RUSH: Okay, more audio sound bites. And, ladies and gentlemen, we have four of them coming up with the esteemed Barney Frank (Democrat-Massachusetts). Barney used to be a regular fixture on this program with frequent utterances and scandals himself involving — what was it that was going on in his basement with his boyfriend? Oh, yeah, the prostitution ring going on. The rumor is — it was straight-up prostitution, but — patrolling schools, right, and so forth. It was going on in Barney’s basement, Barney did not know about it. And Barney was fixing the parking tickets that were needed to park in front of the house here where stuff is going on, and he didn’t know about it. Anyway we had a Barney Frank update. Dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut. This is it.
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RUSH: (slurping)
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RUSH: Quick, who did the song? You know the artiste here? Maimone knows it. He’s not allowed to play. I think it’s 1965. It was Millie Small, not to be confused with P. Diddy.
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RUSH: (slurping)
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RUSH: Okay, that’s our Barney Frank update theme. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Yesterday I pointed out to you that Democrats Chuck Schumer targeting home ownership as the problem here: ‘The lowly mortgage has brought our economy to its knees.’ Last night on PBS, the Charlie Rose Show, he talked to Congressman Frank. Charlie Rose said, ‘Who is representing the vast middle class here who faces these kinds of foreclosures? Where is that voice at the table?’
FRANK: Well that’s, frankly, the Democrats, some Republicans. We are the ones who have said, ‘Look, we’re going to buy up some of these assets,’ and many of them will be mortgage securities. What we’re saying is, ‘Buy them with an eye towards assembling enough of them so we then could be the landlord, in effect, and reduce the foreclosures,’ and that’s one, frankly, that the administration has been resisting.
RUSH: Thank God! He just said the federal government — he, Barney Frank — they want to be the landlord! They want to buy up enough these mortgages so that they can be the landlord. They own; you rent. Folks, this is one of the guys that caused this. And then Barney, he wasn’t through. Same show, Charlie Rose, he continued.
FRANK: When we talk about the large amounts of money, it’s not simply that we’re jealous because they’re getting too much money. It has a bad effect on their behavior. We have what’s called ‘a perverse incentive.’ In many of these corporations if the CEO and the top people make a bet on a certain risky investment and it pays off, they get a bonus. If it doesn’t pay off, they don’t lose anything.
RUSH: Well, now, that sounds remarkably similar to certain aspects of the US tax code, doesn’t it? I mean, do I get to deduct stock losses? I don’t think so. At any rate, we’re back to the executive pay. CEOs have ‘a perverse incentive’ and has ‘a bad effect on their behavior.’ So now Barney Frank wants the government to become your landlord and he wants the government to be in charge of the behavior of CEOs. Yesterday on CNBC Erin Burnett talked to Barney Frank, and said, ‘Is it clear that Henry Paulson doesn’t want all those restrictions in this current bill?’
FRANK: I understand and I — I admire Secretary Paulson a great deal, but on this one asking him to accept any kind of compensation limitations is just kind of like asking the rabbi to eat bacon on Yom Kippur. He — he — he starts to just really start to overreact.
RUSH: They don’t want any limitations on executive pay. (interruption) Bacon on Yom Kippur. Yeah, they start to overreact. Yeah, that’s what he did, asking a rabbi to eat bacon on Yom Kippur, he starts to overreact. So he said Paulson was overreacting yesterday to the desire by Democrats to control even more of the private sector. We are talking about the private sector. They are the ones that broke this. The scandal is inside the doors at Capitol Hill, transferred to Democrat cronies at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which were partially under government auspices anyway, even though they insult our intelligence and tell us that they were private sector businesses. This is where we’re headed if the Democrats get their way. They screw it up, and they get to control it even more!