All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 17, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:49
February 17, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
It's the second anniversary of the Obama porcupist bill.
Ladies and gentlemen, stimulus.
Anniversary two.
You'll notice.
Obama and the regime are not out celebrating this two-year anniversary.
Why would that be?
I mean, I remember Obama pushing the stimulus bill.
He said that it would make or break his administration.
I'm paraphrasing here, but he said if it didn't work, he wouldn't get a second term.
And it has not worked.
It has failed.
Well, it has failed in its stated purpose.
Whether or not it is failed in Obama's mind is yet to be determined.
But it's safe to say that it hasn't worked as advertised.
We don't have a whole bunch of new jobs.
We don't have a whole bunch of shovel-ready projects shovel completed.
We don't have a new bunch of infrastructure done, no new schools and all that.
And the Gallup poll is out with their latest unemployment mid-February 10%.
Underemployment surge to 19.6% in mid-February.
That's up from 18.9% at the uh at the end of January of Gallup's unemployment is measured by uh Gallup without seasonable.
Sorry, sorry, seasonal adjustment hit 10% in mid-February.
And of course, 410,000 new jobless claims this week.
Shocking and befuddling everybody.
Hi, folks, and welcome back.
Uh Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A sheer delight to have you with us.
John King at CNN.
Ladies and gentlemen, has lost his civility.
Audio soundbite 13 first.
Back on January 18th of this year at CNN, John King, USA was apologizing for an earlier guest, the guest Andy Shaw, the executive director of the watchdog group Better Government Association, and some remarks that Andy Shaw made during his appearance on CNN.
John King saw fit to apologize.
We were just having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race just a moment ago.
My friend Andy Shaw, who now works for a good government group out there, used the term in the crosshairs in talking about the candidates out there.
We're trying, we're trying to get away from that language.
Andy is a good friend.
He's covered politics for a long time, but we're trying to get away from using that kind of language.
That was back on January 11th.
We're trying.
CNN really trying to get away from the use of language such as in the crosshairs.
Last night on CNN's John King USA at the end of his show.
Made a remark talking about Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver of Missouri.
We were going to bring you an interview with the chairman of the Black Caucus tonight about the president's budget.
We killed that because of time.
We'll bring you that tomorrow.
an interview.
Fully expect an apology later for this kind of language that's clearly uncivil.
I mean, if you're going to apologize for a guest who talks about something being in the crosshairs, and it seems to be John King will apologize for having to kill someone An interview.
Wouldn't it be consistent?
The Associated Press is outraged.
Wisconsin lawmakers are prepared to pass a momentous bill that would strip government workers of nearly all collective bargaining rights over the loud objections of thousands of teachers, students, and prison guards who packed the Capitol for two days of protests.
Students are unionized?
Is that no, clearly not.
So the students are protesting because their teachers have told them to.
The nation's most aggressive anti-union proposal has been speeding through the legislature since the Republican Governor Scott Walker introduced it a week ago.
After clearing a major legislative hurdle on Wednesday night, it was headed to votes in the Senate and Assembly.
Scott Walker said, I'm just trying to balance my budget.
I'm just trying to balance my budget here.
Now, AP has buried the info that this deal means they won't be laid off.
It's the second to the last paragraph in a long story.
They won't be laid off.
They won't be furloughed.
Just to remind you again, he is attempting to save their jobs.
Now, if what's going on in Wisconsin is a strike, it's an illegal strike.
So if Reagan wanted to be like, or Obama really wanted to be like Reagan, he would call for Walker to fire all these unionistas.
Just like Reagan did during the illegal air traffic controller strike when he fired all of the union members.
The union then was Padco.
Opponents of Governor Walker are calling him Mini Mubarick.
Earlier in this program, we showed you the pictures of some of the protest signs, and they are littering the grounds of the state capitol.
Anne Althouse is there.
She lives in Madison, a blogger.
She's chronicled pictures.
Well, she's chronicled the littering and the mess that this bunch is leaving around.
