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Dec. 28, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:37
December 28, 2012, Friday, Hour #3
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Yeah, I was wrong.
I told you that Obama was going to lose.
Everything that I saw in twenty twelve pointed to the president losing.
The crowds in the waning stages of the campaign.
Romney was drawing crowds much larger than Obama.
The anecdotal evidence that you see in talking to people in the workplace, all the people in 2008 who were so inspired by Obama, none of that seemed to be there this time around.
Plus, you had, you know, 48 months in a row of eight percent unemployment, miserable growth rate, a federal budget deficit that exploded, a national debt that was terrifying people, a stimulus that didn't create any jobs, passage of an unpopular new health care mandate, everything I would have thought pointed toward Obama losing.
Plus, you had this thing in which it seemed as though the people who didn't support the president were passionately motivated to get him thrown out of office, whereas the supporters of the president just weren't there.
Yet Obama won.
And we've all been struggling to figure out what happened.
Was there something wrong with the Republican message?
Was there something wrong with the candidate?
Well, we've got a guy now, Mallory Factor, who's the author of a book named Shadow Bosses, who says there's another answer.
He says government unions are the reason Obama won.
He says that they went into key states, the swing states, with this incredible amount of money and this army of workers that were focused on identifying the president's supporters and getting them out to vote.
People who might otherwise not voted, who were apathetic, weren't inspired, they identified them, they stayed on them, and they made sure that they voted.
His book, as I said, is titled Shadow Bosses, Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind.
I started talking to him in the last hour of the program, and it was such fascinating stuff that we asked Mallory to stay with us so I could ask him a few more questions and also take uh a few of uh a few of yours.
So one-eight hundred two eighty two two eight eight two is the phone number.
Uh Mallory, welcome back.
I want to ask you a couple of other questions because you made a point in the book that Obamacare and government un Obamacare and unionization is going to be that unionization is going to be one of the major impacts of Obamacare, and not a lot of people have focused on this yet.
I want you to share with uh share with us what you believe is going to happen.
Well, under Obamacare, you will see the number of health care workers in America rise from seventeen million to twenty-one million.
And we have documents from the SEIU sent to Dashell, Thomas Dashell, who was the um head of the transition team when Obama first got elected in the health care area.
And they and they are basically saying that there's gonna be a lot more people, but here's the key.
Right now, under ten percent of health care workers are unionized, about a million and a half.
But as Obamacare kicks in, more and more will be working for government.
And as they work for government, they will be able to be unionized as government employees.
They will a lot of doctors, nurses, hospitals, are all losing their independence under Obamacare.
So there is potentially tens of millions of new government workers that can be unionized and forced to pay dues to the union to keep their job.
How would this happen?
Do you believe that they'll use the mechanism of the health care exchanges to create unionization here?
Is that the care exchanges?
They'll use the mechanisms that a lot of doctors, nurses, a lot of people that were formerly independent practitioners will now be working for hospitals, which will be government owned, so they'll be government employees.
And there's also in ten states, they've done something really uh that is just mind boggling.
The unions have the government employee unions, where they've where they've taken um independent home care workers as an example, and they've unionized them under some f fictitious corporation, almost like an Enron style corporation, and made them pay dues to keep their government subsidies.
When I say home health care workers, these are people who were taking care of a sick child, uh a sick adult.
That happened in what in Wisconsin when the Democrats were controlling my state before Walker got in, they passed that kind of that that that legislation in which all health care workers were now unionized that there was an umbrella organization that an independent company would have to be part of and the workers were unionized as a result, you know, as a result of that.
How much does the average union boss in government union make?
Oh, they make so much.
They make m well more than ten times what their actual what their members make.
And but it's not even the fact that like a the former ASME president Gerald McEndie makes made a hundred five hundred and twelve thousand in two eleven, or that is international secretary at the level below them made eight hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars just in salary.
But for instance, this Gerald Mackie in two thousand eleven, um, he spent three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars on private planes for himself.
