Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Could it be, ladies and gentlemen, could it be?
The pulse of revolution began today.
Perhaps even yesterday in Mesa, Arizona.
What is apparent to me, ladies and gentlemen, your loyal, devoted host, is that President Barack Obama cannot kill the spirit of America.
It cannot be silenced.
It's great to be with you as we kick off.
Another three hours of broadcast excellence from the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies.
We are loaded today.
And so let's just get right to it.
Obama spoke at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona.
All the kids were kept in their classrooms.
They got to watch it on closed-circuit TV.
There is an advanced placement government class taught by a man named Jeff Scherer.
And a story here from Mesa, Arizona News, the EastValleyTribune.com, suggested these students in Mesa High School weren't buying any of what Obama had to say.
This is a giant media mistake.
How in the world this ever made it into print is beyond me, but it did.
And now the nation is going to know about it.
Earlier this morning, on CNBC, reporter Rick Santelli reporting from the Chicago Board of Trade.
I don't even need to describe this for you.
I'm just going to let you hear the audio sound bites.
It was on the program Squawkbox.
The co-anchors Becky Quick and Joe Kiernan.
Carl Quintinella talking with reporter Rick Santelli on the Chicago Board of Trade floor.
Here is Santelli's message for President Obama.
The government is promoting bad behavior.
How about this president and new administration?
Why don't you put up a website to have people vote on the internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water?
This is America.
How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?
Raise their hand.
President Obama, are you listening?
How about we all stop paying our mortgage?
It's a moral hazard.
That's CNBC this morning, Rick Santelli on the floor at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Now, these are people with skin in the game.
Obama said, we got to have, everybody's got to pay taxes because everybody's got to have some skin in the game.
Well, this is talking truth to welfare.
This is talking truth to immorality.
The market votes every day and it is speaking every day by going down.
This is a huge chord.
This is what Americans are thinking.
This is reality.
This is the pulse of revolution starting today.
Here is more.
Cuba used to have mansions and a relatively decent economy.
They moved from the individual to the collective.
Now they're driving 54 Chevys.
Maybe the last great car to come out of Detroit.
We're thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July.
All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I'm going to start organizing.
When are you jumping in this time?
How's it going?
Are you dumping in some derivative securities?
Finally, Mr. Santelli explains how the silent majority agrees that you cannot.
Government cannot do away with the business cycle.
There's only about 5% of the floor population here right now, and I talk loud enough they can all hear me.
So if you want to ask them anything, let me know.
These guys are pretty straightforward, and my guess is a pretty good statistical cross-section of America, the silent majority.
They're pretty much of the notion that you can't buy your way into prosperity.
And if the multiplier that all of these Washington economists are selling us is over one, then we never have to worry about the economy again.
The government should spend a trillion dollars an hour because we'll get $1.5 trillion back.
I'll tell you what, if you read our founding fathers, people like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson, what we're doing in this country now is making them roll over in their graves.
This is Rick Santelle, reporter at CNBC, not a commentator.
He is a reporter at CNBC on the board at the Chicago Board of Trade.
And as you can tell, there is tremendous upset over the mortgage bailout that was announced yesterday, subsidizing the losers, Obama picking the losers.
And so many things happened yesterday.
Eric Holder's speech in which he said that Americans are still cowards on race.
And the more I think about it, the more there is a giant chip on its shoulder throughout this entire administration, and probably some anger and a desire to get even with people that they think have wronged them over the years.
It is a serious thing, of course.
And the idea that this would erupt in a market like this, where the traders were cheering, where the traders were whistling, where the traders were booing, this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reaction of people who have skin in the game.
So the point of all this, aside from what you heard, is that you are not alone.
And when the pulse of revolution starts, it just takes an action like this to inspire confidence in others who want to show up.
Now, let's go to Mesa, Arizona.
The East Valley Tribune, a Dobson High School advanced placement government class with strong opinions about Obama, watched the president's speech Wednesday on a small, grainy TV in the corner of their classroom.
Some of the students attentively watched the speech, giving questioning looks and comments, shaking their heads, and laughing at some of Obama's words.
