The views expressed by the host on this program, now documented to be almost always right, 99.6% of the time.
I'm Rushlim Boss, serving humanity.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email route, El Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
I know, I know the last caller was a seminar caller.
This is, you know, practically every leftist caller we get here is a seminar caller.
They go somewhere and they're given talking points or some supposed line of logic to use that has supposedly been tested out.
They're guaranteed to trip up El Rushbo.
It's not possible.
It's like trying to sink a battleship with B-Beast, but these people persist in trying to equate what's happening in Wisconsin with a tax increase.
I mean, even if it were, what's wrong with it?
These people all support tax increases.
Anyway, this guy, our first caller, Mark from Albany, reminded me of an old joke.
A guy asks his friend about his recent sex change operation.
Didn't it hurt?
Didn't it really hurt?
Yeah, a little bit, but what hurt the most was when they stuck the straw up my nose and sucked out a third of my brain.
Well, if you're going to have a sex change operation, they got to change your brain too.
You know, this is the thing.
These people are just, they're predictable, and it's almost, ladies and gentlemen, is what I mean is it's like I'm talking to people who've had some of their brain sucked out.
It's vacant.
Somebody tells them, here's how you do it.
This is what's going to trip them up.
And then they call every talk show they can find, thinking they've got the excellent trip-up technique.
And I wonder if people like that, this guy supposedly wants to compare what's happening to teachers in Wisconsin with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I wonder if people like that are aware of some of the salaries that these union people, not just the rank and file, but the thug leaders are pulling down.
Now, the president of the AFSCME, which is the largest union in Wisconsin, Gerald McIntyre, makes $480,000 a year plus expenses.
That's the union thug leader.
Okay, the union leader.
That's the American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees.
These are the little guys.
You want to start talking about the Trumpas and the Bolsheviks?
You know, in that crowd, you're talking a lot more than that.
So there are doctors in Madison now handing out phony sick notes to the protesting teachers.
What's going to happen to these Democrat senators when they get back?
Whenever they get back, however they're brought back, they'll have fake notes from doctors too.
Hey, my absence has been excused.
Even the head of the teachers union in Wisconsin has asked them, or at least called on them, to go back to work.
Now, if that's happened, you heard about that, didn't you, Snerdley?
What do you think that means?
That means that's exactly right.
That means they got some polling data that just must be telling them how regular people have turned against them on this.
If the union leader is telling you, you better get back to work.
So we're asking ourselves, will the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt?
And in America, we're asking, will the Education Brotherhood take over Wisconsin?
Check the news, folks, because they're sure trying.
The Education Brotherhood, which is a branch of the government unions Brotherhood, has already shut down public schools for how many days is it now?
Three days?
Three or four?
No end in sight.
And yet all they really care about is the children.
That's all they care about.
Children.
They shut down the schools.
They are robbing inner city kids of precious school days that would help make America more competitive.
They're robbing these young skulls full of mush of their opportunity to be exposed to even more leftist propaganda.
And look what they are doing to working mothers who can't afford to pay for somebody to watch their kids.
Have you ever thought about this?
In many cases, school exists to get the kids out of the house and feed them.
Folks, this is what left liberalism has done.
The purpose of school is to get the kids out of the house before Fabio shows up and to feed them.
Don't give me the school breakfast, school lunch, school snacks, school dinner, even in the summer when there is supposedly no schooling going on.
So what about these moms and dads?
What about them?
Working mothers, what are they supposed to do now?
Go to work, leave the house to the kids, kids out of the house doing who knows what?
So now you've got working mothers because of these teachers having to choose between food and safety, going to work to provide food for their children or stay at home to provide supervision.
You know, it's hard to tell how much the Muslim Brotherhood frightens liberals, but we know that the Education Brotherhood has scared the heck out of liberal Wisconsin state senators.
We know that for sure.
We know that the Education Brotherhood has got these state senators cowed.
They ran.
They fled for the border.
Just like Texas Democrats fled the scene twice, losing both times.
And in this chaos, and that's what we have here, state-controlled media faces a great challenge.
