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Hillary’s $21-Million Speech Scandal

by Rush Limbaugh - May 23,2016

RUSH: Now, I want to go back to these speeches, and I want to give you some points of comparison.  I think this is shocking.  The story is in the New York Post, and that does not qualify as Drive-By Media.

It may be a little close, but it doesn’t qualify.  I don’t think you’re gonna see this story in the New York Times or the Washington Post.  I don’t think any of the nightly newscasts are gonna make a big deal of it.  It’s gonna be the kind of thing that, if she loses, in their postmortems they’re gonna go back to and say, “You know what?  We missed this when this happened, but the exit polling will show it, that people thought she was inexorably tied to corporate America.”

You know how much they hate corporate America on the mainstream left, and the reason is the Democrat Party has made corporate America its number one enemies list.  The Democrat Party, for as long as I’ve been alive, has been targeting “Big” this and “Big” that, and they have been drumming up hatred and suspicion and revulsion for all of these big corporations.  That’s why Citizens United is so despised.  That’s why you have leftists running around saying, “Corporations are not people!”

They hate them.  Here’s Hillary Clinton: $21 million in two years.  These Democrat voters? No way.  Ten to 12 of ’em combined are never gonna earn $21 million in their lifetimes.  And they’re gonna ask, “What is she doing that’s worth all that?  I’ve seen her speak.  I wouldn’t pay 10 cents for it.  What?”  People are gonna ask all these kinds of logical questions, and they’re gonna see all the banks.  They hate the banks every bit as much as they hate corporations.  They despise the banks.  I mean, Occupy Wall Street was drummed up because of the banks.

They hate ’em, folks.

I mean, really hate.  Not just dislike.

A friend of mine who was in the golf business, that managed players and so forth, sent me a note. He said that back in the days when Arnold Palmer was healthy… You know, golfers, professional golfers do outings for corporations when they’re not playing in a tournament or they have a day off in a week. They’ll sign up and do an outing for the XYZ Corporation and they’ll go in wherever the corporation is located and they’ll play golf with big clients and they’ll do lunch and this kind of stuff.

But you have to pay for it, and they’re called “outings.”  This guy tells me that at the peak when he was healthy, that you could get Arnold Palmer for $150,000 all day.  Now, who would you rather spend a day with, whether you play golf or not, Arnold Palmer or Hillary Clinton?  If you want 20 minutes with Hillary and you don’t get 20 minutes with her, you get 20 minutes of you have to listening to that screeching voice lie to you, that’s $225,000.  For 150 you can have Arnold Palmer all day long and play golf with him and pose for pictures and have him tell you stories.

And he’s not the only golfer.  They all do it. Did. I assume it’s… Yeah, it probably still happen.  And they’ve all got different prices, but Arnold Palmer being The King… Nicklaus. What was Nicklaus?  Nicklaus, same thing. It’s 150, something like that for all day on these outings.  By the way, Jack Nicklaus has come out for the Trumpster ’cause he’s “turning the world upside down,” and he likes that.  Jack Nicklaus has joined the Trump brigade. (interruption) What are you frowning at in there? (interruption) Oh, wow, you hadn’t heard that, huh?

Yeah, let me find it here in the Stack.  But I just… You know, I’ve been so lucky.  I’ve played golf with these guys. They’re all great. All these guys are exactly like you want them to be when you’re thinking of meeting them and so forth. They’re humble, they’re funny, they’re polite, they help you.  It’s gotta be… For a pro that can play golf, it has to be torture to have to spend a day with a bunch of hackers.  It just has to be torture.

