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Jan. 14, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:51
January 14, 2010, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 247 Podcast.
And meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day, succeeding beyond, well, even our wildest dreams in tweaking the media all over the place yesterday.
I mean, it fit it it fell out precisely as I predicted.
Exactly.
Rush Limbaugh, NAEIB network.
Telephone number 800 282-2882, the email address, L Rushbaugh at EIB net.com.
All right, we've changed the location for the uh of the uh uh uh link to the high definition DittoCam.
It's no longer in the orange bar.
We've put it in the media bar at the top of the page at rush limbaugh.com.
It's right next to the option that you've always had before the Windows Media Player or the real player.
Uh the uh the HD Ditto Cam, uh, you'll see the the uh the red HD logo and the flash logo right next to it.
Click on that, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you access the high definition Ditto Cam today, and for every day this uh thereafter here at the uh Rush Limbaugh program.
Uh I am, ladies and gentlemen, the only top media figure not broadcasting from Haiti today.
Uh we stayed here at our home base in the uh the comfortable confines of the uh EIB Southern Command.
In fact, some media are complaining about their accommodations.
Grab uh grab number 18, audio soundbite number 18.
This is uh MSNBC correspondent Carrie Sanders this morning at Port of Prince, uh, where the NBC crew slept.
These are the tents that we slept in last night.
Some of us just slept outside under the stars.
Uh, there's a container there uh that's used for our airplane.
Uh one of our colleagues actually just slept inside there.
As though people are concerned about where the media is staying, uh as though there's uh a lot of uh really concern over their living conditions.
Uh you may have half a million people dead in Haiti and uh the media continually making it about them.
Just interesting.
All right, lots to do on the uh on the program today.
This is from the hotline on call.
This is a national journal website a year into his tenure.
A majority of Americans would already vote against President Obama if the 2012 elections were held today, according to a new survey.
The Allstate National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows that 50% say that they would probably or definitely vote for somebody else.
Fully 37% say that they would definitely cast a ballot against Obama.
Meanwhile, just thirty-nine percent would vote to re-elect him.
Thirty-nine percent.
He got what?
53% of the vote.
So uh this is uh uh only twenty-three percent say they definitely would do so.
Only twenty-three percent.
It's uh uh what an amazing first year.
All these polls now asking people has he been a failure or success.
And uh equal number in in some cases say that uh he has been a failure.
Again, Rush Limbaugh on the cutting edge.
I told you this yesterday.
We had uh and we were the first us with the most isn't on this of a secret backroom deal between the White House and labor unions over the Cadillac uh health insurance tax.
Officials say the White House and labor leaders have reached a tentative agreement on how to tax high value health insurance plans to uh help pay for a revamped medical system.
The proposed tax has been a major sticking point because labor union leaders um fear that their members with some of the more lucrative benefit plans out there would be hurt.
President Obama supports it as a way to hold down costs by nudging workers into less pricey coverage.
People are going out and buying what they want or getting what they want.
Obama thinks they're spending too much.
Barney Frank today is all over.
Yeah, we are going to legislate compensation everywhere we can on Wall Street.
There is no there's no reason for these high bonuses to be paid.
I didn't, I'm not aware that these guys could all play Major League Baseball.
Uh it's they're they're they're moving in for the uh for the kill of the capitalist system.
Now, the unions were always Going to be exempted from the Cadillac tax plans.
They were always going to be exempted.
They are the major contributors to the Democrat National Committee and to Obama.
They are the foot soldiers.
They're the goons that are dispatched to keep people in line at uh town hall meetings and so forth.
The only problem here is how to justify it.
Because everybody else with a Cadillac insurance, health insurance plan is going to get this big tax, and it could be as much as 40%.
The unions will be exempt from it.
The trick here is how to justify it and how to uh uh avoid, if possible, not ticking people off who don't get the uh the exemption.
Uh the Amish, by the way, will be totally exempted on religious grounds from any of the uh health care new health care mandates that religion may grow in tremendous numbers.
