RUSH: Debbie in Lancaster, New York, great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Merry Christmas.
RUSH: Same to you.
CALLER: Well, you were talking about Governor Paterson. I’m telling you, I am so steamed. Not only is he taxing — he’s taken away our STAR program. He’s taxing everything and anything. He’s increasing welfare benefits by 30%, which I know a lot of legitimate needs are out there, but he’s restricting —
RUSH: Can I give you the truth on this, Debbie?
CALLER: Yes, please do.
RUSH: All right. (sigh) You know, my motto ought to be, ‘He says things that are true that are unspeakable.’ I mean, that’s why Colin Powell is really mad at me. It’s ’cause I said he endorsed Obama because of race.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: You’re not supposed to say that.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: Same thing here, with David Paterson. You know why he can’t reduce welfare?
CALLER: Well, I suppose it’s because their doors are open and we’re welcoming everybody who, uh —
RUSH: No.
CALLER: — won’t work for it.
RUSH: Riots.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Protests.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: New York City (I guess you could add the state to it) is its own self-contained warfare state, above and beyond and apart from the federal welfare state. And as Tom Wolfe wrote in Bonfire of the Vanities, at some point the people on welfare are going to figure out how to cross the street —
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: — and get to the parts of the Manhattan where David Paterson and his buddies, Bernie Madoff and so forth, where they live, and he’s got to keep these people on their side of the street. New York has created these people. He has created this dependent class. New York has done this, and this is called ‘keeping the peace.’ What’s going to happen… This stuff is pure common sense, my friends. The people being asked — well, they’re not ‘asked.’ The people being told they have to pay the freight, they don’t have it anymore, either.
CALLER: No, we don’t.
RUSH: The middle class — the working class in New York City, all five boroughs — is on its way to becoming a part of the dependent class.
CALLER: I’m not in the city. They should annex the city from the state. I’m upstate. And we say New York State, BOHICA: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. This is so ridiculous here, Rush.
RUSH: Well, let me tell you something. Elections have consequences. The people you elect — not you specifically.
CALLER: Not me! Not me!
RUSH: I know, but the people of the state keep electing these thieves.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: They keep electing liberal Democrats. They keep electing people who will do nothing but tax, steal, and spend.
CALLER: They’re doing it well.
RUSH: Eighty-eight new fees and taxes in Governor Paterson’s $121-billion ‘slash-and-burn budget.’ He called the budget ‘the greatest economic and fiscal challenge of our lifetimes,’ but he said, ‘the pain must be shared to deal with the fallout from the Wall Street collapse.’ The budget will cost the city of New York an estimated $650 million in state aid. But it’s the $4 billion in new fees and taxes that might aggravate everyday New Yorkers.’ I don’t see ’em upset about it now, so why should this upset ’em? If you ask me, the average New Yorker should have gotten so ticked off about this years ago, but the average New Yorker didn’t. They just keep electing these people.
This is what they get. They seem very comfortable bent forward, and grabbing their ankles. You see it on the Upper West Side constantly, down in the Village, Soho, Chelsea. Take a drive down there and you’ll see it; these people are constantly bent over, grabbing their ankles, just waiting for the next time. I know some places are doing it for fun, but to them it’s a civic responsibility. This is how we all band together and share the misery. There’s going to be ‘an ‘iPod tax’ that charges state and local sales tax for digitally delivered entertainment services.’ Now, do you want to try to imagine the mechanics of this? And do you know what happens in the music business when you start taxing or even charging for downloads? People have found a way around it each and every time.
That’s why the music industry is in a tizzy here trying to figure out how to get paid for what it does. Only idiots go to the store and buy CDs now with downloads. Do you buy CDs in the store anymore, Snerdley? Just download them, exactly right. Are there still CD stores out there? There are. And there are still people who go buy CDs? Well, it just shows. (interruption) Yeah, I know, out of print. Yeah, but I’m talking about current. Of course if you want to go get, you know, a CD by George Goober Jones, you know, if you like White Lightning, I doubt you’re going to be able… Well, you can probably download that. The point is, you can download that from iTunes or whatever. Think of the mechanics of this. Who’s going to collect this tax? You know damn well nobody in the city of New York knows how to do it. They’re going to assign someone. What, iTunes is going to have to do it?
Is Apple going to have to do it? Ha. Apple (laughing) anyway, the consumer is going to figure out how to get their music without paying this tax. So this tax isn’t going to raise as much money as old Paterson thinks it’s going to raise. None of these taxes are going to raise money. These taxes are going to kill money. The soda cans, soda pop with sugar in it? That’s easy. Don’t buy it and let’s see how happy the state is that you’re getting healthy, when they don’t get the tax revenue. All of a sudden they’re going to start taxing sugar-free beverages. You wait and see. When you start giving up real Coke and real Pepsi and real 7-Up and start buying the diet versions, old Paterson and his bean counters are gonna figure out, ‘Wait a minute! Society is getting healthier. There are still a bunch of fat people out there, but they’ll get fixed in the meantime, but our tax revenues are down. How can this be?’
Because, you Nimrods, people are trying to take action to avoid increased costs of living that you impose. So then they’ll raise taxes on these things that you are buying, and then they’re going to start taxing caffeine. They’ve already started taxing trans fat. This is just absurd. This does not work! ‘The 50-cent tax on cigars, the current taxed equal to 37% of the wholesale price, or 34 cents a cigar. State sales tax of movie theaters, sporting events, taxis, buses, limousines, and cable and satellite TV and radio. While the Medicaid program would grow 3.8%, Paterson wants $3.5 billion in health care cuts, the hospital and nursing homes it said will lead to closures. A flurry of advocates and economists on Monday criticized Paterson for mostly burdening the poor and middle class while ignoring calls to increase the income tax for the rich.’ Uh, heh. I don’t know what’s left to tax the rich! They’re already… Folks, these are liberals. We’ve been trying to warn people for all of these years. The blueprint is out there for how to do this the right way. Let me grab a quick ‘nother phone call.