Because all the hackers want “the secret.” All the hackers hope the pro — the Nicklaus, the Palmer — can unlock the one thing they’re doing wrong to turn their game around. Of course they can’t.  But they try.  Every time I’ve been with them, they try.  They’re helpful, and they put the game of the hacker they’re playing with first.  They all do.  It’s amazing.  Well, I’ve put it in… I’ve got two different Stacks here, and I obviously put the…

Yeah, it’s gonna be in this Stack.  I don’t even know why I need to find it.  I just told you it’s true.  Jack Nicklaus. (interruption) Yeah. (interruption) Yup. Here it is.  Jack Nicklaus. I just want to give you the source. It’s Washington Post.  “Jack Nicklaus Says Donald Trump Is ‘Turning America Upside Down’ — in a Good Way — Jack Nicklaus is the latest member of the sports world to endorse Trump, the presumptive… And Trump, by the way, is a competitor of Nicklaus .  Nicklaus designs golf courses. Nicklaus has clubs.

Like the Bear’s Club here. Trump has his own. They’re modified competitors.  “‘I like what Donald has done. I like that he’s turning America upside down,’ Nicklaus told Jim Axelrod in a ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ interview. ‘He’s awakening the country. We need a lot of that.’  Nicklaus said his business experiences with Trump, who attended the ceremony when Nicklaus was honored with a Congressional Gold Medal a year ago, had been positive and that he ‘didn’t want to get political about this.’

“Reluctantly, he said he knows how he is likely to vote in November even though he says Trump probably isn’t ‘as smooth or as politically correct as he should be.’  ‘I like the guy. He’s a good man,’ Nicklaus said. ‘And certainly — if he’s the one that’s on the ticket, I’ll be voting for him.'” Jack Nicklaus.  You could have Nicklaus at your corporate outing for 150 grand all day, same thing with Arnold Palmer, same thing with Hillary Clinton.  I’m just to put this stuff in perspective. (interruption) No. (interruption)  I don’t know.

I’m telling you, folks: $21 million over two years for 20 or 25 minutes?

There’s nothing that screeches “out of touch” more than that.

That is just huge.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Michael in Glastonbury, Connecticut.  Great to have you on the program, sir.  Hello.

CALLER:  Rush, great to talk to you.  I’ve been listening to you for a little over a year now, recent college grad, actually signed up for Rush 24/7, got my two years. I love it, listen to you every day.

RUSH:  Thank you very much.

CALLER:  I had to call you today.  I spent about the last about hour trying to get through because I had commencement a little over a week ago on Mother’s Day, and you’ve been talking a lot about the liberal speakers that come to these commencements, and a funny thing happened at my commencement.  A guy… I can’t remember his name. He was nobody big. He was getting an honorary degree.  And he suggested that… He was talking about the nineties, and he said we had a Clinton that was president back then.  Perhaps now this year we will have a Mrs. Clinton as president.  The whole crowd, the whole gymnasium — Gampel Pavilion at the University of Connecticut — blew up, erupted in boos.  It was the craziest thing.  I couldn’t believe it happened.

RUSH:  Really? The whole crowd booed, is that what you said?

CALLER:  The whole crowd booed.  I have a video of it on my Twitter page.  I put it up; it got over a thousand retweets. The amount of messages I got… The whole place — student section and people watching — just erupted in booed.  It was insane.

RUSH:  And that surprised you?

CALLER:  It only surprised me because it’s Connecticut, and the University of Connecticut.  We’re by no means a conservative school.

RUSH:  Well, I know, but Connecticut’s close to Vermont. This is where Bernie Sanders is from.  Connecticut —

CALLER:  Right.

RUSH:  Connecticut is… You know, they’re no question that they’re dominant Democrat, Democrat leftist, Democrat dominant liberal and so forth.  Mrs. Clinton is not individual.  It’s why your guy… I guarantee your commencement speaker, the nobody that spoke to your class had to mention Bill first.

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  And even mentioning Bill first, Hillary still gets booed.

CALLER:  She got booed and the video, too. You could see the guy. He was in shock seems like.

RUSH:  Oh, I’ll bet.  Who was this? Who was this guy? Do you remember his name?

CALLER:  I can’t think of his name.

RUSH:  You’re kidding me. You can’t remember your commencement speaker?

CALLER:  There were a couple of them.  He was a former CFO at a Fortune 100 company.  So that’s who he was.  And… Yeah, so the people behind him, they looked shocked.

