RUSH: In Ft. Lauderdale, this is Christine, and it’s nice to have you here.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I take offense to Barack Obama’s comments, which you just played again, that he feels we grow the economy from the bottom up.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You know, one of the first rules of life that I learned is if you’re going to go out there and speak about something, you better know your audience. Mr. Obama has not done his homework with regards to small businesses. You know, my husband and I are a small business. We are small business owners. My husband’s been in business for 20 years in south Florida, and he’s pretty successful. But, the reason Barack Obama doesn’t understand what we go through is because he’s never run a business or his wife. He’s never had to run a business for profit to support his family or other families that work for him. He thinks making over $250,000 is ‘rich.’ It’s not. He does not take into consideration the financial risk small business owners take every day to open their door.
RUSH: Let me stop right here and agree with everything you have said, and add this: nor does he care. All Obama knows is that for every small business, there are five or six other people that at least work for one, if not more, and those are the votes he wants. He wants your employees resenting you. He wants employees resenting big corporations they work for.
CALLER: Well, these employees, though, need to pay attention, because I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. Small business owners are smart. They don’t stay in business and do well and employ people by being stupid. Some years are good, and when that happens, we’re very careful to save for the years that are not so good, when we have to reinvest in our businesses. We pay workers’ comp. We pay liability. We pay health care. We give good bonuses at the end of the year. Now, what I want to ask is, ‘If he’s going to redistribute my earnings, okay? Is it safe to assume then that he’s going to start redistributing my risks?’ You know, we’re partners now, right? So now he’s in my business.
RUSH: No, but again, I must say that I totally agree and I endorse and I love your reasoning here, but as far as Barack Obama is concerned, your business is a success because of your employees, not you.
CALLER: Yeah, but there will not be any employees, Rush, because what’s going to happen —
RUSH: Well, that’s okay, too, because then the government will take care of them and —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — that’s what Democrats want, and when that happens they want to be able to blame you, as they have been for years, for being greedy and selfish and not employing people and sharing what you have, your wealth and so forth, even after you go out of business.
CALLER: But the employees need to be careful what they wish for, because what’s going to happen is business owners know what their limits are. We know exactly where we need to be to not exceed $250,000 a year. We’re not going to continue to hire people if I’m going to give my earnings to Barack Obama.
RUSH: You probably won’t be able to.
CALLER: No, we’re not going to be able to. That’s for sure.
RUSH: You may even have to lay some of the off in order to stay in business in the first place, if his tax increases happen as he promises.
CALLER: But that’s what the employee needs to understand. It’s not this beautiful picture that’s trying to be painted for them.
RUSH: Well, but, see, once… I totally agree with you, but then there’s another thing that you’re not factoring, and that is the Employee Free Choice Act —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — which will allow your employees to come in and unionize your small business.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: With a private ballot.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Or an open ballot, rather, where they can be intimidated by union bosses into doing it. And then if they want, then they can just unionize your shop and then all quit and leave and so forth and leave you hanging. You’re going to have a lot of obstacles. If Obama succeeds in getting everything he wants here, you’re going to have to a lot of obstacles in your way. We all are.
CALLER: Well, absolutely. But these employees need to understand, too, they will lose jobs. There will not be jobs to go and replace the jobs.
RUSH: Do you tell them?
CALLER: We have. We have! We have some people, I will say, we have a great group of people that work for our company.
RUSH: How many employees do you have in your small business?
CALLER: Right now we have 15.
RUSH: You have 15 employees.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: And you’ve sat them down and you’ve told them?
CALLER: Oh, we have. (chuckles) Yeah. My husband is not shy about explaining to them, you know, just basically how the company runs.
RUSH: Did they believe you?
CALLER: Ummm. You know, some of them absolutely. They get it. They really understand it. They’re not out there making a huge amount of money, but they really swing a little more conservative. They understand it. But then we have other folks on the other side that were homegrown Democrats, and they feel that’s just the way that it is. They feel that they’re going to get this ‘change’ when Barack Obama’s elected.
RUSH: What change are they expecting?
CALLER: Well, they feel that, basically, we’re going to get ours; that, you know, we’re going to realize what it’s like to live their life. Which, you know, they’re living great lives.
RUSH: Do they really think that?
CALLER: I do believe that. I think some people —
RUSH: They think change means that they’re going to change places with people that have more money than they do?
CALLER: I think they think we’ll all be equal. I think they do. And I don’t think they understand that, no, we won’t be. I mean they won’t have a company to come to.
RUSH: If they think that, here’s what you need to tell them — and I’m dead serious. There’s evidence in the way the Democrat Party has ‘equalized’ all of its constituents now except for the rich leaders. You tell ’em, ‘All right. Let me tell you how Democrats equalize people.’ This is what you say to your Democrat employees.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: ‘Let me tell you how they equalize people. They don’t try to elevate people who are on the lower end of the scale to reach the higher level. What they’re going to do is take away from everybody above you and ‘redistribute’ that so that everybody will be equal with where you are. Your life is not going to change, but a lot of other people’s will change and they will be brought down to your level,’ and see what they say when they find out change does not mean that their own economic circumstance improves.
CALLER: Humph. (pause) Yeah. You know, it’s definitely… I mean, we’re trying.
RUSH: You go for it. Look, the evidence is everywhere. Outcome based education! If some stupid kid thought 2 + 2 = 5; it was five, until the kid finally figured out it was four. We couldn’t humiliate the kid. We have, in certain public schools, the high achieving kids don’t get special awards. In fact, we can’t humiliate the other kids not quite as smart and don’t perform as well. Democrats punish achievement, and if they think everybody’s going to be equal? The only way that can happen is if we’re equally miserable. So you can tell your small business employees, you can ask them, ‘Okay, are you miserable? Not with me, not with the boss, not with our company, but are you just miserable in general?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, Democrats going to spread that around. Everybody will be equally miserable. If you think their change involves you getting happy, forget it — unless you want to be happy ’cause other people are getting screwed. That’s the Democrat philosophy.’ Well, I’m glad you called out there, Christine, and hang in. Hang in. It’s going to be a challenge, but this is what we’re made for.