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Jan. 1, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:37
January 1, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Time Text
And we're back.
Great to have you, my friends, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you here.
The uh telephone number you want to be on the program, 800 28282, the email address L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
Now, apropos what we were talking about in the first hour, Scott Brown, Republican, former Senator, Massachusetts is showing the exactly wrong incorrect way to do it.
Scott Brown is writing the ticket to guarantee Republican defeat.
Based on what we know, based based on I'm not going to repeat the whole first hour.
I'm not going to repeat any of it.
If you missed it, you go to Rush Limbaugh.com.
I realize some of you low information voters just now getting up.
Um what am I talking about?
They're not even listening here.
What what never sorry, folks?
Here's here's the Scott Brown news.
Scott Brown in Massachusetts yesterday became the first sitting Republican senator to voice support for a federal assault weapons ban after the New Town Connecticut shootings.
Brown failed to win re-election in November.
He won't be in Congress to vote on gun legislation.
But he said as a state legislator in Massachusetts, I supported an assault weapons ban, thinking that other states would follow suit, but unfortunately they have not.
Innocent people are being killed.
This is he's he's guaranteed if he's gonna stay a Republican, he's gonna lose forever now.
This is nice Republicans lose.
He may pick up some independence to it.
He's but he I don't even think he's gonna do that.
But this is how Republicans lose.
They move to the left.
They they get embarrassed of who they are.
They become afraid of espousing conservative principles, and they move to the left and they water themselves down and they lose.
Perfect example.
What Scott Brown is doing here is exactly what the Republican Party has been doing.
And it's what they're doing now.
By the way, they lose the election of what do they do?
Oh my god, we got we got to stand for amnesty.
Oh my god, oh my god, we got uh uh we've got to relax uh our our position on the social oh my god, oh my god, we gotta be more like a Democrat.
You think the Democrats are gonna give up any of their voters?
You think the Democrats are gonna welcome these Republicans in?
No way.
There it is.
This is exactly what Scott Brown's doing here is screwing up his own career.
I don't care if it is Massachusetts.
This is what Republicans have been doing that guarantees defeat.
Pure and simple.
I have another earth-shattering story here.
I intended to get to this in the first hour, but the reason I didn't is the more I kept talking in the first, the smarter I got.
I mean, I've smarter sounding.
I mean, it was it was sheer genuine brilliance in the first hour, and I saw no reason to shut it down.
Now I realize talking like that makes women nervous and is threatening.
But I at the same point I have to be honest about it.
I was making so many good points on the other stuff I had to keep going.
It just kept coming.
And when the hits keep on coming, you play them.
But I'm gonna get to that story now.
It is a story from realclearmarkets.com.
It's not ABC, CBS, NBC, none of that.
I don't know how widely disseminated this story is.
But here's the headline.
When will death spiral states impose taxes on citizens who leave?
It is a story that asks the question and then makes the case for it.
Let me give you a couple of pull quotes.
Like Glenn Close rising from the bathtub to take one more stab in fatal attraction, don't be surprised when death spiral states like California, New York, resort to exit taxes as a last ditch effort to forestall their impending bankruptcies.
Exit taxes were imposed on emigrants and they have a long history including their use in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
And naturally they would In places like that.
Exit taxes were imposed under the theory that since citizens were educated by their government and were either provided benefits or allowed to profit from jobs and business held while living under the government's protection.
They were obligated to pay back some of that money on their way out of the state.
This sounds like Elizabeth Warren.
You didn't build that.
Your business is only successful because the state government made it possible.
The state government protected you.
The state government had regulations for you.
The state government built roads and bridges for you.
And you just can't up and move.
And if you do, we're going to continue to collect taxes from you as though you still live here.
Folks, I hadn't considered this, but I'm...
Now that I've seen it, I think we can all safely assume this is going to happen.
I get audited every year by the state of New York, and I left in 1997.
The state of New York essentially already is charging exit taxes.
Not on this premise, they claim that I'm there a certain number of days a year when I don't go there anymore, and I have to prove it every year 14 different ways for the number of days they allege that I'm there.
I report I haven't worked there this year.