They have to report how the they have to report how the left shut down the school system.
They have to report how the left shut down government.
I mean, it's the senators who fled.
It's the teachers who walked out of school.
They have to report that.
Except they're not reporting that they shut down the government.
They are reporting they've shut down the school system, but they are not blaming the left for shutting down the government.
They are blaming the Republicans.
They're blaming the governor for doing this.
And they're saying, see, that's just what Republicans do.
They're setting up state-controlled media using this in Wisconsin to set up the coming federal government shutdown in early March.
That is what's happening.
Interesting story.
We went back over the weekend, did a lot of research.
We found something interesting from the Washington Times.
September 22nd, 2004, Nearly one-third of public school teachers in Madison, Wisconsin have their own kids in private school.
And that's 2004.
I think the number probably even higher now that it's seven years later.
More than a third of percent, or more than more than 25% of public school teachers in Washington and Baltimore send their children to private schools.
Nationwide, public school teachers are almost twice as likely as other parents to choose private schools.
In Wisconsin, it is almost a third.
You do.
You have to make some money to send your kids to private school.
Don't even send their kids to the schools they go to to work and teach.
And then Terry Jeffrey, Cybercast News Service.
Yesterday, federal government gave $669.6 million to the public schools in Wisconsin in fiscal 2008, according to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.
That is more than 20 times as much as the $30 million that the Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is trying to save this fiscal year by asking state employees, including teachers, to pay for a fraction of the cost of their own pension packages and health insurance premium.
May I give you the numbers again, ladies and gentlemen?
In fiscal 2008, the federal government gave, let's just round it up here, $670 million to the public schools in Wisconsin.
That is more than 20 times as much as the $30 million Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is trying to save.
That's right.
We're talking $30 million.
That's what his savings end up to versus $670 million the federal government gave the schools district in 2008.
Because of this federal subsidy, now this is important to look at this way.
Because of this federal subsidy of nearly $670 million, taxpayers in the other 49 states make a handsome contribution to the salary and benefits packages of Wisconsin school teachers.
Well, if the federal government is going to give $670 million to the public schools of Wisconsin, where do they get the money?
Get it from us, some taxes.
This is taxpayer money.
So, pure logic.
The taxes, tax revenue of people from the 49 other states is paying salaries and benefits of Wisconsin teachers.
Fiscal 2008 is the last year for which the NCES, the National Center for Education Statistics, has published state-by-state dollar amount federal subsidies for public schruels.
Wisconsin faces a $137 million shortfall for the state's current fiscal year, which ends on June 30th, and a $3.6 billion shortfall for the next two fiscal years.
Now, to help close the gap, it's what this is all about, Governor Walker, a Republican, has proposed legislation that would make state employees, including teachers, pay 5.8% of their salary in contributions to their pension plan and 12.6% of what the state pays for their insurance premiums.
And I heard some of the biggest caterwauling over the weekend.
These people are strapped.
I mean, they've been asked to give backs here.
They're going through the recession.
They're barely hanging on and they don't have any more to give.
And this is some typical leftist defending these teachers, and they don't have any more to give.
Well, okay, yeah, how do you afford private school?
But they don't have any more to give.
Who is it that's giving?
It's the people in Wisconsin who are out of work.
They're people who've lost their jobs, and we still have these people are cash-strapped.
They can't hang on like they can't.
They don't have any more to give.
They're not giving a damn thing.
They're taking.
So now they're being asked to pay for 5.8% of their health care.
But my gosh, how terrible?
What's going wrong with this country?
Somebody actually thinks that some individual ought to pay 5.8% of their salary for their own pension plan.
Somebody else is going to pay the other 94%.
Let's look at this another way.
Instead of saying these teachers should pay 5.8% of their salary and contributions, the way to look at this is, is the teachers think that somebody else ought to pay 94% of their pensions.
If the teachers are going to object to paying 5% of it, 5% of it, then they must think it's perfectly fine for everybody else to pay 94% or even all of people who are unemployed are paying taxes on their unemployment benefits to pay these outrageous public sector salaries and benefits.