These are truly the one percent that the unions supported and occupy Wall Street.
They're union members, rank and file union members should be occupying the lavish offices of these union bosses, these shadow bosses, um, around the White House and the Capitol, rather rather than going to occupy Wall Street type movements.
I mean, it's just absurd.
These are truly the bosses in our society.
And the interesting thing is government unions use bought and paid for politicians to pass legislation granting them unending benefits.
Government employee unions like to say they get to elect their own bosses.
Who's there to represent the taxpayers?
Well, what happens in many school boards, school board elections is that the public the teachers' unions endorse a slate of candidates since school you know, school board races are low profile races, not a lot of money spent.
They get behind candidates, you know, the teachers union will get behind the slate of candidates, so then the contracts are negotiated between the unions and school board members that were put into office because of the unions, and they end up on both sides of the bargaining table.
That's also I think what's happened in states that are going bust like California, Illinois, others that haven't done what Wisconsin did, that haven't done what Indiana did, that haven't done what Michigan is now doing, those states are dying because of the massive costs of these benefits, the pensions and other things, but the politicians in Illinois and California are not going to do anything, you know, to address those benefits because the unions are the ones that make sure that they're elected.
Oh, you are so right.
You are just so right.
And and the interesting thing is, even in right-to-work states, in every congressional district, the teachers' unions have paid operatives called uniserve directors.
They get paid 175,000 a year.
They get they get a car, and they have huge expense accounts, and they're there just to do what you just said, to be active on the very local level to elect their bosses.
I what I like to say, what I like to do is I like to quote the former American Federation of Teachers head, the late Albert Shanker, and it just puts it all in perspective.
He said once, when school children start paying dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.
This is the head of a union, teachers' union.
I want to go to uh a couple of uh Russia's callers.
Let's go to Westing, Massachusetts and Steve.
Steve, you're on EIB with Mark Bellingham, our guest Mallory Factor, author of Shadow Bosses.
Hi, Mallory, and uh thank you, Mark, for taking my call.
You like um not so many other uh hosts have a real interesting program today.
Thank you.
Um I grew up in the old world, and in Europe we have seen a succession of socialism, communism, fascism, progressivism.
And what Mallory alludes to really is if the unions are only government unions, and the private uh enterprises only contribute five or eight percent, then really what you are seeing is the return of the brown shirts, which could never happen in Europe because we've already done that there.
It can only happen in the largest free state, the greatest state in the world, the United States of America.
And my question to you is quite simply this can we really start to compare the thuggery that we have seen in Michigan in Wisconsin?
Can we relate that to the brown shirts under Hitler of the 1930s, where the party, the one party and the unions were one state.
You no longer have in the United States a nation of states.
Okay, let's get it let's go.
Thank you for the call for the call, Steve.
Let's get Mallory's answer to that.
One thing that I think most people are unaware of, and I saw it with my own eyes, Mallory, and Steve's question alluded to it was the tactics that were used in Wisconsin in an attempt to stop Governor Walker from implementing his reforms were brutal.
I mean I because the unions in our state had gotten the public employee unions had had their own way for so long, you never knew that they had it in them to be more savage than the worst of the lawn shoreman unions were back in the 1950s.
The tactics were remarkable in terms of how vicious they were unions are known for thuggery and it hasn't changed.
As a matter of fact, they have a what I like to call a get out of jail card that most people don't know exists.
There was in the 70s it's called the Enman's case which said if you do thuggery in pursuit of union objectives you you you can go free.
It's called the Enmonds case and a number of our legislators have tried to change the rules of that and to try to put legislation forth to end that but they can't get it through the Congress.
Because because Democratic politicians won't support some of the Republicans are fear retribution and huge amounts of money being used against them.
So they've even backed off there's a lot of good guys wanting to end that there's a right to to commit thuggery in union pursuits and not have to stand for and not have to stand trial for it and that is so wrong.
