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April 24, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
30:58
April 24, 2014, Thursday, Hour #3
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Welcome back folks.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh executing assigned host duties flawlessly zero mistakes.
As we head on down the tracks of broadcast excellence here in the fastest three hours in media, the telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882.
The email address lrushbaugh at eibnet.com.
Okay, there's a new book that the left has embraced.
It's by a French Marxist economist named Thomas Piketi.
You may have heard this discussed, because this is, I first heard of this a few days ago, is one of the reasons I've been chomping at the bit to get back here and to discuss this.
Because the reason it's being embraced is not just that it's Marxism and socialism and communism.
It's embraced because it happens to coincide with Obama's big push here on income inequality.
I'm told he pronounced the name Piketi.
Piketi Piketty, I couldn't care less.
He's a wuss.
We'll get it with Thomas Piketty.
Fine.
Okay.
That's how he pronounces his name.
We'll give him that.
Obama is embracing this, and the left is embracing it because of Obama's push on income equality or inequality, as though there's some moral sin in income inequality.
There's some moral sin in capitalism.
And therefore, there is a moral sin in the United States of America.
The United States of America is a moral sin.
It's flawed deeply and morally because of the concentration of wealth in the top 1%.
They are hoarding it.
They're taking it from everybody.
And they are stealing it.
They're not sharing it.
They're not redistributing it.
They're giving it away.
They're not paying people enough and so forth.
To the extent that there is any concentration of wealth taking place in this country, let me tell you what's happening.
Government.
The richest counties in this country used to be in Florida and California.
They are now suburbs of Washington, D.C. Wealth is being concentrated in the hands of people who are in or associated with government.
They are the 1%.
This is conveniently ignored by people who thrill with delight at Piketi's book.
I want to start with several analysis pieces here before I share with you my own thoughts.
And I want to start with a piece here by David Harsanyi.
And I, my bad, I neglected when I printed this to make a note where he was a scholar, a think tank, contributor, blogger somewhere.
And I just neglected to print, make a note of where.
And here's how he begins his analysis.
As I write this, Thomas Piketi's book, Capital in the 21st Century, that's the title of it, by the way.
Number one on Amazon.
It's been deemed an important book by a bunch of smart people.
Why not?
It validates many of the preconceived notions that progressives have about capitalism.
Inequality is growing, mobility is shrinking, meritocracy is dead, we all live in a sprawling zero-sum fallacy, and so on.
The book has also sparked non-stop conversation in political and media circles.
Though it's best to let economists debunk Piketi's methodology and data, it is worth pointing out that liberal pundits and writers have not only enthusiastically and unconditionally embraced a book on economics or even a run-of-the-mill leftist polemic, but a hard left manifesto.
Now, my point was starting with Mr. Harsanyi is that he, I think, is typical in that he is surprised at how far left the American media is today.
He is surprised at how far left the Democrat Party is today.
He is surprised.
You and I are not.
We know they are deeply committed Marxists.
They are fascists.
We see it.
We're the victims of it.
We're the ones they try to shut up.
We're the ones who are not allowed to dissent.
We are the ones, the Catherine Engelbrechts, you name it, the Tea Party, we are the ones that the powers that be on the left try to eliminate, not converse with, not debate, none of that.
We know it.
The only thing that's new about the left is in the last 20 years that the media has thrown off their cloak of camouflage, and they are now openly acknowledging who and what they are.
Oh, yeah, Harsanye's from the Federalist, federalist.com.
He says, now I realize we're all supposed to accept the fact that conservatives are alone in embracing fringe.
He's being sarcastic here.
I realize that we're all supposed to accept the fact that conservatives are alone in embracing fringe economic ideas.
But how does a book that evokes Marx and talks about tweaking the Soviet experiment find so much love from people who consider themselves rational, evidence-driven moderates?
They're not rational, evidence-driven moderants, Mr. Harsany.
They are hard, left-committed socialists.
This is the it's just a point of frustration for me.
Grab Soundbite 16.
Just as a bit of illustration here, former Senator Bob Bennett, who was defeated by Senator Mike Lee, Utah, he went to the Kennedy Scrool, the Kennedy Library, March 26th.
They had a panel on political reform.
This is a Republican, Senator Bob Bennett.
And when it was his turn to say, this panel was on reforming the political, getting along, bipartisanship, cooperation, and all of that rot gut.
And it's a joke.
The left is not about any of that.
But we've got people like McCain and this guy, Bennett Fulford.
I can cross the aisle.
I know how to work for the other shines.
They're not interested in that.
But here, just listen to the bite.