And comparing it to the pristine condition tea partiers left when they protested at the same place back in April of last year.
From KSTP.com, Obama says he's monitoring tensions in Madison.
President Obama says he's monitoring the tensions there.
That's where protesters are criticizing efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for state employees.
Republican Governor Scott Walker pushing the measure, which would also increase how much public workers pay for their pensions and health care.
Thousands are protesting at the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin.
So Obama's most desperate voters are in a tight spot here.
There isn't any money to pay their triple gold plated pensions and benefits.
They work for the state of Wisconsin, not the federal government.
Politicians have been trading tax dollars for votes.
It's finally caught up with them.
So you know damn well that O'Berry is monitoring tensions.
But he's not solving problems.
Obama's busy worrying about 2012 because all that matters to him is his most dependable voters, public sector union members, that they get serviced.
He feels their pain because their pain is his pain.
In New York.
So New York magazine.
Mayor Bloomberg to cut almost 5,000 teachers.
It represents an 8% cut.
It's better than Bloomberg's initial prediction of 21,000 layoffs.
Why is so many layoffs?
Well, the city needs to make up for a 2.1 billion dollar reduction in state aid.
Mayor Bloomberg will announce today, maybe he has already, that he plans to cut at least 4,700 teachers in order to balance the budget.
Total of 6,166 positions will be eliminated.
Those that are not eliminated by layoffs will be lost through attrition.
And from the Las Vegas Sun, in what must have been one of his most painful tasks in office, University of Nevada Las Vegas President Neil Smatresk.
Or Smetresk, I'm not sure how he pronounces it, warned faculty leaders Tuesday to prepare for a budget catastrophe.
News that left some of them in tears.
Smatresk at times sounded almost in mourning as he spoke to the faculty senate, saying he had instructed his provosts to start planning for more cuts in staff and departments and programs.
Faculty was angry and indignant.
Cecilia Maldonado, an education leadership professor, chairwoman of the faculty senate Said, I'm sick.
I'm sick we're destroying much of what we've built.
Well, Cecilia, the taxpayers in Nevada feel much, much worse.
Have you checked their unemployment numbers lately, Cecilia?
Have you checked to see how many people in Nevada are out of work?
They've been given a bill for all the reckless spending at the university.
This amounts to foreclosure, said Greg Brown, a history professor, president of the Nevada Faculty Alliance, which is a um professor group.
This amounts to foreclosure, he said.
Well, you know, there are millions of Americans who have suffered through real foreclosures.
Mr. Brown, they've lost their jobs.
They've lost their homes.
You're worried about cutbacks.
You're not going to get a whole lot of sympathy.
Fantasyland has come to a screeching halt.
You just got transferred to Literalville.
Same place I live.
And you people in Wisconsin, you better come to grips with the fact that you live in Littleville as well.
Michael Bowers, one of the provosts at UNLV, noted that UNLV, 54 years old.
He's worked there 27 years.
I never thought this day would come, but we have a plan.
The emotional display was unprecedented, Bowers said after the meeting, because we've never had a situation like this before.
Well, you've never run out of other people's money before.
This is just the beginning.
This is what happens when you run out of other people's money.
But if you notice the tone of this story, these are these are like war heroes.
People losing their jobs or maybe downsized.
But I don't want to come off as insensitive here, but being that I live in Littleville, just since when did state employees take on the status of war veterans?
Since when did their jobs and benefits take precedence over everything else?
Borders Books just went into chapter 11.
Look at the number of people looking for work at borders.
What are they getting undercut by?
Internet.
Store employees at borders are going to lose their jobs.
Others will get fewer hours.
A lot of stores are going to close.
I haven't seen the stories about all the employees there shedding tears.
How about how about we get a story of all of the taxpayers crying because they're watching their hard-earned money get thrown down rat holes by this administration?
No, my point is that the uh the sympathy is selective.