This is Elkview, West Virginia. This is Aaron. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, Rush! Merry Christmas. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Same to you.
CALLER: Oh! I’m so excited to talk to you. I wanted to let you know that Germany already has in place the way to tax radio and television. We lived there for a few years, and every year we would get a form in the mail that said, ‘Tell me how many radios you have, tell me how many TVs you have, and this is the tax rate you need to pay on it.’
RUSH: You are kidding.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: Did they ever challenge your information, demand to come into your home or see your garage?
CALLER: Well, fortunately because we were there with the military we could send them a note saying, ‘We’re here with the Americans. Don’t tax us because we’re Americans.’ I don’t know how they enforced it, but I do know that all of our friends got them, all of our German friends and they said, ‘Yeah, this is normal.’ They were not upset about it; they paid the tax every year. So as soon as I got it, I went to my German friends and said, ‘Are you crazy? You pay this?’ They said, ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’
RUSH: See, this is where we’re headed.
CALLER: Yes!
RUSH: That kind of Western European socialism.
CALLER: Yes, exactly! It’s scary to see. I kind of expect it in New York, I expect it in California, but it’s scary to see that people are starting to accept things like that, ‘Oh, yes. Well, we need the money so let’s tax it on what we have.’
RUSH: See, they don’t have any.
CALLER: I know. (laughs)
RUSH: The government doesn’t have any money. After they take our tax revenue, they are printing some more, and they’re borrowing some more. They don’t have the money.
CALLER: Why don’t they have the money?
RUSH: Once people with no money start bailing out others with no money, then a whole bunch of others with no money are going to go to the same source for more money, and there’s no money. So the original $700 billion bailout is what started all of these runs, all of these requests for bailouts. That, too, was predicted.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Elijah in Dallas. Great to have you on the EIB, Elijah. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush, it’s an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I have some feedback from your caller from last hour about the taxing of radios and TVs in Germany.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I have personal experience. In the United Kingdom they have a similar system, and what they do is they actually have their little white vans that drive around in the dark of night. They have equipment in the back of them that can detect the unique oscillating signatures from TVs and radios up to about a quarter mile and they just drive by each house, detect how many TVs and radios are inside, and if you haven’t paid your taxes on that, then they send you what I imagine is a substantial fine in the mail.
RUSH: You have got to be kidding?
CALLER: No. I imagine they drive in the middle of the night ’cause they’re not too popular. I sure wouldn’t like to see those driving up and down my neighborhood.
RUSH: Now, wait just a second here, Elijah. Do these radios and TVs have to be on in order for these oscillations to be detected by government authorities in their little white vans?
CALLER: No, they do not. They do have to have power, so they have to be plugged in, but they do not have to be currently running.
RUSH: How many people today in the UK or anywhere have a… You know what? It’s probably more than I think. I was going to say, ‘have a radio that’s plugged in.’ Back in the ol’ days, you know, the super heterodyne six transistor thing you take along with you. I guess a lot of clock radios and so forth in people’s homes — television’s, obviously, are plugged in. So really, I would think it would require a whole lot of little white vans running around neighborhoods at two and three in the morning to detect these oscillations to see if the citizens in the UK are lying to them about the number of radios and TVs in their domiciles.
CALLER: I’m sure it’s a very intricately woven bureaucratic system they have over there, but from what I understand, they charge them annually. So you would only have to go through each neighborhood every year, and that’s assuming a hundred percent coverage. But I’m sure that they have their ways set up, and I’m sure there’s all kinds of ways around it. I would just personally build a one-inch thick lead shield around my TVs, but that’s me. (chuckles)
RUSH: You realize they’d drive by a house typically of where you would live, Elijah — I can sort of get an idea of your economic circumstance by talking to you — and if your house reports no televisions in there, you’re going to get a knock on the door.
CALLER: Yeah, yeah. I imagine I probably would. That’s one of the reasons why I live in Dallas. There’s a lot more attention paid to individual freedoms and liberties there than some of the other places.
RUSH: Well, I know, especially the —
CALLER: Across the country.
RUSH: Yes, that’s right. Texas is that way. I actually think, ladies and gentlemen — I don’t want to shock you and I don’t want to surprise you but I actually think — we already have a network of authorities running around monitoring the usage of electronic devices and in fact perhaps in some cases monitoring the content of the usage of those devices. If you remember this fun-loving grandparent couple, the Martins in Florida, who were on the way to the mall in Jacksonville, and they happen to (like we all do) turn on their cell phone receiver radio in their Cadillac, and they started monitoring other people’s cell phone calls, just as you and I do.
I mean, this is common for 75-year-old people on the way to get Christmas shopping done, and they happened to overhear a conversation between Newt Gingrich and John Boehner. They thought they were on to something historic, and they didn’t know what to do with it, and decided off the top of their heads to call ‘Baghdad Jim’ McDermott, who then released a transcript — ’cause, of course, the tape of the call was sent to McDermott. He got it transcribed, and they sent that to the New York Times, and it was published and so forth. So it’s just like they say about Bernie Madoff. Could he have possibly been acting alone here? This is so massive, no one person could possibly have pulled all this off. And in the case of people monitoring our electronic devices, aside from the NSA, is it just one grandparent couple in Florida driving around doing this?