Before we move on, I'm going to get in one more caller on this subject.
Dayton, Ohio.
Ben.
Ben, it's your turn on EIB with Mark Belling and guest Mallory Factor.
Well, hi, Mark.
Thanks for getting me on here.
And actually, my comment goes right along with that.
My brother is actually in the union.
I'm not.
And I was talking to him during the whole election process and everything else.
And one of the things he said is that at one point, the union actually called a meeting, had them come in, and basically in no such certain terms told them that if they did not volunteer or whatever, that it would be noted.
It would be a noticeable act on their part to not associate with the union.
the union and therefore that would be looking down bullied into volunteering for Obama's campaign.
That's what you're implying.
Exactly actually told that he would have to for three hours during the election that he was assigned to drive around the van to pick people up and they had certain addresses they would go to their house nothing ready to go.
And was he is he in Ohio also as you are yes.
Any reaction to that story Mallory?
I believe it's wrong but I believe it happens that's why Obama was able to win.
The unions know very well that money flows to the politicians from them and back to the unions and it's in a never ending cycle of greed and corruption and the only way to change that is to elect heroes like Scott Walker who will take take the hard steps.
But the union but what happened in Michigan is also indicative of what's happening.
The unions overreached and once again once again Michigan was able to pass a right to work law.
It is what um what Ben just said is is absolutely happening happening all the time and I wonder why the Federal Election Commission never looks into things like that particularly under Obama.
I want I I want to thank you for joining us Mallory the book is fascinating.
It's such an honor and a pleasure and uh you do such I mean what you bring to your listeners is so important and I'm sure Rush appreciates what you're doing and I thank you and I hope uh if anybody buys shadow bosses they don't keep it they send it to a legislator they need to read it more than anybody else.
Again thanks for joining us.
Okay open line Friday is going to resume on the Rush Limbaugh program next I'm Mark Belling.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah we spent a fair amount of time today talking to uh our past guest Mallory Factor who wrote this book Shadow Bosses which dealt with government unions but I want to give you an opportunity to talk about all the things that we've been talking about.
Today it is after all open line Friday.
Should we play the sounder one more time?
No let's not we've played it enough.
You even though you're so proud that you've got all of them let uh the let's not do that.
Oh here it is from New York City it's open line Friday one eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two uh, the telephone number.
I do think that what Factor writes about in his book, that unions, not just government unions, although he focuses on them, they've ceased being organizations that exist for the benefit of helping out employees in workplace issues, and instead they're this giant arm of the Democratic Party.
The reason their dues are so high is they only need so much to deal with things like negotiating a contract and working on the workplace issues.
They charge these unbelievably exorbitant dues so that they can raise all of this money that's then used to elect Democratic politicians.
The one thing that cuts into it, as we've seen over and over and over, is when you pass legislation that says the employee doesn't have to be in the union.
It is amazing how many of them will choose not to do it.
Nobody can force you to give dues to the Republican Party.
And nobody can force you to give financial support to conservative organizations like the NRA or the Heritage Foundation or Right to Life or any of the others.
Those are all given voluntarily.
The scam that the unions have going on is that the dues payments are compulsory, and they don't spend the majority of that money to represent workers on workplace issues.
They instead use the money to elect Democratic politicians, and it's a lot of money.
Now, I come from Wisconsin, a swing state.
We're one of the battleground states in the last election, so you see this money at work.
I think you don't see it so much in Texas or Utah or maybe even California, states that were not contested in the presidential election.
They had armies of people swarming on Wisconsin.
They had this van operation of going out into the neighborhoods and dragging people in to vote in early voting.
There were vans and vans and vans, all of these employees, the manpower.
None of them were residents of Wisconsin.
They were descending on the state.
They were all union paid employees, and it gave the Democrats this enormous get out the vote operation that you really can't counter.
The one thing that changes this is that when you introduce and pass right to work legislation that says, okay, I'm on a company that has a union, but I don't have to join that union and I don't have to pay that dues, that cuts into their money.