Somehow, somehow there's a there's a uh valor involved if you are a state employee and you have your salary cut back or you lose your job.
We're not getting any stories about how unemployed state workers and union workers are benefiting from their new status.
We're not getting the stories about how they're coming together and getting closer to their families and closer to nature and finding more productive uses of their time.
But when average ordinary Americans were laid off and losing their jobs, we got all kinds of stories about how good it was for them.
Now we get stories from New Jersey to Wisconsin to Nevada about the sorrow, the unfairness, and the insensitivity involved.
It's now state, federal workers facing the same thing private sector workers face every day.
It's just what happens when you run out of other people's money.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
Another picture from Wisconsin.
I don't know for those of you on the Ditto Cam.
Um this is a repeal walker sign in Wisconsin.
Those are crosshairs on the face and head of Governor Scott Walker, and they are um uh right there between his eyes.
That's as tight as I can get the focus on the ditto cam, folks.
Crosshairs.
Yeah, this uh this bunch protesting in Wisconsin obviously did not get the memo on civility.
Can you see the crosshairs in there?
They're there.
And just just I just wanted you to see this, folks.
I just wanted to tell you about it.
If you don't have a ditto cam and you can't see this, I wanted you to hear about it, because of course, those of us who had nothing to do with whatever happened in Arizona, Sarah Palin a campaign ad, crosshairs all over it.
We had a week of so-called debate in this country over whether she was responsible, I was responsible, talk radio responsible for what happened.
And now you've got the president of the Wisconsin Senate who has been forced out of his house.
You got crosshairs on photos of the governor in Wisconsin.
You got pictures comparing Scott Walker to Hosni Mubarak and Hitler, and I don't hear anybody from Obama on down worried about any of this and what this might lead to.
Nobody is talking about it at all.
Let's go back to the phones.
People uh, as always, patiently wait to be on this program.
This is Corey in Bryan, Ohio.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
Nice to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
All right.
I'm on a cell phone.
I'll pause as much as I can.
Thank you.
All right.
I am a police officer.
I am part of a union, a public sector union.
And I think what they're doing in Wisconsin is hurting us more than it is helping us.
We should be allowed to collective bargain.
If we need to make concessions, fine.
Let's make concessions.
But give us the right to lease unionize that sometimes is the only way we can keep our jobs after an election.
I think what the governor is proposing here is that contracts be renegotiated every year based on available funds.
That's fine.
I'm our contract where I work was up three years ago.
And we extended it every year at zero percent across the board, no raises, but yet our insurance would go up and everything else.
Here's the bottom line.
You know, I have to tell you something, I I have sympathy for a lot of rank and file union employees.
And I always have had.
My my beef with unions has always been the leadership and their reasons for collecting dues for members, their political activism, and so forth.
Uh but I've I've always uh had a bit of sympathy for unionized people.
Look at for my my whole life, um, I I can remember, I don't care what industry it is, union employees have been told that they've got to give things back.
The airline pilots, stewardesses, flight attendants, whatever.
I don't care where nurses, uh, it seems to be the plight of collective bargaining.
It it it just it it seems to be that that at whatever stage you can union employment, uh private sector union employment, the percentages continuous to drop.
Uh now in in the public sector, government, state, local, federal union workforces are expanding, of course, but they can print money to pay people.
But in the private sector, businesses can't print money to pay people, nor can states, nor can cities, nor can towns.
And you want you want the right to collective bargain.
Fine.
If that's what you want to do, that's that's fine.
I've over the course of this program uh I've I've had people ask me, what do you got against unions?
I am nothing.
I'm all for freedom of choice.
If you want to do a certain job and as a result you have to join a union, that's cool with me.
But understand what's going to happen when you do.
I can remember countless discussions on this program over the years about teachers.
People would call here routinely and talk about the inequities of compensation.
How come some baseball player who can't spell and doesn't even know what school he went to is making millions of dollars, and yet the people in charge of teaching our young people make so little in comparison.
And I have attempted to answer that question.