We had 19 co-sponsors, including 10 Republicans, including two members of leadership, who were willing to work on a bipartisan solution because we believed that the current healthcare structure was impossible, terrible, bad for Americans, needed to be changed.
And we were frozen out of the conversation and told to go away.
This was one place where I chalk it up not to anything evil.
I'm not Rush Limbaugh.
I'm not somebody who says he hopes the president will fail.
I think this was an example of the president's inexperience of dealing with the Congress.
He had a great opportunity, and he muffed it.
This guy couldn't be more wrong, and it's why he was defeated.
So he says, Obamacare, no, the president just he had a great opportunity and muffed it.
He just is inexperienced.
He just didn't know how to get any Republican votes.
The fact that they weren't letting us in the meetings and just his inexperience.
This kind of ignorance and this head in the sand, acknowledging good intentions on the part of these people is going to be our ruination.
And he has to go on here and mischaracterize what I said about hoping the president failed as evil.
He said, I'm not going to chalk up to anything evil.
I'm not Rush Limbaugh.
I'm not somebody who hopes.
I still wish this guy would fail.
Folks, I don't want anything that he's doing.
I wish Obamacare hadn't happened.
I wish the stimulus hadn't happened.
And everybody who heard me say that knew exactly what I meant by it.
They still took it as an opportunity to run with it in a totally different direction.
Everybody knew what I meant by that, but they chose to mischaracterize it on purpose for their own selfish personal political reasons.
But it couldn't have been more rational.
I hope he fails.
Wall Street Journal went forward to words on what do you hope President, I forgot what the question was, was something about 400 words and what you hope the president.
I said, I don't need 400 words.
I need five.
I hope he fails or four words.
I don't, because I knew what he was.
This is my point.
I knew who Obama was.
I knew what a committed socialist he was.
I knew what an Olinski guide he was.
I knew what he was going to do if he was not opposed.
I knew what he was going to do if he had clear, smooth sailing.
I knew what his intentions were.
I knew what he thought of this country.
I knew it.
Robert Bennett should have known it.
Every Republican in Washington should have known exactly what Barack Obama was.
It was right out in the open for anybody to know.
It was right.
It was not a mystery.
It didn't require deep investigation.
It just required commitment to believe it.
And they couldn't get past the man's skin color in order to accept the truth.
They were paralyzed by that.
And now, I don't mean to be harping on David Harsania here.
That's not my point.
But he is like, in a way, Bennett here.
He's shocked that modern-day Democrats are accepting a Marxist socialist economics book.
He says, it's unlikely that Democrats would have praised a book like this 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.
Nowadays, Jack Lew, the Treasury Secretary, takes time to chit-chat with the author.
This is my point.
It is very likely Democrats 20 years ago would have behind the scenes been in.
The only thing new is that they are no longer hiding who they are.
They've always been who they are.
Excuse me.
There are reasons for why the mask of camouflage has been dropped.
And I think that I really do believe it's because of the loss of their media monopoly, which has forced them into sort of a competitive mode.
They're now having to compete, and They no longer get away with this phony objectivity that they always were granted.
They always benefited from the assumption that they were objective.
Yeah, they might have been liberal, but they were fair.
They never were.
They were always hard leftists.
They always have been hard leftists.
And now all they've done is come forth and admit it.
How does a book that evokes Marx and talks about tweaking the Soviet experiment find so much love from people who consider themselves rational, evidence-driven?
Have people that have been paying attention the last seven years or six, whatever the hell it is, this guy's been in office, have people not been paying attention to what's happening?
Or is it they choose not to notice it?
And I'm not harping on harsh.
Please do not anybody send him a note that I'm ripping him to shreds.
This is serving here as an object lesson.
He goes on to say that Piketi, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, argues that capitalism allocates resources efficiently but unfairly apportions income.
And the excessive accumulation of wealth by the 1% is not only corrupt, but an inequality that makes democracy unsustainable.
And it's going to get worse.
So only a massive transfer of wealth could make our nation whole again.
Well, hello, this is Barack Obama.
This is Saul Alinsky.
This isn't anything new.
I guess it is new to some people to see every day on cable news your average ordinary guest agree with this stuff, but that's what's new.
It's not, it's just new that they're admitting it.
They didn't in the last 20 years go from moderate to fascist.
They've always been liberal fascists.
That's why I keep harping on the importance of people learning and understanding ideology and how to associate it with people so you know what's coming.
Note that Mr. Piketi is not giving his book away.
He's charging $39.95 for his book.
Why?
Why does he need the money?
Just a little side question.
