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Dec. 11, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:19
December 11, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying because we are willing folks to dig deep to the truth, and we are not afraid of proclaiming it, talking about it, and discussing it.
Happy to have you here.
Telephone number 800 282-2882, the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am not trying to depress you.
I am simply addressing circumstances as they exist.
This stuff can be beaten back.
It is being beaten back in the States.
Look at Wisconsin, now look at Michigan.
Right to work laws.
The unions are on the ropes.
And in Michigan, it's going to play out just like it did in Wisconsin.
The unions are organizing, they're rabble rousing, they're threatening, they're doing everything they can to upset the Apple cart, threatening violence just like happened in Wisconsin.
The teachers are taking a day off to join the picket line, but the states is where liberalism is being defeated.
The states, some of them, is where capitalism is showing the benefits, such as the Dakotas and oil.
Now Obama may be a cult figure.
I don't know.
It may be that without Obama, the left wouldn't be winning all of their winning.
Without Obama, we might, without the first black president and that aspect of the presidency, all this may not be happening.
Your average ordinary Democrat candidate, none of this may have happened.
We don't know that.
I don't care at the moment.
The fact is it is happening, and the solution to it is beating liberalism.
Not just Democrats, although they're one and the same.
That's the solution to this.
It's a monumental task, but it's certainly going to be easier to do that than to take 50 years and fix the education system, which we've got to get started on anyway as well.
But the evidence that this doesn't work is all around us.
Now many of us thought that four years of it would have been enough to convince people I didn't want any more of it.
That didn't happen.
But there are probably reasons for that too.
And I mentioned my buddy Pete Wayner and his piece at Commentary Magazine.
Pete, one of my favorite contributors at Commentary, and he has a piece, What if Conservatives Have Lost the Argument?
Now I'm not that defeat and I'm not going to share with you Pete's whole piece.
You can read it if if you uh if you want.
He starts out talking about the debate over the fiscal cliff, how important it is, and does it mean that that we've lost the argument?
Do people really believe that raising taxes on the rich is the way to go?
Do people really believe that tax cuts for the rich caused all this?
Let me tell you something.
It's about time people started asking this question.
But let me tell you what I think the real question is.
It's not what if conservatives have lost the argument.
The question is when did conservatives make the argument?
No, I don't mean me.
We make the argument and answer the questions every day here.
But I'm not a political party and I'm not seeking office.
The recent presidential campaign.
When was the conservative argument made?
Pete's column asks several questions.
He doesn't offer any answers.
The fiscal cliff debate has him puzzled.
And this is evidence of the difficult position Republicans in Congress find themselves.
So his question is, what if conservatives have lost the argument?
But my question is, what did they do to make the argument?
When did they make the argument?
When did we offer a plan to buy the taxpayer vote?
That's what Obama did.
Obama is offering to buy the non-taxpayer vote.
When have we made a pitch to them?
Seriously.
We just assumed that everybody wouldn't want any more of this wretched economy and would throw the incumbents out.
We just assumed that a competent manager would be infinitely preferred To this disaster.
That wasn't the case.
Conservatism didn't make the argument.
And in fact, conservatism needs to first start in correcting all of the misconceptions about it out there everywhere.
This here's a good illustration of what's going on in Michigan.
Bob Beckle on the five yesterday, talking about the Michigan right to work flap.
He said, these non-union scabs, we can't have that.
We can't have people joining the union without paying the dues.
That means they're getting the benefit without paying the dues.
Hey, Bob.
You know what that's like?
As like the 47% who don't pay income taxes but get the benefits.
What's the difference, Bob?
On the one hand, we're supposedly out of bounds in talking about that, but you are totally permitted to raise this question about people in uh in union jobs that don't pay dues.
What about the 47% that aren't paying any income taxes that are getting benefit after benefit after benefit?
Their votes are being bought countless times every election, Bob.
Nobody has any problem with that.
On your side.
When did conservatives aggressively argue that tax cuts increase revenue?
