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Sept. 6, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:34
September 6, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #3
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I am Rush Limbaugh Talent on loan from God.
Great to have you here.
And we'll get to your calls later in this hour.
Telephone number is 800 282-2882 in the email address L Rushmow at EAIBNet.com.
I think what's called for ladies and gentlemen, a brief history of pensions.
It was General Motors and the United Auto Workers who started the first pension plan in the U.S. There were some railroad workers who had them prior prior to that.
But the main concept, the big time pension concept, started with UAW and General Motors.
Why?
Simple reason.
Before World War II, there were very few pensions.
As I say, mostly railroads.
But pensions like healthcare were offered by companies like General Motors during World War II to attract better employees.
And this happened because of FDR's wage freeze.
So there was a freeze on wages, which meant by definition you couldn't pay people more than X, but yet you needed to attract good employees.
So a way was devised to exceed FDR's wage freeze.
And that was health care benefits and pensions.
They had no other way to compete.
Now, the reason wage controls and price controls never work is, And I love this example.
Back in 1972, Richard Nixon, when we had, I think 3% inflation.
Some says it was not bad at all.
But we were in the middle of a you know faux oil embargo.
Instituted wage and price controls.
Yet when you went to the grocery store, things still seemed to cost more.
And the way that happened was very simple.
The butcher would simply devise in the meat counter a new cut that came into existence after the price control was placed on beef.
And he can price it whatever he wanted.
It was new and not subject to the wage or to the price control until the price was established.
So just to pick one, the bone in ribeye.
I have no idea if that existed before Nixon or not.
But the bone in ribs, just say it's say it had not existed, the bone in ribeye.
Obviously, they did the butcher makes uh new cut, the bone and ribeye, and charges export.
And that is how the butcher in a meat market at a supermarket got around the price controls.
Similarly, when it came to wages.
Hello, stock options, hello, pension plans, hello, health care benefits, hello, all of that stuff.
Government attempting to control always runs up against creative entrepreneurs who will find ways around it.
So FDR institutes a wage freeze.
And in World War II, companies that need qualified workers start to offer attractive employment packages to get good qualified people, and so they started attracting them with pensions and health care benefits.
And I think, folks, that the pension General Motors history is a good point to reiterate because most people don't realize what a new idea public pensions are.
It's just since World War II, when the country and U.S. businesses were flush.
They had very little competition.
Now in 1980, there were approximately 250,000 qualified defined benefit pension plans covered by the pension benefit guarantee corporation.
By 2005, there are now less than two 80,000, less than 80,000 qualified plans.
So in 25 years, we've gone from 250,000 qualified defined benefit pension plans to less than 80,000 qualified defined pension plans.
I don't, God knows how many there are now.
It's going to be less than 80,000 now because 2005 is six years ago.
And probably most of them are union or public sector union pension plans.
And that's how all this got started.
Price controls and wage controls.
Pure and simple.
Brett Baer on Fox just announced that we had this last week that Obama is going to present his jobs plan piecemeal in a number of different speeches.
that the speech on Thursday night, prior to the football game, is not going to be the whole ball of wax.
He's going to roll it out piecemeal.
So whatever you're looking for on Thursday night, it isn't going to be big.
It's not going to be overwhelming.
It's not, it's, it's not going to be anything earth-shattering, and it isn't going to be anything new.
Because it's not a jobs speech Thursday night.
It is a campaign speech before a joint session of Congress.
And as such, if I remember Congress, I wouldn't show up.
I'd go to my football party.
If these people are exciting enough to have football parties or friends that uh that have them.
Health care benefits came out of price controls.
It's a perfect example of unintended consequences.
Health care benefits and pensions coming out of price controls and wage controls is a great example of unintended consequences.
And then they just they just caught on, and then once they caught on, it became clear what they were.
Money laundering schemes.
Simply a way for the Democrat Party to engineer money, circuitously ending up back under its control.
The way that works is quite simple.
Let's go back to Wisconsin.
Citizen A pays taxes from work he does in the private sector.
Some of those taxes are state taxes.
Those taxes, combined with the taxes of other citizens in Wisconsin, pay the salaries of state workers in Wisconsin.
Those state workers are members of unions.