And frankly, you shouldn't have to do it.
In order to work at a job, you shouldn't be forced to pay money to an organization that only claims it represents you, but is instead turning around and using that money to try to elect politicians that you may not support.
It's not just extortion, it's almost theft.
And that's why the case for right to work legislation becomes popular in every state in which it's introduced.
All right, let's go to the phones.
Paramets, New Jersey and Ted Ten, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, uh good afternoon, Mark.
Mark, you opened up the show talking about America's energy boom and how it's so much of a solution to our uh economic problems.
And you also stated that the president likes to pick winners and losers.
Well, in the energy boom, he has picked the winner, and that's been his billionaire best friend Warren Buffett, who gave him so much cover on the income tax rate issue.
The primary beneficiary of the blocking of the Keystone Oil Pipeline down the central plains of the United States is Warren Buffett's railroad.
The Burlington Northern Santa Fe or BNSF.
The oil now has to be transported on rail cars as opposed to a future of being transported by pipeline.
So your point is that in order to facilitate the movement of oil from Canada down to the refineries, which are primarily on the Gulf and in the southern part of the United States, Buffett didn't want the pipeline because it became an alternative to shipping a lot of this stuff via rail.
That's your point.
But not also include the oil that's being produced in the Dakotas in Colorado.
And you are right.
Berkshire Hathaway, which is the corporation controlled by Buffett, does own Burlington Northern, which is one of the lar largest railways in the United States.
Thank you for the call.
The thing that always frosts me about when Buffett gets up there and talks about we should be paying people like me should be paying more in taxes, is that he's implying that he's typical of the average high income person.
Warren Buffett is is under taxed because Warren Buffett mostly has assets.
His net worth comes not from the salary he gets at that company.
He owns all these shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
Well, that isn't taxed.
He's an owner of these things.
His income relative to his actual net worth is relatively small.
The tax increase that Obama is proposing hits hardest the people that are trying to get rich.
Those small business owners that are making two hundred, three hundred thousand dollars a year that are trying to save enough money to move ahead and become a millionaire or become a two millionaire or a three millionaire.
They never end up getting there because they pay so much to the government.
So for a guy like Buffett to get up there and say, Oh, I'm willing to pay when he's worth billions and billions and billions of dollars that aren't taxed, rather nauseating.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I know it seems like it was like twenty-nine months ago, but remember the vice presidential debate?
The one where Biden was flashing those big horse teeth around and laughing and gaffeing all the way through.
Nobody remembers a single thing that Joe Biden said because he made such a fool of himself the way he behaved.
But am I mistaken here?
Didn't Biden say during that debate that we wouldn't go over the fiscal cliff and there wouldn't be sequestration, that this would all be taken care of and everybody knew that.
Didn't he say that?
Nobody seems to remember that.
Joe Biden said we wouldn't get to this point, that we wouldn't be, oh, we'll all work it out.
Well, there evidently is nothing to work out.
To uh Susan in Panama City, Florida, Susan, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Mark Belling.
Hello, Mark.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
We seem to be hearing tons and tons about the tax increases we're gonna have when we go over this fiscal cliff.
What about all the spending cuts we're gonna have?
I'm well aware that the military is gonna be cut back to practically nothing.
But what are the social programs that are going to be cut back?
You know, nobody's really talked about that.
These sequestration these sequestration cuts, and ostensibly you'd think that we conservatives would support that because it would mean that there'd be some force cuts in government spending.
The problem is is that these cuts don't address the entitlements.
They're off limits, and they're disproportionately faced on the military.
You've got a lot of military contractors that have been laying off a lot of employees because the government spending on the military is going to plummet after January first.
The sequestration cuts that in the deal they negotiated two years ago to kick the can down two years till now, those are not across the board cuts that affect everything.
They're very, very targeted and they hit the military disproportionately.
