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Jan. 26, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
January 26, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away today.
This is your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein.
Honored to be here.
I ought to, before we before we do anything else, ought to clear up that business uh where we had that uh that uh dramatic sound effect just before the top of the last hour uh because I didn't want to give you the impression that it was a national emergency.
I didn't want to pull like Orson Wells War of the Worlds thing uh in 1939 or whatever it was and have everybody stampeding for the border to get the hell out.
Uh the the it was an actual emergency, but it was a flood warning for Sullivan County, New Hampshire.
So unless you're in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, uh you have nothing to worry about.
If you're everything is fine.
Everything nothing to see here.
Move on, folks.
No rubber decking.
If you are in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, though, you're screwed.
Flee, head for the hills, run for your lives, get to higher ground now.
You got about a minute and a half.
Uh but other than that, if you're if you're uh if you're anywhere else in the United States of America or outlying territories, I don't want to upset anyone in Guam who who thought it's not a flood warning warning for Guam.
It was just for Sullivan County, New Hampshire.
Uh that's the difference, by the way, when you get a professional, a professional radio announcer, uh like uh obviously like Russia, but also like uh like Mark Davis or Mark Belling or any of the other marks we've had sitting in here, they know that you're not meant to make jokes about the uh emergency warding system.
But I didn't I didn't know that.
And and to be honest, you know, when you live in a country that's on what are we on?
We're permanent orange alert now or something like that?
Uh when when you live in a nation that is on permanent orange alert, you do get to play a little faster and loose with the whole emergency concept, don't you?
Because it's like you're living on you're living on a knife's edge the whole time.
Uh what's the big deal about it?
Eventually you get too mellow about these emergencies.
But it was a flood warning.
Sullivan County, New Hampshire.
Uh if you're in outlying parts of Guam, you can relax.
Uh 1-800-282-2882.
By the way, while we're dealing with unfinished business, I I I mentioned roundabouts yesterday, and I got I'm still getting mail about roundabouts.
Uh, and and I've I'm heard from now, I would say, uh a couple of dozen highway engineers explaining roundabouts in great uh detail.
And I'm grateful for it.
But look, it was just a a cheap irrational prejudice that that erupted in mid-flow.
So I I I'd I'd ask you please to hold off on the roundabout corresponding.
I'm still getting people, by the way, who say, oh, they're not called roundabouts, they're called rotaries.
And then when I said they were called rotaries, I got people saying they're not called rotaries, they're called traffic circles.
Why do you think why do you think they've given a different name in every state?
That's so they slip under your radar, it makes it sound like it fits in.
You don't know that it's some sinister foreign concept imported from a neighboring state.
Uh it's like uh soda pop.
Some people say soda, some people say pop.
It's varies from region to region.
Why do you think this thing is given a different name in every state?
By the way, my local paper this morning uh is has a picture on the front page.
A shimmering white cloud hovering over the mountains of Kinsman North and Kinsman South, as seen in this photo taken in Benton, New Hampshire.
It's a beautiful thing.
It's this beautiful perfect white spherical disk surrounded by uh flaming clouds of many colours.
For more than a half hour, the disc-shaped cloud appeared to remain suspended in one spot.
Uh this is over uh the mountains of Kinsman North and Kinsman South, a little ways north uh west of here in New Hampshire.
You know what that strange disc like disc-shaped cloud in the sky was?
That was a new roundabout coming into land, folks.
Uh that'll be somewhere on uh that'll be at the junction of Route 10 and Route 302 by tomorrow morning.
So anyway, please no more roundabout correspondence, uh because uh the roundabout in New London that uh came uh have to come by to get to the studio here at WNTK uh after dark tonight.
Uh, by the way, I got I got enraged uh email correspondence about this from New London taxpayers who said that roundabout costs 750,000 dollars, which is amazing.
But you don't need to worry about it anymore.
After the show today, after dark, we're gonna go out there and we're gonna dig it up.
So by tomorrow morning it'll be gone and you can and you can relax.
Populism.
Uh populism.
This is the new tactic of Obama.
Uh he's he's realizes now he's too cerebral, uh, he's too aloof.
Uh it's The administration of the elite, he has this elite image, he has this Ivy League image with all these Harvard and Princeton and Yale guys all making plans for the rest of us, the elite making their decisions and imposing them on the rest of us.
