RUSH: A friend of mine sent me a story and just thought it was the most wonderful thing… (interruption) No, it has nothing to do with me. (interruption) Oh, because this friend is the only one who finds every story critical of me and sends ’em to me, with the note, “You’ve probably seen this a hundred times.” And I never see them ’cause nobody sends me that stuff, except this one person.

Anyway, this is an e-mail that’s designed to be feel-good. I read it, and I replied, I said, “This should not make you feel good. This portends another disaster.” Let me give you the details, and I’ll tell you why. It’s a story by ABC News, and it’s about the Syrian refugees, starving, thirsting, not having sex. I mean, everything that could be going wrong with them is going wrong with them.

The United Nations, which is essentially a United States food stamps program, the United Nations had promised to take care of these people, financially, economically, and maybe even the sex. UN’s got people to do that. But they ran out of aid. They ran out of everything for these poor Syrian refugees.

Remember the GoFund campaign that revived the woman’s cake store in Ferguson, Missouri? We mentioned it and a number of other people did and she ended up, at the end of the day, something like $300,000 raised by people all over the country to help her reopen the store which was destroyed in the looting after the grand jury decision in the Gentle Giant case.

Well, something similar happened here. The UN started crying about the fact they were out of money and they couldn’t fund these poor Syrian refugees. So a social media campaign sprung up much like GoFund. The objective here was to raise $64 million from around the world. They wanted $1 from 64 million people. Well, let me tell you what happened.

After a social media campaign brought in a significant cash infusion, the UN food agency,” which is the US food stamp program, “said Tuesday it has reinstated a food aid program that helps feed more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees,” but just for one month. You start feeding 1.7 million people, it costs a lot of money. “In early December, the World Food Program suspended electronic food vouchers for Syrians,” i.e. food stamps, “who had fled to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt. The move triggered panic among the refugees, threatening to starve thousands of families and add pressure on the already strained countries hosting them.

“At the time, the World Food Program said many donors failed to meet their commitments.” Many people who had pledged money to the UN didn’t pay up. “The agency said it needed $64 million to support Syrian refugees in December.” Just in December, $64 million for one month.

“On Tuesday, the agency said the voucher program was on again, thanks to an unusual campaign it launched on social media to raise $1 contributions from 64 million people around the world. The agency said it solicited $1.8 million in donations from almost 14,000 people and from private sector donors in 158 countries, as part of a campaign using the hashtag #ADollarALifeline.”

So my friend sends me this, “Isn’t it wonderful, oh, my God, aren’t we good people? Look at this, the UN failed and people came alive and kept the Syrian refugees eating.”

I said, “Do not get so excited.”

What message does this send, to the United Nations? What message does this send to somebody like Barack Obama? If you’re a UN bureaucrat, if you’re in the food stamp program at it UN, if you’re at the children’s health fund, whatever, if you’re at any UN program that gives away American dollars and you’ve run out, and all of a sudden a social media hashtag in less than half a day raises $1.8 million and you are well on your way to raising the $64 million you need, what do you conclude? Think about it now, if you’re one of these bureaucrats, if you’re a UN socialist big government bureaucrat or a United States Democrat, doesn’t matter, what do you conclude?

You have to conclude that people are not being taxed enough. If they’ve got this kind of money, in this economy, to donate in half a day $1.8 million on the way to $64 million to feed the Syrian refugees, your average big government bureaucrat, the first conclusion, the first reaction’s not gonna be gratitude. It’s not going to be thanks. The first reaction is going to be, “We aren’t taxing these people enough. If they’ve got this kind of money in their pockets, then we need to raise taxes on people.”

If you’re the bureaucracy and you have run out of money, and yet people you don’t even know all over the world can fork up almost $2 million in half a day, you will conclude people have too much money. Because, remember, these are the people that think all money is theirs anyway. That’s what American Democrats believe, that’s what socialists believe, all money belongs to the state, and whatever individuals end up with is simply the result of the state’s distribution, redistribution, goodwill, or what have you.

So I sent back a note, “I hope I don’t destroy your day here, but a story like this presents a great risk to me because all of these UN, European Union, Obama-type bureaucrats are gonna easily figure out that they’re not taxing us enough. If we have the ability to raise and spend money like this on their causes, we gave, people gave almost $2 million to the UN on one of their causes. Mark my words, it will not be long before somebody observes that there is maybe too much money floating around still in the private sector.”

Now, they’ll never say this publicly. They’ll talk about it amongst themselves privately, and they’ll probably get mad, and then they’ll devise schemes to go out and raise taxes with user fees, all kinds of hidden little things, because ultimately they’re not gonna be happy about it. Outwardly they will say so. But I don’t know, a story like this is a dual-edged sword to me, ’cause I know there is deep resentment among bureaucrats for how much money people in the private sector have, and especially here you have a UN program that ran out of money. And the UN doesn’t have any money of its own, doesn’t have any money until it fleeces or extorts whoever it can around the world.

So we’ll just keep a sharp eye on this. I’ve put this in appropriate places in my computer software to trigger my memory and if it keyword relates to any future news from the UN and fees and taxes, it’ll circle back to this story.