RUSH: Steve in Ogden, Utah, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, I appreciate you and your show.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: What you’re just talking about I think lends some credibility to what I’m gonna say, is that I think that basically the Wall Street protestors do have a legitimate claim, and on large part it’s because of corporate greed and to an extent the Republican Party basically is responsible for this because, you know, people are questioning capitalism today. And the Republican Party, I’m talking about basically the GOP is the good old boy network.
RUSH: You’re so wrong I don’t even know where to begin with you. You think corporate greed equals Republicans?
CALLER: Well, can I explain what corporate greed is? I would say that there has to be a distinction made between somebody like you, the entrepreneur, and a corporate executive who’s basically a paid employee of the company that was founded by somebody —
RUSH: That’s not the point. My point is that you’re going to find more wealthy Democrat CEOs and chief financial officers than Republican. Ninety percent of Wall Street money went to Obama, campaign contributions, 2008. Ninety percent of Wall Street titans vote Democrat.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: It is a myth that Republicans equal big business greed and corporatism. It’s a myth.
CALLER: Okay, well, then both parties are responsible for the questioning of capitalism. And that is that execs have the power, and they realize that, and it’s the good old boy network.
RUSH: What do you want to do instead of capitalism?
CALLER: Oh, no, I believe in capitalism. I think that the execs are not doing the responsible thing, they’re not being ethical, and they’re looting the system because they can. They line each other’s boards with each other, and they say, “Well, I gotta raise your pay because your pay is higher, I’m gonna get more pay because of your pay.” It’s a rigged system.
RUSH: Wait a minute now. So frustrating because I so want you to be right. Do you realize it doesn’t matter to anybody else’s life what a CEO is paid?
CALLER: Oh, it does, though.
RUSH: It does not.
CALLER: It has to do with employee morale, the way he works —
RUSH: No.
CALLER: — unions, this sort of stuff.
RUSH: It has nothing to do with anything.
CALLER: It does.
RUSH: If you raise taxes on the rich to punish those people it doesn’t help anybody.
CALLER: No, but that’s another story.
RUSH: That’s what the greed people want. The greed people are down there wanting an end to income inequality, and they want these corporate execs punished somehow, they want their taxes raised, it’s not gonna help anybody —
CALLER: No, but your income is deserved. The corporate execs, the majority of the corporate executives is not deserved, have they gotten rid of the business cycle?
RUSH: How do you know this? (crosstalk)
CALLER: Is a hundred times more.
RUSH: Wait a second. How do you know that CEO X running Widget Company Y is not worth what he’s being paid? How do you know that?
CALLER: I’ve lived under two execs, Rush, that have proved that and my company went into bankruptcy because of them. They came out with the golden parachute. They didn’t do anything to help the company out except to line their pockets. They worry about lining their pockets first and then if they’ve got time then they’ll worry about the company. But that’s been my experience. I want to be a capitalist, Rush, but the guys, the good old boys control the network, and I applaud the Tea Party and what they’re standing for, because I think they could actually get rid of the good old boy network, get rid of the lobbyists, get rid of all this connection and all that stuff because that’s what’s killing capitalism. You’re not killing it, you’re great.
RUSH: The Democrat Party is killing capitalism. The American left and socialism and Barack Obama are killing capitalism. The capitalists are not killing capitalism. Capitalism is not under assault by the capitalists. Capitalism is under assault by the Democrat Party and Barack Obama and the worldwide American left. If people outside of a company can tell people what to pay, that is not capitalism. If you as an employee want some say-so in what your CEO makes, we’re not talking capitalism. We’re talking something else if you want that kind of control. But what’s… (sigh) What’s frustrating is what you think you believe and what you think you know, and every problem that you have listed, I could put you in charge of the fix, and you could do everything that you think needs to be fixed and it wouldn’t change your life at all. It wouldn’t give you a dime in additional income.
It wouldn’t make a difference in your life, unless you are happy when you see other people being screwed. But what is all this? You are speaking in the most broad generalizations that I have heard. So now all corporate execs are looters. They all steal. They’re all part of the good old boy network. No matter which business we’re talking about, no matter what they produce, no matter what, all execs are corrupt. They do nothing but steal; they do nothing but rig the game for themselves. Why can’t you start thinking of the Democrat Party this way? Because if you would, you would be more rightly than you know!
If anybody is rigging the game against the average American citizen it is the Democrat Party and liberalism and socialism and the people who are in charge of it. The people who are responsible for despondency among our population are he Democrat Party, the American people left. You ought to be supportive of the avenues and pathways that could lead to prosperity for you. The Democrat Party is not it. The American people left is not it. These generalizations that you have bought into, I think you’ve bought into them because they’re easy. It’s easy to blame somebody else for what you think you don’t have.
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RUSH: Just goes to show how easy class warfare is. Just goes to show how easy it is to gin up hatred between the classes based on utter stupidity and lies. The stupidity is beyond belief. Corporate executives work for corporate boards. Corporate boards are responsible to shareholders. Disgruntled employees make generalized comments like this because of their own situations. They don’t know what the circumstances are surrounding their disgruntlement. We’re just left with platitudes and we’re left with the usual predictable, “Every CEO is a crook! Every company is crooked, and everybody at the top is making out like bandits while they ruin the company — and, furthermore, kill customers with oil or drugs or whatever!” The choice is really not that complicated. The choice is between capitalism — which is the only system that respects and promotes individual liberty and rights — or a massive, bloated government that dictates how you live.
