RUSH: Chester, New York. Alan, it’s Open Line Friday and you’re next. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you. The other night you had a lady stating on the Wall Street protest, that she was upset about Bank of America charging $5 a month for their fees?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, many years ago, not too long ago, I used to pay a dollar a gallon for gas. Now it’s three and a quarter. That comes out to $300 extra a month. That’s extra.
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: That I pay in gas.
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: That everyone pays in gas, not to mention extra fees and so forth.
RUSH: Yeah. You want to know why people get upset over the five bucks and not the gasoline?
CALLER: To complain about the five bucks is ridiculous. Yeah.
RUSH: It might well be. I ask you this question: How do you know for sure that everybody is up in arms over the five bucks? You hear one citizen complain about it, you then see the media making a whole big deal about it in concert with Obama attacking the banks, and then we see little groups of people out there protesting against the banks. As I said yesterday: “Today it’s the banks, yesterday it was Big Oil, and it will be Big Oil again if this fizzles.” When the price of gasoline goes up, people do get mad. If the media doesn’t cover it, you don’t know about it, you don’t hear it. You just feel it yourself, so you might think nobody’s complaining about it and you’re the only one upset about it, which is never the case. We’re all prisoners of the media. Some of us have developed ways to immunize ourselves from the narrative and the template of the day that the media has.
CALLER: Hmmm.
RUSH: I remember when credit card interest, after the 1986 tax reform, was no longer allowed, no longer deductible on your tax return. Ah, people were livid. There was no doubt people were livid. When ATM fees went up sometime a few years ago, people were livid — and there probably is some outrage over the Bank of America thing, but I think a lot of it is being drummed up. I don’t know how genuine it is. You’ve got Democrats out there trying to create a run on the bank. You had Dick Durbin on the floor of the Senate, urging people to leave Bank of America and go to smaller community banks. I think it’s reprehensible, but I think people are upset about a lot of things, if you want to know the truth.
CALLER: Right. I just blew a gasket. I had to call.
RUSH: Well, you blew a gasket over which fact?
CALLER: That they’re worried about $5 a month, and it’s only some people.
RUSH: Well…
CALLER: Meanwhile, gas is every day.
RUSH: I know. Look, I blew a gasket when people were upset over the ATM fee. Remember that? I really did. “Why? It’s a buck. It’s a buck!” But if the target of the demonization campaign then is forced by the demonization campaign to raise fees to make up for what the demonization campaign is forcing them to lose, it all makes sense. Everybody is being manipulated here. You just have to find ways to avoid being manipulated.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To those of you still trying to understand what all’s going on, it’s always useful to return to Alinsky, always useful. For example, folks, these Occupy Wall Street protests, wherever they are taking place, this is boot camp. This is boot camp for the bigger and badder protests that are in the works. Boot camp training, rehearsal time. Let’s put this together. Due to Obama’s policies, corporations are cutting back. They’re increasing costs or they’re dropping health insurance altogether. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, a story from the Associated Press yesterday. “Feds to Design Health Insurance for the Masses,” by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar.
“The federal government is taking on a crucial new role in the nation’s health care, designing a basic benefits package for millions of privately insured Americans. A framework for the Obama administration was released Friday. The report by independent experts from the Institute of Medicine lays out guidelines for deciding what to include in the new ‘essential benefits package,’ and how to keep it affordable for small businesses and taxpayers, as well as scientifically up to date. About 68 million Americans, many of them currently insured, ultimately would be affected by the new benefits package. That’s bigger than the number of seniors enrolled in Medicare.” And Obama promised it would bend the cost curve down, and Obama promised if you like your plan, you keep it.
And yet here’s the story. “The federal government is taking on a crucial new role in the nation’s health care, designing a basic benefits package for millions of privately insured Americans.” The AP gets its collectivist language right. The regime is designing health insurance for the masses, just like Romney did in Massachusetts, and he’s mandating it. And this word — “masses”? Dead giveaway for what lies ahead. Ronald Reagan knew all too well what Democrats had in mind when they talked about the masses. That famous 1964 Barry Goldwater speech. Let me read to you an excerpt from that speech of Ronaldus Magnus.
“And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as ‘meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.’ Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as ‘the masses.’ This is a term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, ‘the full power of centralized government’ — this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.”
He’s obviously dead-on right. “The masses. The material needs of the masses.” Central planners don’t look at us as individuals. We are just robots and pegs to be plugged into holes to make it all work out. And so here we have Feds to design health insurance for the masses. So, back to Alinsky. Due to Obama’s policies, corporations are cutting back or increasing costs or dropping health insurance altogether. Corporations, because of Obama’s policies, are forced to lay off employees. Salaries, workable hours and bonuses are cut back, fees such as debit card usage and cost of goods have been forced higher to pass on the costs of Obama’s regulations. And yet yesterday at Obama’s presser, he said, (paraphrasing) “Some people think get rid of all these regulations. Well, that’s not gonna create any jobs overnight.”
