RUSH: Hey, help me out. Who…? Some company, some outfit, announced 6,700 jobs lost yesterday. Do you remember who that is? It puts the total, the casualty total in Barack Obama’s War on Prosperity now at 46,700 jobs lost just since January, many of those in one day. I don’t remember who it is, what company laid off 6,700 people yesterday, but guess what? Disney’s laying off 200. ESPN’s going to be. (interruption) It was Kodak. Kodak, that’s right, and now we learn that Disney — ABC, ESPN — is laying off a lot of people coming up soon. Yes. We’re getting close to the magical 50,000 casualty figure in the Barack Obama War on Prosperity. These are people’s lives we’re talking about. Their jobs, their families. Starbucks cut some more, that’s right, while still flying the jet, and so we have (laughing).
Right. So we’re getting dangerously close. We’re tabulating here, ladies and gentlemen, the casualties in the War on Prosperity waged by Barack Obama. Just as they talked about the and counted the casualties in a war in Iraq, there are also shadow casualties as well: people who are not listed in official jobs, official roles, outsourced workers being cut by some of these companies, too. So I think we’ve exceeded. I think we could say that we have exceeded easily in just this past two weeks 50,000 casualties with no end in sight. In fact, the general in the War on Prosperity is telling us more people are going to lose their jobs. So we’ll keep a running tally, ladies and gentlemen. We’re getting into that period of time now.
We’re getting close to a quagmire in the War on Prosperity, being led by President Barack Obama. (sigh) I don’t relish — unlike the Drive-Bys in the old days, I don’t relish — the reporting of these casualties, but they are really. They are people, and it’s their lives. In fact, I’m beginning to see some of the people that were wiped out by Bernie Madoff. There are some people now saying he ought to be tried for murder. I mean, he practically killed people by wiping them out. So the Obama War on Prosperity occurring in the killing fields of American labor. I have yet to see one mainstream reporter dispatched to the war zone to get to the bottom of this. By the way, yesterday at the White House, President Obama signed in a new piece of legislation called the Equal Pay Law, meaning women are no longer going to get the shaft in job payment, in compensation, ’cause Obama took care of that.
It’s named after a woman named Lilly Ledbetter. Now, there are some things about this that you don’t know. There are some things about this that you weren’t told, Obama didn’t tell you and of course the sycophant, slobbering Drive-By Media didn’t tell you. Years and years after someone is fired as a result of this bill… Like Dawn, just for an example, let’s say. (interruption) No, it’s just an example. I’d rather do it this way than read some of the lingo of the bill. Let’s say that I fire you. Okay, I fire you with cause and so forth and so on. This bill will allow you to sue me years after you have been canned. This is nothing but a huge gift to the trial lawyers. It will be an enormous burden to businesses. This is not about equal pay. This is about pay for the trial lawyers. It’s exactly what this is. It allows fired workers to target companies. Give the lawyers time to reach ’em and dredge up some phony case of discrimination and then mount the big guns years later, when the employer and the company is focused on other things. All right, let’s get a couple of phone calls in here, since it is Open Line Friday. We’ll start in Herndon, Virginia. This is Gary. Great to have you here, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: Thank you very much. You know, in the interests of national unity and nonpartisanship, I want to change the tone here. The Democrats say government spending will solve our problem? Fine. Let’s get behind ’em and say, ‘Why is this tepid trillion dollars? Make it ten trillion, make it 20 trillion! You’re just inventing money out of nowhere.’ So let’s get him to go all the way and fix the whole problem.
RUSH: Uh, uh, uh, uh, give ’em time.
CALLER: (laughs) I’m afraid so.
RUSH: Give ’em time. They know they can’t get that done in one fell swoop. Obama said today this is just the beginning, this is not nearly enough. Do you know, by the way, have you heard about the need for what is being called a bad bank, set up by the federal government?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: The bad bank is going to be set up to buy the trillions of dollars of toxic assets that are the result of the subprime mortgage crisis, and do you know how much money the experts are saying? They’re going to call this TARP 2: T-A-R-P 2. Two trillion dollars to buy up all the toxic asset that the $700 billion last fall was supposed to take care of.
CALLER: Yeah. (sigh)
RUSH: Two trillion dollars for the bad bank to buy up the toxic assets.
CALLER: But it will be bigger than that.
