Caller Asks: Should I Take a Grant?

RUSH: Bill in Marietta, Ohio, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Yes, sir. Rush, super mega dittos from the first government in the Northwest Territory.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Yes, sir. My question for the day is, a friend and I, staunch conservatives, both of us — I actually watched your program when I was in high school, and I was into it before I was a conservative. You were there and that’s what awakened me when I was a youth, let’s say.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Yes, sir. My question for you today is, a friend of mine, both of us are staunch conservatives, I’m wanting to start a business aside from the one that I work in, and he says apply for a federal grant. He said it’s free money from the government, he says the man that’s in the White House, he says, let him give you the money. And I say, no, because I don’t want the government’s handout.

RUSH: Let me tell you another reason why not to do it. And I’ll back this up, I’ve got a story in my Stack of Stuff here.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Companies that get into business with the government, like this story’s about an organic milk farmer, and all of the people that distribute his milk have gone out of business. So he’s got nothing to do with his organic milk. So he’s gotten some help from the government. He’s a L3C, Limited Liability Corporation, and now because he’s taken money from the government he is now what’s called a low-profit company. The government is willing to keep him in business if he will promise to keep his profits low. You don’t want any part, Bill, of this administration and any government grant of any kind. You don’t need it, you don’t want it, you don’t want them telling you eventually how you’re gonna run your business and what you can and can’t do with it. Don’t worry about it, don’t go anywhere near it. If it’s a real dream you’ve got and you don’t have the financing yet, hold off. Be patient. We’re going to rebound, and you’re going to be able to get financing through regular channels at some point. But don’t, don’t take a grant.

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RUSH: Now, I want to go back to the guy who asked me about whether or not starting a business he should take a government grant. His partner thinks the government’s handing out free money. No, that’s never true. There’s always a price to pay for it. Here is a story from CNNmoney.com, and the headline is: ‘For L3C Companies, Profit Isn’t the Point — When organic dairy farmer Vaughn Chase received a letter informing him that processor H.P. Hood would no longer be taking his milk, he feared he’d be forced out of business. Three years earlier, he had invested $25,000 in converting his 600-acre family farm to meet the US Department of Agriculture’s organic certification standards. But now he couldn’t find another organic processor willing to take the milk from his remote farm in Maine. With the price of non-organic milk plummeting below production costs, returning to conventional farming wasn’t an option either. ‘That was suicide,’ says Vaughn, 54, who owns about 60 milking cows. ‘I couldn’t put my family through that. I might as well quit.’

‘Vaughn’s was one of 10 small farms in Maine let go by H.P. Hood last year; luckily, none had to quit. With the support of local government agencies and a business consultant, Vaughn and the other farmers created a company to process and distribute their milk locally under their own brand, Maine’s Own Organic Milk Company — MOOMilk. But the most unusual aspect of the venture is its legal status. MOOMilk is a ‘low-profit’ limited liability corporation, or L3C. It’s a controversial new type of business entity intended to make it easier for companies with a social mission to receive investments, including loans and grants, from charitable foundations,’ and government. Are you with me so far on this? ‘Since April 2008, five states and two Indian tribes have signed legislation enabling companies to incorporate as an L3C, which is generally defined as a taxable for-profit business whose primary goal is to achieve a stated social mission. Profit is a secondary goal.’

So this is social engineering in the private sector. We’re going to now reward businesses that do not make a profit if someone approves of their social mission. Meanwhile, 90% of independents and Republicans and 80% of people in general disapprove of the liberal Democrat Congress. And the liberal Democrat Congress is no different than the wackos who come up with an idea like this. This is designed to pervert capitalism. It is to corrupt the private sector and to change the mission. ‘An L3C, which is generally defined as a taxable for-profit business whose primary goal is to achieve a stated social mission. Profit is a secondary goal.’ Now, the mainstream media — I just read TIME Magazine circulation down 34.9%. Newsweek down 41.3%, and magazines have undergone recent revampings to make them more relevant to today’s consumer.

Now mainstream media companies ought to love this. Throw profit out the window? They’ve never liked having to make profit in the first place. I’m not talking about the owners. I’m talking about the journalists. They’ve always thought that profit somehow polluted the objectivity of what they did. Well, here’s your chance. Simply go out there, borrow some money to grow the business back or whatever you want to do with it and say you’re a L3C, and your mission is not profit. You have a social mission. And the social mission is to what? Propagandize the American people in the name of the Obama administration. ‘At least five other states are currently considering similar legislation, and L3C proponents, including the Council on Foundations, are courting potential sponsors on Capitol Hill for a federal bill. In Vermont, the first state to pass the legislation, more than 80 companies have incorporated as L3Cs in the past 21 months.’ Do you understand the ramifications of this? And of course Vermont, a very liberal state, 80 companies have become incorporated, say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, profit’s not an issue, no, no, we got a social mission here.’

‘Robert Lang, one of the original architects of the L3C concept, ‘We’re trying to create an L3C whose very DNA insists that it has to put its beneficial activities in front of making money.’ Lang, a former cosmetics business owner in Granite Springs, N.Y., came up with the idea soon after he was asked to run his late stepfather’s small family foundation. He learned about ‘program-related investments’ (PRIs), which are loans or investments private foundations can offer for charitable or educational projects, such as affordable housing or health clinics, even if they are run by for-profit entities.’ Well, this is disturbing as all get-out to me because this is the corrupting of the private sector and to change its mission in toto and the left is just running hog wild unchecked over everything. Everything they can get their hands on, and as you’ve seen, after just one year, folks, they destroy, they literally destroy what they set out in their mind to fix, which in truth is what they’re setting out in their mind to change.

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RUSH: Here’s Larry in Moore, Oklahoma. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello. I had a comment about the LP or L3PC.

RUSH: It’s the L3C. It’s a ‘low-profit, social mission corporation.’

CALLER: There you go. I think the EIB Network should probably apply for some kind of a grant because you have a social objective. The idea is to get all the dysfunctional minds properly working.

RUSH: Yeah, but the problem with us is that we are oriented toward obscene profits, not small profits. We wouldn’t qualify. We do both. We accomplish a social mission each and every day while making obscene profits.

CALLER: Well, yeah, but compared to the confiscatory profits that the IRS makes you guys are small profits.

RUSH: Well, yeah. (laughing) There’s always somebody that does more.

CALLER: Yeah, exactly.

RUSH: Always somebody that has more, always somebody earns more. That’s exactly right on the money.