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July 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:07
July 27, 2006, Thursday, Hour #2
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Well, Chicago has uh the Chicago City Council has approved a measure requiring the big box retailers, i.e., Walmart, to pay employees a living wage.
A minimum there would be $10 an hour.
We'll have discussion and details of this.
As the Excellence and Broadcasting Network and the Russian Limbaugh program roll on, you are in the midst of broadcast excellence.
The fastest three hours in media.
The telephone number, if you'd like to join us, is 800-282-2882.
The email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
First, John Bolton under assault.
You know, he's uh his recess appointment expires in uh in September, I believe, sometime soon.
And so he's got to be reconfirmed here.
And you know, George Voinovich has changed his mind.
It was in tears on the Senate floor, announcing his opposition to Bolton way back when wrote a piece in the Washington Post, uh Washington Post, uh, for those of you in Rio Linda, I guess in the past couple weeks, in which he said that uh Bolton surprised him.
Voynevit said Bolton has come up to see him like 20 times.
I'm thinking, who wants these jobs?
Who wants these jobs?
Why you are the UN ambassador, the United States, the United Nations ambassador, and you got a trek back and forth to Washington and basically kiss butt of a bunch of people that can't hold your diploma.
Anyway, Voidovich has has softened and is uh going to urge people to support Bolton.
But he's being creamed.
He's being creamed again by Democrats on the uh on the committee, and uh, we have a little soundbite here from this morning, Chris Dodd, Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing.
My objection isn't that he's a bully, but that he's been an ineffective bully and can't win the day when it comes when it really counts.
For example, prior to a vote earlier this month on a UN Security Council resolution intended to sanction North Korea for its provocative Fourth of July missile launches.
Mr. Bolton publicly assured anyone who would listen that he could get support for a resolution with teeth with the so-called Chapter 7 obligations.
Turns out, of course, he couldn't.
The resolution adopted by the UN Security Council fell well short of that.
Oh man, uh, you know, calling him a bully.
Uh he's just it's going his own way up there.
He's he's not he's not providing a diplomatic bridge to uh to other members of uh of the United Nations.
Uh my objection isn't that he's a bully, but that he's been an ineffective bully.
He's probably been more effective than anybody wants to admit up there.
I'll tell you who's the real joke of the United Nations, becoming more and more clear each and every day, and that's the beloved Kofi Anon.
He of human suffering.
The beloved Kofi Annan is indeed perhaps the biggest mistake walking around the United Nations on a daily basis.
You can find pictures that have been taken with Kofi Anon shaking the hand of uh of Sheikh Nasrala, the uh the head honcho lesbo.
You can find a number of those pictures.
Uh and and to get on Bolton like this, it's it's clear the Democrats don't have uh anything in their hearts but defeat.
The uh internal conflict in Israel and Lebanon, the battle in Iraq.
They don't I uh it it it's amazing to them it's it's it's all it may as well be welfare reform, and we can't allow Bush a victory.
Bush is not gonna have a victory on virtually anything at all as we go into this election cycle and the 08 election cycle, even if it means this nation's national security.
Uh diplomacy, by the way, is is that what the Democrats gave to the uh Iraqi Prime Minister visiting uh Congress yesterday?
Is diplomacy what we're getting from Howard Dean?
By the way, Howard Dean, this is I didn't get the last story in the stack because there aren't any soundbites associated with it.
But Howard Dean calls for the end to divisiveness.
After saying Catherine Harris is stalin, uh and and uh uh I get what else?
What did he say there?
Uh uh.
Malik is an anti-Semite, yeah.
Uh we we we get from Dean at the same speech in West Palm Beach yesterday, 240 business leaders from here, by the way, were uh in the audience.
Howard Dean calls for end to divisiveness.
Down to divisiveness was the message Wednesday delivered by Howard Dean as he told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger pointing are tearing America apart.
In the same speech, he accuses Catherine Harris of being uh Stalin.
And as I pointed out, you know, they love the real Stalin.
They love the real Castro.
They love the real Soviet Union.
They love the real Lenin.
They love the real Hugo Chavez, but Catherine Harris, a fellow American.
World's number one enemy.
Compare her to a totalitarian.
Dean called the president the most divisive president probably in our history.
