Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yeah, you know, it's kind of amazing.
I did a short little three-minute interview this morning on a golf channel at 10 o'clock Eastern.
They're out at Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open, kicking off today.
And I'm going to be in a new program starting.
Well, it was in January.
You're going to start taping it next month.
The Haney Project.
Hank Haney, Tiger's former coach, is taking me on as his third pupil to try to turn into somebody who can play the game.
First with Charles Barkley, then was Ray Romano.
Now it's me.
So I'm on the Golf Channel 7 o'clock Western Time, 10 o'clock Eastern.
I must have had 100 email replies from this little three-minute interview.
Anyway, folks, it's great to have you here.
We're going to do Open Line Friday on Thursday today because I have another wedding I have to go to.
Yes, my friends, a good friend's daughter is getting married in the great Northwest.
And so have to fly out there for the festivities after the program today.
Doug Urbanski is going to be the guest host for tomorrow.
So whatever you want to talk about today, fair game.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is now clear that the Constitution of the United States of America may as well not exist.
And it's not just over the slush fund and the shakedown of BP that took place yesterday at the White House.
We're going to get to that in great detail because this is outrageous.
It is outrageous.
It is unconstitutional what they're doing.
And three Republicans are speaking up about it.
Michelle Bachman is one.
Well, Chris Christie, not about this.
Joe Barton called this a slush fund yesterday, just as it is.
But before we get to that, let's take a look at things here.
Obama has rewarded the United Auto Workers.
He refuses to blanket waive the Jones Act, which would allow foreign assistance with an oil spill.
The Jones Act is routinely waived en masse in emergencies like this.
The Jones Act requires American union workers on projects like this.
Obama is not waiving it.
So we have refused expert help to stop the flow, to clean up the mess, all to protect unions.
He has placed union activists on the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board.
And as Secretary of Labor, a former congresswoman, he has used the stimulus bill to pay the salaries and benefits of state and local government employees, especially NEA members, the teachers.
And now he and his party, with some moronic Republicans, there are seven, six or seven Republicans going along with this, are attempting to expand public sector unionism by imposing it on states and municipalities that have not permitted their civil service public employees to unionize.
Chris Christie is in the middle of this in New Jersey.
He's beating these people back.
The latest polling data out of New Jersey is 51% of the people there support what Chris Christie's doing.
It's all he needs.
51%.
And in the process of trying to clean his state up, here comes the Democrats and Obama and six Republicans.
Despite all of these unfunded pension and health care benefits, the taxpayers are going to have to one day have to deal with in the public sector.
Now they are going to expand, impose actually on states and municipalities that have not permitted their civil service public employees to unionize.
They're going to demand that they unionize them.
Just demand it.
And there are six or seven Republicans going along with it.
Now, you look, look at the courage of New Jersey Governor Christie.
He is having to battle these public sector unions because they have substantially contributed to the financial demise of his state.
Yet, the federal Senate and at least six Republicans want to impose on states that do not follow these irresponsible practices the kind of financial chaos experienced by those who do and by the federal government.
Under what constitutional authority, under what logic should this be tolerated?
I mean, it's this is it's absurd.
You now move on to the oil problem and BP.
Is there any problem?
Is there any decision that Barack Obama has not delegated to some study group, to some panel, to some commission, or some stupid czar?
Remember how they got all over Reagan because he delegated?
Well, here we have Obama who does nothing but delegate.
And get this: he has just asked for $15 million for his oil spill commission.
$15 million.
What are they going to do with that?
This is a bunch of people going to sit around a conference table and ask people questions.
What in the name of Sam Hill do they need $15 million for?
How many feet of boom would $15 million buy?
How many bales of hay would $15 million buy?
How many skimmer ships could be rented for $15 million?
How many of Kevin Costner's oil separation devices, those centrifuges, how many of those could be bought with $15 million?
How many gallons of dispersing chemicals?
How many gallons of oil are going to be removed from the Gulf by this $15 million commission?
The answer is none.
It's just, well, I don't know.
I do not know how to describe this anymore.
This is pure, abject lawlessness.
This is not constitutional what is happening here.