As such, they pay dues.
So tax revenue from citizens in Wisconsin ends up as union dues, which end up back at the Democrat Party.
Thank you.
Money laundering operation.
Pure and simple.
I mean, how much money do you think union dues goes to the Republicans?
And that takes us to the first Obama stimulus.
Who got the money?
Obama is now even laughing about the fact that there weren't that many private sector shovel-ready jobs.
The people that got the money in the stimulus plan were primarily women who worked for state and local governments.
That's who got the money.
So that they would not be laid off during the recession.
And the reason it was important may not be laid off is because they paid dues.
They're union members.
So the stimulus plan was a slush fund whose ultimate purpose was to see that the $787 billion that was spent was largely returned to the Democrat Party.
and then spread out among various candidates from Obama on down to whoever qualified for it based on their ranking within the Democrat Party.
There wasn't any private sector job creation with Obama's stimulus.
There was simply saving state jobs.
Now that stimulus money is gone.
It's been spent and there have been now layoffs.
You see what happened in Wisconsin.
The stimulus money ran out, and look what a new Republican governor had to go and say, you know, we don't have any money here, and we're going to have to make some changes here in collective bargaining.
The Ponzi scheme had finally dried up.
And it's going to happen in other states in time.
Hence Obama's jobs speech Thursday requesting another stimulus, which will be another money laundering operation intended for Democrat re-election campaign funds.
It will not be about private sector job creation.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, it is not possible for the government to take a dollar out of the private sector and grow it at the same time.
Simply, the math doesn't work.
Let's use some numbers.
Let's say the private sector in this country is, let's make it easy, $10,000.
That's the total amount of money in the private sector.
Obama comes along and says, well, we need to create jobs.
We need more jobs in the private sector.
So we're going to spend $2,000.
We're going to inject $2,000 in the private sector.
Okay, where are they going to get the $2,000?
The government doesn't produce anything.
The government doesn't have any money.
In order to get the $2,000 to put to the private sector, they have to take it from the private sector.
Or they have to print it, or they have to borrow it.
All of which takes money out of the private sector.
I don't care how they get their money, it comes out of the private sector.
Government ends up growing, the private sector shrinks, unemployment goes up, the $10,000 that was the private sector now becomes eight.
And they want to redistribute that, claim they redistribute it to the people who are more deserving of it than others.
It is one giant scam.
You simply cannot, even in redistribution, and the goal to be fair, you can't take one dollar out of the private sector.
And after you've taken it, then give it to somebody else in the private sector and say that you've grown the economy.
Nothing's changed.
Just somebody else has the dollar you took out.
And if you give that dollar to somebody that's not working, then you are subsidizing unproductivity, and you are shrinking economic growth where people exist and want jobs, while at the same time expanding the size of government and its power.
All the while you claim to be creating jobs and caring about the little guy.
When in fact, all you're doing is shafting the little guy by taking opportunity away from him.
You want to raise taxes on the rich?
Be fair, fine.
Raise taxes on the rich.
What does that do?
Takes money away from them.
And where does it go?
It goes to government.
A lot of people think if you raise taxes on the rich, somehow it's going to end up with the poor.
But the poor are still poor after taxes go up on the rich.
It just never happens.
You take money out of the private sector, private sector gets smaller.
It doesn't grow, and therefore there are no jobs.
This is essentially what Barack Obama has done on purpose.
And that's what he's going to propose on Thursday is more of it.
On the theory that they just haven't spent enough yet.
But government spending.
Creating jobs is a mathematical and an actual metaphysical or physical, whichever impossibility.
It cannot happen.
The government doesn't start small businesses, it obstructs the creation of them.
And once they start up, it taxes them.
And makes it even harder for them to grow.
That is Barack Obama.
That is Keynesian, that's leftism, socialism, whatever you want to call it.
Doesn't work.
And all the while Obama is going to speak to make you think that what is it what his desire is for your economic circumstances in your community throughout the private sector to improve while he is actually shrinking it.
As our buddy at Reuters, James Pethkukas points out, if the payroll numbers were the same today as they were when Obama took office, the unemployment number would be eleven point two percent, meaning the universe of jobs in the private sector has actually shrunk.