Uh and other religions are going to say, well, why just them?
You know, why not us?
Retail sales unexpectedly fell in December.
This is state-controlled associated press, leaving 2009 with the biggest yearly drop on record, highlighting the formidable hurdles facing the economy as it struggles to recover from the deepest recession in seven decades in another disappointing economic report.
The number of newly laid off workers requesting benefits rose more than expected last week as jobs remain scarce.
Here's a quote from Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.
We cannot expect a true turnaround in consumption until the jobs numbers improve significantly and consistently.
Now, given given this obvious statement, why is any negative economic news unexpected?
It's I swear it's in the template.
It's it's they probably have to uh command you, writes unexpected.
Uh it's just it's a w when the private sector's capital is depleted, job creation is depressed.
This leads to spending decreases by consumers, that leads to lower sales and profits, and it all results in the erosion of the tax base, which then shrinks tax revenues.
And only an anti-capitalist statist would conclude that this situation requires tax increases, which starts the process all over again.
None of this is unexpected.
This is totally predictable.
I, your host, El Rushbo, predicted it on the same day that I expressed my hope that Obama fail in his policies.
So let's go through the progression here.
When the private sector and its capital money in the price, when it's depleted, when it's when it shrinks, job creation is depressed.
That leads to spending decreases by consumers.
That in turn hurts sales and profits.
And it all causes an erosion of the tax base, federal and state, which reduces tax revenues, which reduces revenue to run governments in Washington and state capitals.
At this point, only somebody intending for all this to happen would then talk about tax increases.
Because tax increases will start the whole cycle all over again.
It will lead to more unemployment, more depletion of the private sector's capital, spending decreases by even more consumers, more sales and profits hurt, more tax base erosion, less tax revenue to state and federal governments.
And then, oh my God, look at it.
Another double down, more tax increases.
Only a statist, somebody doing this on purpose, would employ the policies that we are employing.
Decline in auto purchases, sinks retail sales, sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly fell in December.
What is unexpected?
I just gave you the progression of how things happen.
It would be insane to expect sales to go up in this climate.
As more and more people file claims for unemployment, more and more people are obviously out of work.
More and more people are not even looking for work Anymore.
The situation is bleak.
Why would it be unexpected that retail sales would fall in December?
Even the media told us it's not going to be a good Christmas.
Who told us it was?
Who are these people that expected retail sales to go up in December?
Consumers spent less on cars and an array of other goods during the holiday shopping month data showed on Thursday raising concerns about the durability of the economic recovery.
There is no recovery.
Right after Christmas, they said we were in a recovery.
They've been saying we're in recovery since uh since November, but we're not.
Compared to uh December 2008, sales rose 5.4%, but fell 6.2% for the whole of 2009.
That's the biggest decline on records that go back to 1992.
The only other year that sales had fallen was 2008, when they slipped by 0.5%.
Motor vehicle purchases fell 0.8%.
Anybody want to take a guess as to why?
Why did motor we predicted this?
Cash for clunkers.
All cash for clunkers did was move uh purchase decisions up a month or two.
It didn't, it didn't increase auto sales at all.
We predicted this.
We are not economists here at the EIB network.
We are not highly trained economic experts, but we know more about it than those who are.
We are able to predict it more than those who are.
Cash for clunkers came along, and it was designed to make it look like Obama had done something spurring economic growth.
Wow, it's going, it's going, it's going.
But we knew that it was just this was facilitating people buying cars earlier than they were already going to.
And this statistic proves it.
Decline in auto purchases sinks.
Retail sales.
The data coming in the wake of a report last week showing a surprise drop in non-farm payrolls in December could add to worries that the economic expansion that started in the third quarter of 2008 could falter once government stimulus.
This is just plain old ridiculous.
Stubbornly high unemployment remains the weakest link in the recovery from the worst economic downturn since the 30s.
Stubbornly high unemployment.
Oh, so unemployment out there isn't it.