He's always talking about those people.
It's always somebody else's fault.
It's the gays' fault.
It's the immigrants' fault.
It's the liberals' fault.
It's the Democrats' fault.
It's Hollywood people.
Well, Americans are sick of that.
Even if you win elections doing that, you drag down the country.
We we really are at a huge divide here.
Because this guy Bush is with them on immigration.
Bush is the he's not blaming immigrants for anything.
I've never heard blame uh gay bash.
I've never heard it at all.
I mean, Bush is the guy that authored the new tone.
Bush is the guy who's reached out and tried to include these.
He's had more Democrats and enemies into the White House for social functions than he's had members of his own support team and party.
These guys are just frustrated and they're trying to create an alternative universe in reality.
Uh and they want doom and gloom, and they want pessimism, and they want all of this.
Um yet here they are claiming that John Bolton's a lousy diplomat, he's a bully and an ineffective bully.
What did these Democrats do to the Iraqi prime minister yesterday if they didn't bully him and if they didn't practice diplomacy?
First, they want to deny him his free speech rights because he wouldn't do what he wants a puppet, then they don't want a puppet.
And the guy is a puppet of Bush, they accused him of being a puppet.
Howard Feynman's out there saying, I can read Bush's body language.
I've been covering Bush since he was in Texas, and I have never seen Bush this defeated.
Well, it wasn't long ago that they didn't like the cowboy swagger.
They thought that didn't play well on the world stage.
Bush should stop the swagger.
He should stop walking around all cocky and confident.
Now, when they think they got Bush walking around like a defeated man, they just think it's absolutely hunky-dory.
They are the ones, ladies and gentlemen, that are in trouble.
They are the ones that do not have a message.
Here's this story.
Democrats map out election plan.
Every day.
It used to be we got this every week.
Now we get one of these every day.
This is by uh written by our old buddy Liz Sedotti in the Associated Press.
Democrats plan to press for a minimum wage increase and tough, smart national security.
Well, well, let's redo the John Kerry campaign.
Tough, smart national security in their final push to wrest power from the Republicans in the November elections.
House and Senate Democrats will hold a joint meeting today to discuss events planned for the hundred days leading up to midterm congressional elections and lay out their party agenda called a new direction for America.
How many times have we had this story?
They're gonna meet.
And then they're gonna come up with what they believe in, and then they're gonna announce it.
But not right now, because they're gonna wait till the election really heats up like 30 three months, hundred days out.
This story is the same story that I have been reading to you and reading myself for the past six months.
Democrats map out election plan.
All right, let's see what they're up against, shall we, uh, ladies and gentlemen.
The economy is as good as it's ever been.
Unemployment is at record lows.
We are winning the war against terror despite the claims of the drive-by media.
Inflation remains low, homeownership's at an all-time high.
And the Democrats want to go in a different direction.
How can this be a new agenda when it's recycling words that John Kerry used in a losing campaign?
I can do it tougher, I can do it smarter, I'm John Kerry.
Well, he's gonna be gonna be strong and smart.
Okay, right, strong and smart.
They've changed strong to tough, right, snertly.
It is a new agenda.
Now it is tough and smart.
They're gonna drop the word strong.
Anyway, country's headed in a pretty good direction, and they're trying to make everybody think it's not.
Of course, there's some unsettledness out there.
There always is.
We are at wall.
We are at war, And we're going to be at wall for a while, no matter who's in the White House, and we get a factor that in who you're going to vote for, because if we're going to be at wall, we want to win the wall.
And you've got to factor, you got a better chance of winning a wall with the Democrats.
Do you got a better chance of maintaining this economy?
What's their what's the new agenda?
What in the world do they need to do that isn't being done now?
The only significant problems out there are uh immigration and gas prices, the future of Medicare and Social Security, and the way I read my history, Medicare and Social Security are specifically problems created and authored by Democrats.
Back in just a second.
All right, folks, Snibe, I want you to I want you to listen to this.
This is going to be shocking, it's going to be disappointing, but there's no reason to keep it from you.
It's out there, it's only going to get bigger, and uh you need to know it.
Robert Novak is uh reporting on a conversation he had with a House committee chairman, Republican House Committee Chairman, does not identify him.
