RUSH: Here Clint in Bismarck, North Dakota. It’s great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, sir. It’s not only an honor to talk to you but also to address this audience.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that. Very smart of you to realize this opportunity.
CALLER: (chuckles) I’ve been a big fan ever since the Ron Brown clip.
RUSH: Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho! Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
CALLER: That’s what turned me on to you. Hopefully my $10 phone is good and clear. I’m calling about Measure 2, the property tax measure that failed here in North Dakota.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: That’s got two dynamics to it. One is, you know, western North Dakota was hit pretty hard by a boom and bust back in the seventies and eighties. And they see a very real threat in Obama and the EPA coming after fracking and things like that.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: But as far as the measure itself, the mechanics were really bad. You had a lot of committed conservative people like myself who were opposed to it because it kind of… It was bad mechanics because the constitutional measure wrote that the state legislature has to come up with a magic formula to fund all the local governments and things like that. And it locked it into a measure so it couldn’t be adjusted or tweaked. And the fact of the matter is, it wanted to take all the local spending and put it in the hands of a centralized — you know, big, for us — state government. And, quite frankly, the state government, the legislature has been spending a lot.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: They’ve been increasing spending, especially on higher education — which is a whole ‘nother issue — for quite some time.
RUSH: Yeah, because of the influx of all the new money. They spent it. That’s what governments do. Well, it’s good to know that stuff. I’ve got a time-constraint problem here, but I really am glad you called. That’s the first understandable explanation I’ve had of why this thing was opposed. So that’s it. Clint, thanks much. I appreciate it. I really do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Clint there had a good point. What if Obama is reelected and just decides he doesn’t like fracking and cancels it? We know he doesn’t like it. What if he just decides to tell people in North Dakota: As of tomorrow, you can’t do that anymore?
Bye-bye boom.