And I only say they're outrageous because it's a gift.
And now they're being asked to pay 5% of it of pensions and they're being asked to pay 12% of what the state pays for their insurance premiums.
And that somehow is criminal.
It just doesn't wash.
Pay 12%.
Let me put it, folks.
Let me tell you something.
I would love, if somebody came to me, you know what, Mr. Mimbo, from now on, you're only going to have to pay 5% of whatever amount of money you're going to retire on.
Everybody else is going to pick up the rest of the tab.
And what your health care costs, we know you don't have an insurance plan, Mr. Levi.
You pay your health care costs when it comes to work.
You're only going to be required to pay 12%.
Next time you have to go to hospital or anything, you only have to pay 12%.
Your audience is going to make up the remaining 88%.
Oh, man, I'd love that.
Wouldn't you if somebody came along and said, you only got to pay 5% of your retirement plan.
Everybody else, people are going to band together pay 95% of it for you.
Would you dare go on strike?
Just a different perspective, a different way of looking at it.
Get some more calls squeezed in here when we get back.
Wait till you hear what it was.
You'll remember when I remind you.
Wait till you hear what it was that brought those runaway Texas legislators back home.
Wait till you remember what it was.
No, it wasn't sex, but it was if they had sex, who was going to pay for it?
And or if they ate, who was going to pay for it.
And also, you know, It's interesting here, Wisconsin state Senate rules require 20 lawmakers to be present for spending bills, but a simple majority for other measures.
So if, for example, the Senate in Wisconsin wants to go ahead and pass a bill restructuring the way union contracts are negotiated, they can do it.
It's not spending.
Well, these guys are out of town.
They can do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stick with me.
Details on both of those are coming up, but I promise phone calls.
Let me go to Pittsburgh quickly.
Joyce, hi.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Mega Paul Malo-Dittos from Pittsburgh.
Thank you very much.
It's an honor to talk with you, sir.
Great to have you here.
Well, my question, sir, is I'm a small business owner, and previous to that, I had been a banker by tradition here in Pittsburgh.
And if I had any employees that did not show up at their jobs, it was considered to be job abandonment, and they were immediately terminated without unemployment.
So why would Governor Scott Walker not do this for both the teachers and the legislatures?
Well, I don't know if he's got the authority to fire the teachers.
Reagan had the authority to fire the air traffic controller workers because they were forbidden from striking.
I don't know that there's a similar law in Wisconsin forbidding the teachers from taking this action.
He could fire them.
I mean, not showing up for work, and then now that we've got doctors giving falsified excuses.
Now you were talking about just cause and so forth.
I'm sure that these are things that they're thinking about.
Well, the other thing that bothers me, Rush, about all of this is just simply this is just this whole social justice wealth redistribution.
I mean, the individuals paying the taxes, which are paying for these public workers, are the ones that currently now are paying for a lot of this health care themselves as well as their N-401ks and their own retirement plans, as I pay for my own insurance, being self-employed.
So they're asking they want everything for free, yet at the hands of the people that are making less money than they, and also paying people responsible for their own contributions.
I just don't understand where their minds and their – I have to give you a chance.
It's because they love re.
You said it yourself, it's because they love redistribution.
The redistribution of wealth is fun because it doesn't require anything to be made.
It doesn't require anything to be produced.
It requires no hard work.
It requires no production.
Just requires power and the ability to spend money that isn't yours, that you haven't had to earn.
And it's easy.
I guess these doctors that are writing these fake excuses, folks, I mean, we're talking doctor fraud here.
Some of these people may not even be doctors.
Do you understand?
I wouldn't put it past the left to have a bunch of people in there posing as doctors to write these excuses.
We know that they're now creating fake identities on all these social media websites.
Here's the answer to the first two questions I posed.
Texas Democrats, what was it that got them home?
In 2003, Texas Democrats fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma in a rented bus.
Governor Rick Perry sent the Texas Rangers after him.
And the Democrat governor of Oklahoma would not allow the Texas Rangers to cross into his state.
