All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 22, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:56
August 22, 2011, Monday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in, Mark Stein.
Honored to be here.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
I'm a foreign exchange student at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's a great program.
Guys like me get to study here and in return, President Obama's brand new Department of Jobs gets to launch its pilot program in Bangalore.
So it all works out.
Rush is away this week.
Its guest hosts a go-go.
Mark Belling will be here tomorrow.
Mark Davis comes in on Thursday.
I believe Muammar Gaddafi makes his debut as an EIB guest host on Friday.
Apparently, he had a sudden yen for a midlife career change.
He's picked out a fabulous new party dress to wear for the Ditto Cam, so you won't want to miss that.
But today we are live from the Rush Limbaugh Show's Northern Frontier Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire, just a smidgenette south of the Quebec border.
Nothing much going by here, except the occasional lonesome moose and an armored Canadian black funeral mega hearse bus being delivered to Obama for his next tour of small-town America, because nothing says hope and change like a giant armoured hearsemobile rumbling down Main Street.
Nothing is sunned but death and taxes and Obama's bus looks like death and your taxes paid for it.
Great to be with you for the start of another week of excellence in broadcasting.
President Obama has issued a statement from Martha's Vineyard on the situation in Tripoli.
I can't believe I read that with a straight face.
I love that song, by the way.
I love that song, Mr. Snerdley.
From the halls of Martha's Vineyard to the shores of Tripoli.
That's a great song.
Why doesn't he have them play that when he makes this announcement?
Yes, it is his summer White House, Martha's Vineyard.
By the way, do you remember that congressman, Mr. Snerdley, who was complaining that increasing the military presence on Guam risked capsizing Guam, that the entire island would flip over?
And yeah, whatever that congressman was, and do you remember the poor fellow from the whatever he was from, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whatever, who was testifying to Congress?
And this Congressman is explaining to him how he's worried that Guam will flip over and capsize.
And the general is trying not to catch his eyes and back out of the room slowly.
And I'm worried.
I mean, because I take it that a congressman, a big-time congressman, wouldn't stand up in public and advance the notion that Guam could be capsized if it weren't technically possible.
I'm worried that the size of Obama's motorcade might capsize Martha's Vineyard.
I think that could be a serious problem.
Anyway, from the halls of Martha's Vineyard to the shores of Tripoli, President Obama has declared that Libya is, quote, slipping from the grasp of the tyrant, unquote, and presumably into the grasp of a new tyrant.
So we look forward to that.
Nothing like a change of tyrant after 42 years.
Colonel Gaddafi, what a survivor.
He outlasted America's AAA credit rating, but he is heading for the big downgrade now.
1-800-282-2882.
Great to be with you.
Mr. Snerdley is here with us.
He landed belatedly in New York like 20 minutes ago after the usual nightmare flight.
But we are glad to have him along with us.
Obama continues his retreat on Martha's Vineyard.
He stimulated the local economy over the weekend by taking his 40-car motorcade to buy an ice cream for them.
Just that right there will do wonders for the economy.
He also bought a book.
He bought two books, I believe, at the local bookstore.
It wasn't my new book.
You won't be surprised to hear.
I would be stunned if they had a copy of my book at the Martha's Vineyard bookstore.
Instead, he bought the Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrule, set in Louisiana Swampland, because let's face it, a big-time Democrat feels completely at home in Louisiana Swampland.
And Rodin's Debutante by Ward Just, a coming-of-age novel set in mid-20th century Chicago.
Associated Press said the president was looking for, quote, drama, passion, and intrigue, unquote.
And you would be too if you'd been cooped up in the world's largest Canadian hearse for a week.
So between the entourage and the motorcade and the closed streets, he spent a five-figure sum to stimulate the economy by $24.95 worth of books at the local bookstore.
So the stimulus is working.
He's still working on his jobs plan.
By the way, this is amazing.
This was on one of the Sunday shows.
A Gallup poll showed only 26% of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the economy.
Do you know any of these 26%, by the way?