Unemployment is a thing, and it's stubborn.
Unemployment is fighting Obama.
They're in a death match.
Unemployment versus Obama.
And Obama is raising taxes and unemployment is saying, screw you, buddy, I'm not working.
What is this?
Stubbornly high unemployment.
As though unemployment is working against Obama's great and courageous efforts to do something about it.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is not all of the bad news from those unfazed at Reuters U.S. foreclosure actions.
Shattered all records in 2009.
And will do so again this year, with unemployment and wage cuts overcoming programs to remedy failing home loans.
A record 2.8 million properties with a mortgage got a foreclosure notice last year, jumping 21% from 2008 and 120% from 2007.
The loan failure rate and thus the fallout for home prices and the economy would have been even worse without foreclosure prevention programs and loan processing delays caused by sheer volume, according to reality or realty track, So once again, it would have been even worse had it not been for Obama's foreclosure program.
But we have also heard that hardly anybody is accessing the foreclosure program.
Yeah, yeah, but they're behind on their payments, and it's it's um and they're in fact, in fact, it it's worse than being said because some lenders uh exempted December payments because of Christmas, just to be compassionate and keep Obama off their back, like he's on the backs of the bankers.
Right now, U.S. foreclosure action shattered all records despite aid.
Despite Obama's courageous efforts to help, foreclosure action shattered all records.
It's no wonder that only thirty-nine percent of the American people would again vote for Obama if the presidential race were uh were held today.
Now back to health care.
Before we go to the break, one quick thing.
The truth has slipped out on this program and on many others.
When we have these nattering nabobs on the left call here and complain that there are this number of millions of people uninsured, uh we always say it doesn't matter.
Everybody gets treated in this country, especially if you go to the emergency room.
Everybody gets treated.
There's technically nobody doesn't have health care coverage in this country, technically.
Well, in really.
And now the truth has slipped out.
New York Congresswoman Anthony Wiener.
Or is it Wyner?
He pronounced he pronounces it, Wiener?
Because I don't want to purposely mispronounce it.
Because some people can think Wiener is a uh, you know, taking a jab here, but if it's the way he really pronounces it, I want to get it right.
Um question, we could easily have a natural disaster if not quite on this scale, at least uh the same broad ballpark, a slightly heavier earthquake in California could do extraordinary devastation in San Francisco, Los Angeles.
Thinking about this, and maybe it's inappropriate, tell me if it's inappropriate and asking, but how would survivors of something like this here uh fare in terms of getting on their own feet economically afterwards with the health care system that we have in place right now?
Frankly, every single day when people uh go into a hospital emergency room, you know, there's some question to ask.
Let me see your insurance card, but at the end of the day, we care for them.
So we really don't have a discussion in this country about whether or not we're gonna have health care for everyone.
We really do.
The only question that we're having now, and it seems so almost silly, it's so petty, is how we're gonna distribute that health care.
How are we gonna distribute it?
Thank you, Congressman Wiener.
The truth is out everybody gets treated.
The question that he was asked was uh was a softball setup.
The question, well, is there a health care system in the condition that it's in now, meaning it's horrible.
And if we had a natural disaster here, oh my God, what would happen with health care in this country?
And Wiener just shot down the question.
Oh, well, everybody gets treated here.
That's not the problem.
What we have to do is redistribute the health care.
America's truth detector, America's Doctor of Democracy, America's bulwark.
Rush Limbaugh at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A couple notes on the Ditto Cam feed today.
Uh the audio is a little distorted on uh all the audio video streams except the HD Ditto Cam.
That audio is normal.
On the um on the uh real player and uh Windows Media player I sound uh little bit slowed down.
And we're working on that.
We have um we've restarted all the encoders.
We think that's where the uh the problem is, uh, so it should be rectified soon.
There's nothing wrong with your equipment, there's nothing wrong with my voice.
It's an RN.
I told you we were we were we were gonna be testing this live.