You can't shake down private companies like this.
Well, I know they did it, but this is not the first time they did it with TARP.
The Heritage Foundation Morning Bell makes a great point today.
We told you when this happened that the then Treasury Secretary Paulson brought these nine bankers in and said, sign this by 6 o'clock.
You're not getting out of this room until you sign it.
And a bunch of one of the Wells Fargo guys, we don't need the money.
We're not in any trouble here.
We're not involved in some subprime problem.
You're going to take it.
You're going to take it.
You're going to take $25 billion or whatever it was, the money that was imposed on them.
It's happening here all over again.
I have an idea.
Why doesn't Obama just go ahead and seize enough of BP and all of big oil's assets to bail out the public sector unions all across America?
Just be done with it.
That's what Maxine Waters said she wanted to do.
Big oil, a big enemy.
Let's just seize their assets.
Just seize their assets and get rid of every union problem that we have.
And let's seize their assets and extend unemployment benefits and to pad out the Democrats' re-election war chest.
Why not just do this?
Why not do it out in the open in one big scoop?
I guess that's what's happening here.
I mean, who can doubt?
This is from the left's perspective, from Obama's perspective.
I mean, who can doubt that BP and big oil's crimes against humanity go far beyond the deepwater leak?
Big oil's crimes against humanity have been going on since Rockefeller found the stuff in Saudi Arabia.
Wouldn't this just be the epitome of social justice, otherwise known as getting even $20 billion when the maximum allowed by law is $75 million?
But Obama brings them in.
Who knows what happened in that meeting?
It went on much longer than expected.
It was said that he was darting in and darting out.
He wasn't there for the whole thing.
Michelle Bachman, Republican Minnesota, said that Obama is exceeding his legitimate constitutional authority in telling BP that it must set up an independent fund, not controlled by the company, for compensating victims of the Gulf oil spill.
She described the administration's policy as an action that's all about extortion.
It is all about extortion by threat of legal hell and its redistribution.
Where is this money going to go?
I ask again the questions I asked yesterday: where is the money going to go?
What unions are going to get it?
What Acorn people are going to get it?
What Democrats who are experiencing great trouble here in their re-election bids are going to get this money?
We were told we have an independent commission or entity who is going to be handing out the dispersal of this money.
Well, who is he?
Well, he's the Pesar.
He's already one of Obama's czars.
How in the world they can call Feinberg independent is beyond me.
Here's, let's go to the audio tape.
This is what I said yesterday on this program about this $20 billion escrow fund.
Look, the government's in charge of this.
I want to know who's going to get it.
Who's going to get this money?
Union activists?
Acorn people?
Who's going to get this money?
Let's keep a sharp eye on who Feinberg gives this money to.
Because I'm telling you, this is just another bailout fund called something else, and we'll see who gets it.
If Obama's past is prologue, and it is, then this is going to be used as a little miniature slush fund.
So this morning in Washington on Capitol Hill during the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Joe Barton of Texas said this in his opening remarks.
I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday.
I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown.
In this case, a $20 billion shakedown.
With the Attorney General of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history.
He went further.
He apologized to Hayward of BP for the actions of the regime.
I'm only speaking for myself.
I'm not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize.
I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown.
So I apologize.
Joe Barton apologized to BP executives on behalf of himself, the American people, for the shakedown.
Ed Maki from Massachusetts did not like this.
Here's a portion of his opening statement.
Not only is the compensation fund that was created yesterday at the White House in an agreement reached between BP and President Obama not a slush fund and not a shakedown.
Rather, it was the government of the United States working to protect the most vulnerable citizens that we have in our country right now, the residents of the Gulf.
It is BP's spill, but it is America's ocean.
And it is American citizens who are being harmed.
Now imagine the surprise of your BP.
I mean, how much money have you contributed to Obama for his presidential campaign?
So you've given at the office.
You've given at the office.
You're supposed to have bought insurance.
And then all of a sudden you get called into the White House and you get shaked down.
You get shaken down and there's a slush fund.
Imagine their surprise.
They thought they had bought insurance against this.
And who knows what they were told in there?
