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Feb. 23, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:51
February 23, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Hey, I got a question here, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm really starting to wonder, and I will explain this as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears.
I'm really starting to wonder here if um Obama's ideological hero was Karl Marx or Groucho Marx.
Well, uh there are times I don't know whether to take this guy seriously.
So which is it?
Where does he get his inspiration?
Karl Marx or Groucho Marx.
As I say, I will explain this as the program unfolds.
Happy to have you along.
Another full three hours of broadcast excellence here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
So they're gonna pink slip all the teachers in Providence, Rhode Island.
This is a place that spent one and a half uh what billion million on wind power.
Uh we'll get into that at some point.
Uh the the the Indiana teachers uh Democrats are fleeing, the governor there not all that upset about it, that'd be Mitch Daniels.
Uh Republican governor, not all that upset about it uh that they're fleeing the state.
Ohio is next, uh Madison, Wisconsin is still undercover.
The media, by the way, the Wisconsin drive-bys know where the Wisconsin Democrats are.
And now we do too.
We know where they are, but they were covering it up.
They were right in a room with them.
They were conducting press conferences, the Democrat senators from Wisconsin were, and the media tagline was it from undisclosed locations, nothing undisclosed about it, from unreported location.
Because these clowns knew where they were.
So the journalists, the drive-by's in Wisconsin, have clearly chosen sides, which is no big um surprise to anybody.
Where are the polls?
Uh, ladies and gentlemen from the AP from CBS ABC Gallup, where are the polls about what's going on in Wisconsin?
Isn't the media interested in who the public is supporting there?
Or are they not able to get the results they want, even with all their oversampling and other skewing tactics?
I mean, seriously, folks, if there were overwhelming support for the fleeing Democrat senators among Wisconsin residents, don't you think that we would be seeing this?
But we're not seeing those polls.
You can bet, you can bet that Obama wouldn't have pulled back on his public support for these protesters in Wisconsin if the polls were not awfully bad for the unions.
And Obama has pulled back.
I got to thinking, but what if if the Republicans in Washington had only fled the country when the Democrats were ramming their health care bill through Congress?
Seems like a brilliant tactic.
Now, Democrats would have never had a quorum, and we wouldn't be saddled with unconstitutional Obamacare.
I myself, had I known that this was a possibility.
I myself might have uh might have even paid their airfare to Barbados or a foreign destination of their choosing.
But nobody thought of it.
The Republicans didn't think of running away.
They didn't think they they they tried to stay there and fight this.
They didn't flee the country.
Anyway, the Democrat tactic opens up a whole new political weapon, tool.
You can't say weapon anymore.
Uh it opens up a whole new tool.
When things aren't going your way, just the scram.
Flee the country if you're talking about Congress, flee your state if you're talking about a state legislator.
Hey, let me get this straight.
Let me let me try to batten all of this down and make it understandable.
All of Obama's talk about learning to live with less.
About Americans using too much of the world's resources, Americans being overweight, all of that.
Apparently, that only applies to taxpayers, not to public sector union members, not to federal bureaucrats, not to trial lawyers, not to Jesse Jackson.
Other words, those who don't work for the government, or those who don't get anything from the government, they need to keep giving until it hurts and hurts, while those Who take need to keep taking and taking.
I think I pretty much have this understood now.
Obama's out there.
We gotta learn to live within our means.
No, we do.
He doesn't, and the unions don't.
The bureaucracy doesn't, but we do.
The people paying for all of this.
We're the ones that have to learn to live with less.
We are the ones who have to sacrifice.
We are the ones who have to live within our means.
We are the ones who have to eat the twigs and the berries and all that stuff that Muchell Obama demands that we eat, but they don't.
They don't eat fruits and berries and twigs and all that rot.
They're out eating barbecued ribs.
I don't care if they're short ribs, long ribs, or baby back ribs.
They're out there eating ribs.
With all kinds of cilantro flavored potatoes on the side, but not us.
We're supposed to dial it back.
This is what Obama means by sacrificing and spreading the wealth.