Another question I'm getting why rush on the ditto cam HD feed is their audio silence.
Why don't we get any of the Paul Shanklin things uh during the feed on the HD Ditto Cam?
And frankly, I don't know the answer to that, but I will find.
Oh, we're gonna have that remedied on on Monday.
This HD is an entirely different thing, folks.
And the flash video is an entirely different flash video requires no codex, which is a good thing, but it's it's we're live testing this.
I mean, we could have delayed this and delayed this and delayed this, but we don't do that.
We life test it, and that's what we're in the process of doing.
So audio during commercial breaks when we go dark, uh, by the way, that will not change.
We're always gonna go dark during the commercial breaks.
We're gonna get a logo up there at some point, uh, and we are also going to uh have the audio problem fixed.
Or not fixed, we're gonna get it set up uh by Monday.
Now that Ted Kennedy is dead, uh, ladies and gentlemen, Obama has decided to go ahead and force the uh the locals on Cape Cod to accept those windmills that Ted Kennedy fought.
Well, whatever happened to the sanctity of Mr. Kennedy's long-expressed wishes.
I mean, I know that applies to health care, but does it only apply to health care?
The Obama administration moved a step closer on Wednesday to ending the nearly 10-year-long conflict over a major wind power installation off of Cape Cod.
The Interior Secretary Ken Zalazar, after meeting with virtually all the parties to the dispute, said that he intended to decide whether to approve the wind turbine project no later than April.
So now that Teddy's out of the way, he fought this.
He wants windmills everywhere but where he lived.
Now that he's out of the way, guess what they're gonna get?
Via Obama, they're gonna get their windmills.
By the way, Salazar, there is a uh uh borin, di uh uh Democrat congressman from Oklahoma, last name of Borin, who is livid at Ken Salazar.
We we mentioned this last week, uh, I believe maybe it was the first part of this week, but Salazar is the Interior Secretary, and he has tightened severely on the uh the opportunity that that private companies have to lease federal lands for oil and gas exploration.
And these are mom and pop little oil companies that are being affected by this, not big oil.
And uh 90% of it's gonna be put off limits, and this Democrat congressman is outraged at all this.
The Democrat congressman says, You you're you're giving too much to the environmentalist wackos.
You are killing.
You guys say you want energy independence, and you're killing the small businessman and woman in oil and gas production in this country who are trying to help you achieve that.
It's on purpose, folks.
I'm telling you, it's on purpose.
Hi, how are you, folks?
Great to have you here.
It's Rush Linbaugh talent on loan from God, from the uh National Center for Public Policy Research.
In the face of rising unemployment, record-breaking deficits, policy experts at the National Center for Public Policy Research are criticizing the Obama administration for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State Professor Michael Mann, who is a key figure in the climate gate controversy.
Michael Mann is one of the guys doctoring all the data at the Hadley Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. He was one of the guys hiding the decline in global temperatures.
He got a half a million dollars in stimulus money.
Once again, illustrating that it is a slush fund.
It is not an economic stimulus package, and it was never intended to be one, except in your mind.
From the business insider.
McMoran Exploration Company announced yesterday, actually Tuesday, that an oil discovery beneath 20 feet of water off the Louisiana coast could be the biggest find in decades.
This is in the Houston Chronicle, too.
Drillers found a 135-foot column of hydrocarbon-filled sands and have estimated the discovery to be nearly two trillion cubic feet of resources, a figure that rivals previous discoveries in the Gulf's deepest waters.
And this is uh it's interesting because I had to rush through this story.
I forget this this Oklahoma congressman's first name, his last name is Boren, and he sent a scathing note to the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who basically has placed uh drilling for oil and natural gas on federally owned lands off limits.
Not totally, but significantly.
And uh uh Borin wrote, You're what your action here is not hurting big oil, you're hurting small business mom and pop oil companies.
Now, you guys say that you're interested in energy independence and these uh these independents in Oklahoma, this guy's constituents.
This is their bread and butter.