It's very easy to explain within the context of free market principles.
It's also uh easy to explain when you as an individual join a union, you are essentially saying goodbye to yourself as an individual.
You can work as hard as you want.
You can be better than the next person on the line, better than the next teacher.
It isn't going to matter.
You're all going to make the same amount of money.
The difference is maybe you can become a foreman, maybe you can become somebody who gets uh more overtime in somebody else, but the basic wage is going to remain what it is for whatever that contract says, no matter how well you do your job, or matter how poorly.
Now, according to the Associated Press, Corey, Governor Walker wants to remove all collective bargaining rights except for salary for roughly 175,000 public employees starting July 1st.
So the unions in Wisconsin can still bargain for their salaries, even if Walker gets everything he wants.
He's not trying to take the salary negotiation off the table.
This is about pensions and benefits and the fact that there isn't any money.
I don't know what to tell people.
There isn't any money in your own home when there isn't any money.
What do you do?
You go on strike against your own family?
Well, what do you do?
Well, you go out, you maybe you get a second job, or you cut back on expenses, or you change jobs and try to get a raise or what have you.
And by the way, cops and firefighters unions are excluded from Walker's plan because he knows if they'd been included, nobody would care about the teachers.
If he would include firefighters and cops, then everybody, oh, you want to take cops off.
Oh no, it'll make us unsafe, and the fires are going to burn down our houses.
But this is what happens when you run out of money.
And when what you do individually does not matter a whit to what you earn.
That's what happens when you join a union.
Hey, look at this, folks.
The news just keeps rolling in from Madison, Wisconsin.
Uh two stories here.
Senate Democrats were leaving Madison today to avoid participating in the vote on Governor Walker's controversial budget repair bill, which has sparked four days of protests in the Capitol.
This, according to an aide, the aide spoke on a condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of her boss, legislative assistants answering the phones at various offices, say they knew nothing about the walk out.
I don't know where these guys are.
Another story from the uh AP.
Police officers are looking for Democrat Wisconsin lawmakers who were ordered to attend a vote on a bill that would strip public employees of collective bargaining rights.
No Democrats showed up for Thursday's Senate session, meaning a vote can't be taken.
Republicans need one Democrat senator to be present.
Calls to Democrat leaders were not immediately returned.
Not a single Wisconsin Democrat senator has shown up for the budget vote.
The cops are out looking for him.
It's kind of a government shutdown.
The Democrats are trying to shut down the Wisconsin state government.
Now, this isn't a mob.
They're not intimidating anybody, we've been told.
How about this?
Democrats running out of town.
Don't have the guts to show up and vote.
Don't give me this is it's a brilliant move.
They're putting off the inevitable here.
Go ahead, Democrats, go ahead and stay away.
Go ahead, run away from all this.
Show everybody who you are.
Show everybody how you line up against the will of your voters.
You go ahead and show everybody.
These public sector unions, folks, let's just describe them accurately.
They are monopolies.
They are different than private sector unions.
And these public sector unions, like we see in New Jersey, like we see here in Wisconsin, are organizing against the taxpayers, the people who pay them.
Pensions, health care, unfunded liabilities, these are unsustainable.
This this is this is really not about whether people get to join public sector unions.
It's whether the taxpayers want them.
Taxpayers are not some company.
We're the taxpayers of a community.
There isn't any competition with a local public school teacher union.
This is not like unionizing companies that make toasters or coffee machines or what have you.
When you go out and you buy a toaster, you look at the cost and you decide what to pay.
The toaster maker has to price his toaster against the competition if he won't stay in business.
If he can't, he won't stay in business.
So he also is incentivized to be a watchful of personnel costs.
In the public school arena, it's a monopoly.
There is minimal competition, so the politicians on the school boards and town councils cut deals with union bosses, and the taxpayers are left paying their real estate taxes, property taxes for the most part, and if they don't or can't pay, they lose their home.
What happens to these other this is what's happening.