By design.
When you take money out of the private sector, that's all that can happen.
Thank you.
There just are fewer jobs to be had.
They've been destroyed.
Now, on top of that, you throw all these pensions and lifetime health care benefits.
And you get total destruction, which is where we are.
Maybe Obama does not want to end this recession.
Some say that FDR purposefully prolonged the Great Depression to get his socialist agenda pushed through.
I would not doubt Obama is doing the same thing.
We don't we don't we don't have a guy who loves this country the way you and I do.
He's got chip on his shoulder about this country.
Needs a continued crisis.
He needs a never ending crisis to be able to push through these bits of legislation, otherwise very unpopular.
Brief timeout.
Sit tight, folks.
Your phone calls are coming next after.
Let's go to Detroit.
This is Kathleen.
Great to have you on the program.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
It was definitely worth the way.
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to let you know what our union leadership's response was to Mr. Hoff's remarks yesterday here in Detroit.
I listened to your program on WJR here in Detroit in the morning.
Yes.
And in the morning, Paul W. Smith is our morning host, and he was interviewing uh UAW President Bob King.
And about halfway through the interview, they were talking about Mr. Hoffa's uh remarks, and uh Mr. King's response initially was that, oh, he was just merely expressing his frustration with the current labor situation.
And when Paul pressed him further and said, Come on, really, you know, taking the SOBs out, uh Mr. King laughed.
I I I was stunned.
He laughed, and then um he was a little tongue-tied and said uh fumbled a bit and said, Well, I just can't comment on the words that he chose to really great guy in the world.
They love it when they tick us off.
They love it when they think they've gotten under our skin.
That's what he didn't want to betray.
Yeah, well.
But they love it.
It's embarrassing for I mean, I have a lot of friends and family who are union members, you know, albeit reluctantly in some cases, but they should be embarrassed that their leadership didn't uh come back out and and somehow um rebuke those words.
Yeah, it's not gonna happen.
In fact, Hoffa has refused to apologize.
He he told uh some leftist stooge site that he'd say the exact same words all over again.
Well, it it was embarrassing.
He was just he just chuckled at him like he was an incorrigible child, and and that's pretty embarrassing.
It's our culture today.
This is our culture today.
This is not this is not something anybody Well, a lot of people don't think this is over the top.
That's nothing.
Besides he was talking about Republicans.
What's wrong with that?
They are a bunch SOBs.
That's what the left thinks.
So don't expect an apology.
And that laughter, that's the closest thing to the truth you were gonna get from the guy.
Yes, we're back.
El Rushbo serving humanity on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Sunday morning on ABC's This Week, the host, Christiana Manpoor, interviewed Senator Jim DeMint.
South Carolina.
And she said, talking about fiscal issues.
President Obama's going to be making a big speech towards a joint session of Congress this week.
Do you expect him to make any proposals that will win Republican support?
I'm frankly very tired of speeches.
I don't want to be disrespectful to the president, but what I want to see is something in writing, and that the Congressional Budget Office tells us what it's going to cost so that we can not only read it ourselves, but the American people can read it.
If he'll send a written proposal, I'll give it every uh a chance.
And but I'm not interested in his speech right now.
And as a congressional budget office said we can't score a speech.
We can't tell him what it's going to cost or what it's gonna do.
As Senator Dement knows this is not intended to be a jobs program anyway.
It's nothing more than uh a speech.
And it's not intended to be scored.
Uh it's it's it's just gonna be an attack on the Republicans as obstructionists.
I mean, this is the uh you you can't score a speech, is precisely the point.
There's nothing Obama can be held accountable to here in a speech.
If platitudinous ideas present all these grandiose plans with no specifics, then the Republicans object to it, and he's got his campaign.
It's exactly what's going on here.
Dement knows it.
The Republicans know it.
Here's Paul Krugman.
He was on also the the round table of this week.
He's the uh the ferret-like uh columnist of the New York Times.
And uh he was asked by Christiana Manpore.
President has a major task this week.
You got unemployment still at 9.1%, and uh job growth last month was zero.
What we should be doing is a huge public investment program.
No better time to do it.
Government can borrow money almost for free, lots of unemployed workers.
What can actually pass Congress?