And it's uh natural gas is one of the cleanest fuels we have, and apparently there's lots of it that's been placed off limits now by the Obama administration.
So they speak out of both sides of their mouths.
Energy independence, green technology.
I guess it's not green technology.
This this guy Salazar is a uh he's an extremist out the wazoo.
Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson and his wife were leaving dinner at a new pizza joint near their home in Omaha one night last week when uh when a customer in there began complaining about Nelson's decisive role in the vote on the Senate health care bill.
Other customers started booing.
A woman yelled, get the hell out of here.
The Nelsons and their dining companions then beat a hasty retreat.
It was definitely a scene in there, said Tom Lewis, a 41-year-old dentist and registered Republican who witnessed the incident.
A second witness confirmed the incident to the politico.
It's a new experience for Ben Nelson.
Um clearly, Mr. Nelson needs to speak to President Obama and Bill Clinton so he can be reassured about how popular the health care bill is.
Remember, Clinton and all these other Democrat leaders told every one of these Democrats, hey, you're gonna lose your city if you don't vote for this.
I mean, that's what happened in 1994 with people.
That's how why the Republicans took over, and they were totally lied to.
Totally lied to.
So Nelson, call Obama, call Clinton, find out just exactly how healthy things are in the latest attack.
And it's right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook in the latest attack on the American private sector, Barack Obama this morning in Washington at the White House, spoke about a new tax on banks.
When I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses as some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people.
Folks who have not been made whole and who continue to face real hardship in this recession.
We want our money back, and we're gonna get it.
And that's why I'm proposing a financial crisis responsibility fee to be imposed on major financial firms until the American people are fully compensated for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street.
Now, uh, folks, this is right out of Sololinsky.
Uh he is trading on the fact that he believes you despise Wall Street, that you despise fat cat bankers, and that anything done to punish them you will agree to and support Obama for doing.
They have paid back the TARP money.
They were forced to take it in the first place.
Let's get the history of this right.
Many of these CEOs at these institutions were dragged into an office at the Treasury Department by then Secretary Henry Paulson, and they were given three hours to sign a document saying that they will accept bailout money.
The CEO of Wells Fargo Bank did not want any bailout money.
They weren't in any problem.
They had no exposure to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Still, they had to take $25 billion.
These firms who were forced to take the TARP money have mostly paid it back.
This is a again, a flat out lie and disingenuous as hell.
When I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American, they were said to be too big to fail by you, sir.
You said they couldn't fail.
We were told an economic crisis of biblical proportions would happen if we didn't do this.
You forced it on them, and you forced it on everybody else else.
I'm not, folks, don't make a mistake here of assuming that I don't think bankers, financial people never do anything wrong.
What I'm objecting to here is this move by Obama to run in and control every aspect of what they do.
It's just another grab at a portion of the private sector that is none of his business, and he's relying on this class envy.
Him thinking that you hate these people.
That's why he didn't object to any of the protests at AIG headquarters'homes, the CEO's homes, which were, by the way, conducted and organized largely by ACORN.
So he forces the banks to take the TARP money.
They mostly pay it back, and now he's gonna tax them for forcing them to take it in the first place.
Here's another soundbite, for some uh get to the Alinsky connection here.
Our goal is not to punish Wall Street firms, but rather to prevent the abuse and excess that nearly caused the collapse of many of these firms in the financial system itself.
We cannot go back to business as usual.
And when we see reports of firms once again engaging in risky bets to reap quick rewards, when we see a return to compensation practices that seem not to reflect what the country's been through, all that looks like business as usual to me.
Well, it seems to me, Mr. President, the one area of our economy that's doing well is Wall Street.
There's money being made on Wall Street, Mr. Vince.
That would bugs you, Mr. President.
There's money being made there.
That's the reason bonuses are being paid.
Have you seen what happened to Dow Jones Industrial Average?
It's climbing.
It's up 22 points right now.
It's uh it's uh it's it's at 106, 10,600.