Here is Piketi's thesis boiled down.
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the 19th century and seems quite likely to do again in the 21st century, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.
There's no data to support any such claim.
I'll get to that in a minute.
He goes on, Piketi goes on to suggest an 80% tax rate to fix this inequality business, an 80% tax rate on income starting at $500,000 or $1 million a year, not to raise money for education, not to raise money for mass transit, not to raise money for AIDS research, not to raise money for anything, not to increase unemployment benefits.
Piketi argues for an 80% tax rate to put an end to incomes over $500,000 a year.
And we have people in America today who can't believe that this is being supported by modern-day Democrats.
And that's what surprises me.
Do they not hear what modern-day Democrats say?
Do they not know what Obamacare is?
Do they not know what the outcome of Obamacare is?
Do they not see where the president wants to take tax policy?
Do they not listen to what he says?
Do they not know when the president of the United States makes a big deal about income inequality?
Do they not know what that means?
When has income ever been equal?
If you don't believe in free will and independence and liberty in a general sense, if you don't believe in those things, then you will find arguments about beneficient and wise big government alluring.
If you're a coward, if you're afraid to strike out on your own, if you're afraid to take a risk, if you're afraid to go for it, if you'd rather have the security of knowing you're going to be taken care of, and at the same time, somebody who did take a risk and it pays off and they become wealthy, they're going to be gotten even within big governments for you.
But if you believe in free will, if you believe we've got 200, 300 million people in this country, and every one of us is different, there is nothing about any of us that is equal.
That is what the law is to do.
But there is no guarantee.
There can't be a guarantee.
There never was a guarantee.
It's not godly or humanly possible for there to be equality of outcome.
Oh, yeah.
This always happens.
I got on a roll and then I've got to stop.
Here's the question, folks.
How many more people must suffer under these Marxist, socialist, liberal theories before a free people like those of us in this country aggressively and permanently reject this nonsense?
I don't know.
I'm really bothered.
Look, I'm conflicted.
I'm glad people's eyes are being opened.
And if this book is opening people's eyes as to just what the current left is, fine.
But I'm a little sad that it's taken six years.
Because look what's happened in these six years.
Real, deep damage has been done to the underlying foundation.
And I mean foundation, founding of this country.
You compare.
I don't, I don't care.
And I'm going to get you the numbers here before this program is.
The suffering, the human suffering under communism, socialism, Marxism versus the human suffering under capitalism, there is no comparison whatsoever.
The human suffering that occurs in communism and socialism knows no comparison.
The suffering that occurs in capitalism can't even make a dent.
No, of course, free markets create unequal results.
Sorry, folks, that's what freedom does.
Here it is again, the ear-splitting tone.
Don't go away.
Okay, now back to this lame-brain Piketi from France.
And I'm yucking it up with this guy.
I'm telling you, this is serious stuff because many more people than apparently a lot of people realize are eating it up and want to implement it in this country.
And folks, the reason it scares me is the last six years were not necessary.
This could have been avoided.
Obama could have been defeated with just a little honesty about who he was because we are not the minority in this country.
We are being governed and ruled by a really small minority of people.
They happen to control the media, which makes them look big.
They are mean.
They are vicious.
And they do not tolerate any dissent whatsoever.
They are the modern day Marxist fascists.
From this poor guy at Mozilla, to A.N. Hersey Alley.
I mean, the list is long of people who have been silenced, intimidated, threatened in the United States of America by other so-called Americans.
These last six, Obama, he didn't have to win in 2008.
He didn't have to win in 2012.
And Hillary doesn't have to win in 2016.
She's one of them.
She's no different than any of the others.
They're all in on this stuff.
What does inequality of income mean?
Has there ever been equality of income?
The Pilgrims tried it.
It's right there in Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, my first ever children's book.
Didn't work.
True story.
The actual story of the first Thanksgiving is socialism's failure.
And William Bradford and the gang's thanks to God for seeing the light.
They tried income equality.
Everybody got the same.
Same amount of land.
Everybody got the same income no matter who worked harder.
Everybody got the same.
They thought that would be fair.
They just arrived in a new place.
What could be fairer?
Everybody ends up at the same thing.
Guess what?
The slackers slacked.
The lazy lazed.
And they lived off the hard work of the industrious.
And the industrious continued to be industrious because it was their nature.
The lazy continued to be lazy because it was their nature.
And finally, unrest started to happen, and the economy wasn't going to hold together.
So they had to change it up.
They had to recognize that people were going to only get a portion of what they produced.
What they produced was theirs.
And that made everybody industrious.
Voila.