You start letting people like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi run corporations, and your life isn’t far behind. Now, our last caller was angry. He had a grudge. There was not a thing I was gonna be able to say to him to change his mind about anything, because he’s convinced that his life has been permanently harmed and damaged by CEOs and execs and lobbyists and so forth. (long sigh) But it’s nevertheless frustrating, because it’s an ongoing process to try to educate people. It shows you what we’re up against, the demagoguery and the brainwashing. Class warfare is just easy to cement in people’s minds, and of course the people being attacked never stand up and defend themselves. They just won’t! They don’t think there’s anything in it for them to do that. So they sit there and they shut up.
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RUSH: This is Tareq in Ft. Lauderdale. Nice to have you on the program, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How’s it going today?
RUSH: Very well. Thank you.
CALLER: Well, I was just calling because as a 25-year-old working full time at our family business I am just truly appalled by these kids in New York City. Some of them are adults, I’m sure, but they just make all of us look bad. I mean, defecating on cop cars, sleeping out there in the streets, smoking weed, whatever they’re doing, drinking. My buddy was in New York City; he saw them carrying 12-packs on their shoulders to party.
RUSH: Are you in that age group?
CALLER: It’s making all of us look bad.
RUSH: Are you that age, around 25?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I’m 25 years old and working hard every day with a college education.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I went to the most liberal school, and the only thing that got me through it was you.
RUSH: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
CALLER: You’re fighting them every day. We were fighting the liberals every day. I was in school in New Hampshire. So you can only imagine.
RUSH: God bless you.
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: I’m gonna tell you what the real opportunity here is. I just mentioned — see if you agree with this — in all this hubbub here about the Republican establishment urging us to set aside our ideology and just support Romney. I opened the show with this: I’m looking at some of the signs these 25-year-old “kids,” as you call them, are parading with down there, and it’s clear that many of them are conservatives and don’t know it. I mean, they’re complaining about how much they make and how much is taken by taxes and one guy is complaining about all the destruction to his business since 2008. What’s he doing? He’s down there joining this protest. These people are confused. The ones who are at least thoughtful are just totally confused, and what we need is somebody who can speak to ’em.
CALLER: The problem, Rush, is that they all go to college. They pay their 50 grand a year and they’re all told that when they get out of college, just because they went to college, they’re gonna get a $100,000-a-year job; and they don’t have to do anything to deserve that job. They don’t need any skill set. They don’t need any common sense. They just need to go and show up to college and then the day they graduate, “Here’s your hundred thousand-dollar job. That’s what they honestly believe,” and when they get $52,000, they’re pissed.
RUSH: I don’t doubt that that’s true. It’s not just college students of that age who have these expectations, but I agree with you: Their minds are being corrupted.
CALLER: Oh, yeah! I had the liberal influence on us since I was a kid. I went to school here in Florida. Earth Day, you know, every year. It just goes on and on. They just push it on you every day: Recycle this, recycle that. It’s brutal.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And you think: “How is it possible for any of us to come out and be conservatives after all that brainwashing?” and it comes down to the parenting.
RUSH: Well, I know, a lot of it does. A lot of it does. You know, it’s like the No Labels crowd. These guys that want to run around and say, “We don’t want to be tied to any labels.” If it weren’t for labels, most people wouldn’t be liberal! You realize…? Look at these kids. What did they want out of life? Now, some of the people are freeloaders and some of them just want it all handed to them and some of them genuinely, genuinely hate capitalism and hate this and that. That’s what they’ve been taught. But some of them down there are really worried about their future. They are worried about there being no future for them.
They’re worried that there isn’t any opportunity for them, and the sad thing is they’re more right than they are wrong, if you couple the way they think and what they’ve been taught. There clearly is no future for them if they continue to support people like Obama and the Democrat Party and the union movement and all of this. The solution for these people is conservatism. The solution for these people is capitalism, and it’s in there. You can see it in some of them. It’s going to take somebody who can talk to ’em and explain this to ’em, but people are gonna muddy the waters and try to tone down the ideology. You know, being liberal is a cheap status symbol.
I’ve often said it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s the most gutless choice you can make. All you have to do is look at some suffering and say, “Oh-ho, God, that’s horrible,” and you’re a good liberal. You don’t have to do diddly-squat about it! You just have to see it and then you have to have the ability to blame somebody else for it. It’s a cheap status symbol, is what liberalism is — especially in the minds of these young idealist wackos down there. Anyway, Tareq, hang in there. You keep at it. I’m glad you called.
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RUSH: Well, apparently Charlie Rose was on a CNN program, I think it was a CNN program, I just read this briefly, and indicated that the debate tonight, a large amount of time will be spent asking the Republican candidates about Occupy Wall Street. And the reason is that not one Republican has come out in solidarity with the protestors while Obama has. So Charlie Rose said, “We’re gonna really hound these Republicans about Occupy Wall Street protests during the debate.” I think it’s from the BusinessInsider.com website.