But you are right, there is reduction in state in spending uh on money that's transferred to the state's transportation and some other social programs as well, but the entitlements were kept, you know, were kept uh sacred there.
I think for a lot of people, they don't recognize that this fiscal cliff isn't just taxes for the rich, but it's a massive series of tax increases and then sa savage cuts aimed disproportionately at the military and not going after the parts of the federal government that have so exploded in cost like the entitlements.
Thank you for the call, Susan.
Let's go to I love this.
Elijah, Georgia.
To uh Joe, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Uh, thank you very much, Mark.
Mark, I've been a long-term blue chip stock market investor, done well, and I'm ready to invest some more money.
However, I don't want to be punished for my success.
I think they ought to get a good deal, but I think it it it should not be with tax increases.
It should be with spending cuts and no tax increases.
If they come to a good deal with that a good deal with no tax increases and spending cuts, I'll be happy to invest in the stock market a lot more than I have.
But if they don't, uh there's no incentive.
Why do they want to punish rich people?
I've heard this from Democrats for 50 years.
We need to reward the successful people.
Let's don't put the best quarterback on the beach.
Let's reward him.
What do you think about that, Mark?
Well, m my first problem is is when you use the term rich people, when Obama uses the term rich people, he manages to include all sorts of people who I don't think consider themselves very rich.
When you're talking about two hundred thousand dollars a year on individual income, that's certainly well off.
I don't know if a lot of those people are rich.
If you've got a young doctor that's got a Zillion student loans out there, and he's making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as an anesthesiologist, you know, in a practice somewhere, and he's paying off all of his student loans, and he's got two or three young children right now.
Sure he's well off and sure he's better off than a lot of people.
But Obama has implied over and over and over again that this thing is aimed at millionaires, and this these are for the rich, and I think a lot of people that are covered by what he wants to hit aren't rich.
Let's also remember that when we go over the fiscal cliff, there are going to be taxes on people in all income brackets.
I want to comment on a point that little that Joe made about investing.
One of the taxes that reverts back to the old levels when we go over the cliff is the tax on capital gains, which will go back up to twenty percent for long-term capital gains.
This again is pure m purely punitive.
Raising capital gains taxes has been proven over and over and over again to actually cost the government money.
Here's why.
Let's suppose you own a vacation property or an investment property, apartment house or a stock or a mutual fund.
If when it's time to sell that, you've got to give twenty percent of the profits to the federal government, you are far less likely to make that sale than if your tax level is much lower.
We've seen how the housing market was able to thrive earlier in the decade when we reduce the capital gains tax on housing purchases.
By raising the capital gains tax back up to twenty percent, you're gonna have more people sit on gains.
When they sit on gains, that means that the investment that they currently have, they merely are holding rather than selling and then reinvesting in something else.
A dynamic economy occurs when people are spending money, when there's financial activity go that's going on, sales of things, purchases of things, money moving around.
The capital gains tax, which punishes people for taking a capital gain, ends up resulting in people sitting on these gains.
So why would Obama do it?
Why is he not trying to shelter capital gains from the impact of the fiscal cliff?
And I think it once again goes back to his motivation that he isn't interested in the economic impact here.
He just wants to take the money away from successful people.
He's motivated by taking the taxes and taking money out of people's pockets, not improving the economy.
That's why it's going to be very hard to reach a deal.
Now they're going in supposedly in about 20 minutes at the White House.
Mitch McConnell's gonna walk in and Harry Reid's gonna walk in and Pelosi's gonna saunter in and Boehner's gonna go in, and I understand Joe Biden's even going to be there.
I don't have any hope that anything's going to happen here.
The only way a deal could ever be reached is to keep Obama out of it.
I think it's theoretically possible that you could take a guy like McConnell who's been around a long time, pretty adamantly opposed to taxes, and sit him down with Harry Reid, and maybe you could cut something.