Says that this man is exuding optimism publicly about re-election chances of holding the House in November.
But Novak says that this guy is telling him the Republicans are going to lose 30 seats, that their internal polling is horrible.
And one of the reasons behind it is that there's so many angry Republicans out there.
Uh angry over a whole host of things.
Uh I don't know.
They're not they're not specified here in the uh in the in the piece.
Uh but apparently there's a there's a there's a uh uh effervescing anger out there if we are to believe things.
I I'm you know, we I got this is a Gallup poll, I think it's Gallup poll sixty-six percent.
The American people fed up uh with Bush's uh veto of the uh embryonic stem cell research uh bill.
Uh and they're just uh you know, people are uh are looking at this in a in a whole different way than the president.
They're looking at not as a matter of principle, but uh they're looking at it as cures for Parkinson's and so forth.
Remember all this garbage uh uh that that took place in the 2004 presidential campaign.
Remember John Edwards out there saying if John Kerry's president, Christopher Reeve will walk again.
Uh and and you get people believing this kind of thing.
Uh when the truth is that there's nothing on the horizon in the foreseeable future about embryonic stem cells, but still uh there is some disquiet with the president.
The Democrats, of course, hate his guts.
Uh, but the Republican anger, it's some of its immigration.
I mean, you could you could probably probably put together a list of things yourself, but this guy is privately predicting this this prominent House Committee chairman, prominently or privately predicting, and has been telling Novak this for six months that the uh uh Republicans will lose 30 seats in the House of Representatives.
Uh Novak writes that Republicans continue to press for popular legislation, it'll help them politically, especially considering that some of it's very likely to pass at a time when Democrats can only lose by trying to obstruct.
The clearest case of this is a bill regulating the transport of minors across state lines for the purposes of getting an abortion.
It easily passed the Senate with sixty-five votes.
Also key to Republican success this year, is a bill that would allow states to share in royalties from uh coastal oil drilling, which would create incentives to exploit domestic resources.
I've got a story of that coming up.
So both, you know, the interstate abortion bill that passed, uh and and this offshore drilling thing, the uh it's it's getting close to, and some of the states are getting all excited because they're gonna get some of the royalties of the federal drilling procedures uh and and results.
But there's another one circulating out there, ladies and gentlemen, that I want to prepare you for.
And it uh sort of dovetails with this story out of the uh Chicago City Council uh deciding the Walmart stores, big box stores must pay a living wage.
I have uh I have heard it on good authority that the Republicans uh in the House are going to propose an increase in the minimum wage and try to make it a signature issue of theirs.
Uh take it away from the Democrats because the Democrats, as we just heard in their big meeting where they're going to come up with their new day, morning, whatever it is for America.
Uh that raising the minimum wage is something.
So the re if if this is true, if if the Republicans in the House offer a minimum wage increase bill, it will tell me that the stories I'm hearing about the uh the fear in the House over the prospects of holding in November are real and felt by these guys.
Would it would what surprise me?
The uh would it would it would it surprise me if the Republicans offer uh minimum wage?
No, it wouldn't.
What wouldn't surprise me?
Nothing would surprise me.
There's no elected conservative leadership to slap the whip.
There's none.
All there is a bunch of politicking.
All there is is a bunch of buying votes.
Of course I won't be surprised by it.
A question for everybody else is do you really think the Republicans gonna lose by thirty seats or lose thirty seats in the uh in the House of Representatives?
I can't apparently they've got enough internal polling uh that shows this, and that it's it's scaring a lot of them.
Uh they're not publicly acknowledging any of this.
I just wanted to get this out there uh because you're on the cutting edge of societal evolution when you listen to this program.
And it's coming.
You're gonna be hearing it.
Because it's once once Novak uh, you know, publishes this, and this was yesterday, by the way.
And once once um uh the drive-by media starts coordinating their own polling results with what they think the Republican internal polling is, then you're gonna see some of the big acceleration.
You're gonna see fireworks over poll results.
I'm just warning you.
John in Oklahoma City, as we go back to the phones, welcome, sir.
Glad you waited.
Oh, a pleasure to speak to you, Rush.
How are you doing today?
Fine, sir.
Thank you.
Good, good.