If you are one of the 26%, I'm stunned by this.
You can still find in the United States of America 26% of Americans who approve of the way Obama is handling the economy.
Are they all residents of Martha's Vineyard?
If you're one of that 26%, I would love to hear from you.
1-800-282-2882, if you're one of the big 26% that approve of the way Obama is handling the economy, I'd love to know what aspect of it you are actually approving of.
Is it the jobs bill?
Is it the property market?
Is it the unemployment rate?
Let me know.
Is it the quantitative easing 3, which we may be lined up for if the Fed can't find anyone else to buy American Debt?
Let me know.
If you're one of the 26% of Americans who approve of the way Obama is handling the economy, I would love to hear from you.
1-800-282-2882.
A quick EIB programming note, by the way.
In the next hour, my fellow EIB guest host, Mark Belling, will be here.
Now, you're probably wondering what's going on.
I mean, you know, for Rush fans, the only thing worse than switching on and finding a guest host is to switch on and find two guest hosts.
But we're going to do it to you today.
At the top of the next hour, we're bringing in a guest host to guest host for the pre-scheduled guest host.
Mark Belling's going to swing by and he'll interview me about my new book that I alluded to from a moment ago in its absence in the Martha's Vineyard bookstore.
So the second guest host will guest host for the first guest host by interviewing the first guest host.
It's easy to follow.
Mr. Snerdley said I could have interviewed myself about my new book, but he didn't think I could keep up the accents long enough.
I can't even keep this one up, by the way, for the full three hours.
If you notice, my natural Midwestern vowels start to break through in the final hour of the show when I guest host.
Anyway, we'll see how it works out.
Mark Stein with a Mark Belling interlude.
It's a 2 Mark Monday.
It's a new format.
We focus grouped it in major markets like Tripoli and Benghazi, and they seem to like it.
So if Two Mark Monday catches on, we'll try 2 Walter Wednesday and 2 Friedrich Friday.
That's Friedrich von Hayek and Friedrich Engels.
It'd be a kind of Germanic crossfire, Hannity and Combs kind of thing.
You'll love it.
So anyway, Mark Belling will be talking to me about my new book in the next hour, which has the cheery title, After America, Get Ready for Armageddon.
The publisher wanted to call it something more upbeat and positive, the little superpower that could.
I think that was their idea.
But we'll get into all that.
Financial collapse, cultural collapse, total societal collapse in our next hour.
How often do you get a teaser like that?
Coming up in our next hour, total societal collapse.
But you know, it's not unrelated to what's going on here in Martha's Vineyard.
You know, the fascinating thing about Martha's Vineyard is that the president of the United States has been there every summer vacation since he became president.
He went there in 2009.
He went there in 2010.
Now he goes 2011.
Martha's Vineyard is not a place that the average American vacations in.
It's a very special place.
You can't even drive there.
You can only get in by ferry or plane.
I don't even know how does he get his 40-car entourage there?
Do they have to lay on extra ferries?
How do you get a 40-car entourage to Martha's Vineyard?
It's a very odd place, and you get the sense of it.
What it's like is when you read about how he spends his day.
President Barack Obama put in a brief appearance Saturday at the home of his friend and one-time teacher, Harvard Law School professor, Charles Ogletree, as he continued his Martha's Vineyard vacation.
Obama spent much of the day in seclusion at his rented compound.
Do you know that's a fascinating word?
This is Associated Press.
Compound is always a bad word in the newspapers.
It's usually if a guy is being staked out by the ATF or the DEA.
Remember, this happened all the time during the 1990s.
Guys like Randy Weaver, where was he?
In Idaho.
He had a compound, and the ATF or the FBI or whoever it was were staking it out and they wound up killing his wife and/or kid.
Waco, Waco was a compound.
Remember that?
That's the compound.
The only good compound, whenever you see the word compound, by the way, if you're thinking of putting your house on the market, and it's not a good idea to be described in the realtor's brochure as a compound.
Compound is a bad word.
