Ski Slip Disproves Obamanomics

RUSH: Now, I was under the impression, because I listened to Senator Obama during the campaign, that he’s only going to raise taxes on the rich, ’cause they’ve got it. They don’t need it. They have more than they need. They can afford it. So he needs to raise taxes on the rich and cut taxes on the, quote, unquote, ‘middle class.’ So he wants economic recovery to bubble up from the bottom or whatever, which is very tough to do when you’re at the bottom and you’re broke. I don’t know how you bubble anything up when you’re broke, but that’s not the point. I have a story here from AP-Obama, and it’s about three Colorado ski resorts being ‘forced’ to lay off workers. (gasping) It’s from the Durango Herald. We read the Durango Herald every day here. It’s part of our show prep rotation. (laughing) It might embarrass them so much they go out of business.

‘This ski season is shaping up to be the worst in years, said a Canadian ski-resort company that has announced it has laid off workers across a dozen resorts, including three in Colorado. Vancouver-based Intrawest Corp. hasn’t said exactly how many workers it let go, but company officials say the weak economy is squeezing the ski business.’ Now, who is it that goes out to Colorado and skis? No, it’s not the poor. The poor are working in the hotels. The poor are working in the restaurants, the, quote, unquote, poor. The poor are working at the ski resorts where the rich are not going because the economy is cutting into their disposable income and they think that they’ve got tax increases coming.

‘Colorado’s Steamboat Ski & Resort, for example, is more than three hours by car from Denver. Because of that, most visitors fly in and stay several days, while smaller resorts closer to big cities have an easier time surviving a poor economy. ‘They’re not as dependent on out-of- state and international visitors,’ Dave Belin, director at Boulder-based research firm RRC Associates, told the Rocky Mountain News. In a survey of skiers conducted online last month, RRC found that most skiers planned to ski as often as last year. But they planned to cut back in other ways — on lodging, lessons and other extras such as traveling a long way to get to a ski mountain.’ See, I thought tax increases and other trivial income killers amounted to chump change to wealthy Americans. But this is what I told you, and this is the main reason I said we gotta support Senator McCain, in fact, because of his tax policy was right.

Every time you hear Obama or some Democrat talking about raising taxes on the rich to help the little guy, it’s the little guy that gets shafted, and this ski resort story is a classic example. So we have to take the wealthy down a notch or two. How could that hurt anybody? Why, that couldn’t hurt anybody! We gotta take the wealthy down a notch or two. They give up a little chump change, Obama can spend it on welfare checks for those who don’t pay income taxes, and life is good for everybody! Except raising taxes is not chump change to rich people. That was just Obama shooting his mouth off. It turns out when the wealthy are pummeled by bad economic news of any kind they pull back, too. Nothing is chump change, and so now they’re going to visit ski resorts less. And when they, the people that pay the freight by going skiing go less or don’t stay overnight in hotels and so forth the ski resorts, three of them owned by a Canadian firm, are laying off the little guy, the guy who’s supposed to benefit from tax increases on the rich.