You know, Obama's out there arguing that tax cuts cause the depression.
Tax cuts cause the recession.
Tax cuts cost you your job.
We didn't defend tax cuts.
We didn't defend them at all.
We can't say that the whole premise of tax cuts lost.
It wasn't on the table.
Even Romney made it clear that he wasn't gonna cut the taxes of the highest earners.
The Republicans have been giving away their identity uh identity year after year after year.
So the old analogy I gave you yesterday about old Coke and Coke classic and new Coke.
Koch figured out their mistake and went back to the classic.
We haven't gone back to classic.
We continue to try to be more like these guys.
When was the last time the nominee of the party forcefully made the case for lower tax rates?
When is the last time the nominee of the party or the party chairman or any high profile elected Republican made the case for lower tax rates, increasing jobs, and increasing revenue and helping to reduce the debt?
You gotta buy the votes of taxpayers the same way Obama buys the votes of non-taxpayers.
Obama gets it.
It works, and it worked for Reagan.
He never shied away from the argument that he didn't, and he didn't lose it.
Why not brag about how much money taxpayers will save?
Why not brag about the great things about our philosophy economically, morally, you name it.
Why not brag about it?
They don't have anybody that's willing to do that.
They all act ashamed of it or defensive about it.
Look at Obama's pitch in 2008.
95% of Americans will get tax cuts.
He proudly said it, if elected.
Can you believe that a guy like Obama was allowed to win the tax cut argument in an election?
A neoclassic socialist wins the argument on tax cuts because our side's afraid to make the argument.
It's what happened.
That was part of Obama's pitch in 2008.
95% of Americans will get tax cuts.
The other half of it was the rest of you are gonna get soaked.
The rest of you are gonna pay through the nose because you've had an unfair benefit the rest of the whole time since this country was founded, and his time America got paid back.
And part of my recipe for payback is your taxes are going up and these poor victims, 95% of this country is a bunch of victims taken advantage of.
Their resources stolen by you, the rich.
Not only am I gonna take what you've got, I'm gonna lower their taxes.
That's an instant sell, folks.
That is an instant benefit.
And Obama's following through now.
And he's doing everything he can to make the Republican Party concede, confess that tax cuts for the rich caused all of these problems.
Obama's tax plan is a joke.
That people bought it.
So I don't I don't accept for a moment that conservatives have lost the argument.
I don't think the argument has been made.
Not by the party.
Yes, I make it every day here, and some people on Fox and other talk show hosts and the blogs, yes.
But none of us get votes.
Nobody's voting for or against us.
We're not in that game.
And how do we tell people to go vote for candidate X when candidate X refuses to sound like we do?
When candidate X is relying on us to make the case for him so he doesn't have to, so he can then benefit because somebody's saying it.
He's gonna have to say it.
She's gonna have to say it.
Whoever the candidate is is gonna have to make the case.
And they haven't been.
That's why I don't think conservatism's losing.
The only way you can say conservatism's losing is in the sense the Republican Party is afraid to use it.
Now there's some conservatives in the party, but I'm talking about party identification.
This party's doing everything it can to make itself look like it's squishy, moderate, center, uncontroversial, not gonna rock the boat in favor of whatever you want whenever you want it, except we can't outdo the Democrats on any of that.
So we're always gonna be light, L I T E, whatever.
Tax light, welfare light, we're always gonna be the pretenders because that's not who the Republican Party really is.
I gotta take a brief time out.
We're gonna come back.
We'll get your phone calls in on this as we keep rolling on.
The EIB Network continues after this.
The EIB Network Okay, back we are into the phones we go.
As promised in Vero Beach, Florida, this is Neil.
Neil, thanks for calling, and I appreciate your waiting.
Hi.
Rush, I appreciate your time and effort and uh first time caller.
I just wanted to say that um God's blessed your mind, and I appreciate your points of view.
Um I often use your monologues as ammunition um to defend conservative ideas against my liberal friends.
I just wanted to comment on um the Van Jones soundbite you played earlier.
Yeah.