If you're in Idaho like Randy Weaver, if you're in Waco like those guys that Janet Reno stormed, compound is a bad word.
The only place in America where compound is a good word is Massachusetts.
In Massachusetts, anybody who's anybody has got a compound.
Yeah, the Kennedy compound, that is the Naples Ultra of compounds.
That is the most desirable compound in Massachusetts.
But now, President Obama, he's got a compound in Massachusetts.
Martha's Vineyard compound.
You might be confused.
You might be thinking, what's he doing?
Living the Randy Weaver lifestyle, living the Waco lifestyle.
No, no, this is a Massachusetts compound, so it's okay.
He was joined, so he went to see his friend Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, who is an authority on race and politics and became Obama's mentor when Obama was a student there.
He's got a home on the island.
Another senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who also has a home on the island, accompanied Obama to the home of Professor Ogletree.
So, isn't this nice?
This is like a sweet, this is like a little, this is like a whole little club they've got there.
All a nice little gated community of people who think exactly alike.
It is a very odd, it is not a typical vacation.
Whenever you mock, whenever you Obama, is that true, Mr. Snerdley?
He's got do I think he has black servants at his compound?
No, I would imagine, like everyone else in Massachusetts, he probably has Latino servants now.
That's the Rainbow Coalition.
Latino, black power brokers, Latino servants.
Celebrate diversity, Mr. Snerdley.
Odyssey, what are you all about?
Anyway, and actually, I'm just reading this story, and it says updates with color details.
Maybe the next Associated Press story will actually supply the details on that.
But this is, you know, somebody said to me, oh, oh, so you're like mocking you, you crazies on the right, you're mocking Obama for taking his vacations on Martha's Vineyard.
Like Republican presidents don't take vacations.
Oh, right.
You know, the first Bush vacation, I remember this, in the summer of 2001, the summer before 9-11, 10 years ago, he went to Crawford, and the White House Press Corps had to follow him out to Crawford, and they were furious.
There was nothing to do.
They set up the so-called Western White House or whatever it was, the summer White House, in the gym of the public school in Crawford, Texas.
And the White House press were furious because they'd spent the previous eight years summering with Clinton on Martha's Vineyard.
Clinton was also the summer guy for Martha's Vineyard.
I remember him being greeted by Carly Simon at the airport at Martha's Vineyard.
He seemed to travel with a smaller entourage than Obama.
So he was greeted by Carly Simon.
I don't know why she was in the entourage, but she was in a backless dress.
And I remember the picture of Clinton running his hands all over Carly Simon's back, moist with perspiration.
And she is one of the great backs, by the way, Carly Simon.
I don't want to be too partisan here, whatever my political difference is with Carly Simon.
She has a fabulous back.
Anyway, Clinton vacation on...
Total back or...
I haven't seen...
Actually, I once wrote in, and Mr. Saddley wants to know whether that's total back or partial back.
I once rode in an elevator with Carly Simon in a backless dress, which is how I studied her back.
But it wasn't quite that low cut.
No cleavage, if you know what I mean, Mr. Snadley.
Anyway, so this is where Democrats go on vacation with the elite super rich.
You can't even compare that.
I mean, say what you like.
You can be anti-Bush or whatever.
But he vacationed in Crawford, Texas, where nobody would vacation unless they liked it.
And that is a difference.
And there is something, to me, there is something Latin American about a man walling himself off in his compound with other members of the elite, especially after he's just descended on small-town America.
He's driven down main streets in Minnesota with a 40-car entourage, 40-car motorcade in his armored Canadian bus in case any of the citizens of small-town Minnesota break through the line and try to get a piece of him.
There's something Latin American about this.
It's profoundly un-Republican.
And I say that as someone who was born a subject to the crown, that there is not, this is beyond monarchical.
It is like some Latin American Banana Republic lifestyle.
We'll talk about that and lots more.
1-800-282-2882-Mark Stein in for rush.
Mark Stein in for rush on the EIB network.
1-800-282-2882.
Rush returns next week.
This guy, Rick Perry, have you been following him?
