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Home > Blogs > Ohio politics > Archives > 2008 > February > 18 > Entry
Eye on Ohio: “Need” ad for Obama
Obama ad talks about taking care of middle-class workers
THE AD:
“Need,” 30-second television commercial.
WHERE TO SEE IT:
It began airing in Ohio on Monday.
SCRIPT:
“I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message.
“This administration has further divided Wall Street from Main Street. You’ve got CEOs who are making more in 10 minutes than ordinary workers are making in a year. The bedrock, the foundation, of our economy is our workers. And the middle class have been treading water or worse.
“My plan says, ‘Let’s return some balance to our tax code. Close these corporate loopholes the lobbyists put in. And let’s make sure that tax breaks are given to people who really need it.”
VIDEO:
The commercial opens with a black-and-white still photo of Obama with voters, switches to color footage of him speaking at a voter forum, then shows him speaking briefly to the camera. It cuts to video of him meeting voters, and a black-and-white photo with a group featuring a man wearing a “Jobs! Worth fighting for” T-shirt.
Obama speaks to the camera for two seconds before full-screen text says: “The Obama Plan,” adding “Close corporate tax loopholes,” “$1,000 tax cut per working family,” “No taxes on seniors making under $50,000.”
ANALYSIS:
Broadcast in earlier primary states, the commercial continues Obama’s effort to chip away at Hillary Clinton’s strength among working-class voters and women by focusing on pocketbook issues.
CEOs who make more in 10 minutes than an average worker in a year are the exception, but they do exist. The gap between CEO and worker pay has been rising for 40 years. The ratio, 24-to-1 in 1965, surged in the 1990s and declined from a peak in 2000.
In 2006, average annual CEO compensation was 262 times the average full-time worker’s salary of $42,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That means the average CEO earned more in one work day than the average worker in a year.
Interestingly, some of the highest-earning Americans are hedge-fund managers. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions, Obama has received $504,484 from hedge fund employees in the 2008 election cycle — slightly less than Clinton, but more than five times the contributions to Republican front-runner John McCain.
Obama’s “$1,000 tax cut per working family” would be a refundable income-tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per family, offsetting payroll tax on the first $8,100 of earnings.
Thomas Feran is a reporter at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. E-mail: tferan@plaind.com.
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