The people that pay for everything dial it back.
We do with less so that what we are saving ends up being spread around to all these other people, the unions, the union leaders, trial lawyers, Jesse Jackson, federal bureaucrats.
Now while all this is going on, Obama continues to defy a federal judge in Florida, saying his Obamacare bill's unconstitutional.
He's pressing ahead with Obamacare, continues to issue regulations that are tantamount to destroying our industries.
He continues to obstruct offshore drilling for oil.
What is the oil price now?
$99.
Oil prices $99, and Qaddafi is threatening to do a Saddam on his oil fields.
Have you heard about this?
Qaddafi's threatened to set his oil wells on fire.
Qaddafi ordered his Air Force to conduct bombing missions on Iraqi or Libyan citizens, and they refused.
They bailed out of there.
So you've got all the instability in the Middle East here, particularly with the oil price now jumping.
We could be looking at $5 a gallon gasoline.
We're already at $4 a gallon in California.
And yet Obama continues to obstruct offshore drilling, continues to kneecap the private sector, private sector jobs.
You got to imagine if he had one-tenth the interest in private sector jobs that he does in union jobs.
You realize that his focus on jobs is all about union jobs.
We all know why.
But imagine if he had that kind of energy and interest for private sector jobs.
Teachers' unions, SEIU, the AFSME, all the rest, they deserve all they can get, all they can grab, they go for it.
We pay for it, they go for it, they get all they can grab.
They somehow are entitled.
They somehow have been screwed over by this country all these years, and now it's their turn.
Now that they're on the inside, they get their hands in the till.
And the till better be full.
We better keep making payments to it.
Just so happens that a chunk of what all these unions are grabbing from the taxpayers somehow manages to wind up in the Democrat Party.
The end of the day isn't that interesting.
A chunk of what they grab from the taxpayers ends up in his and the Democrat Party's war chests.
No wonder he wants union guys to work.
They have to pay dues that end up in his war chest.
No wonder he wants more union jobs.
That's more union dues that end up in his war chest in the Democrat Party's war chest.
So what does the redistribution of wealth?
He's out there talking to Joe the Plumber during the campaign.
Let's spread the wealth around.
What does that mean?
The redistribution of wealth means stealing from the taxpayers and giving to the Democrats, their favorite supporters.
And as we told you at the time, that's what a large Part of the stimulus bill was all about.
It was a slush fund.
Taking money from taxpayers, funneling it through Obama's administration, sending it back to the teachers' unions, the SEIU, AFSME public sector unions in the states, all to protect them from the recession.
You realize, now, folks, that's what the stimulus was about.
It was about one thing.
Protecting Democrat donors from the recession.
Making sure that Democrats, union, public sector, private sector doesn't matter, all of these union people make sure at the government level at state, federal, make sure they didn't lose their jobs.
So that their union dues would continue to be paid, and those would end up in the coffers of the Obama war chest and the Democrat Party.
The single purpose of the stimulus?
Make sure Obama's supporters kept their jobs.
That simple.
Meanwhile, we hear this nonsense about the right to collective bargaining with public sector unions.
Even George Meany opposed it.
The forerunner to John Sweeney.
Even FDR opposed it.
The right to collective bargaining, public sector unions, a collective bargaining against who?
The people.
You're not collectively bargaining against some cigar-chomping fat executive sitting in a boardroom in Detroit at General Motors or Ford or Chrysler.
Sure.
Collective bargaining against the taxpayer is what collective bargaining for public sector unions is all about.
And FDR was smart enough to know that that would lead to people hating government.
And if you're a Democrat and you want to tie up and cement power forever as being the party of government, you need people to love government.
People end up hating government, getting mad at government, and you're the party of government, you and your party in heap big doo-doo.
Little Indian lingo there.
FDR knew this.
George Meany, the early union guys knew this.
That's why they said, no, you can't have collective bargaining.
You can't even unionize public sector work.
Can't even do it.
Well, the current mob doesn't care.
They don't care who you hate.