And the answer is nothing.
If Obama's called for endorsing motherhood, uh, the Republicans in the House would oppose it.
He probably shouldn't calling for what I would want, because the public should want what I want, but it doesn't.
So he probably should be calling for things like a limited but significant program of infrastructure repair, things that we really need, plus things that Michael Large Payroll tax cut.
Probably should be calling for what I would want, because the public should want what I want, but it doesn't.
Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist.
More stimulus spending, but that's the idea that's what you hear from all these Maxine Waters wants another trillion.
Maxine Waters wants another trillion dollars.
Here's Tom Friedman.
He was on Meet the Press, Thomas uh Loopy Friedman.
And uh David Gregory was asking him about Sarah Palin.
She was in Iowa over the weekend, dropping hints and making speeches.
Will she run Tom Friedman?
There's still a great deal of interest in Sarah Palin as this political force in the middle of this huge conversation that we're trying to have.
Well, to me personally, that's a sign of the apocalypse.
You know, because this woman, everything I hear from her, is has nothing to do with what we argue in our book, the long-term trends of where our country's at.
There is no short-term solution.
It's not just getting rid of Obama.
Oh, yes, it is.
Oh, yes, it is.
It is just getting rid of Obama.
I mean, and that's that's not it in total, but boy, what a major step.
That would be.
There's nothing we can do in the short term.
Long term trends.
There's no short term solution.
So why do anything?
Why do anything at all?
Simple truth is we will not solve our country's unemployment problem until Barack Obama himself is unemployed.
That simple, folks.
Speaking of Palin, here she is in Manchester, New Hampshire at a T. Uh New Hampshire Tea Party rally.
You've already withstood the wrath and the disdain and the lies from the media and the permanent political class looking down on us, mocking us, making things up about us, telling us to go to hell.
You've already withstood that.
We're still standing, right?
You're here today, standing strong, committed to restoring all that's good about America.
It's with a still spine that you are still standing.
You're here today, standing tall because you know what is at stake, and it's our children's future that is at stake.
Tormenting the media, Sarah Palin.
Who to Thomas Loopy Friedman represents the apocalypse?
Because she won't go away.
And she continued.
We need to hear from those who can do more than just talk, because we tried that, didn't we, voters?
Been there and done that with a candidate who can just talk, but doesn't have any kind of record of accomplishment and success, successfully reforming those things that are wrong.
What we need is we need people with a proven record of reform and who are willing to take on the tough challenges to run into danger, if you will, not run away from it.
We need a pro-growth agenda.
I appreciate your encouragement.
I do.
They hate it.
They hate that when they hear run Sarah run.
They hate it.
They despise the Tea Party still being optimistic and uplifting.
And here is uh J.R. Providence, Rhode Island.
J.R., great to have you on the program.
Welcome.
Mega Ditto's Rush from the People's Republic of Rhode Island.
I have been there, sir, many, many times.
Great, great.
Well, I'm a longtime listener, first time caller.
Great to have you here.
Thank you.
Uh the question I have is, and and this is I've got to give it a just a hair background.
Um my business is selling in marketing to the very small businesses and medium-sized businesses that everyone's looking to for job creation.
I visit a lot of them every week.
What I've seen over the past two and a half, three years, is a general ambivalence about Obama.
Because you know, business owners, they're busy running their business, they tend to be mostly apolitical, but then they saw the porculus bill, uh, they saw the demonization of various business industries, uh, they saw Obamna care, you know, just absolutely being rushed through.
What I see in their eyes now is absolute fear.
They have no faith in this guy.
They think he's against them.
Uh you know, the only way they will start hiring again and and spending again is when Obama's gone.
Yeah.
And my question to you is, isn't that the message that, you know, conservatives, Republicans should be pushing along that you're not going to get over this until you get rid of him?
Well, I think they are.
Um I think that's why they're running against him is to get rid of him.
I don't see polls about the business community and their thinking, you know, small business owners.
I haven't seen a single political poll asking, you know, uh a true scientific one, seeing where they stand on things, because that would cement home the message.
Um there probably are those polls.
They just know the results just don't fit the template, so they're not gonna be reported.
But you're I mean, I the you you're you're right.