The media are worried about him.
The media are worried about him.
So the whole job, the whole thing now is if his numbers continue to rise, they're going to have to jump on him, clobber him to the ground, and leave him looking like one of those moose that Sarah Palin's blown a hole in.
And so they'll use anything.
I love this story.
Rick Perry's stem cell surgery could lead to quackery.
He had a stem cell treatment last month.
He got stem cells.
Doctors removed some stem cells from his fat cells, cultured them in a lab, and then injected them back into his spine.
That's a medical breakthrough because I didn't even know Republican candidates had spines.
We can't allow that to catch on.
It would be terrible.
How did that happen?
That's absolutely amazing.
So they injected, they found the Republican candidate's spine.
Boy, if only we'd had this in 2008 or back in 1996 when Bob Dole was running.
They found the Republican candidate's spine and they injected some stem cells, cultured stem cells, into his spine.
And doctors are now worried that this could drive thousands of desperate Americans into the clinics of quacks.
This grossly irresponsible operation by Governor Perry could, quote, have the unfortunate potential to push desperate patients into the clinics of quacks who are selling unproven treatments for everything from Alzheimer's to autism, unquote.
Dr. George Q. Daly of something or other at Harvard told the Associated Press.
I wonder if he's vacationing on Martha's Vineyard because that's where the Associated Press is vacationing.
So maybe Dr. George Q. Daly of Harvard was at one of these Obama cocktail parties and mentioned it to the Associated Press guy there.
But he says, Perry, quote, Perry's actions have the, as an highly influential person of power, Perry's actions have the unfortunate potential to push desperate patients into the clinics of quacks.
Governor Perry has only been in the race for 20 minutes and already he's killing you.
He's a threat to your life.
He's a threat to your life because he had this bizarre operation where they removed some of his fat cells and then injected them back into his spine.
But that is certainly a medical breakthrough.
They've managed to find the spine of a Republican candidate.
Boy, I hope whoever the candidate is, the spine holds up until Tuesday in November 2012.
That would be a great start.
Social Security disability on the verge of insolvency.
Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.
Applications are up nearly 50% over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can't find new ones in an economy that has shed 7 million jobs.
This is from the Associated Press.
What's fascinating about this is the assumptions the newspaper.
This is by Stephen Ollermacher of the Associated Press.
He says, quote, claims for disability benefits typically increase in a bad economy because many disabled people get laid off and can't find a new job, unquote.
Now, that's fascinating to me that supposedly the disabled are more prone to unemployment in a recession.
By the way, I'll explain this afterwards.
A lot of these guys looting and torching London are officially classified as disabled by the British welfare state.
And they're not disabled enough that they can't rampage through the street looting and torching and lobbing concrete pieces of concrete through store windows.
We'll get into that in just a moment.
Great to be with you.
It's Tomark Monday on the EIB network.
Mark Belling will be here at the top of the hour.
1-800-282-2882.
And remember, I want to hear from you.
26% of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the economy.
I've always loved that expression, by the way, handling the economy.
It makes it sound like he kind of crumpled it up and tossed it out the rear window on his armored Canadian bus while he was driving through Dead Moose Junction, Minnesota.
1-800-282-2882, if you are one of the 26% of Americans who approve of the way Obama is handling the economy, I would love to hear from you.
We're talking about this thing about the Social Security Disability Program being swamped by claimants.
Just to give you an idea of the way this thing's growing, there are 3.3 million people applying for federal disability benefits right now.
That's a million more than a decade ago.
And I love what the Social Security Commissioner, Michael Astru, said about it.
He said, it's primarily economic desperation, people on the margins who get bad news in terms of a layoff and have no other place to go, and they take a shot at disability, unquote.
And so in other words, people, it's about meeting the federal criteria for disability.
This actually gets to the heart of what is wrong with government programs.
It's not about being disabled as most people would understand that term.
You know, when you go to the parking lot and you see the little wheelchair logo by the disabled parking space and you think, okay, the disabled guy is a guy in a wheelchair.
