohio plumber who showed up at an Obama rally to challenge the Democrat’s tax policies. Wurzelbacher wants to buy the business where he works but says he’s worried that, if the company is successful, he’ll face higher taxes. Obama has said that he’ll cut taxes for those making under $250,000 but that people making more than that would see an increase.

“It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama told him in an episode captured on a TV camera. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too…I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

The government is busy spreading the wealth around enough already. We “spread the wealth around” when we give farmers giant subsidy packages. We “spread the wealth around” when we take from the young and give to the elderly. But at least, for once in the campaign, Obama has been honest about his agenda. His tax policy really is a massive new welfare program (not that he bothered to inform anyone he was running on a platform of undoing welfare reform). One can’t help but wonder, if spreading the wealth around makes everyone better, why haven’t all these programs ended, or even reduced, poverty?

On the contrary, “spreading the wealth around” means punishing economic success, which tends to discourage, big surprise, economic success. Of course, Obama only believes in spreading everyone else’s money around. His? Not so much. Between 2000 and 2004, the Obama’s earned $1.2 million in income and gave a paltry $10,770, barely more than 1%, to charity. Only when his Presidential ambitions forced him to atleast pretend to not be a hypocrat did Obama give 6% of his $1 million 2006 income to charity, though the largest single benefactor was Trinity United Church of Chicago, home of Reverend “I never knew he thought that” Wright.

But back to our friend, Joe.  Wanting to receive the rewards he is due from of his own hard work, rather than give it to Obama redistribute to political constituencies the “needy,” Joe has become an obstacle to the Obama campaign.  Obstacles are also targets.  I predict a furious left-wing assault.  Unfortunately for them, nothing they say about Joe the Plumber can erase Obama’s unguarded slip.

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