It's right there in William Bradford's journal.
The lesson is that old, but this lesson is biblical.
The failure of socialism is biblical.
Socialism is not charity.
Socialism is not kindness.
It's not compassion.
It's the exact opposite.
The Democrat Party is not kindness, is not compassion.
The Democrat Party is punitive.
The Democrat Party has an enemies list, and it's anybody who succeeds who is not a member of the Klan.
What does equality of income mean?
Well, how would you do it?
Would you base it on family size?
Would you base it on hours worked?
Would you base it on what somebody supposedly needs?
Would you base income equality on society?
I mean, if you're going to have income equality, everybody's going to have enough income to do what?
To buy what?
Everybody's going to be able to own what?
Who's going to decide this?
The places and the countries that have tried this, nobody owns anything except the leaders.
There is no property.
Nobody's allowed to own property.
So that question is dealt with right off the bat.
Nobody's going to have enough to own anything, and nobody's going to be permitted to own anything.
The state is going to own everything.
And if you stay in good graces with the state, then you'll be okay as far as okay.
Go get you.
But if you're not, you're an enemy of the state, and that's what we are today.
Anybody that's not an Obamaite is an enemy of the state.
Anybody that's not all in with Eric Holder is an enemy of the state.
Talk to Catherine Engelbrecht, talk to Aaron Hersey Alley.
Talk to Brendan Ike, Condoleezza Rice, Dropbox.
They tried to get her force out of Dropbox and they named her the board of directors, enemy of the state.
In the United States of America, here comes this idiot P. Keatie with his book, and these clowns are all addressing it, embracing it.
Who's going to make these determinations of who gets what?
Who's going to make these determinations of what we all need to be equal?
Same people who brought us Obamacare?
Same people who run the DMV.
Same people running the climate change movement.
Who are these people going to be?
The people that can routinely get a CEO fired for giving $1,000 to a proposition that says marriage is that between a man and a woman?
Can you imagine believing that marriage is between a man and a woman is enough to get you exiled in the United States of America today?
But it is.
And what my point is, this is not new.
The sentiment is not new.
The desire is not new.
The bravery is new because there's no opposition to it, because everybody's scared to death to oppose it.
There are graves.
There are gulags.
There are homeless shelters filled with human beings who have suffered under these experiments, socialism and communism in North Korea, in China, in Cuba.
It's all over the world.
That's what is exceptional about the United States of America, and that's what American exceptionalism is.
We are the exception to living the way most people have since the beginning of time.
Liberty and freedom are taken for granted by people who are born to it.
And as such, they're the last to recognize it being encroached upon.
But it is in the process of happening.
Daily, people are losing liberty.
Daily, people are losing freedom.
Daily, more and more people are afraid to tell you what they really think about something.
We are being ruled.
We are being governed by a genuine minority.
The latest polling date on the Keystone pipeline, 61, 62% want it.
The left is not the majority in this country, but they've made themselves look like they are with the help of the media who are perhaps the leaders by design in this thing.
I've got to take one final time out here.
Well, I've got not a final, but I'm taking it a break, but I want to go through some stats about the wide range of income and who makes it and who loses it in this country.
There is not a constant top 1%.
It's not the same people from birth to death.
There's not a 1% that you can never become a member of.
There's not a top 10% that you can never.
When do you hear these stats?
Based on census data, you'll be right back, folks.
Don't go away.
Professor Mark Rank, Washington University co-author of Chasing the American Dream, Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes, tells a story of his own and others' research last Sunday's New York Times.
Far from having the 21st century equivalent of an Edwardian class system, the United States is characterized by a great deal of variation in income.
More than half of all adult Americans will be at or near the poverty line at some point over the course of their lives.
More than half, 73% will also find themselves in the top 20% over the course of their life.
39% will make it into the top 5% for at least a year.
And perhaps most remarkable, 12% of Americans will be in the top 1% for at least one year of their working lives.
The top 1% is such an unstable group, it makes no sense to write, as many progressives do, about what has happened to its income over the past 10 or 20 years because it doesn't contain the same group of people from year to year.
The United States is still and indeed the land of opportunity.
The American dream is still possible and it's still happening.
People from all walks of life in and out of various income levels, we are not static and we are not destined to be in one income level for all of our lives until people like Obama gain full control.
Then we all are.
Folks, I'm sorry I didn't get any phone calls here in the last hour of the program, but once I committed to this Piketi stuff, and I just barely scratched the surface on it, there's still more to do on this to money.
I want you to know this stuff.
It's about time people found out what is happening in time.
So be back tomorrow, Open Line Friday.
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