So Governor Perry informed those Democrats that they would not be allowed to use their state credit cards to pay for their trip, nor would they be reimbursed for their expenses in Oklahoma, including the bus that took them there.
Now, once the runaway Democrats in Texas realized that they had to pay their own way, that was the beginning of their caving in and coming back home.
So I'm wondering if Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has thought of pulling the plug on the credit cards of the runaway Democrats, because make no mistake, I'm sure they have them.
I mean, if we're going to have welfare debit cards, you know damn well that members of the state legislature have a state credit card as well.
That's right.
If they're not doctors, if these state doctors, if they're not doctors and they're passing out phony excuses, that's even worse.
Now, here we go.
State Senate rules in Wisconsin require that 20 lawmakers be present for spending bills.
However, a simple majority for other measures is all that's needed.
That means the 19 Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate can pass things on their own while the Democrats are in hiding.
Now, to me, as one who advocates being on offense, this sounds like a golden opportunity for the Republicans in Wisconsin to go on a tear and pass everything that they have ever wanted.
Pelosi would do this.
Reed would do it.
But of course, the Republicans are going to act like responsible adults, and I want to irritate the media.
And I'm going to want to irritate people and get caught up in all this civility stuff.
Well, maybe not, though.
Maybe not, ladies and gentlemen, Senate Majority Leader, his name in Wisconsin, Scott Fitzgerald, and he says that his chamber of the Wisconsin legislature is going to convene to pass non-spending bills and act on appointments tomorrow, even if the Democrats remain out of state.
One of those bills could be the union aspect of the budget bill.
Could it be taken up in a separate vote tomorrow?
Democrat State Senator John Erpenbach told the AP today that Republicans could attempt to attach the part of the proposal taking away collective bargaining rights to an unrelated bill and pass it on Tuesday.
I told him, listen, Senator Miller, we're marching forward with our business.
I'm setting the calendar for tomorrow at 10 a.m.
I would expect that the Democrats will be here, but we will be taking up a resolution.
We're going to be passing a piece of legislation, and we'll also be confirming one of the governor's nominees to their cabinet position.
This was Republican State Senate President Scott Fitzgerald.
One of those senators, 14 Democrat senators have left Wisconsin to make sure a vote on the budget can't happen without the required 20 members required for a quorum.
One of those senators said the issue needs to be resolved before they return to Madison.
Well, it'll be resolved when it's voted on.
Here's the bottom line.
If the Senate Republicans in Wisconsin want to, they can go ahead and pass part of what Governor Walker wants, in addition to the 5.8% he wants the teachers to spend on their pensions and the 12.8% on their health care.
The other fact, he wants them to, well, he's advocating for the elimination of collective bargaining rights in exchange for doing the contract every year or something like that.
Well, that's not a budget item.
The Republicans could pass that tomorrow.
The Republicans could simply take it up tomorrow and pass it while the Democrats are in Illinois having run away, having fled this scene.
Now, were it me, I would just start, I'd start passing everything.
What was the election for?
Hey, look, we're here working.
The Democrats can't stop us anyway.
Even if they were here, they don't have the votes.
There are things that we ran on, agenda items.
Those guys leave town, fine.
We're going to continue to work.
Look at the golden opportunity they've got here.
Don't think the Democrats don't know it.
This is an AP story that I have shared with you here.
And one of the reasons for the AP story, I'm sure, is that there is concern on the left that this may be exactly what Governor Walker is going to do.
That and a number of other pieces of legislation.
Doug in Adams, Wisconsin.
I'm glad you called.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
I just wanted to talk about what's happening locally amongst the libs here.
They're trying to get this refrain to resonate that Governor Walker is not showing leadership.
But there's two reasons why this isn't going to make it.
One is obvious.
This was a campaign promise to get the budget balance and not to raise taxes.
The other one is he's not acting like Obama and blaming his predecessor, Governor Doyle.
What he did was misuse the highway construction funds, which come out of tax monies, and also the medical malpractice funds.
And he pushed that into the regular budget to help his government union buddies, his major supporters.
And Governor Walker's not saying that his predecessor is to blame.