So he's decided that as an antidote to that now, uh he's going to be Mr. Populist.
And he's attacking the banks.
And the bank president.
The bank presidents, bank taxes, uh the bank tax is the centerpiece of the party's new populism.
Uh it's the first test, according to the Wall Street Journal, of a populist pitch, the party strategists hope to take to other campaigns this year.
Here's the good news.
They figured out that you're angry.
Uh the bad news is they reckon you're not angry at government and big government and at government expenditure, uh, but you're angry at uh the banks and at other private institutions in society.
Uh with the bank tax, we can take populism back to our side, a Democratic Party strategist said.
On Friday, Martha Coakley and others invoked the bank tax in speeches and fundraising emails.
A missive from Joe Biden uh said that even though the banks receive billions of dollars from American taxpayers, Scott Brown doesn't think it's fair for us to get it back when they're paying out billions in bonuses with our money.
Now they've figured out this didn't work for them in uh in Massachusetts, but they figured out that this can uh this polls well j in a general sense, and that at a time when in certain key demographic uh constituencies, for example, you have a 50% uh unemployment rate uh uh uh among uh young blacks, for example, uh, in part because of actions uh that uh this administration has taken.
But with that degree of dissatisfaction out there, you can channel it and harness it and redirect it away from the government uh and turn it on to their various bogeymen like like bank uh vice presidents.
And what's depressing to me is that when you look at some of the polls, there are far too many people uh willing to string along with this.
You know, for a start it's stupid uh to to pick on banks.
I mean, if you're gonna do this, if you're gonna go down this uh uh half-witted populism route, why don't you why don't you impose a special tax on people who build yachts, uh people who build luxury yachts.
So why don't you impose a special 40% punitive tax uh on mater D's at snooty restaurants that won't give you a table?
You'd be better off doing doing it for an area like that that doesn't touch your life, doesn't impact on your life uh at any at any point.
But what's the point of a bank?
What's the point of a bank?
Uh a bank is where rich people deposit their money so that uh so that people who don't have large amounts of money can access the cash required uh to advance and grow their businesses and buy homes and buy cars and improve their station on life.
If if if there wasn't uh a bank, uh you would have to go to the rich guy directly.
So if it was if you didn't have the first national bank of Dead Skunk Creek to go to, you would have to go and see the big plutocrat who lives in the swanky house uh at at on on the outskirts of town and ring on the gate and petition uh for the Lord of the Manor to graciously shower you with some uh some small pittance that would enable you uh to add a rec room to your hovel if there were no banks.
So the the bank exists, the bank developed in Western society as a conduit uh to to get money from people who had surplus amounts of cash, uh, generally speaking, richer older people, uh, and facilitate its flow uh to younger, poorer people who had lots of energy and lots of ideas, but couldn't access ready cash.
So if you wanted to name the single most stupid and fraudulent uh type of populism one could ever devise, it would be to say, hey, let's demonize bank presidents.
Uh we were talking to a lady in Defiance, Ohio yesterday, and this came up, and she gets it.
She understands it.
When she sees the bank president being dropped off by his chauffeur in his uh fantastic limousine uh outside the the the pillared uh doors of the bank every morning, she doesn't think, oh, I hate that guy.
Why don't why don't they impose a 90% marginal tax rate on him and teach him a lesson?
She says she would like her son to grow up to be that guy.
That's the American dream.
And that's what banks, when they're operating properly, that's what banks uh do.
Banks enable, banks take people who have got uh large sums of money and lend it to people who don't have sums of money.
So why, why does anyone, no matter how idiotic you are, no matter how brainwashed you've been from uh Obama nomics, would you think it was in your interest to make the bank have less money?
So the next time you want to go and buy a car, the next time you want to go and buy some rusting double wide on a sixteenth acre lot round the back of the stockyards, the next time you want to go and get a new credit card, why would you think it was in your interest for that bank to have less money in its vaults?
Now there are problems with banks.
We're not uh uh we're not you know, we're not talking here about perfect institutions.
Perfectability is not something that banks can achieve.
But what is wrong with banks in the United States?
The problem with banks in the United States is that government regulation uh diverted them from what they would otherwise do.
For example, uh, you will notice that uh there are no problems, no banks north of the border had to be bailed out.