But I'm telling you folks, the Democrat Party from Obama on down is literally a bunch of thugs now.
The United States government may as well be a branch of organized crime.
The way that it is being conducted and the way it's doing business and the way it's looking out for itself and no one else.
You've seen the unemployment numbers today.
How in the world can anybody say that this immediate tweak of me, the number of people filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped unexpectedly last week after three straight declines?
Another sign that hiring remains weak.
There isn't any hiring.
All that's been happening is temporary in and out based on census worker employment.
Job claims, benefits, jobless rise sharply.
Anybody surprised by this?
Nobody surprised.
And then this is hilarious.
Mike Allen today at the Politico, one of the items in his little morning report, Obama-Biden declare recovery summer.
Vice President Biden today will kick off Recovery Summer, a six-week-long push designed to highlight the jobs accompanying a surge in stimulus-funded projects to improve highways, parks, drink.
It's been a year and a half and there is none of this.
Organized crime.
It's the closest thing I can think to analogize what's happening here.
And even these guys that are being shaken down, they're paying protection money and it isn't enough.
It isn't enough.
Biden, apparently it's leaked out.
Biden in the meeting yesterday told these BP guys, you have no choice.
You have no choice.
You have no choice is what Biden told these guys.
And these guys are not even a foreign, or they are not even a domestic company.
They're a British outfit.
More Ed Markey, then we'll go to the break here.
Markey says it's not a shakedown.
This is government at its best.
It is not a shakedown.
It is, in fact, President Obama ensuring that a company which has despoiled the waters of our nation is made accountable for the harm which is done to our people.
No, this is not a shakedown of the company.
This is the American government, President Obama, ensuring that this company is made accountable and sending a signal to all other companies that seek to treat ordinary American families in a way that can destroy their entire family system.
This is, in my opinion, the American government working at its best.
The implication here is that British Petroleum, that BP, went out there and purposely tried to ruin people's lives.
This is President Obama ensuring that this company is made accountable and sending a signal to all other companies that seek to treat ordinary American families in a way that can destroy them.
American businesses exist to destroy families.
According to Ed Markey, American businesses, big corporations around the world exists to treat ordinary American families in a way that can destroy their families' history.
That's what corporations do, kill off their customers.
Your modern-day Democrat Party.
We've barely scratched the surface.
Coming right back with much more after this.
Let's not forget who's really being shaken down here, ladies and gentlemen.
And it's interesting to get the British take on this story.
The UK mail online bullied into a $20 billion cave-in.
Obama forces BP to set up a huge compensation fund for oil spill victims, and British pensioners will pick up the bill.
The crisis engulfing BP plumbed new depths last night as Obama bullied the company into depositing $20 billion into a fund to settle compensation claims for the oil spill.
After a face-to-face showdown with the president at the White House, BP Chairman Carl Henriks Von Berg revealed the payment meant the oil giant, the giant, be forced to suspend dividends to its shareholders until at least next year.
BP's backdown came as David Cameron finally broke his controversial silence over Obama's attacks on the company.
The prime minister revealed he told Obama not to go after BP for the sake of it.
Yesterday's dramatic capitulation came as U.S. officials and lawmakers escalated the ugly rhetoric over the disaster.
You know, I guess it's okay now that the Europeans don't like us.
The Brits are not happy about this.
Their pensioners are the ones that are going to be shaken down.
That's where this will end up.
That's who it's going to cost.
Just like corporations never pay taxes at the end of the day.
They always accommodate that with higher prices, their pricing structure at every level of a sale.
So how's that likability factor Obama working on working out for everybody?
So many people worried that Bush made the world hate us.
I don't think Obama's done anything but exacerbate whatever dislike there was, and I don't think it was that bad.
Even when Bush was at the heights of his power, it was all media mumbo-jumbo.
Ed Markey, by the way, went on to say in that hearing yesterday, this morning, actually, $20 billion, that that's just a down payment.
The $20 billion is just a down payment.
Folks, that's how blackmailing works.
It's exactly how a blackmailer will hit you.
You give in once and they keep coming back for more.