They just as soon intimidate you into voting for them as opposed to making you love them.
They don't care.
And once they get their hands on the Federal Treasury, which they now have, they can make sure that their people don't lose jobs, don't lose pensions, don't lose health care during the recession, so that their donor money will continue to flow.
Nonsense about this right to collective bargaining.
The same president who ignores the will of the people.
He wants collective bargaining.
He wants these public sector workers to have fair treatment accorded them.
He wants them to be heard.
He wants them to be respected.
He runs around and he says they're our neighbors.
And they are our friends at church.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Fine and dandy, sounds wonderful.
Coming, however, from a president who ignores the will of the people.
In this case, the people who pay for all of this largesse.
The taxpayers of this country who are just now beginning to figure out their taxes are what is paying union dues that end up in the coffers of the Democrat Party.
And yet those those people ought to be thanked each and every day.
The taxpayers of this country ought to be thanked.
They ought to be shown appreciation.
They ought to be given deals here and there.
No, they are impugned, stupid idiots in flyover country.
He ignores the will of the people.
He ignores election results.
He ignores federal court orders, thumbs his nose at the law and the rights of others, yet tells us that collective bargaining for government workers is some kind of enshrined human right.
Really?
Really?
Then what about people who are forced to join unions when they don't want to?
What about their rights?
What about people who are members of unions but oppose their money being used to support liberal policies, politicians, and the Democrat Party?
What about their rights?
What about the public that has to pay the bills for these massive unfunded liabilities, the pensions and the health care benefits?
What are their rights?
You see, my friends, it's not about rights.
He can talk about the right to collectively bargain.
He can talk about an enshrined human right union people have, blah, blah, blah.
It's not about rights, it's about politics and power.
And for too long, Obama and his party have used government unions, so-called collective bargaining and the power to confiscate through taxation to build an unholy alliance against we the people.
The Democrat Party and their holy alliance with unions equals an unholy alliance against we the people.
Shared sacrifice?
Shared sacrifice, right, Barack?
Spread the wealth.
Right, Barack?
Yeah, tax everybody except your buddies.
They're the beneficiaries of all the taxation.
Transform America, right, Barack.
Grow the government, yeah, right, right.
Grow the government.
Where's that happening?
All in the name of the people, the same people who are repulsed by all of it.
We're not growing the government.
No, we are growing the government.
We're not growing the country.
We are growing the government, but not the country.
All in the name of people who are repulsed by it.
And while they eat ribs, for us it's let them eat carrots.
Only the Messiah and his family get to eat the ribs, short rib, long back, baby back, whatever other kind of ribs they are.
Actually, I am starting to wonder whether Obama's ideological hero is Karl Marx or Groucho Marx.
It's an open question.
It's an open question.
Ha, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, cutting edge societal evolution.
This is From the Hill, the block briefing room.
Democrat urges unions to get a little bloody when necessary.
This is Representative Michael Capuano, Democrat in Massachusetts, fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches, defend off limits to workers' rights like those proposed in Wisconsin.
Sometimes it's necessary to get out on the streets and get a little bloody, said the congressman on Tuesday afternoon.
I'm proud to be here with people who understand that it's more than just sending an email to get you going.
Every once in a while you need to get out in the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.
Well, things got a little bloody in Tucson.
As I recall, things got a little bloody in Tucson, Arizona, and the leader of the Democrat Party and the leader of the unions said that kind of stuff has to stop.
Now that happened some weeks ago.
And yet weeks later, here is a Democrat advocating that the streets get a little bloody.
Because of what's happening in Wisconsin.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, if Obama's speeches in Tucson don't change the behavior of Democrats, then who is it that leads that party?
Well, let's see.
The unions pay the bills and they provide the votes.
In fact, let me just put this out on the table.
Whatever else unions are, it is now clear that they function as a highly effective money laundering machine for the Democrat Party.
That's that's really what's going on here.
In some case, the case of the public sector unions, which is now most of them, it's money sucked out of the taxpayers' pockets and put right into the war chest of the Democrat Party.