No Canadian bank had to be bailed out by the government of Canada.
You know why?
They don't have subprime mortgages in Canada.
They don't have they they didn't get into that racket.
The government left the banks, and and by the way, this is the pitiful state this country's been reduced to.
I'm citing to you a Canadian example as an example of how capitalism should function.
You should be embarrassed as an American by that.
But it's true, it's true.
The Canadian banks are fine, they don't need to be bailed out, uh, they're doing great, and the re and the only thing that's a problem, by the way, is that some of these banks, like uh the Royal Bank of Canada and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, they made the mistake of buying small uh U.S. subsidiaries.
So they bought the first National Bank of Dead Stunk Creek and then discovered uh that their small U.S. subsidiary was their only underperforming asset uh at the end of the year.
So they've all sold off their pathetic American subsidiaries now.
Because they understand that the government has distorted the banking sector in the United States, distorted the banking sector.
So the idea of scapegoating the banks, as Obama is doing, the only people that is going to hurt you.
Uh we've been hearing all this talk for the last year.
We need to free up the credit markets.
We need to free up the credit markets.
What is the credit market?
The credit market is the guy sitting across from you at the bank.
And when you go in and say, Well, I need a loan of fifteen thousand dollars.
Okay?
So how how is Obama proposing to free up the credit market by taking that fifteen thousand dollars that the vice president of the bank was going to lend to you and saying, no, we're gonna toss it down the great sucking moor of the Federal Treasury to disappear in the bottomless pit of nine trillion dollars or whatever the hole is now uh and just l and just throw it down there like sacrificing virgins uh into the volcano.
If you can think of, you know, uh a trillion dollar bill as uh as just a random virgin that you're tossing down the great sucking moor of the Federal Treasury.
This is this is phony baloney populism.
This is m a magician's sleight of hand, where where the government that takes ever more of your wealth and your liberty is saying, oh, don't blame me, it's all that guy's fault.
The guy in the top hat and the striped pants and the tailcoat waiting for his chauffeur to pull up the car before you lynch him on the sidewalk.
Uh uh a bank, if you if you want to have genuine genuine populism involves leaving the people free to exploit their economic potential to the fullest.
And all scapegoating banks does is get in the way of that.
It's the crudest kind of class warfare, and it's fundamentally un-American.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein Inforush.
Mark Stein, InfoRush, let's go to Sherry in Quad Cities from Barack Obama's great state of Illinois.
Sherry, you're live on the Rush Limbush.
Are you are you anywhere near uh Obama community organizing territory?
Well, I'm afraid it's everywhere, even though we don't see it, but please don't rub it in.
I won't I won't send him round to organize your community.
By the way, no no nobody who has a choice about it wants to live in the kind of community that requires a community organizer.
I mean, it's generally a good sign that your community is not functioning properly, but so I I hope you don't have them uh in your in your neighborhood, Sherry.
But it's great to have you on the show.
Thank you.
Well said.
And you know, when we are looking at our primaries and our votes coming up, I'm my mother and I both are saying, you know, if they're from Chicago, I'm not voting for 'em.
I'm looking for someone from mid to southern Illinois, and that's just a fact.
There's not much trust there.
Right.
So you don't you don't want someone who's part of the machine?
Absolutely.
They cannot be trusted, and I hate to make generalizations like that.
It makes me sick to my stomach to say that about people, but it's what we've seen.
How do you think all this class warfare uh stuff is gonna is gonna play?
Because the the Democrats think they w they've found a winner here, demonizing demonizing uh the private sector.
Uh seventy-seven percent of the public think that uh Obama is unfriendly to business, and the Democrats say, hey, that's great, let's let's demonize them even more.
You know, if I were gonna write a book or an article or something, I would write about the ironies.
I think there are so many ironies about the Democrats and the Liberal platform and um and what what the outcome is of of what they do.
And I live in uh John Deere's world headquarters, and which is huge union territory.
And again, it pains me to say this about unions, but I think they're wagging the dogs.
I think the days of the union are past, and they've got such a stronghold on their members that um they won't let go.
And I think it's ridiculous that uh the union members um I don't I don't know.
I guess my question is, are they really as brainwashed and gulable as it seems?
Um Well, I would say I I would I would say, just uh just to take that point, Sherry, that there's two kinds of unions.