They say prove it.
14 different ways, 365 days.
The latest audit has been going on nine months.
For a year I was never in New York.
And this happens to everybody that leaves New York, for an particular a state that has no income tax, like Texas or Florida or Kentucky.
So what the premise here is that if you decide you're going to leave California, and thousands of people today are for Idaho or any other low tax or no income tax state, the premise here is the state you're fleeing can still charge you exit taxes because you benefited from that state government when you live there.
Now what does this mean?
What is abundantly clear now is that our government, federal and state, no longer exist for the people.
The reality is now the people exist for the government.
Whether you like it that way or not, it's not the point.
The point is the Rubicon has now been crossed.
We all work in service to the government at all levels.
That's how government sees it.
That's how the president sees it, that's how senators see it, that's how state legislators see it, governors see it, our income is not ours.
Our property is not ours.
Our work isn't ours.
The government has first claimed all of it.
Whether in the form of income, real property, guns, whatever, the government now claims the authority to both dictate and ban, and there seem to be no avenues to stop this.
And there's no opposition to it.
The Republicans in Washington are rallying around failure at this point.
Obama equals failure.
The Republicans are rallying around it.
And now Republicans all across the country are even talking like the Democrats.
We must tax the rich.
We must penalize those people who haven't paid their fair share.
We must go get additional revenue from those who have more than they need.
Republicans and Democrats alike are now using this language, and what the language means is that our income isn't ours, our property isn't ours.
That we exist for the government.
The government no longer exists for us.
It's the other way around.
And there is virtually no serious, substantive, effective political opposition to any of this now.
And that's the transformative Nature of Obama that I was talking about in the first hour.
That is the real transformation in this country taking place right now.
No longer does the government, federal or state, exist for us.
We, the people.
Out the window.
Elect people who serve at our pleasure out the window.
We work for their pleasure.
We exist for the government.
That's whenever you hear Obama speak about practically anything, but it's particularly on the fiscal cliff or the next budget deal, a debt limit deal, what you listen to him, and you're it's it's clear that the government is the sun, and every one of us are planets orbiting around it.
We work in service to the government at all levels.
They have first claim on everything.
All money is governments, and what we end up with is what they decide to permit us to end up with.
We don't earn anything.
We didn't build that.
They did, they permit us, because of their benevolence, good graces, or whatever, to have whatever it is we have.
And the more supportive we are of the government, the better we will be treated.
If we oppose the government, we will be targeted.
And we will be claimed or said to be the problem or the enemy.
But here you have now this, it's it's out there now.
States imposing taxes on fleeing citizens.
Exit taxes.
One of the most fascinating uh characteristics of government borrowing, whether at the local, state, or federal level, is that debts contracted over time are obligations tied to specific geographical boundaries, but not to citizens living there when those debts were incurred.
For example, while it's customary to say that each of the 210,000 residents of Stockton, California are on the hook for their share of the bankrupt municipalities estimated $700 million in unpaid bills, the day one of them picks up and moves, personal responsibility for that debt drops to zero.
If Stockton, California is in $700 million in debt and you're a resident, part of that's yours.
You leave, it's no longer your problem.
That is now called tax evasion in this story.
Leaving New York by the way, think of all the calls we've had on this program of people accusing me of being unpatriotic for leaving New York.
If you left simply because you didn't want to pay taxes, you aren't being patriotic.
I said, I thought I'm being smart.
I thought I'm maneuvering things here to keep more what I earn.
No, no.
You owe that.
It's patriotic.
Biden, patriotism equals paying taxes.
So now, ladies and gentlemen, leaving, moving out of a state for whatever reason, a high tax state or a state that's in a debt spiral that finances are in a mess, you moving out, that's now tax evasion.
And this article I have here says, imagine if that type of tax evasion were eliminated.
How would it change America?
Government debts are accrued on your behalf by elected officials for whom you had a chance to vote, all supposedly representing your interests in a democracy.
All citizens are obliged to pay the government's bills as determined by the duly empowered taxing authorities, regardless of whether they voted for a particular officeholder or not.
Well, what's to stop legislators from passing laws that make debt obligations due and payable by any citizen who decides to leave for another jurisdiction?