Other students listened, occasionally glancing up to watch while texting on their cell phones, reading a book, or finishing some screw work.
The gym's events were shown simultaneously in rooms throughout the Mesa school.
Teachers were given direction or discretion on whether to show the speech, the students said.
The students in the class were hopefully hopeful that things would work out, but they questioned whether Obama's plan would actually work.
These are high school students, would actually work to dig the country out of its economic woes.
They also said they expected a longer speech.
One senior took some notes during the speech, was among the most vocally opposed to Obama's words at one point when Obama talked about the costs of his stimulus plan.
Two seniors looked at each other and said, uh-oh.
Overall, I think it's a good idea, but he's not addressing the issues of the economic crisis, said one student, a McCain supporter.
The spending bill he just passed is just progressing the Democrat agenda rather than addressing the economic issues in the country.
Another student thinks that Obama's plan is backward and deals with the less important stuff first.
He said bailing out business and providing better regulatory systems for giving out money to business should have been first.
If businesses can't afford to hire people, then people won't be able to work and pay off their mortgages.
It's kind of like putting money into a funnel.
Now, these are students in an advanced placement government class at Mesa High School.
Another student, also a Republican, said Obama's plan sounds good, but they questioned how Obama could want to rely on people's responsibility when that's what got us in this mess in the first place.
This just puts us more in debt, said another student.
It's a horrible situation we're in.
Senior Brandon Miller wore a shirt that had the words, Hitler gave great speeches to above a picture of Obama.
Miller said he had been an Obama supporter because of his speeches, but after debating the issues in this class and looking more into Obama's policies, his vote was swayed toward McCain.
He showed a video on his camera he had just taken of the president's minute-long motorcade and talked about what a great experience it was to watch it.
Miller had also spent a couple hours in front of the school hanging out and watching the protesters.
Even though I don't support him, I do think it's cool he's here.
I just don't believe all the things he's telling us.
His goal is too big and too broad.
The students also questioned why Obama chose their school for his speech, since he wasn't talking about education and wondered how much money the district spent on beautifying the campus while district positions and services are being cut.
District officials noted this week the landscaping project completed over the weekend at Dobson High was already in the works and was just expedited by the president's visit.
Funding came from voter-approved bonds.
New sod was laid in front of the school Tuesday.
One senior said the joke at the school is they're going to take it away when Obama leaves.
The teacher, Jeff Scherer, said his students feel very strongly about the issues, maybe more than the general population.
He thought at least one of his students was outside protesting.
He had planned to take the students outside as a class project, saw them what was going on, but he didn't get the chance.
These kinds of kids really get into it.
During the election, we had lots of debates on the issues.
This is an advanced placement class, Dobson High School, Mesa, Arizona.
Now, what this tells me is that there are scores of places around the country where this kind of sentiment, not just from Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, but also at Dobson High School in Mesa.
Yes, there were protests.
Yes, snurdly, there were protests in Denver.
They roasted a pig for all the pork and oh yeah, there are protests there.
The drive-by media is not covering any of it.
That is what's stunning about this news from the Dobson High School Advanced Class actually making the East Valley Tribune.
And then, of course, Rick Santelli at CNBC today.
And my point to you is, ladies and gentlemen, that there is a pulse, a pulse, a revolution starting today.
This says so much about the media, too.
They could find more of these doubters if they wanted to, because they are all over the place.
Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, the whole country is not a bunch of lemmings walking over the cliff behind Obama who can fly.
They are not in lockstep with the supreme leader.
There's a lot of doubt.
There is a lot of anger.
You remember the guy that called from Leroux Restaurant in Grand Rapids, Ohio?
He sent me an email last night.
He has, as of last night, he said he had received hundreds of emails from people all over the country thanking him, agreeing with him.
One of them was a vet from Florida who called to say, thanks for what you said on the Rush Show today.
I want you to know that we in the military, that's why we do what we do, is to defend and protect the traditions that you practice today on the Russ Show and keep your restaurant going.
That's why we do it.
And Dave LaRowe said that his restaurant business obviously is up as a result of his phone call to the program.
But what's really touching him is these hundreds of emails he's getting from people who thanking him, congratulating him, and letting him know that he's not alone.