When you talk about collectively bargaining, public sector workers, teachers, I don't care what they are.
When you talk about public union members, public sector, collective bargaining, they're collective bargaining against us, the taxpayers.
We are the people.
We are the boss.
We are paying.
The stimulus bill, just to remind you again, the purpose of the stimulus bill was to make sure that the people who end up contributing the largest amounts of money to Obama and the Democrat Party did not lose their jobs.
Public sector unions and their dues.
So just think of it as a very sophisticated, highly sophisticated money laundering machine.
Here you have the stimulus.
You can't just take that money and give it to public sector unions.
You can't just take that money and put it in your campaign war chest.
But you want it in your campaign war chest.
So who do you give it to?
You give it to the unions to launder.
Ostensibly to keep them employed during the recession, yes, and to keep their dues flowing in so the money circuitously ends up in the coffers of Obama and the Democrat Party.
What is Obama's immediate oil policy?
What is it?
Aside from using the grease from Michelle's ribs, what is it?
Can't figure it out, but we in Heat Big Doo-Doo price of oil now inching up toward $100 a barrel at 99, what is it?
Uh 995.
Greetings.
Welcome back, L. Rushball, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
So you have a Democrat urging the unions to get a little bloody when necessary.
We've got effective money laundering taking place here.
Public sector unions, beneficiaries of government spending, so union dues end up in Democrat Party coffers, including those of the president.
But the president was in Tucson.
And he said, don't get into this uncivil behavior.
We've got this stupid, I cannot believe the biggest bunch of bull malarkey I've seen in I don't know how long.
This Institute for Civility at the University of Arizona.
Bill Clinton as a co-chair.
Greta Van Susteren is the only media person to accept some position of note at this institute for civility.
What an absolute crock.
And while all this is going on, these Democrats talking about busting heads, breaking heads, getting a little bloody in the street.
People from the same party as the president.
So the unions pay the bills, they provide the votes for the Democrats.
Are public sector unions demanding Democrats go to the mattresses on collective bargaining?
Or is this is this story about Massachusetts putting bloody ideas in their heads?
This is a call for all-out war, or has that already been decided.
My gosh.
Democrat urging unions to get a little bloody when necessary.
Seems like we've got the first case for this new institute of civility at the University of Arizona.
Something important.
Ladies and gentlemen, all of these decisions that states and localities are having to make regarding budgets, layoffs of public sector union members and so forth, They result from the real world.
They result from the fact that they must balance their budgets.
They can't endlessly print money.
They cannot deficit spend.
Obama has no such limits on him.
So he's an out-of-control, reckless big government spender who doesn't have to make a single tough decision, and as such, he won't.
But all these governors and mayors, town council presidents, I mean, I don't care how deep you want to go here, they have to make realistic decisions.
Obama can continue to pretend otherwise, leaving it to others to try and rein in spending and taxing.
But if you look at the way he's behaving, he's not even qualified to be a governor or mayor, given what he has done and what he is doing.
From Madison, Wisconsin Democrats kept the Wisconsin Assembly up Overnight with a droning filibuster in another desperate attempt to block the Republican governor's bold plan to strip public sector workers of nearly all of their bargaining rights.
Well, wait a minute now, we we thought the Democrat Party hated filibusters.
We thought they um despised filibusters.
Oh, I guess unless they're using them to fight civil rights legislation.
The debate marked the first moment in days in which what has become a high-stex game of political chicken between Democrat lawmakers and Governor Scott Walker.
It's a funny kind of game of chicken.
In reality, Governor Walker's trying to save union jobs here.
And if his reforms fail, there will have to be layoffs, possibly as soon as Friday.
It's like gravity, it's not a suggestion, it's the law.
The governor says the bill is needed to help solve the state's looming budget deficit, but Democrats see it as an all-out assault on unions, their staunchest campaign ally.
And by staunchest campaign ally, they mean their paymaster and their de facto bosses.
So note the headline of the story here.
Wisconsin Democrats filibuster to delay anti-union bill.