RUSH: It will be bigger than that because the stimulus bill is going to get over one trillion. So already we’re up to three trillion here, if the TARP 2 money is right. What some people are starting to say — I think Larry Kudlow said this last night on CNBC, is — ‘We’ve gotta do TARP first. This is not a stimulus bill; it’s pork. Well, let’s set aside the pork. Let’s get liquidity back in the banks, let’s get rid of these toxic assets. If it takes two trillion for TARP 2, let’s do it, but we can’t do the stimulus, the Porkulus at the same time,’ and some experts supposedly agreed. But his point is, if government spending is the salve, why stop at one trillion? It’s sort of like the same argument I make about the minimum wage.
Well, if $10 an hour is great, why not 20? In fact, why not 50? Why not $50 an hour minimum wage? Why not a hundreds? Why not just guarantee everybody $200,000 a year, which is what all these jobs are going to cost if they’re ever really created, which they won’t be, and of course… In fact, why just give the money directly to the people? Why don’t just do that if you want to stimulate? Now the government is coming up with a plan to make you buy cars. Wait a second. I thought we bailed out the auto companies. Ford didn’t want it. I thought we bailed out the auto companies. Now we got a clunker law. We are going… The federal government’s coming up with a plan to give you money to go buy a car! This is out of control. At the same time, you’re being told that the future is worse than anybody knew, when in fact we’re not even half as bad off as we were in 1982.
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RUSH: My friends, my other friends at the Heritage Foundation had found something else in the Porkulus bill. Listen to this. This is from www.Heritage.org: ‘President Barack Obama’s trillion dollar stimulus plan,’ Porkulus plan, ‘has morphed into an appropriations bill devoid of debate. The process forgoes any pretense of targeting unemployed people and resources. For instance, the [Porkulus] bill reads ‘Provided further, That not less than $140,000,000 shall be available for climate data modeling.’ This raises the question of how many unemployed climate modelers are out there pounding the pavement. When presented with that question, last Friday, Pat Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists stated ‘I don’t know one unemployed modeler.’
‘Whether or not another $140,000,000 for climate data modeling is a good idea, it is hard to see an immediate, economy-stimulating impact from this item.’ I’ll tell you something else that’s going on with this. This establishes that if you’re a climate modeler, you get money from the federal government. This government is the Obama government. They want to propagate this manmade global warming hoax. You take money from them for your climate computer models, when you don’t even need it? What, do I wonder, are your results going to show? Exactly what Obama wants. Where did I find this? Heritage Foundation. AskHeritage.org. It’s all I did.
Go to the website, AskHeritage.org, special reports on the stimulus, the Porkulus, any number of things. Become a member, and you will have an encyclopedia open. I’ve been using the Heritage Foundation. It’s one of the most crucial educational elements throughout the last 20 years of this radio program. I’ve used them the first moment I discovered them, when I learned that they were heavy architects of Reagan administration policy. They’re quality, class people. They’re us. They’re us people. They’re scholars, but they’re not eggheads. They’re scholars and they’re brilliant geniuses but they are not elitists. Www.AskHeritage.org.
Todd in Red Bank, New Jersey, it’s nice to have you on the program, sir.
CALLER: Thank you very much. Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I am a high school economics teacher, and I just feel like if people really understood where this money was coming from, they’d be more outraged about this bill, whether it’s the increased welfare or more payments to unions or any of the support of the typical constituencies of the Democrats. Think of the GDP, not as money, but it’s made up of what we as Americans produce every day. So it’s a $13 trillion pie — and that sounds like a big pie, but your income is really just your slice of the pie. Whatever you put into it, you get out of it.
RUSH: Yeah. But wait a second. Here’s the thing: it’s not a zero-sum game. Too many people think you get the $13 million pie and you take out a hundred thousand of it, they think somebody’s lost a hundred thousand. They don’t believe in the growing pie. How difficult a time do you have? You teach high school economics, you said.
CALLER: I do.
RUSH: How difficult is it to teach it? How difficult is it for these kids to learn?
CALLER: I’m grading my midterms now and I’m finding out it’s harder than I ever think. The economy is a difficult thing to understand but like I said. What I wanted to get to is: Every dollar that you give to somebody that didn’t earn it, does come from somebody else’s pocket who did produce that dollar.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: You’re right. It’s not a zero sum game.