I mentioned earlier in the program that I think the Republicans would immediately bite on a deal that said, all right, we're gonna put off spending cuts for now, but let's simply move forward with the current tax rates, no tax increase on anyone, and we eliminate the sequestration.
I think the Republicans would accept that deal because it would mean that there wouldn't be a tax increase.
But I don't think you'd ever get that deal from Obama.
The only way that they can make a deal is if they get him out of this thing.
He doesn't want to deal.
If he wanted to deal, he would have been throwing out real proposals all along.
Instead, everything he has proposed is stuff that he knows the Republicans can't accept.
He hasn't made a single serious proposal here because I think he doesn't want to have a deal.
What this thing at the White House is is a dog and pony show in which the president who raced back from Hawaii tries to make it appear as though he's being reasonable, tries to make it appear as though he wants a deal.
Instead, what you're gonna get after this thing is over is he's gonna come out, hold a news conference of the Rose Garden Lawn or somewhere, demonize the Republicans, say they're not serious.
I I could be wrong.
We're gonna find out in a few hours.
I think that this is just an opportunity for him to drag the Republicans in, use them as props for the photo op that comes out, rip them for the fact that there isn't a deal when it is he he is the one that doesn't want to negotiate.
He's the one that doesn't want to deal.
He's the person who's trying to take us over the cliff so he can achieve his political goals of busting up the Republican car party and create dissension there, and to get the tax revenue that comes from going over the cliff to uh Manhattan Beach, California.
Scott, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark.
Hey, you're talking about the union dues, the dues.
Um, going to the Democratic Party.
And I was actually thinking, this dues is actually my money.
Okay, I pay taxes, government takes that money, and then pays these union employees.
And that money skimmed off the top.
And if you were to follow my dollars, my dollars would go from me earning it to an ad campaign trying to destroy my business.
That's correct.
I think that there should be some statement, like similar to where you buy food and you have the calorie count to show where each dollar is allocated from the dues that's collected.
Well, they do issue those reports, but the members never take a look at them.
You know, our guest Mallory Factor was talking about the fact that they do have to report what they spend and where, but nobody ever sees any of that, sees any of that stuff.
Shouldn't it be a public report?
Because it is my money, it's my tax dollars that is that is funding that report.
I think it is public.
I think that nobody's bothered to pay much attention to it.
Now that we're realizing how much money is involved, I think you're right, it's a good thing to see it's a good thing to see.
Thank you for the call, Scott.
I have never been a member of a union.
My entire work life I've managed to work at radio stations that weren't unionized.
So I can't relate to the guy who's in one of these unions, particularly a government employee union, where you have to sit there and bite your tongue all the time.
You can't be the oddball that objects to what the union is doing because the ostricization is so terrible.
I always put myself, though, in the other guy's shoes.
Can you imagine being a conservative in a union where you are compelled to pay those union dues, or lose your job, be fired, and then have to see that money go and be used for political causes that you don't agree with.
Not to mention the fact that you've got a union that's negotiating things for you that you may or may not want and taking stands in your workplace that you may or may not agree with, but to take that large chunk of money beyond that and use it not for things that have anything to do with your work, but instead try to elect politicians, that's your money.
It's morally wrong.
And it can't be defended.
The reason that they support it is because of course they want the money.
What a racket it is.
You have to give us money that we then use to turn around and elect the political candidates that we support.
Of course they're going to defend it, and of course they're going to fight for it passionately.
Because it's such an in undef indefensible racket, it can't be defended.
I do believe that when you do see states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Indiana earlier, and many other states that have right to work laws.
Wisconsin doesn't have right to work laws for private employees.
We do for public employees now.
I do think that there's momentum to this once you get people to realize just how much money they're being forced to pay out, much of it going for political purposes that they don't agree with.
I'm Mark Belling and Soap Online Friday on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
The Republicans in Washington that are just mortified that they're going to get the blame if we go over the fiscal cliff.
We've just got to get past that.
Republicans are blamed for ever.