Don't worry about it.
You don't have to be in a wheelchair to qualify for federal disability.
And I mentioned that a lot of these guys rioting, looting, torching, burning in London were officially categorized as disabled because in the late 90s, in order to so-called reduce the unemployment rate, the British government found it convenient to reclassify the long-term unemployed as disabled.
They weren't actually disabled.
They could hold most jobs.
Yes, you might be disabled if you were asked to rappel into the presidential palace in Tripoli and depose Gaddafi.
You might be a wee bit too disabled for that.
But you were certainly not disabled enough to hold down the majority of jobs.
And yet they, essentially for political reasons, to give the appearance of lowering the unemployment rate, they classified a big chunk of the unemployed as disabled.
And by the way, this is profoundly wicked because what you're doing is the state is inviting somebody, is incentivizing a citizen to collude in a lie because somewhere, somewhere deep inside, you know you're sitting around at home all day, you're disabled, you're claiming your disabled benefits.
But somewhere deep down inside, you know you're able to work.
You know there are jobs you can do.
And so there's something actually evil about the welfare state classifying someone as unable to work when they are in fact able to.
Now, what happened in the United States is a similar process.
In the 1980s, here's again, Charles Blahaus, one of the public trustees who oversees Social Security, says, quote, the disability program got into trouble first because of liberalization of eligibility standards in the 1980s, unquote.
Who could have foreseen that?
When you make it easier, when you take, this is actually a perfect, in a nutshell, what is wrong with government.
You start a small program off, and then gradually it metastasizes and expands to include everybody.
It doesn't matter where you go.
It's common to government all over the world.
In Greece, they introduced the right for people in hazardous professions to retire at 50.
And initially, a hazardous profession meant bomb disposal and one or two others, which is fair enough.
Bomb disposal is hazardous.
Then they changed it so that if you were a hairdresser, that qualified as a hazardous profession.
Then they made it so that what I'm doing right now, talking into a microphone is a hazardous profession because of microphone bacteria.
If you are the Rush Limbaugh of Greece, and I don't think they have one because otherwise they wouldn't be in the hole therein, but if you're the Rush Limbaugh of Greece, you have the right to retire at 50 because of microphone bacteria, because you've been sitting in front of this microphone.
Boy, what a class action suit Mark Belling and Mark Davis and Walter Williams and I will have against the EIB network who have exposed us to all this microphone bacteria.
We would have the right to retire in Greece because that counts as a hazardous profession.
The reality is that once you start introducing these entitlements, being actually a citizen of a functioning society becomes a hazardous profession because you're just being shaken down to pay for unsustainable entitlement programs that are going to collapse.
And if you're one of these people who is trying to get a piece of social security, which by the way, you know, now the idea, for example, Social Security, full social security benefits retirees can get at age 66, gradually rising to 67.
Early retirees can get reduced benefits at 62.
This is in a country, by the way, where male and female life expectancy is pushing 80.
So we're talking, the system is set up.
The system is set up so that in effect, it's going to pay you to have a long weekend for the last 25% of your life.
However, if you qualify for disability, you can get full benefits based on your work history even before 62.
There's no way any society can make this arithmetic add up.
Not in a time when people, as I said, their life expectancies in the United States and other Western societies are pushing 80.
When Roosevelt introduced this system in the 1930s, the idea would be you'd be on it for a couple of years and then you'd die.
Not the idea that you'd be on it for two decades or a quarter century if you manage to qualify because you meet the criteria for being so-called disabled.
Let us go to Alan in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Alan, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
In regards to talking about the Social Security disability, I'm 66 and about two weeks ago, I got a disability form from the government, and I didn't think anything about it because I'm not disabled.
But all of a sudden, I start reading about people that are getting these forms, and they're flooding the system with people that are supposedly disabled that really, really aren't.
And I started to think, well, something's going on here.
I'm not really sure what it is, but maybe they're trying to collapse the system.
I don't know.
Maybe they're planning to put more people into dependent situations.