They've got you.
You pay one time and they'll keep coming back.
So slush fund, extra-constitutional blackmail, whatever you, here's a full marquee quote.
He said, BP has just made a down payment on ensuring that every single claim, every single injury, every single health-related harm, which was done in the Gulf is paid for.
We have no way right now knowing the full consequences.
This is just a down payment.
Now, the BP stockholders, they are the small people that Obama and our news media pretend to be so concerned about.
That CEO, the chairman, went out and said, yeah, we're very concerned about the small people.
The small people are BP stockholders and the pensioners in the UK.
Sit tight, folks.
Be right back.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, I find myself apparently in a minority position, just as you do, too.
I checked the email during the break and I got a lot of emails.
How dare you defend BP?
Are you nuts?
Do you want the Democrats to win the election?
You got to jump on BP.
There's no defending.
I'm not defending BP.
Standing for the rule of law, we have a legal system to ensure that corporations are held accountable.
We have free market aspects that ensure that.
Civil and criminal matters, we have a legal system to deal with it.
Now the executive branch has just said the legislative branch, judicial branch, neither matter.
We're just going to come in and we are the law.
Take over a private industry, the auto industry, if they want to, they can do it.
I'm not defending BP here.
I'm trying to defend the U.S. Constitution, the American way of life, American exceptionalism, what it was that made this country great.
From the U.K. Mail story, Mr. Svandberg and Chief Executive Tony Hayward were told that either they agreed to set up the multi-billion dollar escrow account, the slush fund, or the Americans would rush through laws to force them.
No, the Democrats would do so.
Now, this is typical.
This is how the Democrat Party has been working for the longest time.
Elliot Spitzer, who I guess is going to get a CNN show.
Elliot Spitzer started it as Attorney General of New York, shaking down AIG and shaking down any number of companies, threatening to put them out of business unless they agreed to pay a fine or what have you when there was no evidence they'd done anything wrong.
Andrew Cuomo is picking up where Spitzer left off.
And now Obama is threatening to make life a living hell if they don't do what he wants, which is to give him their profits so he can redistribute that money to Acorn, to his union supporters, all for the purposes of electing Democrats and re-electing him.
That's why it's a slush fund.
I have no brief for British petroleum, but folks, we got the split screen, by the way, now that I mentioned yesterday.
Now that we've got these hearings going on and this Hayward CEO and whoever else is up there, little bitty postage stamp picture of him, the most of the screen is taken up with the streaming video of the oil leaking from the busted well or the fire after the explosion on the rig and the surface.
So we're finally getting the split screen.
Now they got Henry Waxman there.
He's joined in in the interrogation.
Now, this, you talk about the small people going to be hurt by this, British pensioners.
The move will also hurt American investors.
40% of BP's major shareholders are Britain, but Americans have a 39% stake in BP.
And get this.
BP reportedly has twice as many American as British employees.
So in addition to whatever joblessness Obama is going to cause with his drilling moratorium, now whatever damage he causes to this country is going to hurt American jobs down the line.
So I'm not, who could, who could defend BP in this?
And somebody, some Republican from Texas, so did you really care about this or was it just us the pursuit of profit?
What the hell?
Of course it's the pursuit of profit.
We had better be damn well satisfied and happy they had made some profits or they wouldn't have this flush fund money to cough up.
Good Lord, have people in this country lost all of their moorings?
Have people lost all sense of common sense?
Is everything that was good about this country now the epitome of evil?
Apparently it is.
As this White House defines things, Ben Stein, American spectator, submitted this.
The action of the president in demanding this immense transfer of the stockholders' wealth without any legislation or court decision is extremely worrisome.
We live in a constitutional republic.
The president's job under the Constitution is to enforce the laws made by the elected Congress.
His job is not to create new laws and enforce them by himself.
His job is as magistrate under the Constitution, not as codillo.
He is not the law.
He's supposed to enforce what Congress decides.
The BP behavior is reminiscent of how immediately after assuming office, Obama, with no congressional authority or administrative allowance, simply made a phone call to fire the head of General Motors.