RUSH:  Let me ask you: Were inspired by what he said outside the Hillary stuff?

CALLER:  Rush, nobody was inspired by what he was saying.  People were shaking their heads, people talking in the stands.  It was not inspiring.

RUSH:  I’m sorry.

CALLER:  Yeah.  Yeah.  It’s been going on a lot, too.  I talked to a couple friends. A couple friends graduated from Southern Connecticut State University and one at West Conn, and Dick Blumenthal, I guess, gave a couple speeches there.

RUSH:  No wonder the place was asleep, if Blumenthal was there.  Hey, look, thank you, Michael, I really appreciate it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jesus in Seattle.  Great to have you, sir.  Hi.

CALLER:  Mr. Limbaugh, greetings to you, sir.  First-time caller.  I really appreciate you.  I learned a lot from you.  I got a quick question, if I may.

RUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER:  About Hillary Clinton making the $21 million for speeches: Was she on a taxpayer dime while giving the speeches?  And if so, did she, you know, not pay attention to government rules?

RUSH:  Well, let’s see. “Mandatory financial disclosures released this month show that, in just the two years from April 2013 to March 2015, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state collected $21,667,000 in ‘speaking fees,’ not to mention the cool $5 mil she corralled as an advance for her 2014 flop book, Hard Choices.” So the years are April 2013 to March 2015.  I think she was… The years run together.  I don’t think she was secretary of state.  I think she had left, she was gone by now.  I think the haughty John Kerry had moved in.

CALLER:  I just thought I’d ask the question.  I thought I’d appeal to the all-knowing Maha Rushie.

RUSH:  Doesn’t matter.  She was doing this stuff while… Let me tell you something.  Forget this for… Well, don’t forget this.

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  There’s $100 million, Jesus, in another account, the Clinton Family Foundation.  That’s what we jokingly here, affectionately refer to as the Clinton Crime Family Foundation. She and Bill and Chelsea — who says she doesn’t care about money. She tried but she just can’t care about it. They are the beneficiaries there, and they supposedly make charitable donations. But there haven’t been very many. That foundation collected $100 million, part of which while she was secretary of state.  That’s the money that came from foreign governments and individuals and who knows who else.  So your point is: Was she doing all this speechmaking on government time?  I doubt it.  But she was… I mean, people are not just sending money because the foundation’s there.  She and Bill had to be soliciting it.

CALLER:  Yes, sir.

RUSH:  While she was secretary.  In fact, they were playing off that, and all of this has been donated on the come, on the premise she’s gonna be president someday.  So the point is her presidency has been purchased.

CALLER:  Yes.  Exactly my point.  She is more preoccupied about making money. Her mind is gonna be there, not in the welfare of the country.

RUSH:  It sure seems like it is.  I think these two people, because neither of them came from wealth… Folks, this is psychological, and some of this is born of my own life experience.  I’ve seen these things happen.  The Clintons, by virtue of being ranking politicians, cannot help but hang around really wealthy people (i.e., donors and other movers and shakers), and they never had any money at all.  I mean, Hillary is dead-solid middle class.  Clinton, you know, is maybe even less than that.  They never had any money.

But all the people they hang around with, did. All the buddies they went to Yale with, many of them had blue-blood family money. They didn’t have any.  I think it became an obsession.  I think it became an obsession. Like, take one weekend, say, at Yale, and they’re in lawless, and it’s a weekend, and say Strobe Talbott one of their buddies says, “Hey, we’re all going to Aspen! Bill, Hillary, you want to join us?”  They say, “No;” they’re tied up.

They say, “No” ’cause they can’t afford it.  Strobe Talbott and the boys can hop on the family jet and fly out there. But if they don’t invite the Clintons to go along that way, the Clintons can’t afford to go.  That’s an example.  I don’t know what specifically happened, but things like that.  They became obsessed.  Whitewater was a get-rich-quick scheme, which is what the Clintons thought everybody did in the ’80s did: Schemes.  There wasn’t any merit. As far as Democrats were concerned, the wealthy cheat, steal, and lie to people.