But I just want to let you know that I got the form and I looked at it and just threw it away because people will fill it out.
Wait a minute, Alan.
Did you put your shoulder out when you threw the form away?
Because if so, you may qualify.
Believe me, I qualify in more ways than one.
I got more metal in me than a landmine.
You probably qualify for something, but it's probably the ladfill in Bethlehem for that.
That's probably the one thing you can't get into the disability program for.
I don't know.
With three back operations and two hip replacements, I qualify for something, but it certainly isn't disability.
And I just feel when I got this that they were, there's something, there's something fishy.
So you're thinking is they're actually touting for business.
They're sending these things out to anybody.
It's like the whatever it is from the publisher's sweepstakes.
You may already have won.
You may already be disabled and you just didn't know it for the last three or four decades.
They're basically just shipping it out.
I think that's where they're going.
It's under the Cloud and Pivot Act.
Right.
Okay, well, you might as well get up here.
As you say, the object really is to collapse the system.
And in many ways, the fastest way to do that would be if all 300 million Americans get classified as disabled.
And then we can start from scratch all over again.
That, by the way, is my approach to a lot of the problems with big government.
For example, when they had the Panty Bomber, if you remember him from whatever it was, the Christmas before last, who tried to self-detonate over Detroit.
And we were assured by Janet and Competano that the reason he was allowed to board the plane was that he wasn't actually on the no-fly list.
He was just on the standby list for the no-fly list because the no-fly list is clogged up with seven-year-old boys from Pennsylvania and small businessmen from wherever who've managed through some bureaucratic mix-up to get on there and can't get off again.
And my position on the no-fly list is that when all 9 billion people on the planet manage to get on the no-fly list, then we can start again from scratch.
And same thing here with Social Security Disability Program.
Let's get all 300 million Americans classified under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and then we can start again from scratch.
Mark Stein Infra Rush, 1-800-282-2882.
Don't forget, coming up in our next hour, total societal collapse.
Mark Stein Infra Rush on the EIB network.
Dozens of people were arrested in front of the White House over the weekend after staging a rally to protest a 1,700-mile oil pipeline that Trans-Canada Corp wants to build from Alberta into the U.S.
And these people were all urging President Obama to block construction of the pipeline by denying Trans-Canada a permit.
Good luck with that, Louis, his multi-million dollar armored Canadian hearsemobile only runs on Canadian gas.
So I believe you've got to have the world's, to actually fill it up in Minnesota, you've got to have the world's longest gas pump coming all the way down from Alberta over into across International Falls, and then he sticks it there in the hearsemobile and fills it up.
So good luck getting this thing.
The Trans-Canada oil pipeline, it's going to use oil sands, tar sands oil.
That's the new scary word to an American environmentalist.
Yeah, tar sands.
Yeah, it's racist.
It's racist oil.
Yeah, I didn't mean to say that.
I didn't mean to say that, Mr. Snerdley.
We don't want to any.
It sounds like something out of Brayer Rabbit, isn't it?
Tossing him in the tar sands oil.
We don't want to do that to him.
Let's go to Marie in Warner Robbins, Georgia.
Marie, it's great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Where is Warner Robbins, by the way?
It's in Georgia.
Yeah, I know it's in Georgia, but which bit of the state?
It's kind of southwest, more of the southwest part of the state.
But I had a question for you as well.
Since we're talking about the disabled, when are we going to discuss the disabled oil corporations?
Because they're taking subsidies.
They're getting money, federal taxpayer dollars as well.
And Mr. Romney just said last week that corporations are people.
So when are we going to discuss these disabled people?
They're getting money too, right?
Federal dollars, aren't they?
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
Well, you don't even have to go.
They're disabled too, right?
Yeah, like the big banks who got all the, they got some awesome disability.
I mean, if you want to talk about...
Yeah, all these disabled people, how do you think they feel sitting around in their office that's like, what, 3,000 or 4,000 square feet being disabled?
I think they probably feel bad, don't you?
Yeah, they got like Citigroup and Bank of America and Morgan Stanley got $107.3 billion in disability payments from the Fed chairman.