The stenographer here is Todd Richmond of the Associated Press.
Mr. Richmond, uh this is not anti-union legislation, this is budget reform.
But you just couldn't see fit to put that in your headline, could you?
You couldn't mention that in the story.
Budget reform is what this is.
That's what this governor is charged with.
It's what he campaigned on, it's what his job is.
Why leave it out?
Everything the Democrats do is called reform.
And now all of a sudden, filibusters are great when Democrats do them.
And then note that the legislators had to be heavily guarded because of the protesters.
Imagine the outrage of these were Tea Party protesters.
Oh, yes.
Had to be guarded because of the protesters.
There's a great piece on a lot of this.
It's long.
I'm going to excerpt some of it.
It is a great piece.
Best of the web today from James Taranto, the Wall Street Journal.
To make sense of what's going on in Wisconsin, it helps to understand that the left in America lives in an ideological fantasy world.
Let me give you a uh a pull quote here before getting into the whole piece.
Because it is great.
Here is the contradiction of progressivism.
Progressives tell us they want the government to do more.
But they cannot win elections without public sector unions.
Because they are beholden to those unions, their main priority when in power is to increase the cost of government.
Not the scope, but increase the cost.
Because resources are finite, the result is the worst of both worlds.
A government that taxes more without doing more.
This is unsustainable economically.
Fortunately, as Wisconsin voters showed last November, it's unsustainable politically as well.
So this illustrates again how phony Obama is we all have to live with our means.
We all have tighten the belt, we all have to do all of it wrong.
Because they are beholden to union paymasters, their main priority when in power is to increase the cost of government, i.e., what you pay these people.
By increasing the cost of government, you launder money through the unions and get the dues returned to you.
So the Democrats, for all the ideological reasons they want to expand government, also have an economic reason to expand government.
Expanding government, increasing the cost of government enhances their power.
Because the unions are essentially money launderers of taxpayer money.
Because where are the public sector unions getting their money?
They're not producing anything.
And I'm making widgets, people are not buying anything.
What Ends up in the annual household budget of a public sector union worker is taxpayer revenue.
Pure and simple, it's tax dollars.
And when there isn't enough of that, we borrow it.
And when we can't borrow anymore, we print it.
But none of it results from production.
It's pure redistribution of wealth.
So not only are private sector people being taxed and having their standards of living affected negatively, those dollars they pay the government more and more end up at the end of their circuitous route in the Democrat Party.
Because the Democrat Party's paymasters are the unions.
Is it any wonder that since Obama was emagulated, the federal workforce has increased by 200,000 people?
200,000 brand new public union, public sector union people paying dues, a portion of which end up with the Democrat Party and with Barack Obama.
Back to James Taranto.
The dispute between the state government and the unions representing its employees is about power, said Paul Krugman of the New York Times, said that accurately before going off the rails.
Krugman then writes, what Governor Walker and his backers are trying to do is make Wisconsin and eventually America less of a functioning democracy and more of a third world-style oligarchy.
And that's why anybody who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators' side.
That is pure idiocy.
It's the exact opposite of that.
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones elaborates, unions are the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently act as a countervailing power against corporate power.
They are the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.
The decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition, no matter what doubts you might have about unions and their role in the economy.
Never forget that destroying them destroys the only real organized check on the power of the business community in America.
If the last 30 years haven't made that clear, I don't know what will.
Now there are several problems with this line of thinking.
First, to talk of America in terms of class is to speak a foreign language.
Outside of university faculties and Marxist fringe groups, but we repeat ourselves.
Americans don't divide ourselves up by class.
Rather, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
All men are created equal.
When Americans describe themselves as middle class, the term is a synonym for ordinary or respectable, not part of a taxonomy of division.
Actual middle class Americans don't feel put upon by corporate power or the business community.
Because by and large, they own the means of production.
They run businesses, they hold shares in corporations through their investment and retirement accounts.
Some belong to unions, but the vast majority don't.
In 2010, the union membership rate was 11.9%, down from 12.3% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The labor movement in America has increasingly come to consist of people who work for government, not private companies.