And this is the message.
This is by no means being mass accepted.
Don't forget, 46% of those who voted voted against this stuff.
And I'm beginning to wonder now how many people who voted for it actually thought they were voting for this.
Because what is happening is outrageous.
This mortgage plan yesterday, Eric Holder in his speech yesterday calling this country still a nation of cowards on the issue of race, this country which has shed more blood than any nation on the history of the earth to wipe out slavery, racism, and discrimination against people of color around the world.
It is an inexcusable statement, and yet there they are.
The drive-bys are right there defending it and explaining what he meant by it.
So the sides are clearly drawn.
They have been for a long, long time.
And it's going to be a battle.
We battle not just, ladies and gentlemen, the Democrats and the liberals and President Obama, we also battle the media.
AP fears are mounting about losing a job, not having enough money to pay the bills and evaporating retirement accounts, according to an AP poll released yesterday.
Nearly half of those surveyed said they worry about becoming unemployed, almost double last year's number.
The poll also found that in the past month, public support has dipped slightly for the porculus package.
I lost a job myself, said Ed Winkler, 40, a married attorney, father of two in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
There were just too many attorneys for the amount of work we had coming into the firm at the time.
He's opened his own practices.
Most of his work involves bankruptcies.
Now, how can this be true in the era of Obama?
How can there be public stress?
How can there be any, much less?
How can it be increasing?
How can it be rising?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is not possible.
The entire country, I thought, has been swept up in Obama mania.
And he has just spent all of our money fixing everything that Bush screwed up.
Seriously, how can this be possible?
How can there be rising public stress over the economy since Obama's fixed it?
Well, I'll tell you one reason is because Obama hasn't fixed it, and he's telling everybody he hasn't fixed it because he talks the economy down every day.
Let me tell you what I think.
Then we'll go to the break.
I think this goes beyond Alinsky.
I think this goes beyond rules for radicals.
I think this goes beyond pick the target, freeze it, isolate it, polarize it.
I think what is happening here is the Obama administration, or Obama himself and his true circle of advisors, which are not in his cabinet, hope to so grossly expand the welfare state that it includes not just the poor and the working poor.
They want you in the middle class in the welfare state.
They want some of you in the upper middle class in the welfare state.
He is devising legislation that protects, rewards irresponsibility, the losers.
You are the ones paying for it.
This lawyer lost his job.
There are a lot of white-collar people losing their jobs.
There are no jobs to be had.
The jobness numbers are skyrocketing.
Inflation came out today.
It's way up and it's tiny.
It's just the tip of the iceberg of what's happening.
Told you this was around the pike, too.
I think there is a desire to totally reorder and restructure American society with as large a welfare state as possible.
With an attempt to depress any hope of rising individual prosperity, more and more dependence on government.
I have to take a break.
Wait till you hear what Barney Frank says about the mortgage industry.
Do you know why you producers, those of you who play by the rules, still paying your mortgage, even though you're underwater?
You know why you're going to have to bail out the losers and keep them in their houses?
To maintain the property tax base for government.
Back in a second.
Samuel Adams said it, ladies and gentlemen.
It does not take a majority to prevail.
What it takes is an irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
What I really like about this is we need to appeal to the minds of men, not their feelings, which is the Obama route.
And I think we saw a brush fire ignited yesterday and today, yesterday in Mesa, Arizona at the Dobson Haskruel.
And by the way, for those of you who I should mention this because a follow-up on a previous story, as you know, I offered to go to that Green Bay, Wisconsin middle school after they were so upset at my rolling commentary during Obama's inauguration.
Our great affiliate up there worked tirelessly with the school board and finally said the school board says there's no way that Rush Limbaugh is going to get inside this middle school.
I ought to offer to go out to the Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona.
But I'm not officially doing that.
Don't anybody start working on that.
I'm not officially doing that, but I did want to clear up the detail here about Green Bay because a lot of people have been asking about it.
Mayor Bloomberg, state and city revenues in New York are falling because of the Wall Street collapse.
State lawmakers are considering income tax increases for households earning between $250,000 and $1 million.