And about his idea of paying America back.
Um, I think Obama has that same idea too, that we need to pay America back, and what I think that he has wrong is that it's his idea that the government is America and not the people.
But um, if anything, you're America, you are America.
The people who live, work, and breathe in America are what makes America America.
Where did you where did you get that idea?
Uh who taught you that?
Um, my parents, my conservative friends, you as a matter of fact.
Yeah, I know.
Being facetious.
Um, you're right.
Van Jones is only parroting Obama.
Van Jones is not the original thinker here.
Obama is.
Obama's the guy who's got like-minded people in these positions.
It's Obama who thinks it's time to pay America back.
And you're right, by America, he means the government.
The government is the command and control central authority.
The government is America, not the people.
You're exactly right.
That's a great way to uh to explain it to people.
Now, let me find this uh this ML piece.
Here it is.
In fact, we've got the sound bites if I can find them.
What's the number of Mike?
Do you happen to know off the top of your head what five and six?
Is it or just five?
Of all pages to have on the bottom.
Here's Jeffrey Immelt.
He was on Charlie Rose last night.
Uh, He's the GE CEO.
Charlie Rose said, like America, China is changing.
The growth rate has gone from double digits to right around 8%.
What does that mean for China?
What does it mean for the U.S.?
And should it change expectations?
State-run communism may not be your cup of tea, but their government works.
You know, they get things done.
They have five-year plans.
I always tell our team, read the 12th five-year plan, which is the segment we're in.
Typically, what they're doing makes sense in the Chinese context.
That's what they're doing now.
You know, the new president comes in, Mr. Xi comes in, he's got an agenda, and they're driving environment, they're driving company reform, they're driving more consumerism that are the right things.
You hear that admiration.
This is the CEO of General Electric who's speaking in admiring terms about a communist government.
Now, this 12th five-year plan, you ought to, you want to read a five-year, go read the second one.
Go read Mao's second five-year plan.
That's where 36 to 40 million Chinese were starved to death on purpose.
Have you ever noticed in every communist country's history there is mass killing?
There's famine, there is pestilence disease, there is mass death in every Chinese or in every communist country's history.
That is always denied by the intelligentsia in our country.
But nevertheless, it exists.
So you say, okay, well, why does the GE CEO sound so enraptured with a communist government?
What would you say is the answer to that, Snerdly?
It's partly money, of course, maybe money at the top, but it's also control.
You see, he gets things done.
Charlie Rose, they get things done.
They've got five-year plans.
Their government works.
They just dictate stuff and it happens.
They don't have this messy democracy.
You have to get votes and support.
You don't have opposition.
You don't have to negotiate with anybody.
You just go do it.
You just decree that it be done and it is done.
Whatever you want.
You know, we'll take out the competition for you.
If the Chicoms want to do business with General Electric, ML can say fine, but we want to be the only ones.
Chicom say fine, cool.
And they'll take everybody else out for him.
And he doesn't have to beat them in competition.
He's got a government wiping out his competition for him, if that's what he wants.
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, longs for this too.
Thomas L. Friedman, every other day, it seems in the New York Times, writes pieces longing for the kind of government in this country that they have in China.
A small group of really intelligent people making decisions on the fly without any delays, without any without even roadblocks, the right decisions for the right people at the right time.
And they long for it.
It's no different than why actors and Hollywood types and leftists in general love for the El Castro.
They are envious of his power.
They're envious of the command and control.
Having opposition, who needs that?
Having to negotiate with a bunch of idiots?
Who needs that?
Having to deal with a bunch of Republicans who are going to point out when you aren't paying any income taxes on five billion dollars worth of earnings.
Who needs that?
So Charlie Rose said, well, look, if you say to Obama, here's what I would do if I was you, and it's valuable to the president, Jeffrey, hearing that from you, because he knows that you are giving it the most crucial analysis because it affects you directly, right?
You know, and people are never going to believe this, Charlie.
But you know, believe it or not, the 25 people that worked on the job council weren't there selling their own book of business.