So Clinton said, “Why shouldn’t we?”  And it’s all illegitimate, as far as they’re concerned.  But they wanted it desperately.  I think it consumes them.  I think the desire for wealth consumes ’em and has consumed ’em, and once it does… You know, have you ever heard people, in discussing wealth — average people, don’t have a lot of money — talk about people who do? Ask the question one way or the other:  “Don’t you have enough?”  Or maybe if it’s not a personal conversation, “Gosh, don’t they have enough?” and, “Why, how much more do you need? I can’t spend all that. What’s the deal?”

The point is, what people don’t understand is that in those circumstances there’s never enough.  There’s never enough.  If you have $100 million, it’s not enough; you wish it was 250.  If you have 250, it’s not enough; you wish it was 500.  Because in the back of every wealthy person’s head is the fear that something’s gonna come along and they’re either gonna have it taken away or they’re gonna lose it.  It’s such a… It’s a really… It’s rare to be that wealthy.  It is really rare.  And because it’s rare, it seems tenuous.

Some people have a paranoia that it’s gonna be taken from them or that they’re gonna lose it or it’s gonna be mismanaged. Something’s gonna go wrong.  So, to guard against that, they keep raking it in or trying to.  So the concept of, “Isn’t that enough?” never crosses their mind.  There’s never enough when you’re faced with the — in your own mind — prospect of losing it.  But even without that, what people are basically asking when you say, “Don’t you have enough?” is, “What’s your comfort level?”  It goes back to the same old thing.

“Comfort level” basically means at what point do you think you’ve got enough, you don’t need to do any more work, you don’t need to generate any more wealth.  There are some who have the… In fact, Merrill Lynch. I’ve told this story. Now, this dates back 1980s.  I don’t know if this practice is still alive, but back in the 1980s, if you interviewed for a job at Merrill Lynch, the one way to blow it was to give a specific answer to the following question: “How much money do you want to make with us here at Merrill Lynch?”

If you answered the question, it didn’t matter what you said. If you gave them a figure, you were done.  You didn’t know it, but you were done.  The reason you were done is because they had done all kinds of psychological studies and tracking of people, and they found that if somebody said, “I want to earn $2 million,” or, “I want to earn $150,000,” whatever the number was, Merrill Lynch figured that’s when they’ll stop working. They had reached their comfort level.  So they didn’t want to hire anybody that specified a number.

If you answered “as much as I can,” you were gold, at least for the next phase of the interview.  But the Clintons are a… They’re not an uncommon couple of people who never had any money, hanging around people who had gobs of it, feeling inferior because of it.  And maybe even worse than feeling inferior, feeling cheated, feeling, “Why, I should have as much money as such-and-such does! Why, I’m smarter, I’m more valuable, I’ve worked harder,” any number of victimology ways you whine and moan about your circumstance.  I think it became an obsession.

They steal the White House furniture, for crying out loud, when they walk out of there claiming they’re broke.  When you’re out taking $21 million in two years giving 20-minute speeches, the money is for something.  They are knowingly allowing people to pay them this money, and these people paying it full-well know that they’re gonna get something for it.  This is not charity.  This is not friendship.  This is not liberals being nice to other liberals.  This is not people saying, “Hey, Clintons, we think you should be wealthy, and we’ve got a plan.  Hillary, come do a bunch of speeches to as many banks as we’ve gotten together. We’ll make sure you earn some money.”

It’s much more than that.

They’re expecting a lot for all of this, if and when she makes it to the Oval Orifice.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  The Clintons have gotten rich while pretending to run a charity, which is also something they probably think the rich would do.  Remember, the formative events that presage all of this would be 1980s.  And for those of you who were not adults in 1980s, in the eighties, or were not even born, one of the things that the left… I mean, the left was miserable the eighties ’cause Ronald Reagan was in office, two landslide wins, and the economy was just roaring.  Every aspect of Reaganomics was working.