Yes, it would. Get rid of Obamacare and a massive number of regulations evaporate. You get rid of Obamacare and there’s gonna be a huge spike in economic activity real fast. Roll back some of these regulations that have been imposed on business and bar the door. And there’s Obama saying, “Well, some people say get rid of the regulations. That isn’t gonna make any difference.” Where do you think the five-dollar credit card fee comes from? It comes from Durbin forcing the banks to reduce an existing fee for credit card swipes from 48 to 24 cents. They have a business to run. They have income streams that are defined. The federal government’s just cut an income stream in half. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and everybody else plus their employees. They gotta stay in business.
They have to make it up somewhere else, so they go out and raise the credit card fee five bucks a month for debit card usage, and everybody has a cow, including Obama, because Obama and the Democrats think the banks are just gonna sit there and take it. Just like you’re gonna sit there and take it when your taxes go up. You know that press conference, Obama’s holding up his bill, $447 billion, (imitation) “Right here is 1.9 million jobs, right here, my bill, pass that bill, 1.9 million jobs.” Not one reporter deigned to ask, “For how long are those jobs created, Mr. President?” ‘Cause they’re all for one year. Whether they were teachers or doctors or nurses, firemen or cops. They were jobs funded for one year. But taxes do not create jobs.
There’s never been an occasion where taxes create jobs. The private sector and activity there is what creates jobs, not taxes. Taxes kill jobs. Not one reporter said, “Mr. President, I don’t understand, you just spent $787 billion two years ago for jobs, and we’re in much worse shape. How is half of that — Mr. President, I don’t understand how the federal government spending anything creates jobs anyway. Could you explain to me how it happens?” Not one reporter said, “Mr. President, you’ve just described how various Americans are having to do with less. Have you ever thought maybe the government could do with less?” Not one reporter, and not one reporter ever will, not in the currently constituted White House press corps.
So let’s review. Because of Obama’s policies American businesses are cutting back or dropping health insurance altogether, or they are raising costs to their employees for it. While this is happening, businesses are forced to lay off employees. Salaries, workable hours, and bonuses are cut back. Fees, such as debit card usage and the cost of goods, have been forced higher to pass on the costs of Obama’s regulations, and the president is blaming the businesses when it was, in fact, the president who caused the very problems that businesses struggle to overcome to stay afloat. And not only is this president blaming the businesses, the corporations, for the misery that Obama has caused, it’s funny, he likes to compare himself to Reagan. These problems didn’t happen under Reagan.
So not only is he blaming businesses for the misery that he is causing; he’s now orchestrating or encouraging phony protests designed to further damage American companies. Why would anybody do this? What would be Obama’s purpose in causing all of this misery and pain and suffering and chaos? What’s his purpose? Stanley Kurtz explains it in his 2010 book Radical-in-Chief. Quote, “Alinsky was convinced that large-scale socialist transformation would require an alliance between the struggling middle class and the poor. And the key to radical social change, Alinsky thought, was to turn the wrath of America’s middle class against large corporations.” Well, Alinsky is Obama’s godfather, mentor. It was Alinsky that Obama was teaching when he taught some kinda constitutional law at the University of Chicago. “The key to radical social change turned the wrath of America’s middle class against large corporations.” That’s exactly what’s happening. Everybody’s mad at the banks or Big Oil or Big Drug.
This is the Democrat way. It’s right out of Alinsky. Another question not asked at Obama’s press conference yesterday. “Mr. President, you keep talking about Ronald Reagan and that quote that millionaires shouldn’t pay more taxes than a janitor or some such thing. But, Mr. President, you’re taking it a little bit out of context. You’re not telling us all of the tax cuts that Ronald Reagan instituted and all of the attacks he instituted against a growing government. The Reagan model worked, Mr. President. Yours didn’t. How long are you going to continue on this path, Mr. President, holding the economy hostage to failed theories?”
They didn’t ask that question. The Reagan boom, which lasted nearly 20 years, did not have an American Jobs Act. But it worked. The Reagan boom did not have Stimulus 1, Stimulus 2, Stimulus period! But it worked. The Reagan boom did not attack, smear, or vilify the other party, but it worked. The Reagan boom did not pick on 1% of the voters to incite 99% of the voters, but it worked. They call it “taxpayers;” I call it voters, because the attack on the achievers is not economic; it’s political. I know that Obama does not have a clue about business, and yesterday’s press conference confirmed it. Here is how he characterized the Republican jobs plan.
