A Totally Fed Up Californian

RUSH: Dan in Temecula, California, great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: It’s a great honor to speak to you, Rush. I want to get right to the point. Don’t want to waste time because I know you’re a busy man. I want to talk about this shortfall that we supposedly have in California, $42 billion. Rush, I’ve lived here since 1961. I’ve watched in the last ten years the state government has doubled here in California. In the last five years, the general fund spending has gone up 30%. I have to pay… They have run the business and middle class out of California. We watched a net loss of population every single year. We have the highest gas tax in the country, the highest business tax, the highest sales tax. We are spending right now, Rush, $15 billion a year in Medicaid; seven billion a year in public assistance; $11 billion a year for illegal immigration in California. We’re spending $600 million a year to keep illegals in our prisons. As I said, we right now, Rush, Schwarzenegger had a $9 billion surplus in the year 2006. He and these morons up in Sacramento spent every dime of it.’ They have increased our budget in this state every single year. I want to show you how ludicrous this is, Rush. They’re talking about a $42 billion deficit. These morons have set a budget for $111 billion for the year 2010 which is $8 billion more than what they spent this year. What…? Look, Rush, I’m not the smartest guy and I’m not the sharpest pencil and I’m not the brightest Crayola in the box. I’m an average guy, but I’ve had it, and I’m sick and tired of it. And I’ll tell you, the only reason I don’t leave this state like all the other people who pay taxes — meaning the middle class and business — is I’m stuck here for reasons I can’t control, but I could tell you this: As soon as I get the chance, I’m outta here, and if I sound mad, I am.

RUSH: Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. That’s all people are doing these days is whining and whining and moaning, and I’m getting tired of it. (pause) No, I’m just teasing out there. I thought of that response halfway through your call, and I was dying to use it. Look, I have total understanding for your situation out there. Frankly, I used to live in California for three and a half years and I loved it, and I love visiting. It’s one of these places I love. I would love to live there, but I’m not going to give away what I’ve earned down a drain, you know? It’s just a bottomless, endless pit. You know, you’re propping up all kinds of noncitizens. I saw something the other day which will illustrate, Dan, your point. I have it in the Stack. I just haven’t had a chance to get to it, so I’m going to recite this from memory, but the ballot initiative process is alive and well in California. It was a ballot initiate — you might remember the name of it, but I don’t, or the number of it. I don’t remember, but basically the animal rights people out there spread the news that chickens and turkeys — well, primarily chickens — were being mistreated in the process of… The egg farmers were mistreating them by putting them in cages where they couldn’t spread their wings.

CALLER: I remember.

RUSH: And the people of California, after being inundated with stories for years about how mean we were being to the, whose objective — the only reason the chickens are alive is to lay eggs so that human beings can live, and that’s what’s insulting of these people! So they mandated brand-new cages that the egg farmers are going to have to invest in and buy at their own expense, which is going to add in total cost. The egg business in California, like any other business out there, is huge. The number of eggs that the California egg industry produces and ships is just incalculably large. So it’s going to cost hundreds of billions to these egg farmers, chicken farmers and egg farmers, to retool. The story was — it might have been in the Wall Street Journal — that a number of them are going to say to heck with it like you and they’re just going to leave, and they’ll go to cheaper states to do business, because their business is laying eggs. These chickens are not pets.

CALLER: Rush, why is it that these people who want to do this, they always claim the high moral ground like we’re the uncaring, insensitive people. Let me ask you then: Who do you think is going to pay for those eggs? The poor people that they say they represent. That’s who’s going to pay the price. Schwarzenegger wanted to put a 9.9¢ tax on every barrel of oil that came out of California.

RUSH: And they want restrictions on automobiles made to be driven in California, to raise the cost of those.

CALLER: At the same time, the state legislature wanted to raise the price of gas, the same people that cry the high moral ground, 21¢ a gallon. So the poor are going to pay for the gas, the poor are going to pay for the eggs, and they think they’re doing them a service? When we’ve got billions of gallons off the coast of this country? It’s estimated a hundred billion dollars worth of oil.

RUSH: Look, I don’t want to —

CALLER: It’s unbelievable.

RUSH: I don’t want to oversimplify this, but in the case of the animal rights nutcases who succeeded with that ballot initiative by tugging at the heartstrings of people who like animals, we all like animals. If you’re a movie star, they always say the last thing you want to do is be in a movie with an animal because the animal will upstage you every time. Everybody just loves them, and we try to humanize every animal. Be it a tiger, be it a jaguar, we try to humanize them. Jack, I remember as a kid watching the road runner and coyote cartoons, Wile E. Coyote, and we humanized the coyote. And so we end up loving all these things, and the chicken, too. It doesn’t matter what the animal is. So what happens is I firmly believe, Dan, that in large measure what’s happening is leftist activists are seeking the destruction of capitalism. I think that’s what the militant environmental movement is all about.

I think that’s what the militant cultural rot movement is all about. I think it’s all aimed at destroying individual liberty. I think it’s all aimed at destroying what they think is the evil of capitalism, and that’s the inequitable distribution of resources. And I think it’s been a long, slow, stealthy procedure and strategy that they’ve employed. If all this had happened in one big gulp or in one week or one month or even a couple years in California, you wouldn’t put up with it but since it’s been happening incrementally, it’s gotten to the breaking point now, but it may be too late to stop. You ask how in the world can they have such an out-of-control budget deficit and still increase spending by $8 billion next year? Very simple, it’s called baseline budgeting. Very simple. There isn’t a government in the world that will do with less next year than it had this year. It doesn’t exist.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: And, look at how they’re scaring you in California. ‘Well, we have to increase the budget. If we have to cut the budget, what’s the first to go? Police! What’s the next to go? Firemen! What’s the next to go? Trash pickup! What’s the next?’ They’re all the things that you interact with every day. They’ll never tell you they’re going to get rid of Mortimer Snerd and his merry band of bureaucrats who doesn’t do diddly-squat all day long.

CALLER: One more thing and then I’m going to shut up, Rush. I want to thank Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama — and you folks down there in Florida, the east side — for your 10,000 oil rigs, while California has 23. But we don’t want to mess up our pristine coast. And I want to thank the other states that provide our electricity with their coal burning plants in Nevada and Utah and all out in there, because California, see, doesn’t want nuclear power. We want you to dirty your state so we’ll buy your power.

RUSH: Well —

CALLER: Makes sense, doesn’t it, Rush?

RUSH: I’ll tell you what, we’re going to be running out of oil and coal pretty soon because Obama is going to re-implement the ban on offshore drilling that was raised during the campaign that was lifted, and if he does his cap-and-trade program, that’s the end of the coal business. If he actually does the cap-and-trade program, if he gets it going, gets it up and running, then that’s the end of the coal business. So we’ll be looking enviously at you with all your windmills.