RUSH: Vince in Columbus, Ohio. Hello, sir. You’re on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, I just wanted to send a direct message to all the goons in the White House that they can put Vince Polerno and Columbus Ohio on the Snitch List because I’m sick and tired of this bully pulpit. You wouldn’t believe what we saw out there in Columbus, the liberal Astroturf with their premade signs from Organizing for America were out there trying to shout us down. But we came out there, we had our signs, we put them together with what we could. We took our Sharpies. We put them on notebook paper. We went out there with truth, man. We were fighting out there.
RUSH: This was at a Sherrod Brown meeting?
CALLER: Yes, sir, in Columbus.
RUSH: Tell me what happened. What happened? Did you get assaulted by some union thugs or something?
CALLER: No, the Organizing for America thugs were out there. I didn’t see SEUI thugs, but they would have been more than welcome to talk to me. The event was terrible. I mean, only the Organizing for America and the Sherrod Brown e-mail people were on this list to know that this event was going on. My mom called at 9:30 in the morning and looked at the website at 9:30 in the morning, as did many other people, and there was nothing on the website. And the office lied to us. They said, ‘Hey, there was no event going on,’ but there was. They lied to us. They put on a Obama campaign health care rally on our taxpayer dollars, on our Ohioan taxpayer dollars.
RUSH: And try to make it look like a genuine town hall.
CALLER: Yeah, yeah. It’s such a crock, man.
RUSH: Of course it’s a crock! Everything is fake; everything is staged. They have to send out memos to these people that tell ’em where to show up and what to wear and what time, and then they have to tell ’em what to say and, ‘Here are the signs you have to make.’ It’s always been ginned up and fake. That’s the reason they’re losing this because people like you are genuine. You’re not organized. You’re just showing up because you’re ticked off.
CALLER: Yeah, we have a legitimate concern of the future of America, and here we have these paid-off union thugs and these brainwashed goons from Organize for America thinking they can shut us up. But, no! They’re dead wrong.
RUSH: That’s right. Organize for America, by the way, is an Obama White House website. The White House is sending out the thugs. Or whatever you want to call ’em, the rent-a-mob. It doesn’t matter. Vince, thanks much. Frank in Overland Park, Kansas, where I used to live in a tiny little shack. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you doing?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, myself and my family owned some restaurants in the state of Utah. We live in Kansas. And the bottom line is as a small-time franchisee with the health care bill version in the Congress right now, our concern is — at least our understanding is — if we had to all of a sudden start paying 100% of all of our employees’ insurance, that would pretty much put us under and possibly put us out of business. So I want to make sure, in your opinion, do we have that assessment correct? Is that what the health insurance bill would make us do in terms of pay 100% of all our employees?
RUSH: You would either have to do that or pay a fine levied against you by the IRS.
CALLER: The 8% of your payroll?
RUSH: Yeah. Minimum. Minimum. Minimum 8%. Minimum 8% of your payroll.
CALLER: Minimum.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: See, prior to the election we had five years 10% year-over-year growth, which was outstanding, and then as soon as we hit the election and finishing ’08 we dropped to 3% growth, and now we’re down 20%. And so now our stores are running marginal, and our fear is, if this goes through, we’re done.
RUSH: You know, it’s entirely possible. If it goes through as is, it’s entirely possible. Unless you off-load those people to public option, which is what they want you to do. You off-load your employees to the public option. They get their insurance. The government takes care of it and then they’re off your back. See, this is the trick they’re using to get people on the public option. They know you’d go out of business. They know you’re not going to pay 8%. They know you’ll not do all this. So you’ll just cancel your own health insurance and bammo! They are on Obamacare.
CALLER: Which would then put our immediate family on the Obamacare, so to speak, as well.
RUSH: Yeah, if you’re on the company plan.
CALLER: Exactly. We are.
RUSH: I got a question. This is great illustration of how private insurance is going to be lost. And this, by the way, was discovered by the Duke University classics professor who read the plan. We went through the analysis yesterday. If you want to see his article and the way we treated it, it’s at RushLimbaugh.com. We’ve got it highlighted there to the home page.
CALLER: I’ll check the out.