I was calling my point was that I think Iran's gonna push this uh war in the Middle East as far as far and as long as they possibly can, again, to kind of duck tail on what you're saying, to influence the elections in November, I think, if they can keep the pressure and keep supplying Hezbollah and uh maybe even drive up the price of oil, again, you you know, even though the economy is in good shape, if we had some.
What are you really saying?
Are you saying that the Iranians want Democrats to run this country?
Oh, exactly, exactly.
So the Democrats in there, uh, well, wait a minute now.
Well, why wh wh John, why would why would Mahmood Ahmadini, a militant Islamist terrorist, want Democrats to run this country?
Well, if uh if they get control of the House, I think there'll be impeachment proceedings brought, and that's gonna take Bush away from you know dealing with terrorists, and now it's gonna take the eye off of Iraq.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You are saying that the Iranians are fearful of George W. Bush and wish he weren't around running the American show.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I mean I say if they can drive up the price of gasoline, another fifteen, twenty thirty.
Well, we need a bumper sticker.
A mood for the Democrats.
Mahmood for the Democrats.
Iran, if you're right, if Iran's doing this to affect our elections, I wouldn't doubt it.
Then they're trying.
You know what?
We could turn this into something positive.
Remember when that when that bin Laden tape came out sounded just like the Kerry campaign, and they accused Rove of doing that.
Ken in Kansas City, you're next.
Uh, sir, nice to have you with us.
Good afternoon, Rush.
Afternoon.
Um go back to what you mentioned earlier about the polling, the New York Times article you read, something like sixty percent of uh people in other countries think that the president does not have the respect of their leaders.
Foreign leaders, yes.
Uh, yeah.
The well, of course, the poll itself is interesting because it's New York Times' opinion of what foreign people think of what they think their leaders think about Bush.
So it's one of those, you know, about six times removed from the the leaders themselves weren't asked.
But yeah, I mean it's it basically is a poll that asks the American people, what do you think foreign leaders think of Bush?
Yeah.
And well, I don't think they like him very much, but it doesn't say whether they mind that or not.
Yeah.
But the real thing is that uh what difference does it make?
What foreign leadership of the president it's the facts on the ground.
It's worth what they think of the country.
Come on, Ken, if you're the CBS New York Times polling unit, you know the only thing that matters is what do they think of us?
You can reverse it at uh compare with uh George Bush's predecessors.
Well, but I'm telling you, the reality on the ground is not what their interest.
These people live in a different world, a different universe.
They live in a world of spin and PR.
They live in a world of feedback.
What do they think of us?
I hope they respect us.
I hope they like us.
That's that's that's so easy to understand.
It's uh let it drill into your head.
On the choo-choo train of truth here, folks, heading on down the tracks.
Rush Limboy, and more fun than a human being should be allowed to have my brain tied behind my back using talent on a loan from God at the same time.
800-282-2882, a city council in Chicago has brushed aside warnings from Walmart stores to approve an ordinance that makes Chicago the biggest city in the nation to require big box retailers to pay a living wage.
The ordinance passed 35 to 14 yesterday.
After three hours of impassioned debate, it requires mega retailers to pay wages of at least ten dollars an hour plus uh three dollars in fringe benefits.
Three dollars in fringe benefits.
By by mid-2010, it would only apply to companies with more than one billion dollars in annual sales and stores of at least ninety thousand square feet.
Alderman Tony Preckwinkle said, it's uh trying to get the largest companies in America to pay decent wages.
No, it's not.
Minimum wage in Illinois, by the way, six and a half.
Uh the federal minimum is five dollars and fifteen cents.
Mayor Daly and others warned that the living wage proposal would drive jobs and desperately needed development from some of the city's poorest neighborhoods and lead uh people like Walmart to abandon the city.
It's exactly Walmart will wring the city.
Walmart will surround the city.
But they will not go there.
This is has nothing to do with a livable wage.
This has nothing to do with making big companies pay a livable wage.
This is all about uh uh unions.
This is all about the Democrats uh being loyal to unions.
I think the Acorn Group was behind this, a huge liberal group.
But just let me uh the the minimum wage, and it looks like the Republicans are gonna propose one of their own increases, so uh this is all moot.
But you know, I'm gonna keep I'm gonna keep talking about it because it it's ridiculous.