You know, they were there legitimately trying to help the country.
And that's kind of like it is possible to be a global CEO and still love your country.
And I can manage that paradox okay.
It's not always easy, but I can manage that paradox.
Yeah, it's It's still possible to be a global CEO.
CEO still love your country.
But those of us on the jobs council, we we weren't there trying to sell our own book of business.
We were generally trying to help help the country.
Okay, you had I don't think Obama has met with this much since January.
It's either January or July, the last time Obama met with his jobs counsel.
But a jobs counsel.
If you need a jobs counsel, you're defeated already.
If you're the president of the United States of this country and you need a jobs council, you need a jobs czar.
What you are admitting is that everything comes from government.
You want somebody to tell you how government can create jobs.
And of course, that's not how jobs get created in this country, or not how they were created in this country.
So here we are longing for the command and control of a communist system.
Hey, it works for them.
Obama loves the ChICOMs too.
Obama thinks they snap their fingers and they get a brand new airport built.
Snap their fingers and all kinds of global warming regulations are agreed to and met.
Just snap their fingers and everything good happens.
It's magic.
Communism, command and control.
When you're ahead of the command and control, why it's just great.
And that's what these guys all aspire to.
Hi, how are you?
El Rushbo, having more fun than a human being, should be allowed to have.
We have breaking news from the National Football League.
The ex-commissioner Paul Tangleyaboo has vacated all player discipline in the New Orleans Saints bounty case.
CBS Sports is reporting that the former commissioner has affirmed Roger Goodell's findings in the Saints Bounty case.
Said, yep, there was a bounty program.
Yep, what Goodell's investigation found was indeed happening, but in a stunning turn of events, the ex-commissioner Tagliabu has vacated all player discipline.
Tagliaboo's bounty ruling was announced by the NFL and the former commissioner filling in for Goodell after the current commission accused himself from the appeal hearings.
He decided that while Goodell's findings were factually accurate, the entire case was contaminated by the Saints organization.
Now, for those of you in real end of vacated means nobody's going on vacation here.
It means that it's annulled and made legally void.
Now what does this do to the coach?
Sean Payton been on the beach all year in Dallas.
What does it do to him?
I haven't seen anything on that yet.
Or the defensive coach, Greg Williams, who was at the helm of all the bounty stuff.
But all of the player discipline in the Saints Bounty case has now been vacated.
Here's Tom in South Bend, Indiana.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB network.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, it's an honor to speak with you.
I've been listening since I was 15 years old.
Thank you very much, sir.
Appreciate it.
I am uh 22 years old.
I'm married.
I have two wonderful uh children, young children.
I'm uh manager at a national fast food chain and uh very famous chain.
I wanted to let you and your listeners know we have a policy concerning Obamacare.
We had to deal with the mandate that uh anyone who's a full-time employee, which is now defined as I think 32 or 35 hours a week, is uh you're required to give them health insurance.
Well, at a fast food chain, we just can't afford to do that for every sixteen, seventeen, you know, eighteen, nineteen year old who comes in for a minimum wage job, we simply can't afford.
And that's really that's not a surprise to anybody.
I mean, this was expected to happen.
Yes, that's right, and that's what they've uh voted for.
This is the great compassion from the liberal side.
But what all their compassion's gonna get us in the end, and this is one for your jobs, everyone's hours are gonna get cut to under thirty hours a week.
So basically you're gonna be making around a hundred and fifty bucks a week at the end of the day.
So anyone who's trying to support their family on a hundred and fifty bucks a week, uh, they can go thank the liberal compassionate uh you know Obama administration for that one.
Well this is gonna be this is going to be interesting to see if in fact Obama gets blamed for this.
I know I know it's Obamacare, but I if I I just want to warn you, I just want to warn you what's gonna happen.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services and the President of the United States, the vice president, are not gonna just sit there and let your fast food chain blame them for people losing their health care and maybe their jobs.
It's going to be your fault.
Call the pizza uh Papa John's Pizza Guy by if you want to find out what's gonna happen.
