The election is over, but the Joe the Plumber case is not.
Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles said his office is now looking at a half-dozen agencies that accessed state records on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.
The Beacon Journal has learned that, in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, two other state offices — the Ohio Department of Taxation and Ohio Attorney General Nancy Rogers — conducted database searches of Joe the Plumber.
Wurzelbacher became an instant celebrity after he asked Barack Obama a series of questions in his Toledo driveway about the Democrat’s tax policies.
In the third debate between Obama and Republican John McCain on Oct. 15, the candidates referred to Joe the Plumber more than 20 times.
The next day, the taxation department conducted two separate searches of a database of liens for unpaid taxes that were certified to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office for collection.
John Kohlstrand, a taxation department spokesman, said he is prohibited from talking about individual taxpayers, but he confirmed that the databases were checked.
……The searches were done to determine whether a lien placed against the individual was appropriate and whether it remained unpaid or not, Kohlstrand said.
Yeah, but why only after Wurzelbacher confronted Obama?
……Kohlstrand said that the AG’s office wanted access to the records so they could turn over to the national media lien information that was a public record in Lucas County. He said the national media did not have reporters in Toledo, so the attorney general’s office was helping them out with public records.
……Jim Gravelle, a spokesman for Attorney General Rogers, said he could not comment on individual records because of privacy issues. He said he would not confirm or deny that the AG’s office went to taxation or whether his office had been queried by the inspector general.
You mean like the same privacy afforded to Joe by your office?
……Wurzelbacher had questioned Obama’s plan to raise taxes for anyone with an income exceeding $250,000 because he planned to purchase his own plumbing business.
……Charles said he does not know at this point if anyone in any of the agencies did anything wrong.
He doesn’t know if any one of the agencies did anything wrong.
Oooookay.
Over the next for years, vocal critics of the Obamessaiah should expect to have their records dug into for anything that might be used to punish them or frighten them into silence.
This is part of the orders given by Obama during his campaign:
“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/obama_releases_his_inyourface.html
Consider it a continuation of the harassment, vandalism, and tactics he learned from one of his idols, communist Saul Alinsky. (http://www.semcosh.org/AlinskyTactics.pdf)
Welcome to the Socialist States of America.