The minimum wage uh is an arbitrarily set wage, has nothing to do with market conditions, it actually reduces jobs.
It it it results in the loss of jobs.
People don't believe that, but it is statistically true.
Now let's let me ask you people in Chicago at the uh at the city council.
Ten buc an hour in 2010, why not tomorrow?
This is desperately needed, isn't it?
Why are you gonna wait almost three years or four?
Why wait four years?
What's the point here?
By the time we get to twenty ten, ten dollars an hour is gonna be not that much different than the six fifteen or six fifty that is the required minimum wage in Chicago now.
Why wait?
And by the why stop at ten?
If if ten dollars is is a good livable wage, wouldn't fifteen dollars an hour be even better?
And if that's true, then why stop at fifteen?
Why why didn't you make the livable wage twenty dollars if big corporations?
Who was this that said this?
Tony Preckwinkle.
Said they're trying to get the largest companies in America to pay decent wages.
Well, I don't think ten bucks an hour is a decent wage, Ms. Preckwinkle.
I wouldn't work for it.
Who do you think will?
Big companies need to pay their fair share.
Fifteen's better, but why stop there?
Why didn't you do $20 an hour?
And what is this three dollars of French benefits?
Three dollars won't even buy a gas gallon of gas in Chicago now.
You call it a fringe benefit?
It's absurd.
It's insulting.
Make the fringe benefit.
In fact, Ms. Preckwinkle, I have a better idea.
Forget this hourly wage business in the first place.
If we're talking about really making these companies come clean and be honest with the people who are making them successful, then let's just say that there is a required minimum salary of $75,000 a year for everybody that works at Walmart.
Everybody gets health care, dental, no copay, no deductible, and $20,000 of fringe benefits every year.
Well, we can't do that.
Why not?
Why if you can go from $650 to $10, why can't you go from $10 to 15?
And if you can go to $50, why can't you go to $20?
I mean, go talk to your union buddies or doing whatever jobs they're doing and ask them if they would go back to ten dollars an hour on the basis it's a livable wage.
Do you think Louis down there in the stonemason uh uh the bricklayers or whatever is gonna tell you that he'll accept ten dollars an hour on a basis of livable wage?
Don't you think that Walmart ought to at least have to pay the lowest union contract equivalent in Chicago?
Where do you come up with these arbitrary numbers?
Ten bucks, chump change.
Fifteen, chump change.
Why the average illegal immigrant wouldn't work for that.
You're gonna have to do better than that in Chicago if you're gonna really talk about a living wage.
But I don't know how you stop at ten.
I don't know how you stop at twenty, and I don't know why you don't just go and make it official.
Make it a hundred grand, Miss Preckwinkle.
Make it one hundred grand.
Talk about a livable wage.
Somebody might really be able to buy a car and not have to take Chicago public transit at a hundred grand.
Well, no, don't even have to do that.
And make Walmart pay for that if they want to learn English.
Go all the way with this Chicago City Council.
You are just tiptoeing around here.
You're dancing around the real truth.
You don't care about these workers.
You just want a double digit minimum wage.
Because you know what this does?
Can I tell you what the big secret of the minimum wage is, folks?
Now the so-called livable wage, in addition to whatever political uh ploy it is to try to teach the downtrodden, the forgotten, the hungry, and the thirsty that the Democrats care about them.
What it really is is a way to goose union wages up.
Because good old union negotiators in Chicago are now gonna say, whoa, people that don't know how to count beyond ten and have only been in a country for a couple years, are gonna make ten bucks an hour at a box store at the checkout line or somewhere stocking things on shelves.
Well, good for them.
We want to raise our union contract the next time it comes up.
The higher the minimum wage goes, the higher the baseline for union contracts are.
This is such a scam.
And of course, since the city of Chicago and its union deals that it makes with the city with other people is actually paid by Chicago taxpayers, people like Tony Preckwinkle, don't really have to think of the money coming out of her purse or pocketbook or back pocket, whichever she prefers.
Al in uh in Chicago, uh welcome, sir.
Nice to have you on the program.
Rush, nice nice to talk to you.
I'm gonna be able to Chicago, I'm at Moscow on Michigan.
Uh this is nothing more than a political act.
Uh, it's also an act that will impact greatly on the poorest of the people in Chicago.