After all, they don't hesitate to take your money when you die.
Why should they not take your money when you leave?
You got death taxes, income taxes, why not an exit tax?
Yes.
Mayors and governors of the of most tax and spend heavily unionized low growth cities and states are both desperate for uh revenue and they're tired of watching disgruntled citizens leave.
Think how politically attractive it would be for them to make economic deserters pay their fair share of old debts even after they leave.
I can see the argument already.
You can't move away from credit card debt.
You can't move away from commercial debt.
So why should government debt be so easy to dodge?
Politicians could easily win kudos from both public employee unions and the overtaxed residents left behind for the mere cost of enraging immigrants who won't be around to exact retribution at the next election.
Emigrants with an Eaving.
Like Glen Close, rising from the bathtub, take one more stab and fatal attraction.
Don't be surprised when death spiral states resort to exit taxes as a last ditch effort to forestall their impending bankruptcies.
And again, exit taxes imposed on people fleeing have a long history in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
So what's to stop, say California from imposing exit taxes on the steady stream of people leaving for Texas or Arizona, Nevada.
More than 200,000 people leave California every year.
They take their money with them.
They leave behind their share of the state's six hundred and seventeen billion dollars in debt, which comes to about sixteen thousand dollars per resident.
That's $3.2 billion a year in tax evasion if you leave.
And this guy's point is they're gonna figure this out pretty soon.
And they're gonna start charging exit taxes.
And I wouldn't put it past them.
But this this whole notion you didn't build that, your money isn't yours, your income isn't yours, your property isn't yours, your work is not yours, government has first claim to it.
Not only is that the prevailing attitude among government people now, but way too many citizens agree with that premise as well.
And now to the phones.
People have been patiently waiting, and we're gonna start Long Valley, New Jersey.
This is Frank.
Thank you, sir, and welcome.
Great to have you here.
Thank you, Russ.
I was sitting here enjoying a cigar in one of the last fashions in New Jersey is still allowed to smoke at JRSO.
Having a good time listening to you.
But the real problem here is, and you're talking about the uninformed voter.
Uh you're not and uh you're not going to get them by giving them more information.
And the West separates elections from governing.
And we don't do that.
We tell people during the elections what we're going to do after we elected, and progressives tell people what they want to hear to get elected.
And we don't separate it.
And I I had breakfast with Rodney, and I looked at him and I said, Are you going to attack President Obama during this election?
And he said, No.
that we have a lot because we need to start thinking about elections separately bank governing we don't do that We come up with great ideas, great policies, but there's never been a policy enacted with a concession speech.
And all we do is give concession speeches.
And it's ridiculous.
And the tax issue, I said to them, I go, you should go out there and say to people, look at progressives want to tax less people more, and conservatives want to tax more people less.
Because when more people are being taxed less, then people are working and the economy grows.
And he looked at me and goes, oh, it's a great idea.
It's true, but I can't say that.
I said, why can't you say it?
It's the truth.
And we need to separate.
Now wait a minute.
Wait a minute now.
He did say it, and that was the problem.
What was it that scared people about the Republican Convention, do you think?
Uh they scared them from the Republican convention.
Yeah, what scared people about the only two find too many facts and figures.
Right too much information.
No.
The Republican convention was about hard work.
When you when you start talking about every speaker had the same story, up from nothing, families who sacrificed for years, in some cases decades, so their kids could make something of themselves.
The kids came along and they worked really hard.
America's great, the land of opportunity.
Sorry, doesn't sell.
But but Romney did talk about broadening the base, lowering taxes so more people get hired, more people working equals more revenue to the government.
People weren't interested in that.
They're not interested in that.
No, but he did it just like you did it by explaining it through facts and figures and in a broad sense.
You need to start, we need to start using, and this is what low information people understand, one and two sentence terms and repeat it over and over and over and over.
And that's what the progressives have done, and that's why they win.
They don't care about governing.
The governing comes after winning the election.
We don't think about just winning.
We need to destroy the opponents.
We should be looking at whoever's gonna run in 2016, and we should start to destroy them today.