They already pay a 6.85% income tax rate.
Mayor Bloomberg, who as recently as six months ago would have supported this, had something different to say about it recently on the radio.
This is exactly what I think is the problem with the bill.
I read through it and I heard.
Soundbite number 11.
Soundbite number 11.
1% of the people that live in the city of households that file in the city pay something like 50% of the taxes.
In the city, that's about 40,000 people.
So if, you know, a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral.
the question is, what's fair?
If 1% are paying 50% of the taxes, you want to make it even more, a little over half the people, half the households who file tax returns don't pay any taxes.
And about 30% of the households that file get a credit from the government.
The government sends them a check that's earned income tax credit.
Shazam, Shazam, folks, I feel like the lid's blowing today.
But did you catch this?
40,000 people in New York City are paying 50% of the taxes.
40,000 people.
And he's worried that this state tax increase will force some of them to leave.
And if they do, it'll wipe out whatever new revenue is generated by a tax increase.
Amazing.
There is doubt.
There is disagreement.
There is rage.
There is effervescing anger all over this country to the Obama administration plans.
And you would not know about it if your only source for news was the drive-by media.
They are still the biggest cheerleaders that I have ever seen for an administration.
But you have to, ladies and gentlemen, have to hear Mayor Bloomberg again in New York.
Because I want to put this in perspective for you.
Here he is.
1% of the people that live in the city, the households that file in the city pay something like 50% of the taxes.
In a city, that's about 40,000 people.
So if, you know, a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral.
The question is, what's fair?
If 1% are paying 50% of the taxes, you want to make it even more.
A little over half the people, half the households who file tax returns don't pay any taxes.
And about 30% of the households that file get a credit from the government.
The government sends them a check that's earned income tax credit.
Now, let's put this in perspective.
New York City, the financial capital of the world, right?
New York City considered the hub of the United States of America, right?
How many people in New York, I mean, eight people work, 14 million people go to work every day, 8 million people in New York City, right?
Is that right?
Do you understand what you just heard?
40,000?
Did he say people?
He did.
40,000 people, he means families, I'm sure.
But 40,000 people out of 8 million pay half the tax load in the city.
Do you realize all it would take to kill that city is half of them leaving?
If 20,000 of that 40,000 paying 50% of all taxes fled and decamped, you know what would happen to New York?
It would die.
These people, these 40,000 people, they ought to be treated like royalty.
They ought to be thanked.
They ought to be respected.
Instead, they are impugned.
They are maligned.
They are trashed.
As often a day as Democrats can do so, they are said to be the problem.
That 40,000 people is who Obama is aiming at.
Those 40,000 people is who Obama thinks are responsible for the blight that exists throughout the rest of the city.
Those 40,000 people, they make too much money.
They have too much of a good time.
They have taken all that wealth from the other 50% of the city.
As such, we have to target them.
The stimulus package, the mortgage bailout, what Rick Santelli was talking about, the people, Atlas Shrugged, the people who are making this country work are the targets.
And the people who are the losers, the people who are the slackers are the beneficiaries.
40,000 people, according to the mayor, provide over 50% of the revenue.
Now, only now when revenue is down does anybody care about them.
Only now when Wall Street has collapsed and tax revenues have gone down, and now Obama wants to put maximums on the amount people can earn on Wall Street.
I would like to know how many of the 40,000 people in New York that provide all this are in the financial business and how many of those people's caps on their pay will have a further effect on reducing tax revenues to the city.
Now, the people that are doing this are not stupid.
This is Bloomberg getting off the bus.
This is Bloomberg getting off the Obama Air Force One.
These people are not stupid.
Don't think that they're just ignorant and socialist utopians who think they have a better way.
They know exactly what they're doing.
That's what's scary about this.
That's what's enraging about this.
I listened to the most amazing thing.
I wish I could remember where.
I was watching television.
It might have been, oh, it was.
It was Shepard Smith.
And I think he was talking to one of the Fox business news infobabes or anchors.
I'm not sure which.
And it was about the mortgage debacle, and it was about the stimulus package.
And Shepard Smith kept talking about the laws of economics.