It's the only area of the economy doing well, and now you're assaulting it.
There's no there's nowhere in the private sector left to invest.
That's why money's going to Wall Street, pure and simple.
Business as usual.
Not punish Wall Street firms.
Yes, it is.
It's exactly what you're doing.
Prevent the abuse and excess that nearly caused the it was not bonuses and salaries that caused the collapse.
What caused the collapse?
Well, and I it was Sol Olynsky.
Solinsky and Acorn taking over the banks and demanding that banks make loans to people that they knew could never pay them back.
The banks holding worthless paper.
So they came up with a bunch of new financial products to try to sell to try to get some insurance on this worthly worthless paper they were forced to lend.
This is just mind-boggling here.
It's it's more manipulation.
It is it is another undisguised attack on free markets, and the president of the United States insisting that there aren't going to be free markets anymore.
He's going to regulate it.
We're not going to have risk.
We're not going to have up and down cycles.
We're not going to have any entrepreneurism.
And we're not going to have any qualified people in these institutions because they're all going to leave to find jobs elsewhere.
Even if they have to leave the financial services industry.
One more bite.
We're already hearing a hue and cry from Wall Street suggesting that this proposed fee is not only unwelcome but unfair.
That by some twisted logic, it is more appropriate for the American people to bear the cost of the bailout rather than the industry that benefited from it, even though these executives are out there giving themselves huge bonuses.
What I'd say to these executives is this instead of sending a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal for employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee.
I suggest you might want to consider simply meeting your responsibilities.
And I'd urge you to cover the costs of the rescue, not by sticking it to your shareholders or your customers or fellow citizens with the bill, but by rolling back bonuses for top earners and executives.
They've already paid most of the TARP money back, and getting rid of these bonuses would not make a dent in how much TARP money there was.
There were nowhere near $700 billion in bonuses.
There's still $200 billion of TARP money that's not spent.
What the hell is he talking about here?
I'll tell you what he's talking about.
100% pure class envy.
He wants you to hate these people, and he wants your support because he wants you to believe he hates them too, and he's getting even with them.
At the end of the day, you're no better off.
Regardless what he does to these Wall Street executives and these fat cats and their compensation packages and their bonuses.
What he can strip them, he can cut them in half.
It's not going to change your life at all.
It's not going to put an additional dollar in your pocket.
Repaying you the taxpayers is another one of these euphemism euphemisms.
It's just that this guy's already placed this 12 trillion dollars in debt.
The repaying this is chunk change, it's nothing.
This is pure 100% politics.
And Valerie Jarrett was on this cohort was on TV this morning.
The banks should step up to their responsibility and be our partners and not try to fight their obligations.
Obligations.
These people have largely paid back the TARP money to get out from under the federal fist and the hand that is regulating and running these businesses.
I wonder what the uh buyer's remorse factor is on Wall Street, because a lot of those people are liberal Democrats, and a lot of those people voted for Obama, and I wonder if they're having buyers' remorse yet.
I think Obama has the same speech writer as Hugo Chavez.
He's down there nationalizing businesses, left and right, all kinds of threats aimed at businesses.
I'm gonna tell you what Obama's doing here, folks.
Obama is is doing all of this, engaging in these these uh unwarranted attacks, class envy-oriented attacks on banks and Wall Street firms to divert attention from his monumental failure as president in dealing with the economy and job losses and foreclosures.
He is a dismal failure.
Dismal.
Now his mind is a success, he intends to do this, but he is failing to reignite this economy.
So he has to distract people's attention from that.
This is what socialists is what Marxists do.
You could take every bonus given on Wall Street and add them all up, and it wouldn't add up to anywhere Near the trillions of dollars in fiscal waste and deficit spending of Barack Obama.
It wouldn't come anywhere near it.
It's too bad that Obama doesn't show the same outrage about the waste of taxpayer dollars by Acorn or the enormous costs passed on to the consumer by big unions, or the enormous cost of government created by all of these unions that work in the government public sector.