Well, now that I'm gonna tell you something.
That you are right on the money with that, because that's what they are already doing.
They are already targeting Marco Rubio.
They are already beginning to target whoever they think our future stars are.
That is exactly what they did to Romney, and Romney didn't do a thing about it.
Bush didn't do a thing about it when it was happening to him while he was president.
For some reason, our side believes eh nobody's gonna really believe that.
That's so extreme and outrageous.
Nobody's gonna believe it.
And they do.
Our last caller did have a point, um actually two points.
We ought to be out destroying whoever they're working on Hillary right now.
They are.
The Democrats, that's their modus operandi.
They're out destroying Rubio.
Now, the low information voters don't think it's unfair.
They think the Democrats are warning them, telling them the truth about these evil people that want to do them harm.
They want to make them work or what have you.
Do you realize Obama really never has governed, at least the perception is, he's always campaigning?
Now, clearly he's governing.
I mean, the people paying...
Don't misunderstand me.
The people we're talking about, he's constantly appealing to them.
He's constantly reaching out.
Do you know he's fundraising even now off of Newtown Connecticut on his website?
What's he fundraising for?
He didn't have another campaign.
They're out raising, but they're asking for donations to Obama websites.
And they're appealing to people's emotions based on the Republicans and their stand on the fiscal cliff and Newtown Connecticut, they're fundraising on this stuff.
And he hasn't even been inaugurated for his second term yet.
He's fundraised for what?
Democrat Party?
Who knows what?
But the caller's on to something.
Uh you know, we we we equate campaigning with governing.
We equate, okay, here's how we are going to govern.
This is what we're gonna do that.
In fact, the Democrats cannot be honest about what they're gonna do.
If they were, they would lose every election.
If Obama had told people my plan is a perpetual unemployment rate near 9%, ever expanding government with more debt and higher deficits.
You think he didn't want anything?
In fact, he campaigned promising people he's gonna end all that stuff.
And so he gets credit for trying because that's what they think he's doing.
Uh we're talking low information people here.
That's the caveat.
It's I don't know, in what way?
Very frustrating.
It's also to me, uh quite fascinating, in the sense that we got to devise a way to defeat it.
Here's uh Larry in Evansville, Indiana.
Thank you for calling, sir.
Great to have you on the program.
Well, hi, Russ.
I've been Waiting for you to have this conversation for a long time and it's very important.
I'm glad you're having it.
Listen, my uh comments are uh you earlier you raised the question or two questions.
Well, how do we reach low information voters?
And then what do we tell them?
Well, uh, I believe there's only three ways, there's actually three ways.
Wait, can I interrupt you for a second?
Don't don't lose your train of thought, but I'm gonna tell you what my gut reaction is.
And this is why I could never be a politician.
When you say what do we have to do to reach low information, I don't even want to.
I don't even want to descend to that level.
Well, I think it's necessary to win elections.
No, no, no, no, wait.
Even my staff here, highly overrated on the other side of glass, thinks I've just stepped in it by saying that.
But but do we want to be governed by or or maybe I know what my problem is.
We have to figure out a way not to appeal to them, but to use them.
Correct.
We make them think we care about them, but we really don't.
Well, no, I wouldn't say that.
That's what the Democrats are doing.
I'd say we only have three opportunities to reach them.
And if one win elections, that's and they are debate number one, debate number two, and debate number for three.
Now, Russ, if we would have put an earpiece in Romney's ear, and you on the other end tell him what to say, we would have won.
In other words, we want our Republican candidates to say what you and your colleagues have been saying for years.
Wait a second.
That's why it's so frustrating.
Wait just a second.
Just a second.
Your premise, you telling me that I know how to reach low income low interest voters.
I think you you could, yeah, better than Romney could, yes.
Because you're gonna you're gonna deal see low low information voters tend to to gravitate to to vote emotionally rather than logically.
And you're a smart person.
We're logical.
And all this, like Obama, because he's cool and he plays basketball and all that.
They perceive Romney as being the same old, same old Republican rich guy.
He's going to make us go to work.
In other words, if you would say that the debate...