Washington Post today, editorial, demonizing welfare recipients.
In a number of states, Republican governors and legislatures are doing something that the polls overwhelmingly support.
They want a drug test welfare beneficiaries.
The recipients of welfare, they want to require them to undergo drug testing.
The reasoning is very simple.
We don't want welfare benefits to go to people who are going to turn around and use the money to go out and buy drugs, which isn't good for them and it's not good for their children.
The Washington Post today.
In political terms, pushing welfare mothers into the legislative crosshairs may be more beneficial or at least suicidal than gunning for hardworking Hispanics, but it's a public policy.
Why single-out welfare recipients, beside the fact that relatively few of them are likely to vote and fewer still to vote Republican?
There is nothing Republicans can do right now that isn't going to get them ripped By the media.
They're going to be blamed for everything, so why not just do what you believe in, do what we think is right, and try to win the argument rather than worry about whether or not you're going to be blamed.
Kimberly Strassel, today's Wall Street Journal, she argues that before the Republicans go any farther in this fiscal cliff stuff, that they've got to unify themselves and make it clear that they're not going to bite on raising any taxes.
She writes, and I want to give you the last two paragraphs of her column.
If they intend, meanwhile, to use the debt ceiling as their leverage to force Obama into spending cuts, they have to be united.
This president will pounce on any sign of weakness, and he is adept at using the press to highlight GOP cracks.
Obama is in fact counting on such a scenario, already positioning himself as the guy who won't budge, the better to spook GOP members into breaking as they did in this recent tax fight.
For all the ugliness of this lame duck session, it did have one merit.
It has exposed how President Obama intends to govern in a second term.
He's intent on narrow political victories and on damaging his opponents.
Republicans can be grateful at least for that insight and proceed accordingly.
Atlanta, Georgia, Pete, it's your turn on the Russian Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Go ahead, Keith.
All right, Pete's gone.
Let's try Glenn in Fort Lauderdale.
Glenn, you're on EIB with Mark Beleg.
As to the voting...
I mean, as far as the um the workers being uh represented by unions and being basically taxed, I really think we need another uh Tea Party, not the Tea Party uh that we had recently, but the original Tea Party, uh, in the fact that this is really a tax without representation.
Yeah, it really is.
I mean, compulsory union dues.
Back when the majority of union dues money was used for contract negotiations, the unions were able to make the argument.
Look, we're out there cutting this deal for you.
We're we're the ones getting you this good pay, we're the ones getting the benefit.
You ought to have to pay for that because we're doing this work for you.
But now that the majority of the money is being spent on political activism, not on anything that has to do in the workplace.
Now that they're paying these union bosses hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're out there paying all these workers to go into states like Ohio and Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Florida and get Democrats elected to office, that argument that we're doing this work for you starts to go away.
Instead, people are being compelled to pay money for what used to be workplace representation, but now it's political activism that in many cases they simply don't agree with, they don't support, and they're morally opposed to.
Thank you for the call.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
A little bit earlier in the program, I alluded to these comments of Wilbur Ross.
It's the CEO of W. L. Ross and Company, he's a financier.
Big big deal guy.
He believes the fact that we hit this debt ceiling, which is happening right now at the same time as the fiscal cliff, we hit the sixteen trillion four hundred billion number, sooner than we were expected to.
This is a couple of months early.
He thinks that this means that the debt is growing even faster than most economists and the government realizes.
He's saying we could be facing a Greek situation.
That the combination of going over the fiscal cliff, the tax increases that that creates, sending the economy into a recession, meaning despite the increase in tax rates, we're getting less money, and the fact that the debt is rolling up even faster than we can control, that we're going to hit the point of no return earlier than people think.
Most people have talked about this being several years away.
Ross says we're on the on the verge of that now.
Rather sobering.
And it also tells you just how disconnected from reality the president is when he's not worried about that.
He's still out there trying to settle his political scores.
Anyway, thanks for listening.
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