RUSH: But where we are now, the people — average American — think… I don’t know how many of them, to use your example, ‘If we’re going to give somebody who doesn’t have a dollar, a dollar; it’s going to come from somebody who had it, who earned it.’ The prevailing opinion in America, is, ‘Good! It’s not fair that somebody doesn’t have a dollar when somebody else does. We need to punish the person that has the dollar.’
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Capitalism, unfortunately… Capitalism makes so much sense. It’s common sense. Economics is common sense. But it’s tough to learn. It’s counterintuitive.
CALLER: It is counterintuitive.
RUSH: It ought not be. Liberalism, all you have to do is feel it and you think you are one. But capitalism, conservatism, they’re intellectual applications. How much resistance do you get from these kids? ‘Cause look it, a lot of people have formed emotional ideas about society. They watch MTV. They watch all these shows and read all these magazines and listen to all these songs about the disadvantaged and the poor. How difficult…? Do they reject some of the concepts that you try tot each to them?
CALLER: I think, just like your listeners, the more you spend listening to the truth, the more you understand it. I feel like because I have these students 45 minutes a day, every single day, I get to start with the basics and work them up to the point where they understand the concepts like the GDP can’t be… You can’t take one part without taking it from somebody else and give it to them. Like once you explain those things over time, you don’t get much resistance. But it’s like most Democrats, it’s an emotional reaction. ‘They deserve this. We shouldn’t have poor people. Everyone should have health care,’ but when you have time to educate, which your listeners have, then you come to understand the truth, and that’s why programs like yours are so important.
RUSH: I appreciate that. I would loooove to be able to go into your class —
CALLER: Oh, I would love that.
RUSH: — and just listen to some of the objections.
CALLER: I will fill out the guest speaker request form tomorrow, Rush.
RUSH: I guarantee you, you’re… Where are you?
CALLER: I’m in Red Bank, New Jersey.
RUSH: Yeah, Red Bank, New Jersey. I doubt that your school board will consider me anywhere near your campus.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: But they will say too partisan and polarizing.
CALLER: Well, that could be, but I’m just as polarizing as you and they let me show up to work every day, so…
RUSH: That’s just because they don’t know it.
CALLER: Ha-ha! That’s exactly right.
RUSH: I can’t wait ’til you start teaching them about taxes.
CALLER: Oh, goodness. Yeah, that’s coming up in the spring. It’s always fascinating. (laugh-sign)
RUSH: They will. Well, good luck. You’re doing the Lord’s work out there. You really are. I appreciate it. Who’s next? Laura in Aurora, Illinois. It’s great to have you with us here on the EIB Network and Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I just had a quick question. You know, you say that the Republicans and, you know, all our efforts are always behind the Democrats. Do you have any ideas for…? You know, like I hear all these different places that you could, you know, find out information about and donate to — the Heritage Foundation, Newt has his own website — but it’s like, I feel like we need one central location to like really get it all together, and, you know, come back at these guys.
RUSH: That’s not possible. I would love that, too, for my show prep.
CALLER: I know. That’s what I mean.
RUSH: No, I’m being very serious. I’d love it. Look, I spend my average day… I finished here yesterday at three o’clock. I did a couple little things for tomorrow’s program for like 20 minutes after the program. I went home, and I intended to chill.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: Just for an hour and a half, and before I even had a chance to sit down on the couch, I heard about this new MoveOn.org Big Labor union ad pitting me versus Obama —
CALLER: Ugh.
RUSH: — and I found out about it because a lot of the Drive-Bys were sending me e-mails wanting responses. So I had to sit there ask tell them what I had to say about that. I didn’t leave the computer to veg at all last night until I got up and went to bed at 1:30.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: During that, I got so many places that I go to put together this program every day, to learn what I want to. Plus the lib sites, the Drive-By sites and so forth. It’s impossible to have a single — even for conservative, a single — clear house. Now, for ideally conservatism though, that’s what the Heritage Foundation is, like this report I just did on the climate modelers. I haven’t seen that anywhere else. A lot of people are poring through this. They have multitudes poring through this bill finding things, but this is just one example of what they do. Really, AskHeritage.org is close to what you want. If you’re just looking for how to understand, explain ideological conservatism as applied to current-day events, that’s a pretty good place to go. That and my website, the Essential Stack of Stuff. But one spot will never happen.