Hey, if you just want a bunch of free stuff, then I'm not your guy.
But if you want some dignity in your life, we have to convince them that we don't want them to go to work either.
No, it's you gotta get reach them emotionally.
In other words, you say, hey, if you want some dignity and pride in knowing that you can provide for your family with a good job, then I'm your guy.
That's an emotional thing they're going to react to.
You see what I'm saying?
They'll react to that.
Hey, you know, I don't want to be a vote, I don't want to be a freeloader.
I I want to I really do want to work.
This makes sense.
It's an emotional, they buy emotionally.
You see what I'm saying?
And that's how we gotta change things.
No, I'm confused.
I must have been confused.
I understand, I under understand when you talk about their emotional not thinking, but but um see, I don't equate teaching them about work and opportunity as working with the low information voter.
Now that I could be wrong about this.
I'm I'm I'm okay.
Okay, let me let me ask you.
Are you essentially saying that you think my degree of passion and my desire to have people understand what I'm saying could reach these people?
Is that is that your point?
Rush, thank you.
You just put words in my mouth.
Passion is the key.
You have a passion for caring about people and our country.
That's not being displayed so much with uh with the in the debates on the Republican side.
Thank you.
That's exactly what I want to do.
Okay, all right.
No, I appreciate that.
I I because I I must tell you, I have uh I have perhaps a um when I hear low information voter, I think hopeless.
Uh I low information voter, how do you reach somebody that doesn't know anything?
Um I guess I'm coupling the fact that and maybe this is where I'm wrong.
I'm assuming in America in 2012, if you're a low information voter, you don't want to know what he.
We got more media, we have more opportunity to be informed than we've ever had in this country.
And if you aren't, it means you don't want to be.
So maybe I'm wrong about that, but I'm thinking uh you have to work at not being informed in this country.
Well, not when you got the liberal news media against you, and And you know what I would do?
I would take all the campaign money or all the money I would spend on commercials and give it to uh supporting low information supported charitable causes and not spend one diamond.
What the hell is that?
What is a low information?
What is a low information charitable cause?
Well, I didn't mean low charitable causes, but people that benefit from low from uh from charitable causes from low income or low uh who are they?
What what are low information charities?
People who uh abuse the uh welfare system, the people who want a free ride, and I'm not talking about people who are in real true need, but the the the people who are abusing the the the giveaways by the government.
That's who I'm talking about.
In other words, if if we went on and a candidate actually said, hey, uh I'm I'm meeting all my money.
You're not buying votes, but you're so enjoying your sincerity because it doesn't matter anyway.
Those commercials are just a waste of money.
Why not give those to charitable causes anyway?
And you have to reach people at the debates because they don't listen to conservative radio.
Most of them know we're preaching to the choir too much.
We need our not listening to liberal media either.
By definition, they're low information, they're watching entertainment tonight.
They are they are they're tuning in to TMZ on the web.
They care about K Stew and RPAT.
They care about the Twilight saga.
They are moved by when Oprah cries.
But they're not watching CBS ABC NBC.
They don't care about the fiscal cliff.
They don't understand the national debt as long as they can watch their reality TV shows and it's not affecting their lives on a day-to-day basis.
They think all that stuff is just typical Washington B.S. Fiscal Cliff, all this.
Look, here's let me illustrate, because I I I don't I I realize I'm probably making people very nervous, and I'm probably sounding very threatening to 24-year-old single, unmarried, maybe divorced twice, three times bigamy women.
Who knows?
Uh and I I don't intend to be doing that.
But let me illustrate what I mean when I think of low information voter.
This isn't gonna work because I'm just gonna get called names.
Um let me use it anyway.
I'll run the risk.
You remember the first term, maybe the first year.
Obama announced a voucher program for rent-free living in certain American cities.
One of the cities was Detroit.
Literally 30,000 people showed up to register for the opportunity to get some rent assistance or something like that in uh Detroit.
And and of the 30,000 that there were only like 1,500 such grants to be made, 30,000 people showed up.
And our affiliate, WJR sent a reporter into the crowd to ask them some various questions.
Why were they there?
Uh what did they hope to get, and where was it coming from?
