Helen Jones-Kelley’s Flimsy Excuses for Invading Plumber Joe’s Privacy

Helen Jones-Kelly, the director of Ohio’s Department of Job and Family services admitted in a letter today that her agency did a lot more than simply check to see if Joe Wurzelbacher owed any child support. She also had her agency check to see if he was on unemployment or welfare.

Her reasoning for doing the checks seems innocent on its face, but is really pretty flimsy and ought to alarm anyone who professes a love for civil rights.

Among the resources from which we obtain enforcement leads is the public media. When a news story brings to our attention a person who has recently received a financial windfall or which otherwise suggests that the person may have more financial resources available to them than what might ahve been expected, we take note. When someone of apparently limited means wins a major lawsuit of the lottery, we’ll often run a quick check to see if that person is behind in child-support payments or is a public-assistance recipient.

Well, okay. But what gave Jones-Kelly the impression that Wurzelbacher was a person “of apparently limited means”? He owns a house and is gainfully-employed in a profession not exactly known for paying minimum-wage. He hadn’t indicated that he had just received a “windfall”, only that he was planning on buying into a business. I suppose that having that much money and not being a highly-paid government bureaucrat meant to her that something funny had to be going on. There was no way that Plumber Joe could come up with that much money on his own, right?

Right. The stench of the Nanny State is cloying.

More from Jones-Kelly.

With respect to Mr. Wurzelbacher, we and our sister agencies had receives a range of media requests about him. I am told that there were at least 25 media inquiries about Mr. Wurzelbacher across our state agencies. Some concerned information contained in public record databases and some did not.

Remember, this is 25 media inquiries in a matter of a couple days about a guy who did nothing more than ask Barack Obama a question. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that there haven’t been 25 media inquiries in two years of the people holding all the paperwork related to the years that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama worked hand in hand on the Annenberg Challenge. At least, not from anyone not named Stanley Kurtz.

Mr. Wurzelbacher had suggested that he was considering buying a business that would make $250,000 to $270,000 a year, but a public records check in response to media inquiries at the Department of Commerce had revealed that he was not a licensed commercial plumber. Our check, at the request of the media, revealed that he had enrolled in, but not completed, that program.

And that’s relevant to his buying a business how, exactly? First, Wurzelbacher didn’t need a commercial plumbing license because he was doing residential plumbing work. Second, he doesn’t need a plumbing license of any kind to buy a plumbing business.

Not yet at least.

And did you catch how many times she tossed the word “media” in there? Seems she might have been a tad bit eager to make sure the Republican legislator to whom she wrote the letter knew that all these inquiries were the media’s doing as opposed to, say, the doings of a maxed-out Obama donor who happens to have the authority to have the checks made.

After that half-paragraph non sequitur that had nothing to do with the topic at hand, Jones-Kelley tries to get to the real reason she ran the checks.

It was suggested (and later verified through publicly-available findings in the Lucas County Courts and the Office of the Ohio Attorney General), that Mr. Wurzelbacher owed back taxes. Given our understanding that Mr. Wurzelbacher had publicly indicated that he had the means to purchase a substantial business enterprise, ODJFS, consistent with past departmental practice, checked confidential databases to make sure that if Mr. Wurzelbacher did owe child support, or unemployment compensation taxes, or was receiving public assistance, appropriate action would be taken.

So let’s get this straight. If you live in Ohio and show up in the public eye at all, Ms. Jones-Kelly believes she has the right to go trapising through your confidential public records even though she has no indication whatsoever that youv’e done anything wrong and without reason to believe that you might show up in any of the databases she’s checking.

First off, she’s wrong. Wurzelbacher never said that “he had the means”. What he said was, “I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year…”. That’s completely different. “Getting ready” means exactly what it says. It doesn’t mean he had the money in hand. it didn’t mean that the purchase was imminent, or even likely to happen in the near future. He could have been arranging a loan for the purchase. He could have been developing a business plan that would help him earn the money. Jones-Kelley made a bad assumption and violated Wurzelbacher’s privacy based on that assumption.

Beyond that, though, what about Wurzelbacher’s financial situation (or at least the situation she thought he was in) would lead her to believe that he had ever received unemployment or welfare payments? Okay, so he had a tax lein. So what? All a lein indicates is that he was actually earning money, had taxable assets, and wasn’t particularly fond of giving a big chunk of it back to the government. That doesn’t lead anywhere near welfare or unemployment.

For that, she needs to be disciplined. The people of Ohio shouldn’t have the least bit of confidence that their privacy is held as sacrosanct by the people they have hired to safeguard it. If Jones-Kelly will authorize those searches based on such flimsy and incorrect information, what would stop her from inventing some other bogus reason to check the records of anyone else who runs afoul of the candidate to whom she’s donated over $2,000?

I’m also faintly amused that she believes that a business “making” $250-280 thousand a year is “substantial”. The owner of that business would be really lucky to be pulling down $100,000 for himself afer he paid his employees, paid out maintenance on the equipment, paid the state and federal taxes, and invested in new or upgraded equipment. It’s obvious that Jones-Kelley has not the faintest clue what it takes to run a business, which is probably why she’s a bureaucrat.

Let’s remember what started this, though,. Joe Wurzelbacher has been vetted by this overreaching bureaucrat, the media, and Obama’s thugs because he asked Barack Obama a question. Nothing more.

How are you going to be treated if you question a beloved government official? Are you ready to find out?

Other Posts of Interest:

• Police Clerk Charged for Violating Joe Wurzelbacher’s Private Records
• Is Abuse of Government Power Not a Real Story If Democrats Are the Abusers?
• From American Dream to Unemployed, Thanks to Barack Obama

Tags: Barack Obama, Corruption, Joe Wurzelbacher, Media Bias, Nanny Fascism, Stanley Kurtz, Taxes

Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., The Obamessiah