And the real immediate I mean you have unions in uh uh as you do in say uh Detroit who are presiding who negotiated deals that they're that their companies could not support.
Now, at one level it's the fault of the stupid uh boards of those companies for agreeing to sign those agreements in good times and then frantically trying to figure a way out uh when they can't afford all those overgenerous payments.
That's that's the problem of Detroit.
But but you know, uh Detroit killed itself because of uh because of unions in in uh in many ways.
But the the real threat now, I would say, Sherry, is public sector unions.
I don't even understand why we have public sector unions.
President Kennedy uh allowed the federal government to unionize in, I think it was 1962.
And uh why?
Why?
Because uh because if you work for the government, you don't need a un normally if you work for a union, it's because the rich, selfish plutocrat you work for is gonna is gonna fire you and kick you out without any notice, and you uh and your uh little wife and kids are all gonna be starving in your hovel because the big bad capitalist has kicked you out uh because the markets turned down.
But you don't have to worry about that with government.
The government is a monopoly.
You d you you don't uh you don't have a situation where uh the the uh the government A says, well, I can't compete with government B across the streets, I'm gonna have to cut your wages.
The one people who shouldn't be uh in unions uh are the public sector, our government workers.
And uh since uh President Kennedy sent this thing in 1962, essentially the Democratic Party has has uh unionized the federal uh government, the government workforce of the United States, and thereby starts with a huge advantage in every single election because effectively when you allow people to be public sector workers, public sector unionized workers, those union workforces become fully paid up members of the Democratic Party.
You look at it what any candidate in New York state has to do.
New York is an overunionized state, and that means that the Democratic Party starts with a huge advantage in almost uh any election, and that's why it's bad for bad for the country, uh, Sherry.
And so I hope I hope people in the private sector do not buy this uh demonization.
They're not buying it in your part of town, are they?
Well, I don't think so.
You know, that's my whole is in humankind and human sensibility, because I think the union and the liberals are banking on people being um responding to the mantra and this villainizing uh wealthy people, rich people.
I've seen it in my family who are union members.
They just think they believe it.
Hookline and thinker, that's the mantra, and when they and I've seen and heard the uh Obama administration start and play play that up to get people ready and rally their side in this coming election.
And I'm really hoping that they're going to be smarter than that when they come to vote.
They will be.
It didn't work, it didn't work in uh Massachusetts, and it isn't gonna work in the rest of the country because people get it.
This this crude class warfare is absolutely the opposite uh of what used to be the great strength about the uh about the United States.
So we'll talk about that and lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for rush on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Don't go away.
Great to be with you, your undocumented Anchorman.
America's Anchorman returns live uh from Las Vegas uh tomorrow, where he's been busy uh judging the Miss America Condes.
I s I'm still getting uh mail about roundabouts.
Uh I've had an email from Catherine who goes, I've Googled maps of New London, New Hampshire, and cannot find any roundabout.
Where is it?
Uh Catherine, you don't get it, do you?
They d they're like vampires.
They don't show up on maps.
Vampires in the mirror.
They they don't show up on maps.
You're not gonna find it there.
You can do the GPS, it's not gonna work.
Uh we're talking about this new populism, Obama the populist.
Uh the president is making noises about helping the middle class, says the Los Angeles Times.
Is it a real economic plan or pandering?
Well, what do you think?
What do you think the answer?
That's the A or B question, the multiple choice question.
Is it a real economic A, is it a real economic plan?
B or pandering.
Don't all press B all at once.
Uh what is what is uh crippling the middle class in this country?
What is crippling the middle class is governmentalization of your life.
Uh the cap and trade bill.
What does that do for the middle class?
It imposes new regulatory costs on uh on small businesses, it imposes new costs on uh on just the simple act like selling your home or or uh bringing your home up to environmental standards.
What does health care do?
That's a job killer.
What does card check do?
Uh that's uh a job killer.
It's it it diverts uh card check benefits big, unproductive, unionized uh industries over small dynamic uh industries.
What does the energy tax do?
What does stimulus spending do?
That's what's killing it for the middle class.
That's what's killing it for the middle class.
Now they now people turn to this.
Once productive states turn to this as a last refuge, uh, for example, in the state of Oregon, where is it?