When I called the White House press office to ask under what law or regulation Mr. Obama was acting in demanding this slush fund of $20 billion in BP, I was told he didn't need a law.
Ben Stein called the White House press office.
What law permits this?
The White House press office says he doesn't need a law.
If the government put a lot of money into General Motors, it could call the shots at General Motors.
That's what he was told.
But under what authority, Ben Stein asked them.
The White House press office person said no authority is needed.
He doesn't need a law.
He can do whatever he wants.
Which takes us to the Heritage Foundation morning bill.
On October 13, 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson summoned the CEOs of the nation's biggest banks into a gilded conference room at the Treasury Department just a stone's throw away from the White House.
Each CEO was then handed a one-page document that said their company would agree to sell hundreds of billions worth of equity to the federal government through the TARP program, at the time called the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
We plan to announce a program tomorrow and that your nine firms will be the initial participants, Paulson told them.
In case anyone missed the subtle message, Paulson added this.
We don't believe it is tenable to opt out because doing so would leave you vulnerable and exposed.
Sure enough, just like a certain fictional band leader once did, all nine CEOs signed their respective contracts.
They were not allowed out of the room until they did.
Yesterday, history repeated itself.
This time it was the executives of BP who were summoned directly to the White House to have a little chat with the president and Eric Holder, who has threatened BP with criminal prosecution.
The exact conversation may never be known.
And by the end of their no-nonsense business meeting, quote unquote, BP emerged from the Roosevelt room to announce that they would voluntarily, quote unquote, place $20 billion into an escrow account to begin covering claims associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and contribute another $100 million to a foundation that will support oil workers made unemployed by Obama's indefinite ban on offshore oil drilling.
Did you know that?
It's not just the $20 billion.
They shook him down for $100 million for a foundation that will support oil workers made unemployed by Obama's ban.
So the president admits he's going to put people out of work with his oil ban, his moratorium on offshore drilling.
Not just the Gulf.
Anywhere else it's happening, Alaska.
He knows these people are going to lose their jobs.
Guess what?
BP sets up $100 million for a foundation to support them.
You understand this?
We have a president, a president that admits now, yeah, I'm going to put all these people out of work.
I'm going to make sure they don't have jobs.
I'm shutting down oil drilling.
I'm going to make that evil BP pay them So that I can get away with shutting down the industry.
There, the workers won't get mad.
Workers won't get upset.
They're going to be paid for not working.
Well, this is the theory, certainly they won't get upset.
And meanwhile, Obama gets to shut down offshore drilling, all the while preaching about we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Now, hilariously, if I mean, if you can crack a smile at any of this, the Constitution is one of the few things Obama can claim any knowledge about.
He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago on constitutional law.
Of course, in reality, he didn't teach constitutional law.
You know what Obama taught?
You can see it in the pictures of the blackboard diagrams that he drew and was pointing out.
What Obama taught was rules for radicals by Saul Alinsky and how to use the Constitution to shake down corporations through race and grievance lawsuits.
That's what he taught students at the University of Chicago, much like he is doing to BP.
He taught students to do exactly what he has just done.
But he didn't learn that from the Constitution.
He learned it from Rules for Radicals, authored by that great anti-American Saul Alinsky.
I wonder, will this BP foundation of $100 million, will they pay for oil workers whose jobs are lost through cap and trade as well?
Where does this end?
They're trying to make this Hayward guy cry on camera, and they may not have to try very hard.
I watched a little bit of this before the program started at about 11:30 when they had to break because of the QA because they had a house vote, so they suspended it till noon.
They want to make this guy cry on camera.
BP's market cap has declined by around 50%, $100 billion as a result of the spill.
Now, by any rational measure, BP has been harmed more by the spill than anybody else.
And their shareholders have been harmed more than anybody else.
Not to say that people haven't been harmed, don't misunderstand, but they have been hurt.
Their own actions have hurt them as happens.
Isn't a 50% collapse of their stock?
I mean, if we're going to dole out punishment here, and if we want to make ourselves feel good at the misery of somebody else, losing half your value in six weeks, isn't that pretty, isn't that pretty cool?