(impression) “Well, we’re gonna roll back all these Obama regulations? Anybody really think that’s gonna create jobs right now and meet the challenges of global economy, rolling back regulations?” Now, in poker they call that “a tell,” a giveaway. A tell is when a poker player gives away his bluff, and that was Obama’s tell — that was the giveaway — that he doesn’t have a clue. If we would roll back, quote, “these Obama regulations,” close quote, it would create jobs right now. If we could roll back Obamacare, it would create jobs faster than all of the “porkuli” that have been combined in history. Not only is business burdened by Obama regulations, they are realistic enough to know that there are countless Obama czars working around the clock for new regulations, and they don’t have any accountability. How could anybody as smart as Obama is supposed to be behave as un-smart as he does? I don’t have to say it. It’s all in Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, and it’s all what Obama wants to happen.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So all these people are being stoked from the White House — and Joe Bite Me, the vice president, is out there also stoking these people, these Wall Street occupiers. There’s already little spatters of violence that have popped up. Seven hundred arrests, I think I read, nationwide.
If these small crowds — and they are small. This is boot camp for what’s coming later. Mark my words. This is just a trial run, folks, for what the regime has planned as we get closer to the 2012 election. I’m convinced of that. I’m convinced that they want to re-create the circumstances of the Democrat convention in Chicago 1968. Although not about them; they want it about banks, big money people, whoever they can turn the wrath at. But if these small crowds of losers turn violent, mark it — book it today — you can thank Obama and Biden and other Democrat politicians prodding them on. So let’s put the marker down right now: If there’s property damage, or if people are inconvenienced in New York and other cities, you can thank Obama and the Democrat Party.
Because Obama and the Democrat Party have made clear they support this. They’ve made clear that they are encouraging this. And there’s evidence now that people want jobs. There’s this incredible story in the New York Times: “Some Unemployed Find Fault in Extension of Jobless Benefits — Dan Tolleson, a researcher and writer with a Ph.D. in politics, has been out of work since 2009, except for brief stints as a driver. Still, he opposes President ObamaÂ’s call for Congress to renew extensions on unemployment benefits. ‘TheyÂ’re going to end up spending more money on unemployment benefits, while less money is coming in on tax returns,’ he said, suggesting that the government should focus on measures that might encourage businesses to hire. ‘Far better to relax some of these outrageous regulations.'”
This is from an unemployed guy who doesn’t want the extension of unemployment. It’s not helpful. “Even among those struggling to find work, Mr. Tolleson is not alone in his views. In a recent survey of the unemployed by Rutgers University, more than one in four respondents was opposed to renewing the current extended unemployment benefits. … Economists generally agree that unemployment benefits encourage some job seekers to delay accepting a job …” Really? You don’t need economists to tell you that. It’s human nature. It’s just “raising the unemployment rate.
“A study by the San Francisco Federal Reserve last year found that the benefit extensions had increased the rate by four-tenths of a percentage point,” the rate of unemployment. The Washington Times has a story about how the White House is feeling pressure to open up work on an oil pipeline. People want to work. There are a lot of people in this country who want to work. There’s dignity in work. There’s a sense of purpose. There’s a definition of self in work. There are a lot of people who don’t want to sit around, be losers, and join a protest march and be wards of the state. There are people who do want to work, and they are putting pressure on the Democrat Party, which seems to want to coddle the unemployed.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, I spoke to Stanley Kurtz. I want to go back to this Alinsky business. I spoke to Stanley Kurtz for a Limbaugh Letter interview in December, and this is one of the things he told me. He said, “The idea here,” Obama’s idea, “polarize the country between the Democrats and Republicans along class lines. How do you do that? Well, first you attack business interests and literally drive them out of the Democrat Party and into the Republican Party. That might sound crazy. Why would you want to drive anyone out of your party? But the idea is that by attacking business interests –” and of course we’ve seen what Obama did with the Chamber of Commerce and some of his other actions, his attack on fat cats, his attacks on the Supreme Court during a State of the Union address over the campaign finance issue “– once you attack business interests, the theory is you jump-start this populist anti-business movement of the left, and those people pour into the Democrat Party, and the idea of Obama’s socialist mentors was that if you can polarize the parties almost completely along class lines, the party of the have-nots, in this case the Democrats, will gradually drift further and further toward socialism.
“So when you see Obama talking about enemies, ’cause that also activates another key part of the coalition, the theory is that you bring in activated minority groups, you ally them with the anti-business populists, all of his attack techniques are efforts to jump-start this populist movement on the left.” Stanley Kurtz writes for National Review Online and a bunch of other places. He told me this in an interview of the Limbaugh Letter coming up now on a year ago. How prescient was he? It’s exactly what is happening. Complete with the protest movement that is not spontaneous, by the way.
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