Average ordinary Americans who are paying the salaries and the health benefits and the pensions are losing their jobs and losing their homes.
There isn't any money anymore.
And so these public sector unions, monopolies, are organizing and protesting against the taxpayers.
And what happens?
The Democrats in the Senate of Wisconsin flee.
They leave town.
And now the police are trying to find out.
I'll tell you what the unions are really upset about is that Walker's bill, the governor's bill, includes a section that would allow public workers to opt out of joining unions.
It's the opposite of card check.
His bill, and that's why the Democrats don't want to vote on it, among other things, includes a section that would allow public workers to opt out of joining unions.
That's why Obama's monitoring this.
Make no mistake, folks.
This is it.
We have a microcosm of exactly where this whole country is headed.
Now, under under Walker's plan, once again, unions would no longer be able to negotiate the length of their shifts, their vacations, their sick days, discipline processes, among other things.
They would be able to negotiate salaries.
Now let me ask you, those of you who are not members of a union, are you allowed to negotiate the length of your shift?
Are you allowed to negotiate when you start and when you finish each?
Are you allowed to negotiate your vacation schedule and time and length?
Are you allowed to negotiate your sick days?
Are you allowed to participate in whatever the disciplinary process at your company is?
No, you go to work someplace at the ABC widget company to tell you, okay, here's when you're going to work, this is what the vacation schedule is, how many weeks you get based on service, here's how many sick days you get, and the discipline process, if we have one, this is what you don't have a say, but you accept the terms as they are when you go to work in the private sector.
These people want all that negotiated as part of the deal.
I'll never forget something.
H.R. will back me up on this.
Because my associates on this program were genuinely afraid for my safety in the early 90s.
In Chicago, the bricklayers.
Remember this, snurtly?
The bricklayers union was making noise about going on strike, and I made the observation that what they're going to do is demand more pay for laying less bricks in a given work day.
That they always do.
That they're going to demand more pay for less work, more vacation time, and all hell broke loose.
Intimidating phone calls, demands that uh union officials be allowed to appear on the program, people demanding them.
How do you know this?
You can't just spout this off.
Well, my dad was a lawyer, had experience with the bricklayers in our little town and some Teamsters unions, and this is what they asked for, then it already happened.
I had seen it happen.
They knew this is what was happening with the bricklayers in Chicago.
They eventually backed off.
Yeah, we sent them documentation of historical trends.
We didn't make it up.
My only point is the private sector does not have the the people in the private sector unless you know you happen to uh uh I mean there are exceptions to this.
There are certain people who have arisen to such heights in companies that they are quote unquote special, irreplaceable or what have you.
But I guarantee that'll never happen to anybody in a union.
Everybody's the same.
Everybody ends up the same, no matter how well or how poorly they do.
And I look, that's fine.
Don't I don't want to be misunderstood here.
If somebody wants to join a union, you go right ahead.
This United States of America.
I just want everybody to understand what they're doing when they make a choice.
That's simple.
Who's next on the phones?
This is uh Dean, a trucker in Cleveland.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Uh hey, I was uh wondering about the uh outrage from the media uh concerning uh the Obama administration's uh wanting the new house to fail.
I just kind of wondering about that.
Seems as spilled over to Wisconsin also.
Well, that's a I'll listen to your response off off the phone.
Thank you, Dean.
Dean driving around in Cleveland in a truck.
We don't know whether he's going into Cleveland or coming out of Cleveland, but he's up there.
And he's got a pretty good observation.
Everybody's hoping the governor of Wisconsin fails.
In fact, folks, uh the picture I just showed you, the picture I just showed you with the crosshairs.
What I what the picture doesn't show, but what it does say is uh don't retreat, reload with crosshairs on the governor's face.
Don't retreat, reload.
Now these are our good friends from the left, these loving, compassionate, tolerant people who dictate civility to us.
Don't retreat reload is the sign.
That's what it says in the sign with pictures of the governor in the crosshairs.