They were the classic low information voters.
They thought they were showing up to get a free apartment and that Obama was giving it to them.
And when he said, Well, where's Obama getting the money?
From his stash.
Well, I don't know.
I don't care.
Obama.
Obama is coming from Obama's stash.
Now they were of the opinion that Barack Obama personally was going to get them into some apartment or whatever the deal was.
I think it was rent assessment or or abatement.
But it was Obama was gonna do this personally for them.
That's why they were showing up.
Now, that to me is what I think of a low information voter.
And I said at the time that if I were president, and that's what people thought I was going to do.
I'd be embarrassed.
But Obama, not embarrassed.
That's a sign of success to Obama and the Democrats.
That kind of citizenry, if you will, that's see, they don't care how it is they end up with their power.
They don't care what kind of country it is that they're governing as long as they're governing it or controlling it.
And where it is, you know, often thought they have all the compassion.
They're the ones who have all the care and concern for these people.
They don't.
Average Democrat voter lives in squalor, lives in near poverty, average Democrat voter lives a subsistence, but they keep voting for it.
Now it would embarrass me if I and I said this at the time, it would embarrass me.
I caught hell, by the way, from the drive-by media for this assessment at the time that I made it.
I'm just repeating the story because that's what I think of when I think of low information voter.
So when I say I I wouldn't want to reach them, I don't I don't know that I as as as president, I wouldn't want to do what it takes to get their support.
Because what is that?
That's turning the country into a socialist state.
And I don't want to do that.
I don't have a desire for power like that.
That's all I mean when I'm when I talk about that.
That's when I hear low information, that's what I see.
I don't see skin color, I don't see I I I see helpless people.
Now you may see low information people in totally uh different, you may say average ordinary common Americans who just don't know anything or don't care to know anything.
I have a different knee-jerk, admittedly, definition or reaction to low information voter.
So if I'm wrong, feel free to call and tell me.
I could very well be.
You know me.
I'm never right that much.
Back after.
Back to the phone.
Zell Rushball on the cutting edge.
It's Dave in Detroit.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hello.
Rush, thanks for having me.
You bet, sir.
Thanks for for calling.
Oh, my question for you was in regards to the fiscal cliff.
You know, Boehner and the Republicans would keep giving on uh taxes, but we don't hear anything on the Democrats, and they don't give at all.
And curious why that is.
Are you are you asking me why that is?
Yes.
Well, um, uh the Democrats won the election.
I mean, that's basically the answer to the question.
Democrats won the election.
Obama doesn't want to say Obama doesn't want to cut spending.
He wants to grow spending.
He wants to spend more.
The Republicans don't think they have a way to get Obama to agree to cut spending.
And so Boehner has come up with plan B. Here's plan B. Plan B is everybody's taxes are scheduled to go up on January 1st.
Everybody's.
Everybody's income taxes are going to go up on January 1st.
Boehner's plan B is a proposal that says only people who earn a million dollars or more will see a tax increase.
Nobody else will.
Because Boehner believes that Obama doesn't want to go over to Cliff.
And the Republicans don't want to go over to Cliff.
Because if we go over to Cliff, everybody's taxes go up, and then Obama will come along and propose tax cuts like January 2nd and get credit for tax cuts that he allowed to go up in the first place.
And the Democrats or the Republicans are trying to corner Obama into accepting a tax increase on the rich, which is what Obama says he wants, but exempting everybody else.
No tax increase.
Uh in the deal because Obama has said that he's not.
Well, this gets confused, because Obama's claiming there's almost $1.2 trillion in cuts in years nine and ten.
There won't be a year nine or ten.
But basically, uh, Republicans don't think they've got any leverage.
They don't think they have any way to pressure Obama into compromising with them.
And so what they're trying to do is prevent everybody's taxes going up so that they don't get blamed for it.
That's really the impetus.
But there's more to there's a lot of conservatives are pushing Plan B, and I want to tell you how they're doing it when we come back.
Here's the bottom line.
I think that Obama and the Democrats want to go over the cliff.
They want to punish the rich and the Republican Party.
They want to wipe the Republican Party out.
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