Oh, our employees are already blaming us.
We're letting them know then letting you know, and they say you're gonna try to blame it on Obama.
No, no, it's not us.
And they're gonna say, why do you have to make so much profit anyway?
What's more important?
Profit or my family, profit or my health care, profit or my job.
You don't care about me.
I'm just a piece of meat to you.
You throw me away so you can protect your profit.
Obama's right.
You're worthless pieces of trash here.
That's what they're gonna say about you.
It'll be interesting to say when see when they go to uh other places and find that this isn't just happening at our chain, this is happening everywhere in the entire country.
Exactly right.
And that's because American big business is immoral and cares only about itself.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
American small business cares only about itself.
They don't care about the employees.
Obama's told you that, and this is gonna prove it.
They've never cared about you.
You're the manager, you're set, you've got yours.
It's easy.
You flay people off, you fire people, tell them you don't have the money for the health care, and they're gonna say, why don't you give yours up too, buddy?
You're gonna I that's how it's gonna play out.
I Obama's not gonna get the blame for this.
Yeah, and this is exactly how they win the culture war, Rush, because you know, now that he's just feeding them out of his hand because he told them we were evil and we didn't care about them.
So now everything he was right from the beginning.
He knew it.
So guess what happens?
These people that are now gonna lose their health care or not get it because of the cutbacks and changes at your company.
Guess what?
The federal government's gonna magically have a policy for them.
Somehow, someway, Obama will be seen as the savior.
You have dastardly and mean spiritedly, extremely cut them off.
You've reduced their wages, you've taken them off the health care plan, you've closed down, but management still has theirs, and ownership still has theirs.
And the government will find a way to come to the rescue uh for for these people.
But not immediately.
I mean, Obama wants the chaos and the pain.
He he wants a little bit of this blaming you and your company to go on.
And if you don't believe me on that, ask anybody who worked at AIG what happened.
So I, you know, you're you um you're you're sitting out there and and you're making the mistake a lot of people make.
That facts matter.
That truth is undeniable.
The fact of the matter is this is only happening because of Obamacare.
This is only happening because of Barack Obama.
This is only happening because the Democrat Party has instituted new policies that you can't possibly afford.
But you're a small business or a big business.
You can afford anything.
You're rolling in money.
It's all going into your back pocket, into your big house, your second car, whatever.
They see the trappings of your wealth or your company CEO's wealth or whatever.
Uh I've seen this.
I've seen it's it's we're in the middle of it happening now.
I'm not trying to scare you, I'm trying to prepare you.
Yeah, the the funny thing is we were on the verge of expanding before this Obamacare stuff came down.
Yeah.
We uh, you know, it was the let me just tell you uh how the first time our company ha stock has ever lost money in the history of our company uh has been in this quarter.
Well, then you deserve to.
It's payback time.
You deserve to it.
You deserve to lose it.
Everybody else is losing.
Why shouldn't you?
Well, we didn't build this.
This is only because of the roads and bridges.
You didn't build it.
I'll tell you what's good.
The hosts at MSNBC are going to start steering people to your restaurants to raise hell.
Um the unions, any number of people are going to start using these circumstances to create a little chaos and uh a little commotion out of all them.
I know.
At the end of the day, they're still going to end up with less money and no health care.
In an old world, yeah, it would count for something.
But they will be able to vent that anger at having less money and no health care at the people they think are responsible for it.
And they'll be made to feel better by unloading on the people they think are responsible for it.
This is it's it's a it's a it's a dastardly thing.
Look at this.
Look along the same line.
Thanks for the uh thanks for for the call, um, Tom, I appreciate it.
Last month, environmentalists cheered as California launched a cap and trade program.
But talks of a federal carbon tax raised concerns about double taxation.
San Francisco Chronicle reports that while the chances of a federal tax on carbon emissions being adopted are still remote.
California state officials are worried enough to have started discussing the prospect.