I wonder if CNN will run that picture.
I wonder if we sent that picture to John King, USA if they would run that picture.
And be condemnatory.
Well, even if they did apologize for it, would they condemn this kind of action on the protest march in Wisconsin?
Would they would they say this is this is uh this is not the civility that the president asked for?
Would they do this?
A little J.J. Jackson here in the bumper rotation.
and But it's all right.
Arlington, Virginia, Sean, hi, sir.
Great to have you on the uh EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
Um, I just wanted to call because I don't know a single rich teacher or a single person that's gotten rich by being a teacher, or a paper pusher at any state government agency.
Ironically, I do know plenty of people that have gotten very wealthy being cops who who aren't under assault by this governor.
But I wanted to make one other point too, because I went to a lot of Tea Party rallies, and I heard a lot of people talking about they wanted their country back, and I started thinking about what that meant.
And what I thought it meant was maybe going back to a time like the 50s or 60s, when one man could go out and provide a living for his family and put a car in the driveway and pay for his house and provide his family with health insurance and send his kids off to college.
And in the 50s and 60s, more people were unionized than ever before.
Since then, unions have shrunken in size, they've lost a lot of their power, and now both parents have to work.
No one's teaching the kids any kind of morality at home.
Nobody can afford insurance for their families anymore.
I I mean, it's it's crazy how bad the status of the worker has gotten in this country since the 50s and 60s.
Maximum percentage of the American workforce that was ever unionized, and this is back in the forties was thirty-five percent.
It's never been never been above that.
It's been uh even during the 50s and sixties, it was it was nowhere near that.
Uh are you trying to do that?
Are you trying to say that union membership is what led to the kind of prosperity you're talking about you just described in the 50s?
Well, I can't.
Because if it were the unions would be the most powerful organizations in this country today, everybody would want to be a member of one.
Just isn't true.
You know, I I I don't want to spend time, you know, with the Tea Parties getting their country back.
It's very simple.
It's it's reduced the size and scope of government.
It's in government out of people's lives.
It's lower taxes, it's get rid of regulations, it's it's to get the government uh uh stop being an obstacle to freedom and prosperity and success.
But I know what you're really getting at.
Your real question is, what have I got against unions?
What do I have against?
What am I?
You think you just said it.
Unions, those people don't make any money except the cops who this guy is not targeting in Wisconsin.
Let me put this in a political context for you.
I oppose liberalism wherever it is.
I oppose liberalism because liberalism is what has destroyed prosperity in this country.
The rise of liberalism, the rise of public school education or indoctrination, taught by liberal Marxist teachers is responsible for your precious lack of morality, plummeting morality, plummeting education scores, plummeting knowledge.
Your precious liberalism is responsible for it, and wherever it is, I want it defeated.
Even if it is housed and headquartered in a union.
There's nothing to me sacred about a union just because it is a union, just because it may be the location of quote unquote the workers, which is a Marxist term I also object to when being applied to people who go to work in this country.
We have entrepreneurs, we have employees, we have associates.
Workers exist in China, in the old Soviet Union, in Korea, and in Cuba.
I think liberalism needs to be eradicated.
And just because unions are whatever people think they are doesn't mean the liberalism of a union is hands-off or untouchable to me.
If I'm going to try to wipe out the Democrat Party in a political sense, if I think they ought to be relegated to minority status, then it only makes sense that their primary supporters also become minorities in terms of power and status, and that would be unions.
Does that help you understand?
I give you details here.
We come back in the next hour, but here's a couple headlines from the Politico.
Democrat National Committee playing a role in Wisconsin protests.
Organizing for America.
That is the Obama website.com.
Fight for our state workers.
So Obama is whipping up the protesters in Wisconsin.
Now, our last caller has one point.
Public sector unions do earn twice as much as non union workers.
Public sector work.
That's what's wrong.
The people paying these people make half of what the people they are paying earn.
Not sustainable.
▲
Export Selection