And I really like that to him.
You know, what's not resonating is the business about these poor teachers, because the Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance has put out a lot of numbers showing just how really well off the benefits are for Wisconsin teachers.
Well, I'm sure they've bragged about it.
Oh, I'm sure that this is one of the selling points.
Look at how good we do for our teachers.
I'm sure they bragged about how great the teachers of Wisconsin have for it.
I have it.
And there isn't a whole lot of public sentiment.
The reason why the union head, the teachers' union leader of Wisconsin, suggested they go back to work is precisely because they've done some polling data.
They know exactly how the public feels about this.
And they are not supporting the teachers.
And they don't like the fact that their kids are not in school.
But you said something.
I need to ask you something out there, Doug.
Is one of the mantras locally in Wisconsin in the media and among the Democrats that this governor is not showing leadership?
Are they actually saying that?
They say it.
I've seen it in emails.
I've seen it in the newspapers.
I hear.
What in the world, friends?
What in the world do they mean?
They don't.
They don't specify because they cannot.
It's the opposite.
So, again, so they're just trying to create an image here of a guy not leading.
It is the exact opposite.
This is leadership on parade here.
They say he's uncivil.
He won't talk to these people.
Well, never mind that they're not even in the state.
What if I send them heritage.org stuff and I send them Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance stuff?
They ignore it.
Well, of course.
This whole point of talking.
This is, you know, I think, you know, that's a straw dog, too.
He's not talking to them.
In fact, we heard that last week.
You know, if he would have just talked to it, it wasn't Democrat Senator if he just talked to us about it.
There wasn't a thing to talk about.
They knew this was coming.
What do you mean, talk about it?
Okay, some stats, and then one additional item before we go to our next obscene profit timeout.
Wisconsin spent.
We ring the numbers here.
$10,791 per pupil per student in its public, elementary, and secondary screws in fiscal year 2008.
That again, the last year for which numbers are available from the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.
Now, that $10,791 per pupil that Wisconsin spent was more than was spent on public schooling by any other Midwest state, including Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa.
This means, in effect, Wisconsin spending more on teachers and administrators than any other state in the Midwest.
So nobody's getting short change.
The average salary for a state employee in Wisconsin was $53,700 a year, 4.3% higher than the U.S. average for state employees.
But that's some years ago because now that number is up to $65,000.
That's the national average in a lot of cases.
Now, Scott Walker sat down with our buddies at the Heritage Foundation.
This is from the Morning Bell.
This is the Heritage Foundation daily blog.
Teachers' unions and representatives of every liberal interest group in the country may have taken over the streets of Madison.
But inside the Wisconsin governor's mansion, its chief tenant remains calm and resolute.
The Badger State's budget will be balanced, Walker said.
He said the stakes in Wisconsin are high, not just here, but across America.
I've said all along the protesters have every right to be there, but I'm not going to let tens of thousands overload or overshadow the millions of people in Wisconsin, the taxpayers of the state, who want us to do the right thing and balance the budget.
This is an interview with the Heritage Foundation.
And he said a number of, in fact, we've got some audio sound bites with, I think it was on Fox News Sunday yesterday as well.
That's excerpts of that coming up.
But Governor Walker, the Heritage Foundation people say, is aware of just what Wisconsin stands to gain or lose with the ultimate outcome of this debate.
And that's precisely why he insists the outcome be a balanced budget.
So he's prepared to endure personal insults, the comparisons to Hosni Mubarak or Adolf Hitler.
He'll face days of chanting outside his window and threats to his safety.
But they run around and say Hitler-like, which they're not supposed to be doing, as you know, because Barack Obama sent a memo out.
We're not supposed to do that anymore.
We have a new era of civility.
In fact, we have a new institute of civility that's starting at the University of Arizona.
Bill Clinton's one of the co-chairmen.
You didn't hear this?
No, Sterling was screening calls the first segment of the program.
The University of Arizona has instituted a brand new, they've started an institute for civility, National Institute for Civil Discourse, opening today at the University of Arizona.
Former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush 41 are serving as the honorary chairman.