The deficit was coming down, unemployment was going up, interest rates were plummeting, jobs were being created left and right, tax rates were coming down.  It was a bonanza.  And, as such, a lot of people were making a lot of money.  Now, you have to know how your average leftist looks at people who have a lot of money.  They think there’s something dishonest in every fortune, no matter how big or small. They think there’s a crime somewhere. They think there’s something dishonest. There’s some cheating, sliming, screwing people, whatever.

And the Clintons were no different.

There was this automatic suspicion of wealth.  Now, there’s been that time immemorial.  But in the eighties it was focused, and one of the allegations the left made and continues to make about the 1980s is it was illegitimate.  “Yeah, yeah, unemployment was coming down. Yeah, but it was a bunch of crazy, phony deals.”  In their minds, they don’t want people to believe it was actually Reagan policies that made all that happen.  It was smoke and mirrors, and the wealthy who were getting wealth in the eighties… The middle class was growing and expanding.

They didn’t want that. They couldn’t afford for people to believe that that was actually happening.  So it had to be somebody was “picking winners and losers.” It was the government or banks or somebody was choosing who was gonna do well.  Not merit. It never is, as far as the left is concerned.  They think it’s the accident of birth or whatever, and so it took hold among many people on the left that there was no legitimacy in wealth, that rich people were screwing somebody.  “Nobody pays anybody that kind of money,” was the classic reaction you would get to whatever.

It could be dollar amounts, here, in trying to define it are all based on your starting point.  People making 50 grand a year think a hundred might be wealthy.  People making a hundred think they’re not wealthy, barely getting by. They need few hundred to be called wealthy.  It all different from person to person.  But on the left the one thing that was constant was that whatever amount of wealth somebody had, it was illegitimate. They grew up thinking that, and the Clintons personify the kind of people who would believe that you had to run a scheme to get rich, that it doesn’t just really happen through hard work.

“That’s bogus.  That’s what conservatives want you to think, but that’s not true!” So Whitewater is born, and all these shady deals they got involved with, ’cause they thought that was the route to it.  And they still do.  I mean, they’re getting rich off of a charity, which is probably what they think a lot of people do.  I mean, they know a lot of people with nonprofits.  They know a lot of people that run these foundations that are all doing quite well.

And none of ’em seem to ever work.  And then in politics, speech income is huge.  There’s speaker agencies, talent agencies all over Washington, arranging speeches and personal appearance for politicians and other public figures.  And with the Clintons, it’s not so much the speaking agency as it is that they are openly selling her presidency.  But it is the money that’s driving them, the acquisition and maintenance of wealth that drives them and is driving them.  Look at what they did when they were in the White House.

All these Lincoln Bedroom overnights and the White House “coffees.”  I mean, they were raising money every day of Clinton’s two terms and using the White House to do it.  They had all these guys like Charlie Trie and John Huang coming over here, with unmarked T-bills in suitcases being left at the DNC headquarters.  I mean, it was — and this is in the nineties.  But you don’t get rich in business.  It just looks that way.  You get rich with schemes and knowing people and pulling fast ones and so forth.  Which is what they’re doing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Peter Schweizer, you know, he’s written this book called Clinton Cash.  He made this documentary-style movie about it.  And he was on Fox & Friends today.  He’s gonna put some of this in perspective.  This book is devastating on the Clintons.  I mean, it is not ideological.  It’s not left-versus-right, Republican-Democrat, conservative-liberal.  He just looked into their practices.  He just found out who’s giving them money, why, where’s it going, what’s it for, and cataloged it, and has written this incredible book. This is his second book in this regard, Peter Schweizer.  He’s a thinker out there at a think tank, Hoover Institute, little conservative enclave hidden down in the basement at Stanford out in Palo Alto.  He was on Fox & Friends today and Ainsley Earhardt was talking to him. “Tell us about the movie and your book, Mr. Schweizer.”