This has a direct impact on our quality of life.
Now, the bank profits, let me tell you why bank profits are up.
It's not because of any chicanery on their part.
It's not because they're cheating people.
Do you know what the cost of money?
The Fed fund transfer rate is practically zero.
There's no interest rate.
Bank-to-bank borrowing.
Larry Cudlow says it, any idiot can make money when money costs them nothing.
That's why they're not lending to anybody else.
They don't why would you lend to somebody?
That is kind of risky when you can get money for nothing and buy treasuries with it, or invest in the government for a guaranteed three and a half percent.
And this is exactly what's happening, and that is why they're turning a profit, not because they're stealing anybody.
The big banks paid back the loans with interest.
They bought back the warrants, but who didn't?
General Motors didn't.
Chrysler didn't.
Fanny and Freddie.
They are the people who need to be taxed.
They are the people who need to have taxes placed on them because they have not paid back the TARP money.
The big Wall Street firms paid back the TARP money with interest, and now they're still being taxed, and they were forced to take it in the first place.
Now, to Saul Alinsky, bank stocks took a big hit a couple days ago due to this intent to tax them.
Not General Motors, not GMAC, not not Fannie Mae, not Freddie.
And this is all under the guise of paying back TARP money, which they've already done.
The fact is that Obama is returning to his roots here, folks.
This has been a playbook for years.
Controlling banks, controlling mortgages has been the goal of people like Olinsky and organizations such as Acorn from the beginning.
Now, what Obama's doing now is what he used to do for Acorn.
Only now it's much easier.
And it can cripple the entire private sector, not just one banking organization at a time.
Peter Schweitzer in his book Architects of Ruin.
And I read to you here from pages nine and ten.
Olinsky understood the world of finance because many of his early backers were financiers.
Olinsky would brag, I feel confident I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday, out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday, even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.
Olinsky directed much of his fire against banks.
He understood not only the power of banks, but their potential to act as a fulcrum by which he could advance his ambitious agenda.
They also make a convenient enemy, as Olinsky taught finding an enemy was important.
And thus he was quoted in Hillary Clinton's senior thesis, and this is what Hillary wrote about Alinsky.
In order to organize, you must first polarize.
People think of controversy as negative, they think consensus is better, but to organize you need a bull Connor.
Now on page 23 of Schweitzer's book, Acorn and other activist organizations also dissubscribe to the view that the banks were part of a larger structural effort to keep minorities in the urban poor oppressed.
Banks were not simply in the practice of making money, they were political institutions, whether they knew it or not, part of the privileged white power structure.
Lending practices, therefore, were less a function of rational criteria than racial politics.
With the arrival of the Community Reinvestment Act, the crusading housing activists discovered that they now had a seat at the table and a vehicle for their redistributionist schemes.
By using a cadre of lawyers and an army of activists, Acorn believed it could dramatically alter the terms of the financial free market and force banks to lend to those they would ordinarily not consider qualified.
As the sympathetic Professor Heidi Schwartz put it, through the CRA, activists could extract resources from banks, take money out of them, give them to the poor and working class people simply a euphemism for extortion and income redistribution.
Alinsky taught to target the banks.
They're a convenient enemy, everybody hates them, they think bankers steal and cheat and lie.
Inside information, making them and nobody else rich.
Olinsky said, go after the banks, intimidate them, and we take them over, and we get the money out of there to our constituents.
And that's exactly what Obama has done from day one.
It's all in Olinsky's rules for radicals.
Bat.
Now, don't we want the bank profits to go up, folks?
Isn't that what this was all about?
Bailing out the banks?
What did that mean?
Don't we want bank profits to go up?
Have we just spent hundreds of billions of dollars because we wanted bank profits to go up so that we would no longer have to subsidize them?
And now the profits at banks are up and all of a sudden they're an enemy.
They're a demon and they've got to be cut down to size.
This is how Olinsky radicals work.
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