RUSH: Will in Amanda, Ohio. You’re up first. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey thanks, Rush. Hey, don’t you think the one common denominator between the Tea Party and the protesters on Wall Street is a lack of justice? And what I mean by that is the lack of criminal prosecution from anybody from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Wall Street, the banking industry, or even our own government officials.
RUSH: Um, okay —
CALLER: Not one prosecution, Rush.
RUSH: You want prosecution? Oh, “not one.” I’m trying to understand. What’s the correlation to the Tea Party?
CALLER: Well, the Tea Party gathered great strength after the bailouts that they tried to stop, and I think without the prosecution of anybody for crimes that have brought this country to its knees —
RUSH: Okay, name for me a crime and who you think should be prosecuted. I’m not disagreeing, I just want to know. Obama was asked this question today.
CALLER: Rush.
RUSH: Somebody asked him today, “How come there haven’t been any prosecutions?” Who? And for what?
CALLER: I have to untie the other half of your brain for this one. Think about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
RUSH: Okay, when I think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac I think Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: But look at the collusion that’s taken place between Wall Street and the banking industry and selling the mortgages — or giving mortgages to anybody — ’cause we know we can sell ’em off over here and we don’t care if they’re qualified or not.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Do you think there was a lack of fiduciary responsibility from a lot of people?
RUSH: No! I think there was fear of government.
CALLER: The what?
RUSH: I think there was fear of government. You talk about all these mortgage-related projects. Why did they exist?
CALLER: That doesn’t justify crime.
RUSH: I’m not saying it does. No, no, no, no. Wait a minute. (sigh) I’m not trying to justify crime, but when you have the… I don’t know. Barack Obama is telling the banking industry what it can and can’t charge and what profit he will accept and what level of profit he won’t accept. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter came up with this scheme that resulted in the subprime mortgage crisis. They said it was unfair that poor and minority people didn’t have houses, so we’re basically gonna give ’em houses. How are we gonna do that? We’re going to make the banks loan them money, knowing full well they can’t pay it back. Janet Reno threatened a number of Wall Street bank people with all kinds of investigations and prosecutions if they didn’t make these loans.
Now, it’s risky saying this because I sound like I’m coming to the defense of bankers. My total anger here is related to big government, oppressive government, leftists from Bill Clinton to Jimmy Carter and now Barack Obama wanting to micromanage and centrally plan the private sector economy in this country to the point of eradicating it and destroying it. So these guys at the banks have just been told to give away money. Okay, fine. They have to show profit for their shareholders, they have to stay in business, and how can they if they give money away? So, what do they do? You may call it criminal. They came up with ways to pass the buck down the line. They created a bunch of products that had no value, but they touted value. You may think that’s a crime. It could well be, and I’m not saying it’s justified.
But if you want to get to the root of it, you have to go to who demanded it with the full force of government and threats of prosecution behind them — and that’s William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, aided and abetted by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac who took the opportunity to personally enrich themselves. The executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw what was going on, and they personally profited from all this money that was being generated and floating around. There was a literal rainstorm of money. They could just reach up and grab a handful of it, put it the back pocket on Monday and do the same thing on Tuesday. There was so much money going out and circulating around what they stole wasn’t noticed for a while. Even the regulators in the Bush administration who wanted to put a stop to this were shouted down by Barney Frank, and we’ve played the audio of it on this program. We had it. (Don’t get it again, Cookie. I don’t want to get sidetracked on this.) I gotta take a break here.
Put ’em all in jail for all I care!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ve decided that I’m not through. I’m not through with this. How many of you remember that when it came to these bailouts, most of the banks were forced to take a minimum of $25 billion or $50 billion? The chairman of Wells Fargo blew the lid off this one. What happened was that the then Treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, called ’em all into an office and shut the door at three o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday and he gave them a piece of paper to sign. The piece of paper was a request and acknowledgement asking for and getting the bailout, and he told ’em, “You are not getting out of this room until you all sign this.” The Wells Fargo chairman didn’t want the money. He didn’t need a bailout. A couple of other banks didn’t need the bailout.
They were forced to accept the bailout. The banks have paid back their bailouts with interest. The government has made a profit from the bailouts. Erin Burnett has her own show on CNN and she traveled down to Wall Street. She was interviewing one of these lugheads down there, and this guy was saying, “They took bailouts and they haven’t paid any money back!” She said, “Oh, no, no. They did. The banks have all paid the bailout money back with interest,” and this guy was, typically, just totally uninformed. He was just dumb, just stupid like they all are down there, oh, really? “Okay, well, I’m gonna stop protesting.” He left! Then she started getting grief from other people for having blown the lid on the truth. So the banks were forced to take the bailouts.
Now the Obama regime, as we speak, is making banks go into minority neighborhoods. The subprime thing is being rerun. This time, not just loans to the poor. They have to open branches in poor and dangerous neighborhoods. The regime is forcing this. The regime is putting limits on their profits. The regime is telling them what they can and can’t charge for fees. Obama lit into ’em again today. So it’s clear that Obama is gonna run for office against the banks; he is going to run for office against Wall Street. He’s going to try to get you to hate the banks. Now, before he tried to get you to hate the banks he tried to get you to hate oil; and before he tried to get you to hate oil, he wanted you to hate the health insurance industry; and before that, he wanted you to hate the people in charge of student loans; and on and on and on.