If you know Chicago, there's a ring of poverty around that very successful core downtown.
Those folks rely on public transportation.
They won't be able to benefit from the targets and the Walmarts and the discounts that are available.
You know, Ben Stein, the economist has many times said that Walmart is the greatest poverty anti-poverty program.
But this is also a political act.
You know, they'll they'll cancel this out if they begin to see stores growing and and being built right across the line and in suburban communities.
And that is what will happen, because it happened with gas stations.
Gas stations rim the city.
Well, it's already started.
Walmart's already said they're gonna build a store in one of these uh economically depressed places, and the people live there love it.
Now that's an excellent that's an excellent point.
An excellent point.
If these stores get built outside the, and you said it, not I, the ring of poverty uh in uh in Chicago, then the the primary beneficiaries of a Walmart store won't be able to get there to take, or they'll go broke getting there and won't be able to spend any money once they do get there.
Absolutely.
Can I tell you Kmart, Home Depot, uh Lowe's, the they're building right now in Evergreen Park, and these are communities that are one block, you know.
They they share a border with the city of Chicago, and they do it because also sales tax in Chicago.
If you cross the street, you go into Indiana, you go from eight to eight and a half percent down to six.
And Chicago is hurting itself, but Chicago has always done this.
That's not unique.
What I call a captive constituency.
That's the captive const that's that's not I mean that that's true in uh the sales tax.
I mean, uh in uh in New Jersey, they they bumped up the sales tax on some luxury cars and boats once, and people just went to Pennsylvania.
Uh that and they ended up having to rescind the tax because it l liberals think raising taxes raises revenue.
They do not understand the dynamic aspects of of raising or cutting or lowering taxes.
But I'm gonna I'm uh I'll tell you something here.
This is uh uh I want to ask you about the mayor.
Because you obviously in Chicago, you're closer to it than I am.
The other day, this wacko bunch of city council people actually passed a trans fat ordinance.
Yes, sir.
Or they're working on it, and and and and and mayor Daly said, what the hell are we doing?
We got serious problems with kids in this country.
We got a drug problem, got a crime problem.
What the hell are we regulating people's menus for?
And he opposes this uh living wage thing.
Now, what's with that?
The City Council of Chicago has nothing better to do.
I mean, they they've got to be.
No, I mean, what's no no, no?
What's with Daly opposing that?
Daly's a Democrat too.
Daly sounding like a Republican, almost a conservative Republican on this.
Yeah, but Daly's, you know, Daly's not running for anything at the moment.
Uh he's well, he will be soon, but he's doing straddle.
He's doing a straddle.
He, you know, he's doing what Clinton always does.
He wants to be on the right side of the issue.
It's it's not a matter of principle, it's a matter of positioning.
And that's how Daly always operates.
Wait a second.
The living wage, minimum wage, that's a fundamental defining issue of the Democratic Party, and he's ripping people like Tony Preckwinkle.
By the way, how long has Tony Preckwickle been a member of the City Council in Chicago?
I think forever.
Is she married?
You know, I don't know.
I I can't can't say that.
Just wondering if it's her maiden name.
I'm sorry.
I'm just wondering if it's her maiden name.
I could Google it.
You don't have to worry about it.
I'll handle it.
Uh anyway, thanks.
Thanks, Al.
I appreciate the input.
This is this is just fascinating stuff.
But it is, you know, big cities, big Democrat cities, are locked back in an old era.
Drive-by media locked in an old era.
There are major transformational changes happening in front of all of them in the Middle East in this country, and they're so locked in that old lens and that prism through which they look at news that they're missing all of it.
I gotta take a quick time out here, folks.
We'll be back before you know it.
You know, here's something else for the Chicago City Council and for everybody else here that toying around with his lunacy, and it is sheer lunacy of raising the minimum wage.
And I can demonstrate it to anybody who thinks they want to call and argue with me about it, because I know how you're gonna argue.
You're gonna but Ray, who can live on five dollars and fifteen an hour?
Who can live like that?
Well, uh a lot of people are not living on it, is the point.
It's an entry-level wage.
It's many of them are the equivalent of babysitters.
There are entry-level jobs in America, the newest one being the illegal immigrant job, and then there are other jobs that you just your first job in the marketplace.