I can't I've uh I've got I've got a pile of curling fax paper here, and I can't find the relevant one.
In the state of Oregon, uh they have uh decided that the solution to their problems is to increase corporate taxes.
Do you know what increasing corporate taxes does?
This country already has some of the highest corporate taxes, the highest corporate taxes in the world.
You go uh here it's about 35%, depending which uh which state or city or whatever you're in.
In Ireland, you know, it's a flat rate of twelve percent.
And uh and it's uh that's it, twelve percent.
Uh America's corporate tax rate is lower than uh than uh is higher than Sweden's.
What do you think what do you think Americans work for?
A business doesn't pay taxes.
In the end, whatever tax rate you impose on a corporation has to be paid by human beings.
And those human beings are your uh uh voters and they're your citizens.
So this idea that you can somehow demonize corporations and no human beings need be involved is completely preposterous, and only a left-wing economic illiterate would look at it that way.
Let's go to uh I'm not even sure how to pronounce this name, Ferrin.
Ferrin in Atlanta.
That's a fantastic name, Therin.
Theron, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, you pronounced it correctly.
It's Theron.
Oh, that's great.
Well, what Theron, just before we go any further, what kind of name is that?
Uh it's actually uh of Cajun origin, I think.
Oh, right.
So that would be that's what was confusing me.
I was I was thinking of it uh from up in uh up in Canada, it would be Tehran, uh Tehran, but you just say Therin.
You've Americanized it.
Well, I don't I don't know.
It's it's a very unusual name.
There's only about three people I do have it.
It's uh I I c I consider them this felt French name is the way I kind of described it.
Well well, that's good.
Don't go sissying it up by sticking an accent on the E or anything.
It's just good law, the all-American way like uh Theron.
Okay, uh Farinina, you're uh you're calling from Atlanta.
And what uh what's your point?
Well, I I was listening to the earlier and I wanted to uh to uh maybe respectfully correct you on something.
You mentioned about uh uh about maybe instead of taxing bankers they should go after uh you know luxury ya yacht makers, but uh you know populism can have uh unintended consequences at any level, and if uh uh about fifteen years ago that was that was done.
I don't know if it was done for populist reasons or not, but they basically decided to uh to tax uh yacht builders and it put an awful lot of uh blue collar workers out of out of uh work and uh and uh basically they had the backtrack on it.
So I'd like you to maybe um you know wax on about the uh about the unintended consequences of the unpopular y just just to clarify here, Theron, I wasn't recommending that we we impose punitive taxes on yacht makers.
But I I was I was just making the point that if you want to, if you're if you are mired in this populist outlook, uh the one thing you shouldn't be going after is banks, because banks are really in the business of taking rich people's money and lending it to poor people who don't have money.
Uh whereas it's easier to target uh a big yacht maker who's making uh is making yachts for John Kerry to uh to to float off sea in.
But you're right, and the Democrats tried this.
Do you remember you don't have to go back fifteen years to the yacht bill?
Uh about a year ago, they were going to impose penalties when they first came into office.
Do you remember when the big three order makers all flew in to beg Washington for money, and they all flew in by private corporate jet.
And the Democrats, because they think this way, uh they think Nancy Pelosi uh needs a big private jet, but they don't think a guy who runs a big multinational company does.
They were going to impose punitive taxes on uh on corporate executives who used corporate jets.
And then some Democrat congressman, bless them, uh showed that all these blue-collar workers who were their constituents work for private jet manufacturers in this blue state and that blue state, and the Democrats decided to leave corporate jets alone.
But that actually makes the point.
That that we even when you're trying this populist stuff, you can take a yacht as a symbol of consumer excess, or you can take a private jet as a symbol of corporate greed, but who makes the jet?
Who makes the yacht?
Regular people do.
The guy who lives down your street makes that yacht, makes that corporate jet.
And this is where populism is simply the worst kind of class prejudice and and uh ultimately self-destructive, because uh you you're not the the the big rich guy will still find a yacht.
He can buy a yacht from some guy in the United Arab Emirates and sail around in that.
Uh all you'll be doing is put an American uh American yacht uh workers out of work.
So that's a very good point, Theron.
You you said it perfectly.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
That's uh Ferrin in Atlanta.
That's uh that's that's kind of yacht uh kind of yacht country uh down there in in an odd kind of way.