I mean, these these people are clearly aware.
I mean, small businesses in Obama's world are the millionaires and billionaires that he wants to punish.
That's when he talks about millionaires and billionaires, that's what he's talking about, folks, small business owners.
Uh and and don't forget now, we have the story last week.
The number of millionaires is vanishing.
Down 39%.
And now let's say you're sharing that, okay?
You're all right.
Are you better off?
Are you better off?
Some millionaires no longer a millionaire.
You did you um get the money the millionaire lost?
Same thing for people to make ten million dollars a year or more, they're way down too in the last three years.
Did you get the money those people uh lost?
Somehow your life better off because they lost a lot of money.
You're not.
You're not actively better off.
If you're feeling better, more power to you, but your life's no better.
But that's what the Democrats want.
The Democrats want you to really be happy that other people are getting shafted.
That's what they want.
Anyway, I've got to take a break here, folks.
Sit tight.
We got much more straight ahead right after this.
CNN, I've got I've got this uh story here in the stack.
CNN.
Number of businesses approved to accept food stamps grew by a third from 2005 to 2010.
This is in USA Today.
Vendors from convenience and dollar discount stores to gas stations and pharmacies increasingly join the growing entitlement program.
And now it includes retailer, restaurants and other retailers.
Restaurants are being pushed to accept food stamps.
I'd like, can you tip with food stamps?
You know, I I I might be tempted here to um go out and join the food stamp program myself if you can tip with them.
Oh, they're not stamps.
But you can still, well, you can still tip with the debit card, right?
You could do with the food stamp debit card, you can still use it for tipping.
I gotta get one.
I mean, they're pushing this stuff all over the place.
All you people with pensions out there that we're paying for.
It's about time you paid me for something.
I'm just kidding, of course, but uh it is the case.
Food stamps are being encouraged.
Food stamp use encouraged at non-food retail outlets and at restaurants.
Keith in Cookville, Tennessee.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you for uh taking my call, and uh I'm a first-time caller.
And my question is is flash of the Republicans go and sit in front of the president and show him the respect his office deserves when he won't show them the respect their office deserves and repudiate and rebuke Hoffa for his comedy.
Well, I know you meant that the joint session speech on Thursday night.
Yes, I do.
Yeah.
I think Jim DeMint's not gonna go.
I think there's like eighty-five other people who are Tea Party Republicans who have been insulted and degraded by those communists.
It was an insult.
It was you know, it was a constitutional insult, too.
The way these things normally happen, the White House consults with the Speaker of the House, they come up with a mutually agreed to date for the president to come up and do a joint session.
Obama just chose this date, and they claim it was pure coincidence it happened to be the night of a Republican debate, said uh said Jay Carney.
Oh, speaking of which, I heard today, and I I think this is true.
I heard that Jay Carney's White House briefings have been moved to three o'clock.
I think I think I was told that.
You know, Republicans will be lucky if Obama doesn't call them names during this speech.
The whole purpose of this speech is for Obama to ream the Republicans as obstructionist.
You know, I haven't bothered you with them, but I've got Obama sound bites from the Hoffa thing yesterday.
And he was on a roll, boy.
He was out there ripping into Republicans left and right and how they're obstructionists, and uh, we're gonna find out who's in this for who.
We're gonna find out what Republicans are willing to work with me on putting Americans back to work, uh and uh and all that.
Uh I I I think he probably will call them names or insult them somehow, or I don't maybe not insult him, but he'll uh he'll provoke them.
And it's all it's all going to backfire.
Because the American people are also not just Jim Dement.
The American people are tired of Obama speeches.
Speeches don't accomplish anything.
The Greek columns, the full stadiums, those days, all the Halcyon days, the Grant Park on the night of the election, those days are gone.
Obama doesn't have that mesmerizing messianic control over people anymore.
People are tired of the monotone, the teleprompter reading.
All this stuff is counterproductive for him.
Okay, just today, I think just today, uh Jay Carney moving the um press briefing of three o'clock.
Just today.
I don't know about you folks, but I'm I'm starting to get Obama burn-in on my flat screen.
You know what?
He's on so damn much that there's this, there's this image of Obama on the screen all the time.
Started to tick me off.
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