Well, you know, if we do this, then that has to happen.
And if we don't do this, then that has to happen.
And I got to think, the laws of economics.
Whose laws of economics?
Shepard Smith was talking about the laws of economics that are real, the ones that we know.
The economics of Friedrich Hayek, the economics of Milton Friedman, the economics of a free market.
Those are the economic rules or laws he was talking about.
And it got me to thinking, everybody knows these rules.
Everybody knows the law of supply and demand, for example.
I mean, the people we're talking about know it.
Everybody knows that when you raise taxes, you decrease the activity that occurs on that activity that you have increased taxes.
When you lower taxes on an activity, that activity increases.
So, for example, if you lower income taxes, entrepreneurs are going to bust ass earning more income.
They'll pay less tax on it.
If you lower capital gains taxes, people will be more incentivized to invest because they'll be able to keep more of the profit they earn.
And you might say, well, there aren't any profits right now.
Well, there would be if we could re-incentivize people to invest again.
But there's no investment in the free market.
All the investment's going in the government.
Now, that's Keynesian.
And it hasn't worked.
The government is, and by the way, we're not going to go back for the longest time until this bunch is defeated in the next election or the next tour, if that happens at all.
We're not going to go back to the free market economic rules that have governed this country.
What this is all about is replacing free market economics with government-centered central planning economics, picking of winners and losers.
And that's exactly what's happening.
And right now, the people being picked as winners are the people paying nothing or very little of the tax bite that supports the government.
The people who are being targeted as the losers are those of you who are playing by the rules, who can pay your mortgage, who did not go out and borrow more than you could afford.
You're paying your taxes.
You're doing what you can to support the institutions that govern where you live, the federal government, state government, city government, and so forth.
You're the targets now.
All are.
We're the victims.
We have to pay.
We have to pay for the unfair advantage our hard work has given us.
We have to pay for the unfair advantage that our perhaps birthright gave us.
We have to pay for whatever reason they in Washington decide we have more than we should have.
Because the fact that we have more than we should have is denying others who are just as deserving less than what they should have.
In the process, the welfare state is going to expand like crazy.
Those currently in it are being subsidized to stay in it.
Those not in it are going to go broke, are going to be forced to go on unemployment.
You lost half of your 401k.
I don't know what's happened to your kids' college fund, but I dare say it's probably not in great shape.
You think this is an accident?
You think the effort to fix it is this dumb on purpose?
Have you seen anything come out of Washington since Obama was inaugurated that is designed to help you, that is designed to get people out of your way so that you can once again start entrepreneuring, creating, inventing, investing?
Just the opposite, is it not?
You think this is happenstance?
You think this is really seriously honest people who really believe that supply-side economics, which by the way, supply-side trickle-down, whatever you call it, free market economics is all it is.
Basic economic rules 101, basic economic law.
Basic economic law has been suspended, and the people who practice it are practically under arrest.
They're in the process of being charged for their own version of immorality.
Make no mistake, 40,000 people in New York pay over half the benefits, and Bloomberg knows that a tax increase on those people is going to cause some of them to leave and they're just going to get outraged and split.
They ought to be treated like royalty.
They should be thanked.
They should be respected.
Normally, if you run a business, you cater to your good customers.
You want to keep them.
And you want them to be happy.
And you want them to be happy paying you.
The government of Barack Obama doesn't even like you.
The government of Barack Obama wants even more from you, and they want you to be thankful to them that you're paying it on the basis that you are helping Obama fix the economy.
They want all accolades, all credit, all bowing down and kissing the feet to occur in Washington at the feet of Barack Obama.
He doesn't even let members of Congress who wrote the stimulus pork and his package surround him at the signing ceremony.
It's all him.
He did it by himself.
He wants everybody to think that he's the single foremost driving force and authority that made it all happen.
That's what he's cultivating.
And he's got, and he's a pied piper.
He's got these people following him around like he's Fengali.
But this news out of New York, it's not news to people like me.
It's not news to people like you.
I mean, my website for four years has published federal data.
What percentage of income taxpayers pay what percentage of the total vote?
And it's similar to what it is in New York.