We can feel pretty good about that.
The problem with it is, is that there are average Americans and average Britons who are shareholders who are losing their investment in the company, too.
It's not just these CEOs getting creamed, but this regime demands a slush fund and then sets up a foundation to pay oil workers knowingly idled by virtue of Obama's policy.
Man, oh man, oh man, Democrats were bragging all over television last night and this morning how they were going to slice and dice this CEO today.
They couldn't wait.
It was like they couldn't wait to get hold of Ollie North during the Iran-Contra hearings.
They were going to slice and dice.
They couldn't wait to get their words in their hands and who knows whatever else on this guy.
I got to take a break.
We'll be back.
It's Open Line Friday on Thursday today, 800-282-2882.
We'll be right back.
Well, the CEO, Mr. Hayward, just said something that I'm sure did not please the Democrats on the committee.
He said, hey, it says, like I pointed out yesterday, your MMS, mineral and mine standards, whatever that agency is, approved every step of our construction in that rig.
As I pointed out yesterday, BP can't do a damn thing without some bureaucracy signing off on it.
The Obama administration.
Democrats don't like this.
Also got a fascinating note here from a friend of mine, happens to be Jewish.
Subject line of his email, even the Nazis got a trial.
Due process, fairness, rule of law for everybody.
Even Eichmann got a trial.
But not these guys.
Not these guys.
These guys are not getting a trial.
They call Bush and Cheney dictators.
And by the way, how about all the other oil companies whose rigs have been shut down by virtue of Obama's extra-constitutional moratorium?
Now, it's interesting to note, the Heritage Foundation has this interesting to note how the deal between the White House and BP is structured.
BP is not handing over $20 billion check today or tomorrow.
Instead, they are set to pay $3 billion in the third quarter of this year, $2 billion in the fourth, so $5 billion total for the remainder of the year, and then starting next year, $1.25 billion per quarter thereafter.
So it's going to take a number of years for them to pay out the $20 billion.
In the meantime, in the meantime, BP has identified $20 billion worth of assets in the United States that the federal government now has a lien on.
In the event of a bankruptcy, guess who gets to jump in line and have their claims honored first?
If you're still guessing, think Chrysler's secured creditors who were told to pound sand.
The bondholders at Chrysler and GM were told to pound.
Remember, Obama went public and called them greedy.
All they wanted was to be made whole on their investments.
They're the ones that kept the companies afloat by buying the bonds.
When it came time for the government to take over, they're the ones that were told to pound sand.
So the way this is set up, if BP defaults on this, guess who owns it?
Barack Hussein Obama.
So yesterday's voluntary deal between BP and the regime was nothing less than a continuation of Obama's ongoing assault on the rule of law.
Now, we talk about the greatness of America and how the aspects of American greatness are now all considered criminal.
Failure is a necessary component of capitalism.
But this administration refuses to allow the rule of law to work.
From Fannie Mae to Freddie Mac, from GM to Chrysler, from AIG to Citibank, this regime continues to subvert the established rule of law.
This lawlessness creates uncertainty in the business environment, and it is a huge reason why our economy is not recovering as it should be because everybody who owns a larger small business or corporation who's thinking about investing in growth can take a look and see what this regime has done to the oil industry following what it did to the auto industry, what it did to the mortgage industry, what it's done to the home industry, destroyed everything it's touched.
Health care too.
Healthcare's been destroyed or it's in the process of being destroyed.
The greatest healthcare system in the world.
So everything this administration has touched has gone to excrement.
And if you own a business and you're thinking about expanding and hiring people, maybe you've got to have them pay healthcare benefits and you're watching this, you know, you don't want to be some brave guy, Paul Revere, riding through the wilderness.
You hope they don't notice you.
And the way you go about not being noticed is to just not grow.
Don't report profits, anything of the sort.
This is unacceptable, folks, what has happened to our great country just a year and a half.
James Carville on CNN last night said, it looks as if President Obama applied a little old-school Chicago persuasion to the oil executives.
What that means is making them an offer they can't refuse.
Now, as Heritage says, that may be a great way to run the mob, but it is no way to run a country.