Let's go to Bill in Southampton.
That's also yacht country too.
Bill in Southampton, New York, uh uh you're live on the Rush Limbus.
Great to have you with us.
Yeah, hi Mark, how are you today?
I'm doing good.
Excellent.
Uh uh kudos and amen to all of the points that you're making about banks and co and going after corporations in America.
But here's here's my uh little bit of hope that uh Americans are not going to buy this populism against the banks, and it has to do with Freddie uh Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack.
And I believe a lot of Americans were tuned in to watch that old uh uh uh hearing in the uh Congress with Barney Frank and Maxine Waters extolling how well Freddie May and Fannie Mack are doing for America while they were forcing the banks to make all of these subprime loans and really destroy the in the system that we have today.
And I I really laid at their doorstep why the market crashed as much as it did, and I think a lot of people saw it when the Republicans tried to show that Freddie Mae and Fannie Mack are in trouble by bringing in the auditors, all they did was just trash the auditors and constantly say what a wonderful job they're doing for America.
That's r that's right.
And and what happens is the people think it's uh it's Fannie May and Freddie Mac.
I think you had it the other way around, Freddie Mac and Fanny and Fannie Mae.
But it doesn't matter because they're cross-dressers, who can remember which is which anyway.
Uh but the point the point is this that people think, oh, this is just some quasi governmental entity that helps poor people.
They don't they don't realize that it is in fact a massive distortion uh of the natural market and that it prevents the natural corrections of the market.
And what it did here in the United States, and this is why people should be going after Barney Frank long before they go after any vice president of this or that private bank, because Barney Frank is completely unaccountable.
And Fanny Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are unaccountable in that sense, because they're a a government license monopoly.
Uh they've been given a blank check uh now.
The uh they passed this thing in the dead a night uh just before uh I think it was Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve or whatever holiday it was, Groundhog Day, who remembers.
But they passed this thing uh uh essentially removing all fiscal control at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completely, so that the government can just write them a blank check now.
And that has been a far more destructive uh uh blow at uh at property, which is after all the heart, the bedrock of a free society.
Property is indispensable to liberty.
So when you make an assault on the integrity of property and you destroy the value of property and you destroy the property market, you're actually making an assault on freedom.
There's a reason why hardcore Marxists say property is theft.
Because they understand that when people get a taste for property, when people own property, they start thinking like free individuals.
And that's why the distortion of property of the property market that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did was uh was absolutely disgraceful and did huge damage uh uh to this country and in fact to the uh to to the economy.
And people would be far better off blaming Barney Frank, whose uh who whose significant other or whatever you call it, whose partner, uh whose long-term boyfriend was running one of them.
I can't remember whether he was running Fannie May or Freddie Mac, but he was running one of them during all this time.
That's the sort of thing, by the way, that if it was some a Republican guy and his wife was running uh Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, there'd be all kinds of investigations into.
But oddly enough, whatever Barney Frank does, like this thing up in Maine the other day, where it turns out his uh his current boyfriend has been growing marijuana in the uh in their vacation home, and he says, Oh, well, I've no, I had no idea what a marijuana plant looks like.
Uh so how is I don't know what it was?
Uh that th this is one reason uh why uh one party states are unhealthy.
Barney Frank is not subject until this Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, to the normal political accountability.
He's as essentially the uh uh emir of incumbent stand in his little congressional district in Massachusetts.
And uh you be we need that we would be far better off demanding that these uh the uh the Congress and some of these regulatory agencies be held to account than going after bank uh presidents.
And you talk about auditors, nobody audits anything at government.
Government is immune to auditing.
Government, can you look at any government program?
You look at Medicare, you look at the money that just disappears in Medicare, uh, because it either goes out in fraudulent payments or it just disappears somewhere en route to making a payment.
No uh small business could present paperwork like that to the IRS and get away with it.
Only a government department can, Bill.
And I think that's the message that people people need to hear.
So you you keep telling it to folks, Bill.
Have you gone?
Is Bill still there?
Bill, Bill, Bill's gone.
He bailed out of me.
We'll have lots more your calls straight ahead.
1800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network, rush back to uh tomorrow.
I found that story from Oregon I was looking for.
I got uh uh usually when I'm uh uh sitting down with HR and the gang uh down in New York.