Hard to leave the country, but you can leave a city and relocate.
It's happening in California.
People are pulling out of there, left and right, for a host of reasons, among them high taxes.
If just 10,000 people left New York, just 10,000 of these 50% left New York City.
I shudder to think what would happen to the place.
Back in a second.
And ladies and gentlemen, this just end the Obama administration is now going after Swiss bank accounts.
The curtain is being peeled back on the infamous secrecy of Swiss bank accounts.
Wednesday, the Obama administration, well, the largest bank in Switzerland, UBS, agreed Wednesday to reveal the names of wealthy Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts to evade taxes.
The change in policy is the result of UBS's administration, United Bank of Scotland, by the way, their admitted role in conspiring to defraud the IRS.
As part of the agreement, the bank will pay $780 million in damages and also close all offshore accounts of its American clients.
Not clear how many names will be divulged, but the feds have been looking into roughly 19,000 accounts.
According to the New York Times, the deal could mark the end of Swiss banking as we know it, as many offshore clients may no longer trust the anonymity of the country's banking system.
Prosecutors suspect that UBS helped its American clients hide $20 billion from the government or about $300 million a year in taxes from late 2002 to 2007.
UBS has admitted some of its employees participated in a scheme to defraud the United States.
They didn't volunteer this.
They were forced to admit it.
Now, the thing I'm going to be looking for, how many members of the Obama administration, how many high-ranking Democrat, high-profile Democrat or Democrat supporters names will be on the list of UBS account holders who tried to evade U.S. taxes?
We know that Tom Daschell tried to evade taxes.
We know that Geithner didn't pay taxes.
This guy down in Houston, this Stanford guy, this guy was all over the Democrat Party.
His level of fraud may be between $8 billion and $50 billion.
This guy had banks all over the world, and clients were lined up at these banks to try to get their money out yesterday in the Caribbean, in Venezuela, Mexico City.
They were shut down.
This guy's picture was taken with Nancy Pelosi at the Democrat convention.
This guy underwrote some program they had that was chaired by Bill Clinton.
Pelosi and Bill Clinton both praising this guy, Stanford.
The level of financial corruption that has become the Democrat Party is breathtaking.
Even those who are corrupt and found guilty of it, some have ended up in Barack Obama's cabinet.
There was no anger from the drive-by media.
There was no suspense.
There was just, their people are too important, Mr. Limbaugh.
We can't really get rid of Geithner.
And Daschell, he's the only guy that really knows what to do with healthcare.
He wrote the book on it.
We can't get rid of these people.
It's too crucial of a time in America.
So now the Swiss banking industry probably changed forever.
No secrecy.
If Obama gets his way on this, it's an all-out assault, folks.
It is an all-out assault.
But I just want to see 19,000 accounts of the United Bank of Scotland.
I just want to see UBS.
Well, wait a minute.
I'm not right.
When I say United Bank of Scotland, obviously I'm wrong.
UBS is a Swiss bank.
I'm take it back.
I watch golf tournaments and I'm getting caught up with the confusing initials for a bank in Scotland.
I apologize.
I caught my own error.
Note that none of my staff caught it.
I caught it myself.
As far as my staff is concerned, I can be left out there dangling all by myself.
I don't have a Swiss account either.
But I just, there's 19,000 accounts in this Swiss bank, and I just, will we find out, will we find out if there are prominent Democrats among these people?
Because you know there have to be.
We know prominent Democrats evade taxes.
They sit on Obama's cabinet.
This is not a stretch.
It's a good thing that Obama is going after these tax evaders, folks.
I just have to tell you, I question, will Obama's new Attorney General be going after onshore tax cheats?
Mike Geithner, Tom Daschell?
Or will Eric Holder, the new Attorney General, be a coward like the rest of us Americans?
Will they be going after Charles Wrangell and his tax violations?
Will you authorize that, Mr. Holder?
You're going to chicken out going after Democrat tax cheats.
Sorry, once again, distracted by people who need totally irrelevant information to this radio program now.
Thank you, New York State tax audit.
Yes, I'm in the midst of a New York State tax audit.
We've got to take a brief time out here, folks, ladies and gentlemen.