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RUSH: Bloomberg News: “Consumer Prices in US Rose in February as Gasoline Jumped — The cost of living in the US…” This is inflation. <\/p>\n
In fact, let me say that instead of “cost of living.” It\u2019s the same thing. Inflation “in the US rose in February by the most in ten months, reflecting a jump in gasoline that failed to spread to other goods and services. The consumer price index climbed 0.4%, matching the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The biggest jump in gasoline in more than a year accounted for about 80% of the increase in prices last month, leaving households with less money to spend on other goods and services,” including contraception, which is why women emerging from the voting booths on Tuesday night said (summarized):<\/p>\n
One other quick note here before we go to the break. (interruption) Well, yeah, I think it\u2019s possible. I was just asked if I thought the price of birth control might go up with inflation. I don\u2019t know. What do you think? Do you think the price of birth control might go up? You know, it\u2019s between $4 and $9 a month now. I think it\u2019s a month at Walmart. It may be 15. At Georgetown it\u2019s $1,000 a year. It\u2019s $600 a year or less at Walmart or CVS or whatever. If inflation hits big, what do you think would happen to the price of contraception? I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m being asked. Some things are immune to price increases. Some things aren\u2019t. We just have to wait and see. <\/p>\n
“The percentage…” This from the Los Angeles Daily News. “The percentage of Californians who smoke has dropped to an all-time low of 11.9%, the second-lowest in the nation behind Utah\u2019s 9.1%. That\u2019s good news for the health of Californians,” it says here, “but bad news for the state\u2019s budget and First 5 program, which funds local services for children up to age 5. The decline in smoking was anticipated, but it has descended at a much sharper rate than predicted. As a result, California will face difficulty in funding $16 billion in bonds the state has issued since 2001. … Unlike many other states, California made the mistake of deciding not to take the annual payments from tobacco firms but instead borrowed money against expected receipts.<\/p>\n
“Now that the payments are less,” because people are smoking less, California “faces another fiscal problem.” Now, once again, ladies and gentlemen, I must say: You in this audience were told to expect this. Not just in California, but everywhere. I am often illustrating absurdity by being absurd. I\u2019ve said that we need to give smokers medals. We need to make \u2019em citizens with great honor, because they are the ones paying for children\u2019s health care programs. The taxes, the vast majority of taxes from the sale of tobacco products goes to fund children health care programs. All of this was done by the Democrat Party while demanding that fewer and fewer people smoke, making it harder and harder for people to smoke. <\/p>\n
Oh, you can go buy the cigarettes. The cost was through the roof because of the tax increases. And we heard all about how smoking kills and we got all these people trying to ban it everywhere. It became harder and harder to use the product but you could buy it anywhere you wanted to. And the taxes were going to be used to pay for children\u2019s health care programs, so something had to give here. If you are urging people to stop smoking, if you are guilting them to stop smoking, if you\u2019re telling them, “You can\u2019t continue to smoke! Why, you\u2019re gonna get cancer. You\u2019re gonna get lung cancer and you\u2019re gonna cause all kinds of rising expenses in the national health care costs.<\/p>\n
“You have to pay higher taxes!” In the meantime we\u2019re paying for children\u2019s health care programs with the tax receipts from the sale of this product, which are becoming harder and harder to use. Now, this had to happen. At some point the success in the anti-smoking programs is gonna be such that it was gonna cause a reduction in tax revenue to fund these children\u2019s health programs, and California is now unable to come up with $16 billion for their First 5 program. So once again the Democrat Party, “doing it for the children,” has left them in the lurch. <\/p>\n
Children\u2019s health programs in California now will be unfunded or underfunded because the taxes from declining sales of cigarettes are falling short, the terms of paying for the programs. What are we to do now? Now what do we do? Taxes from tobacco products pay for children\u2019s health care programs, and while all that\u2019s going on, we\u2019re demanding people stop smoking. We make it harder and harder for them to smoke. They gotta stand outside bars and restaurants. They can\u2019t smoke in public stadiums, can\u2019t smoke in the park, can\u2019t smoke anywhere. In some places you try smoking in your house, and a neighbor will turn you in to the local authorities.<\/p>\n
Yet these are the people paying for children\u2019s health care programs. <\/p>\n
What do we you do now?<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Of course I ask the question rhetorically, “What can we do?” I\u2019ll tell you what we can do. And again, as the mayor of Realville, I live in Literalville. I\u2019ll tell you what to do. The joking thing would be to say, “Okay have Obama mandate that everybody buy cigarettes. If he\u2019s gonna mandate that everybody have health insurance, mandate that everybody buy tobacco products. Whether you smoke or not, buy it. Mandate that you buy it.” Don\u2019t laugh, folks. I know it sounds funny but if they succeed with this mandate of making sure everybody buys health insurance, then there\u2019s nothing to stop them from demanding that we buy anything. And Obama and his people are oriented toward this kind of totalitarian regime, authoritarianism.<\/p>\n
They wouldn\u2019t think twice about it. <\/p>\n
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<\/a>So if there\u2019s a shortage in sales tax revenue from tobacco products, just mandate everybody go out and buy it whether you use it or not. Children\u2019s health depends on it. It was the original intent, just like he supports infanticide. He supported legislation as a state senator in on Illinois that if a child survived an abortion, a third doctor could come in and finish the job. If a baby intended to be aborted survives the abortion, Obama supported legislation to allow a third doctor to come in and… I know it sounds grotesque and brutal, but he did! It would be nothing to say, “Look, children\u2019s health depends on the sale of these products. <\/p>\n