SCHWEIZER:  The film really walks people through very real examples of how the Clintons have basically become wealthy by peddling government influence and power.  We’re not talking about Wall Street or large oil companies in the United States.  We’re talking about foreign governments and foreign corporations.  That’s, I think, what’s so shocking about what the Clintons have done that’s unprecedented with any other political figures in American history.

RUSH:  This is a another thing.  This is not the speeches.  The speeches, just the last two years of speeches is $21 million.  The number… The amount of money the Clintons have raised combined speeches since he left the White House 2000, it’s over-the-top how much.  But this is the Crime Family Foundation that Schweizer’s talking about.  That’s $100 million that’s been donated.  Ostensibly to charity, but it isn’t.  It’s Mrs. Clinton and her presidency.  And Schweizer’s looked into it — it’s how we know this — and he says it’s “unprecedented with any other political figures in American history.”  So Brian Kilmeade said, “I watched your movie two weeks ago — it’s unbelievable how it’s spelled out — and I walked away thinking, ‘Would they be this blatant about these scandals knowing that Hillary Clinton’s queued up to run for president?’  Why would they take any risk, let alone put this out there?”

SCHWEIZER:  There has been a pattern of behavior with the Clintons for a long time going back to when Bill was president, when he was governor of Arkansas. They always play it very, very close ethically in this way, and they’ve gotten away with it.  When she became secretary of state, America’s chief diplomat, they basically viewed it as an opportunity to cash in.  Once she became secretary of state, Bill’s speaking fees tripled, the amounts and the quantity that they got from overseas went through the roof.  They cashed in.  There’s just no other way to say it.

RUSH:  I… He’s right, and it’s exactly right on the money (no pun intended), ’cause they’re obsessed with it.  They are obsessed with it.  They want to be among the wealthiest in their circle, and all the other things wealth provides.  But in addition to that, it’s what wealth says about you.  You know, wealth crackles with its own power.  Wealth, in its own way, is intimidating.  Wealth is the standard old, “F-you money.” Of course, what good is that if you’re never gonna say F-you to anybody?  So they want to be able to do that. There’s all kinds of things wrapped up in this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Westin in Philadelphia.  Great to have you on the program, sir.  Glad you waited.  Hi.

CALLER:  Rush, how you doing?

RUSH:  Good.  Thank you.

CALLER:  I’ve been hitting some golf balls on the driving range while I waited, so it wasn’t so bad.  Listen, you know, I was thinking of poor Duke Cunningham.  If only he had given some speeches, you know, while he was accepting bribes, ’cause really that’s all this is is accepting bribes.  And, you know, you were mentioning the left is upset with corporate America.  Listen, I’m a strident right-winger, and I’m upset with them also.  I understand, sort of, that they have to do it.  You know, with the transgender bathrooms and the gay marriage and whatnot, you see corporate America bowing to the government, going along with the left because they are fearful.  Fearful. They are fearful, but they also know — and I’ve written Trump about this, a line that he should use. The biggest player in business today — and that’s everywhere. That’s state, local, and federal. The biggest player is the government.

RUSH:  Exactly right.

CALLER:  And everybody knows that they have to play ball with these people.  And, you know, my disappointment with the corporate folks — and you’ve mentioned this before.

RUSH:  Wait just one second. Wait just one second.  Don’t make these guys out to be victims.  These corporate —

CALLER:  Oh, no.

RUSH:  These guys, they’re not all, “Ah, my God! The government’s gonna do this if I don’t go along!”  They’re taking aggressive role. They’re forcing this cronyism, many of them are.

CALLER:  Yeah, ’cause they’re doing fantastically well.  That’s why I’m saying I’m disappointed with them.  I mean, they’re lining their pockets.  But it used to be that the elite, the wealthy —

RUSH:  They are winning in the marketplace without having to innovate.  That’s the problem.  They are winning because of their association with the government when their competitors don’t have it.  They don’t have to innovate.  All they have to do is have the government punish their competitors with regulations or what have you.  It’s seedy.  I agree with you 100%.