I've uh got everything on like this nice super thick paper.
It's almost like card you'd use for a wedding invitation.
It's money no object.
But I've had it all uh up here on like curly fax papers.
Every time I try to find anything, it sort of uh it curls off and uh blows out into the breeze Into the flood stricken Sullivan County and gets washed out to Long Island Sound before I get a chance to grab it.
But I found this thing.
Portland, Oregon.
Oh, Oregon is considering measures to raise taxes on households earning $250,000 or more, and on individuals earning $125,000, as well as hike corporate taxes.
About $39,000 of the state's 1.5 million taxpayers would be subject to the higher tax.
And some big companies could see their annual bills go from ten dollars to $100,000.
Hey, what's the big deal?
I wonder how many of those companies in this in this recession, set say your like 2009 tax bill was $10, and your 2001 tax bill is $100,000.
So that's like $99,990 more you're giving to the government than you would have had to invest in your company or to hire somebody else.
This is what's wrong uh with uh the thinking behind uh be behind what the government's doing.
All this stuff is job killing, job killing, job killing.
For a start, when you have uncertainty, in other words, when you have things like health care stuff that oh it's past the Senate, oh it's it's n it's it's wiggled through the next hole, it's wiggled through the next hoop, it just has to jump through one more hoop, and then we will have fantastic government health care.
But we haven't quite got there yet.
We we might get there by reconciliation.
You got cap and trade, it passes in in one house, it hasn't passed in the other house, but it's coming down the pike, it's coming at you.
Everything that that uh the administration and the Democrat Congress talks about and makes clear it wants to pass is a job killer.
So even before passing it, people if you've got a small business and you're thinking, well, do I want to hire somebody?
I'm I I uh okay, last quarter I kind of recovered.
I got back on my feet again.
Uh it'd be nice to maybe take somebody else on.
Oh, but what's this?
Oh, now they're saying my annual tax bill could go from ten dollars to one hundred thousand dollars.
So that ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars, uh nine hundred and ninety dollars that I would have used to hire a new person, maybe a couple of new people, whatever, uh now will be going to the government.
The whenever you have uh populism that identifies itself as an assault on the dynamic uh and the successful and the innovative, you're punishing yourself.
It's great to stick it to the to to the rich guy, but you're in the end you're only sticking it to yourself.
You'd be much better sticking it to the big job-killing government bureaucracy uh that is at the heart of the problems uh here.
Mark Stein in for Rush and lots more still to come on the EIB network.
Mark Stein Inforush on the EIB network.
Let's go to Richie in Cincinnati.
Richie, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Yeah, Mark, thanks for taking my call.
Uh I want to be arguing right at the point.
Uh Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are creating trickle-down taxation and poverty on the poor.
And here's the reason why.
Every time you directly or incre directly or indirectly increase prices for corporations through taxation or any other cost, what you do is force them to raise their prices.
Okay.
Now, if you raise the price a hundred dollars, if everybody's gonna every person in the country has to spend a hundred dollars more.
Think of it this way.
A twenty-five thousand dollar income that spend the uh disposable income left of about ten grand, divide a hundred dollars by ten thousand dollars, that's their effective tax rate.
Take that person you were mentioning before, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
They have a hundred thousand dollars of taxation.
Taxate that increase in taxation.
That is only going to increase divide a hundred by a hundred thousand.
Effective tax rate on the poor goes up.
Taxation never trickles up to the rich, it trickles down to the poor.
That's that's an excellent point, Richie.
And you know why this president doesn't understand it.
There's fewer people, by the way, involved in uh uh who have a private sector experience in this administration.
They did some survey, fewer people in the cabinet with private sector administration than in any uh U.S. cabinet the last century.
And that's why the president stood up here uh and he said that uh government health care plan would be helpful be uh because unlike it would be cheaper uh because uh unlike private uh health care insurers, they didn't have to factor profits into overhead.
That's how economically illiterate the President of the United States is, folks.
He thinks that profit is part of your overhead.
So he's he's uh for he's now for the last 12 months punished profits.
People who make profits spend those profits by investing in their companies, by uh spending money in other local businesses, uh, by s by dispersing those profits around their communities.
There's nothing in it for you if he takes those profits and sticks it in the great big bottomless pit of the Federal Treasury.
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