I just don't understand all these disabled people taking all this federal money and then they want to pay the taxes.
Yeah, Citigroup took $99.5 billion in federal disability payments.
Now I understand what you're getting at here, Marie.
And you're making a good point, which is that corporate welfare is as devastating, I think is as destructive as any broader societal welfare, and it's done in individual terms.
These guys get a lot of money.
So if you're saying to me, do I think Morgan Stanley should have got $107.3 billion?
No.
You're right to be mad about that kind of stuff.
I think GE should pay taxes.
But you know what?
But just let's go back to what Mitt Romney says, Marie.
When Mitt Romney says corporations are people, what do you think he means by that?
I think he means that people own stock, and in a sense, they are.
That's why I said we might as well, we're going to discuss disabled people.
We might as well discuss all of the disabled people, the ones, the wealthy, that's taking money from the middle class, the poor money from the middle class.
Just a minute.
Listen.
No, but just a minute.
Let's explore this.
So when a corporation pays tax, only wealthy people pay that tax for the corporation, you're saying.
Is that your point?
That if a corporate, because America has the highest corporate tax in the world, has 35%.
That's what they're supposed to pay.
Do you think any of them ever get around all of those loopholes?
Do you think they actually get around to paying it?
Do you think they're just stay with me?
Stay with me a minute on this, because the official rate is 35%.
Do you know what it is in Canada where Obama's bus comes from?
No, I can't imagine.
It's 16%.
And it's going down to 15%.
Do they actually pay it?
Exactly.
Exactly.
And here's my next point, Marie.
When you have super mega high, insanely high corporate tax that's the highest in the developed world, do you think the big guys at GE, do you think the big guys at Citigroup, do you think the big guys at all the sinister mega corporations, do you think Global Mega Corp Inc., as you said, pays 35%?
No, it doesn't.
It's all floating around offshore and here and there.
Because when the corporate tax rate gets that big, it becomes worth your while devising ways around it.
And that benefits the super mega global corporation, but it doesn't benefit the guy on Main Street who employs five people.
I'm not it.
What business are you in, Marie?
What job do you do?
I work for a regional assistant.
I don't want to go any further than that, but I will say that.
Do you work for a private company, though?
No.
Okay, well, then you're out of this equation entirely.
So let me explain it to you.
If you don't work in the private sector, the rest of us are all holding up and paying for whatever it is you do.
So let me explain it to you.
What Mitt Romney means is that a corporation cannot pay tax.
A corporation is an entity.
A corporation is a corporate HQ.
A corporation is articles of incorporation in the bottom of the president's desk drawer.
Every dollar of tax paid by a corporation is paid by a real human being, whether it's a stockholder, whether it's an employee, whether it's a customer to whom the costs of federal regulation and tax are passed on.
Federal regulation alone in this country accounts for 10% of GDP.
What that means is that we are sinking the equivalent of the Indian or the Canadian economy into complying with federal paperwork.
So, in other words, whatever you feel about corporations, you don't like walking down Main Street and seeing mega global corp Inc. and it's all full of rich guys.
But every single dollar of tax paid by the smallest corporation, and that term, by the way, can apply to your local hardware store, your local hair salon, and all kinds of other entities.
Every dollar of tax is paid by a real live human being.
A corporate entity in itself does not pay tax.
That was what Mitt Romney, God bless him, was trying to explain to you.
Most corporations in this country are not Goldman Sachs, they are not Citibank, they are not ExxonMobil, they are not British Petroleum, they are your friends, your neighbors, and they're paying taxes, corporate taxes, at the highest rate in the Western world.
If you make more than $50,000 worth in tax, you pay 35%.
No other country does that to crush its small businesses.
Mark Stein for Rush.
Mark Stein on the EIB network.
Rush will return next week.
Don't forget, tomorrow, Mark Belling will be here, and Mark Davis comes in on Thursday.
Lots more still to talk about as the Rush Limbaugh show continues.
▲
Export Selection