CALLER:  That’s exactly right.  It used to be that the people, the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, I’m not saying that they were totally —

RUSH:  Exactly right.  Exactly right.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  You know, speaking of this cronyism, our last caller was right on the money about it.  Democrats have their own reasons to despise the banks and so forth. They think they’re in bed with the Republicans and they hate capitalism.  You know, leftists hate capitalism. They despise it.  And Hillary Clinton sidling up to all these banks, taking all this money and owing the banks and being related, in bed, associated with them? It just rubs them the wrong way.  But on our side, this crony whatever you want to call it — capitalism (I prefer crony socialism) — the way it manifests itself is this.

You got a guy like Obama who’s a statist. He doesn’t want to own these companies.  He just wants to be the boss.  He doesn’t want to own the means of production; he just wants to control it all.  So it’s not really communism, socialism. It’s more like fascism in that regard.  Well, then you have a CEO who realizes it, and rather than fight it, he says, “Okay, I’ve got a guy here who wants to be the boss. So the path of least resistance for me is to have a relationship with him.”

So you are the CEO of the XYZ Electric Company, and you decide that you’re gonna be Obama’s best buddy — so he will leave your company alone — rather than oppose him, which is what people used to do when big socialists came along. Everybody in business for the most part stood up and joined hands and stopped these people, opposed them, and tried to keep them from being elected.  That doesn’t happen anymore.  Now the easiest, least resistance route is to get in bed with ’em.  And in the case… Let’s take Walmart.

How many of you were surprised some years ago when Walmart came out in favor of Obama’s minimum wage proposal increase?  People said, “Walmart? For crying out, Walmart? I mean, Sam Walton must be turning over in his grave!  What? What? What?  This is crazy! Walmart has no unions, is a right-wing company.”  Wait a minute.  Wait a minute.  How about this.  How about Walmart can say to them, “You know, we can afford that they mandate another buck or two-hour minimum wage. We can absorb that. We can figure out a way to hire people. We support it. But our competitors may not be able to go along with it.”

And so Walmart doesn’t have to lower a single price. They can just rely on the fact their competitors can’t compete with the new government regulation or whatever. That may be not the best example, but it results in Walmart profiting because of their close relationship with the head of state and all of his bureaucrats that lead these agencies: EPA, DOJ, HHS, TSA, you name it. You got a company that’s in bed paying to be there? Hands off. Competitors not so much.  And so you don’t have to innovate at all to beat your competitors.

You just have to have that relationship with Obama, and that’s why people on the right despise it and are angry.  It’s something that’s always been incorrect to say that Big Business is pro-Republican, as is evidenced here by these Clinton speeches.  Let me tell you something: Wall Street props up the Democrat Party and has for a long time.  Most tech CEOs are huge leftists.  The idea that they support the Republican Party is a myth.  That’s the funny thing.  All these leftists, these Bernie people out there thinking the Democrat Party’s anti-Big Business, anti-corporation.

They’re in bed like you can’t believe.  They just lie about it.  You know, they rip into these big.  And some of them who aren’t in bed, they do try to harm them: Big Pharma, Big Oil, big whatever.  But it’s… I’ve read a piece by David Boaz, who used to be at the Cato Ins which is a libertarian think tank.  He may still be there.  I don’t remember where this was, but his article was fascinating.  He said many of the militant gay political-agenda types hate capitalism. They hate Republicans. They hate conservatism.  Yet it is the free market economy which has allowed being gay to prosper economically.

He said go to any socialist country, go to any communist country, go to any totalitarian country, and take a look at how gays are treated versus how they are treated in the United States in a capitalist economy, where they can now get married. They can own businesses right out in the open.  You can’t do that in Cuba; you can’t do it in Saudi Arabia; you can’t do it in Venezuela; you can’t do it in China; you can’t do it anywhere.  I thought it was an interesting observation, because it’s right on the money. Yet they hate it! They vote against it. They donate to Democrats, the socialist equivalent here in this country.


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