The same Bill Clinton, who had a war room in his White House to deal with political opponents, spent years smearing Ken Starr, and had an entire operation of bimbo operation to deal with women who came forward and told the truth.
Bill Clinton is co-chairman of the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona.
Sterling, here's how it's described.
The National Institute for Civil Discourse, a nonpartisan center for, get this, a nonpartisan debate, center for debate of civility, research, education, and policy about civility in public discourse.
So they're going to debate civility in public discourse at the National Institute for Civil Discourse with Bill Clinton as a co-chairman.
Hey, that's right.
I said what James Carvo said.
You remember that?
Well, I had Paula Jones out there.
You know what she's doing?
She's trying to say all kinds of horrible stuff about me.
And so James just said, well, you wave a $100 bill through a trailer park.
You never know what you're going to find.
I know.
This is the left National Institute for Civil Discourse.
And we will be right back after this.
Don't go away.
As often as we play soundbites on this program containing excerpts from speeches made by elected officials, we don't spend a lot of time talking about what goes into making a great speech.
There's so much to cover here in the fastest three hours of media.
I mean, I've given enough speeches to know just how much effort and how much focus has to go into a speech to meet and exceed the expectations of an audience.
Everybody has their own ways of doing a speech, and mine is to not prepare for it, which is nerve-wracking.
I cannot begin to tell you how nerve-wracking it is.
The minute I start preparing for a speech, my brain freezes.
It's just a quirk.
I don't know, but the minute I start thinking about it, fewer ideas pop into my head.
So you hear about people getting butterflies, making a public appearance.
I get butterflies, but not because I'm doing it in public.
I worry my brain is going to shut down.
Because if it doesn't, my brain doesn't light up.
Well, Sterling says it's never happened to me.
It has.
You just don't know it.
Yeah, I've had to fake it through there during a couple of 10 or 15 minute passages of a speech, wandering aimlessly.
You may not know it, but it's happened a couple of times.
That's why, if it had never happened, I wouldn't fear it.
Anyway, there's all different kinds of ways of doing this.
A lot of people sit there.
They write it word for word.
They think about it.
They just lot of prep time.
And it's one of those things people don't take for granted.
When you hear particularly smart thoughts from somebody, I mean, some people really like to speak in front of audiences assembled and make really convincing arguments.
Every speech these days is captured on video or audio, or the words are transcribed for others to read.
Great speeches get replayed or reprinted time after time, like the Gettysburg Address of Lincoln, for example.
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The scholars at Hillsdale, led by their brilliant president, Dr. Larry Arne, it's with two N's, determine which speeches given recently have the greatest impact.
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Has two N's in his name because one N is not enough to capture the brilliance in his brain.
Now, who's next?
Where are we going?
Chuck?
No, it's rushforhillsdale.com.
Just go there, sign up, El Fribo.
No strings attached.
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Chuck in Columbus, Ohio.
Hi, sir.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, thanks.
I'm a non-union state employee here in Iowa.
And since you know liberals like every square inch of your glorious naked body, I was hoping you could help me to understand why liberals think it's okay for public employees to even have unions in the first place.
Do you really want an answer to that?
Yeah, I can't figure it out.
I mean, what if the Army had a union and the soldiers just went on strike anytime there's war?
Well, if you think about it, you've just answered your own question.
True, true.
The reason that the reason they want to, and I'm going to get plastered for this.
The truth is the greatest enemy to many people.
I'll back this up with an anecdotal story about who are hired to be teachers in some places.
But bottom line is the reason that they want to unionize public employees is.
Can I say this?
That's how you get around having to hire good people.
And it's how you get around not having to get rid of failing or underperforming people.
Because it's not about hiring the best.
It's about strength in numbers and loyalty to the Democratic Party.
It's pure and simple.
That follow me.
Unionizing teachers.
Unionizing state employees is not about better teachers.
It's not about better employees.
It's about more power for the Democrat Party.
It's about institutionalized Democrat Party membership as state and federal workers and employees.
How can you get more loyalty to the government than to make them union members?