Yeah, we're aware that it's a possibility, and uh, we've been considering it uh as of late, said Stanley Young of the California Air Resources Board.
We want to make sure the California companies continue to transition into the program without any sort of disadvantage.
We promote the possibility to federal government addressing climate change.
We're all for that.
And on our part, we're prepared to align our program in a way that allows California to move forward.
Now, one potential solution would be for Congress to exempt California companies that already participate in the state cap and trade program from a carbon tax.
California officials have indicated that they could tweak their system to harmonize it with a possible federal tax.
So California's passed carbon tax.
The feds are thinking about it.
If the feds do, this leads to double taxation in California.
State and federal carbon taxes.
Now, California just voted to raise taxes on itself with Proposition 30.
Some Californians, more than you would expect, are going to be paying a total of 53% in just income taxes, state and federal.
Then the carbon taxes on top of that.
And then there is the Obamacare tax on top of that.
It's just the beginning.
None of these taxes have hit yet.
They're all going to hit next year.
Some of them starting on January 1st, some starting with the first paycheck of the new year.
And at that point, we'll have a bit better indication on what people thought they were voting for.
Also out of California.
The unemployment rate may be above 10.2%, and the state debt may be above 16 billion.
The state's GDP may be in serious trouble, and businesses may be leaving in droves because of higher tax rates.
But it isn't going to stop the gravy train for the state's poor and dispossessed.
The California Public Utilities Commission is all set to green light a new program that would give homeless and low-income people free cell phones.
An expansion of the Obama phone program.
So the California unemployment rate above 10.2, state debt 16 billion.
People leaving the state, taxes going up left and right, and the homeless and low income are going to be given free phones and free service.
The idea is to help them reach out to possible job opportunities and stay connected with family.
So we're gonna give California, not we California's gonna give the homeless free phones and free service so that they can apply for jobs and stay in touch with family.
Now why don't the homeless live with their families?
Maybe as a solution that would make them unhomeless.
You believe this?
You better, because this is it gonna give the homeless free phones and free service.
They can stay in touch with mom and dad.
And apply for jobs.
Really?
Really?
*music*
Shannon in Morgantown, West Virginia.
I'm glad you called.
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Oh, it's such an honor to talk to you.
Thank you for taking my call.
Uh I know you advertise or talk about Heritage Foundation, and every time you do, I just want to thank you for your program.
I believe it to be uh just as educational.
I've used it in homeschooling, all of my sons, and next semester in January, I start in the junior year of my fine my youngest son using your program daily.
Um your phone app in 247 has it's so nice.
I used to have to stay up at night, record your program, take notes, um, and teach my oldest two sons that way, you know, years ago, and now I just hand him my ass plug in the head buds.
He listens to what I listened to the night before when I'm at work, and uh your your program is it's very educational.
I use it for school, and thank you.
Well, you know, I appreciate that.
I'm I'm I'm I must say I am remiss in telling people all the tools that we've made available to people to access the program.
I just I can't get it.
It's 25 years and I I just can't get over the the notion of of hyping myself.
I just very uncomfortable doing it.
Well, I wanted to do that for you because every time every time I hear the Heritage Foundation, which is wonderful program, I hope to use that.
Um I mean, I yours is yours is wonderful and it's needed, and if people even just homeschooling would get that app, it's inexpensive.
I mean, we're not even middle income family, it's you've made it so inexpensive for us, and you've broken it up with transcripts so they can read and listen.
It's it's perfect for homeschooling.
I actually I could not have said it any better.
Uh, is go to the uh the app store.
Yeah, and and you get the app, just search for Rush Limbaugh at the app, also the newsletter app.
Yep.
That's something we've digitized the Limbaugh letter now.
Well, look our Shannon, I really appreciate that.
I can't, I can't thank you.
And if you made my day, I don't and I uh all I had to do is say, yeah, I don't have to hype myself.
She did it.
I appreciate it very much.
We'll be back, folks.
Don't go away.
Eric Schmidt, the chairman of the board of Google has declined Obama's offer to be Secretary of Business.
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