There is a myth out there that heads of households supporting the uh family sedan and a 2.8 kids and a white picket fence in suburbia on five dollars an hour, 515, 650, whatever the hell it is, is a myth.
Heads of households are not earning.
I mean, there may be some, uh, but uh i it's you you're you're gonna react to this totally emotionally.
Nothing.
Yeah, I know.
Well, how many of you think what you're earning right now is enough?
I bet you're all saying, no, I need more.
Even I say that.
Even I say, now what are we doing about it?
Are we running around?
He needs a government program to raise my wage.
Is minimum wage, you know something else that's not talked about with the minimum wage?
The tax burden.
Why isn't the tax burden which cuts the net minimum wage ever discussed?
If the minimum wage is so crucial, shouldn't it be free of any taxation?
Like Ms. uh Miss Preckwinkle in Chicago.
A ten dollar living wage.
Make it tax-free.
I know that they're not going to be an income tax out of that, but they are going to pay state.
They're going to pay through the nose on state income tax.
They're going to have Social Security, Medicare taxes withheld, and a whole bunch of other things.
Unemployment insurance, workers' compensation.
Now, I mean, how is that fair?
You you people in government talk about how unfair it is.
And then whatever the minimum wage is gets eaten up by your taxes.
So if you really believe all this, those of you at the Chicago City Council are neither of you pro-minimum wage geeks.
If you actually believe this, then make the next time you propose it all the way through.
No taxes.
Every minimum wage recipient is exempted from taxes.
It's too important.
People need to live, Mr. Limbaugh.
They need to be able to eat and feed their families.
I understand that.
And I wouldn't want to do it on $5 an hour.
Wouldn't want to do it on 10, although I've done it on the equivalent.
We all have, is the point.
Well, other than you trust funders and you Wall Street people whose first job out of Harvard, your hedge fund is a couple hundred grand a year, but most people have earned the equivalent of a million.
I did when I was 13.
Got it out of the way when I was 16, 17, and 18.
That's when I earned the equivalent.
It was a buck and a quarter an hour.
And I didn't even care.
It was so little I didn't care.
I just I just love the experience.
I gave the money to my dad because he had fronted me the money to go to broadcast school.
That's not a broadcast schools, electronic school.
Went down to Dallas when I was 16.
Had to have a radio license that's irrelevant now, but I had had one then in order to work at this radio station in my hometown.
And uh he required me to and it cost 600 bucks to fly me down there, live in some old woman's house for the six weeks.
Well, that they had a whole row of houses down there next to the school, and they the owners of the houses rented out rooms for a very cheap figure.
It was a school, it was a factory.
All kinds of guys going through there, women too.
And I was 16 when I did it, and when I got back and started working, gave my dad the money, pay him back, and unbeknownst to me, he set up a bank account.
Uh and that just all that money after after what three years, it was like $3,000.
So I made a thousand dollars a year and I was working full time.
Now I was a teenager, but that's what the minimum wage is.
It's exactly what it is.
It is misrepresented as something that uh a majority of Democrats, a majority of Democrats want you to believe a majority of Americans are just one paycheck away from homelessness and destitution, and it's all Bush's fault, the Republicans' fault because they won't raise the minimum wage, and so forth.
I'm just saying, if you're gonna go out there and raise the minimum wage, uh you as a city council member or member of Congress, whoever, whatever governmental body you're part of, be fair.
Go all the way.
Exempt all taxes.
I mean, okay, $10 livable wage, $3 fringe benefit.
That's really, really cute.
That's $3 French benefit.
That's just so thoughtful and compassionate.
I wouldn't have thought of that myself.
That shows how much smarter the liberals are than I am.
But after the taxes, the state taxes, the Medicare, if there is federal income tax, $10 an hour probably not going to pay any.
Uh most taxes paid by the rich in this country.
Uh but Medicare, Medicaid, uh, Social Security, uh, one armed amputees, uh, Greenwich Village Fund, whatever's taken out of there, ten bucks is gonna add up to about five or six an hour.
Now, is that really compassionate?
I don't think so.
How to dedicate the final hour of the Rush Limbaugh program to Chicago City Councilwoman, uh Tony Prickwinkle.
Simply because I love the name.
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