Before that, they hated the car companies; and before that, it was Walmart that was gonna kill you; and before that, it was the drug companies that were gonna kill you; and before that, it was somebody else; and then it was oil all over again. For as long as I’ve been alive, the Democrat Party has been telling us that all of these industries are out to kill us! They are out to kill our customers and destroy the earth with their evil practices. So it’s just the banks who are the latest target of the American socialist left. There is a war on the entirety of the private sector. It is the private sector that employs most of you, that services most of you, that creates the economic prosperity that our nation has enjoyed — and there is a war on that private sector, and it’s being waged from the Oval Office, and its foot soldiers are on Wall Street and in other cities around the country.
By design and with organization. There’s nothing spontaneous about this, and there’s nothing that this bunch has in common with the Tea Party. First and foremost, everybody in the Tea Party had a job (or recently did). They worked. The Tea Party is their first ever involvement in anything like it. These people are the perpetually lazy, spoiled-rotten 99% white kids who don’t have anything else to do except sit around and be told how rotten their lives are while they use iPhones, iPads and automobiles that everybody else worked hard to make for ’em that they now think they have to put out of business. The EPA. The famed Environmental Protection Agency is attacking farmers and truckers and fishermen and coal miners. The Interior Department is attacking people who work at oil drilling sites and refineries.
HUD, the Justice Department, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have destroyed the housing market, not the banks. The government has destroyed the housing market, starting with Bill Clinton and going all through Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and every other Democrat who had anything to do with the subprime mortgage thing. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. People’s homes were the most important investment most families make in a lifetime, and Obama sits up there today — stands up there today — lamenting how bad he feels about all that, but if we just pass his $450 billion jobs bill, “Why, everybody will get their house back and everybody get their job, and everybody get a road repaired, and no more bridges will have any problems! All for $450 billion. Damn right, do it now!”
Why didn’t the first 800 billion do that? Why do we need another $450 billion? We did this once before, and we’ve double down on it numerous times since first time. The massive deficit spending authored by Barack Obama is destroying investments in stocks, bonds, pension plans, and savings accounts. All these people who have pensions — they expected to be paid for life after working for 20 years — guess what? They’re underfunded, and many of them are invested in the very stock market Barack Obama is trying to tell them to hate! Obama is attacking every business. He is attacking every employer and employee. He is attacking the system. He has a perverse mind.
One day he targets one group or business, the next day he targets another. Never, ever does he take responsibility for any of this mayhem. Oh, no! He’s just an innocent bystander. He’s a spectator. After running up debt heretofore unseen in this country, he tells us we have to get control of our spending. Now, he is desperately trying to save his pathetic and destructive presidency, and to get reelected he does not give a damn who he hurts in the process or what he damages. The only person who does anything out of altruism and selflessness is Obama and his fellow liberals, right? Do you believe that? They’re the ones with all the compassion? They’re the ones who have all this concern and caring for the downtrodden while they sit there and destroy them?
The dirty little secret, folks, is Obama is not only for occupying Wall Street. He also wants to occupy Main Street. Everything he said in that news conference this morning was in reality a frontal assault on Main Street! All this talk of tax cuts for small businesses that hire veterans or give raises? There are no tax cuts! There is a tax credit that is the stupidest deal in the world. So you go out and you hire somebody and pay ’em 50 grand plus the benefits and Obama will give you a $2500 tax break. Big whoop! So you have a net cost of $47,500 bucks. Yep, you get a tax cut. He’s got crosshairs aimed at every business, large and small, on every American who’s trying to work for a living and better his prospects for himself and his children. There is a tax increase for everybody working in this country. There is a tax increase for everybody who still has a job.
I got a story here, it’s in Politico today. This is really crazy. “Democrats are increasingly abandoning their biggest talking point on taxes: Families earning more than $250,000 a year are ‘wealthy’ and should pay more.” It says here the Democrats are running away from that. I didn’t hear any of that today. Did you hear Obama running away from that? “That figure — $250,000 for a household — has been at the tip of the tongue of so many Democratic candidates and lawmakers in the past few elections that itÂ’s become ingrained in the partyÂ’s tax philosophy. But theyÂ’ve taken a beating from Republicans and have grown increasingly divided on the issue, since that income level would not only cause tax increases for some small businesses –” Did they actually admit that in The Politico? This person doesn’t have a job for long, Manu Raju. It’s good knowing you, Manu. I hope I can read where you write next.
That income, 250, would cause tax increases for small businesses? I’ve never seen this admitted to in the State-Controlled Media. Manu, hide! I’m probably too late. “So Democrats on Capitol Hill and the White House are settling on an easier sales pitch: Tax the millionaires, believing that public opinion is firmly on their side that the truly rich should pony up more cash as the economy struggles –” yeah, it’s their fault, right. It’s the rich’s fault that the economy is struggling. Yeah, the rich, they’re hoarding everything, yeah, it’s the rich, they’re the ones to blame. That’s what Obama’s selling? That’s the ticket to ride back to the Oval Orifice in 2012, the rich are to blame? And the magic potion to fix the economy and to get you working again is for the rich to pay higher taxes. Shazam. That’s easy. Perverse, sick thinking.
So the Democrats are not abandoning taxing people at 250 grand. They’re abandoning saying so. They’re just gonna say millionaires and billionaires for now. They’re not gonna talk about 250 grand anymore because that’s a lot of small businesses and their taxes are gonna go up. They’re still gonna tax you. They’re just not gonna say it now. That’s what the story is saying. “The new rhetoric could force a serious rethinking of the Democratic approach toward the Bush-era tax cuts for high earners that theyÂ’ve vilified for the past decade, lawmakers said Wednesday.” This is a crock, Democrats rethinking, this is total BS. The only place that might have some validity is Democrats in the Senate who are facing reelection.
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