As the Bureau of Labor stats notes, the union participation rate for public sector workers in 2010 was 36.2% versus just 6.9% for private sector workers.
In any case, it seems to have escaped Krugman and Drum's notice that the Wisconsin dispute has nothing to do with corporations.
The union antagonist is the state government.
Which is the people of Wisconsin, not some evil corporate fat cat.
That's been my point all along.
These people are not negotiating against some filthy rich fat cigar chomping executive who spends all day on the golf course.
They are negotiating Against Wisconsin citizens who are not members of unions.
Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership, writes Joe Klein of Time, a liberal who understands the cruel distinction.
Public employee unions are organized against the might and greed of the public.
That's true.
Public employees, public employee unions are organized against the public.
That's who pays them.
Hi, we're back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, collective bargaining in the public sector.
I cannot emphasize this enough.
Collective bargaining in the public sector, thus is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers.
I am so happy this is all coming to light.
I'm glad this has happened to Wisconsin.
I'm glad finally people are figuring out what collective bargaining with private public sector unions means.
The negotiations with public sector unions against people who pay them are negotiations between the unions and the citizens of the state of Wisconsin in this case.
And it's not a negotiation.
It is a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers.
That's where the union workers in the federal and state governments get their money.
Corporations are not involved.
Evil, bad Walmart, McDonald's, I don't care, name one.
They're not involved.
This is strictly unionized workers in the state holding hostage the people of the state.
And the people of Wisconsin are being held hostage.
Their schools are closed because Senates fled the st uh, senators fled the state to avoid democracy, and the teachers walked off the job.
The teachers are union workers.
They're holding out for whatever.
From who?
Their neighbors.
Obama says, well, they're just neighbors.
They're just your neighbors and they're people at church.
Yeah, what are they trying to do here?
They're holding them up.
It's not a negotiation, as Mr. Taranto says.
It's a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers.
The notion that this is in the economic interest of the middle class for government employees of Wisconsin and elsewhere to get above market wages is laughable.
Above market wages means wages higher than the people who are paying the wages earn.
Where's the justice in that?
You earn $50,000 a year.
People that work in your state government earn a hundred thousand dollars a year.
You are paying it.
Where's the justice there?
The idea that this is in the economic interest of the middle class for government employees to get above market wages and lavish benefits is laughable.
The government employees are middle class, but so are the vast majority of taxpayers who are paying them who do not enjoy these special privileges.
Tom in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, you're up.
Great to have you on the EIB network today, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Great to talk to you.
You bet, sir.
Uh, as a uh conservative Republican here in Pennsylvania, this has really been fun to watch for me.
You know, the D's have uh really painted themselves into a corner here and uh really an uncharted waters.
They've been fighting for decades, this class warfare.
You know, the haves versus the have nots, the working families versus the rich for decades.
Now the shoe is on the other foot here, and the liberals really don't know how to handle the argument, and consequently they just leave the states.
Right.
And look who is it now hates government?
Look who is it that hates government?
Liberal Democrats.
They hate government.
When it comes to a choice between the unions and government, who do they hate?
They hate government.
Who's knocking government?
All of these union workers, all these Democrats are knocking the government, criticizing, ripping the government.
That's not very civil.
No.
So they don't know how to handle the argument.
You know, an argument to say, but on the other side of the argument in decades.
Bottom line is they don't argue.
They can't win.
They don't debate.
In some cases, they try to impugn and destroy the credibility of their opponents, or in this case, they flee as cowards.
They just leave the states.
They just run away.
And somehow, they want to tell us that they're doing this for our benefit against some evil corporation.
Trying to screw them.
Another exciting hour of broadcast excellence.
The first one of three today is in the can.
There's still a lot of good stuff in the James Taranto piece, Best of the Web.
Today's from yesterday's Wall Street Journal.
We'll get to that.
We still have quite a few entries here in the Wisconsin Teachers Strike stack, all of that going on.
And a number of other things too.
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