RUSH: Do that. Now, I got a question for you.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: It’s just a question of logistics, curiosity. You own a chain of restaurants in Utah and you live in Overland Park?
CALLER: (laughing) It comes down to mom and dad starting the franchises out of Utah, but they were originally from Kansas and that’s where they wanted to be.
RUSH: All right. So how often do you visit the stores in Utah?
CALLER: Monthly to every other month.
RUSH: Really. So you got good people you trust to run these things.
CALLER: Overall, yes. I mean, we’re not unlike any other business. You’re always trying to improve your personnel.
RUSH: Right. And the restaurant business you’ve got a lot of theft.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You have to factor that in as the cost of doing business. Is it white tablecloth kind of restaurants?
CALLER: No, it’s more fast-casual.
RUSH: Okay, excellent. Do you serve adult beverages?
CALLER: In some we do. In some we don’t.
RUSH: Well, that’s more theft —
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: — that you have to account for. (laughing) All right. Well, look, I appreciate the call, Frank. Thanks much and best of luck to you.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush.
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RUSH: Mark in Houston. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Yes, Rush. In the world of blue-collar jobs, there’s two rather enviable jobs to land. One of them is a union job, you know, with good pay and good benefits. The other is a government job: be it federal, state, local, park ranger, police, firemen, city managers. Those people I believe are at the highest risk for being forced into this health care system if it passes, but the one interesting thing is when the government people get these jobs, they always say, ‘Well, the pay is not good but the benefits are great,’ and that’s almost universal across this country about county job or a state job or whatever. I’m thinking that those guys are going to be forced into this program through the federal government’s powers and abilities to be able to pressure them.
RUSH: It’s possible. I happen to know a lot about local government. I happen to know a lot. (chuckling) I do, and one thing I know about local government is every damn one of them is in over their heads in debt. And they’re raising property taxes left and right. I know local communities that are paying police and firemen a cumulative total of couple, $3 million each over the period of their retirement. Now, I guarantee you that if the public option comes available, that you’re going to have a bunch of local communities say, ‘You know what? We’re gonna save some money here: You’re on Obama’s plan,’ just like a whole bunch of business will off-load the costs, state, local governments. I can see that happening. That’s not a bad point.
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RUSH: All right, who’s next? It’s Vincenza in Pearl River, New York. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush! Conservative dittos from a proud mother of two Rush Babies and the proud wife a New York City detective macho conservative man, very macho. (chuckles)
RUSH: Thank you very much. That means he doesn’t go to the doctor much.
CALLER: He hasn’t been to the doctor since he’s ten years old when he got his appendix out and he’s hitting 56 now. (chuckling)
RUSH: Congratulations. That’s one way to cut health care costs is just don’t spend any money on it.
CALLER: Hey, listen, my first thing I want to say to you is how about putting ‘Vincenza’ on your top ten list of your all-time favorite female names.
RUSH: Well, I’d be glad to move it in there.
CALLER: Oh, thank you!
RUSH: Vincenza is one of my all-time top ten favorite female names.
CALLER: (laughing) Thank you so much. Well, seriously, what I’d like to say I’ve been hearing lately these libs saying, you know, ‘According to the World Health Organization France is rated number one for health care and the United States is rated like 34’ or something like that. How do I respond to these idiots?
RUSH: You simply say, ‘World anything…’
CALLER: Yeah, right.
RUSH: Any organization which has as its first name ‘World’ —
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: — is a bunch of United Nations socialists.
CALLER: You’re right.
RUSH: And then you say the secretary general of the UN yesterday told people in Inchon, Korea, ‘We’ve got four months to save this planet.’
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: And then you say, ‘Okay, we’re 34th and France is first? Go there when you get sick. Go there! Go there.’
CALLER: (giggling)
RUSH: In fact, offer to pay the plane ticket. Offer to pay their plane ticket.
CALLER: Absolutely right. You are so right all the time.
RUSH: If they want to sit here and run down their own countries, say, ‘Okay, if it’s better there, go.’ You might have missed this but I have my own plan to save money on health care and not tamper with our own health care system.
CALLER: That’s right. (laughing) I heard you before say that. You’re right.
RUSH: Just give everybody a plane ticket or train ticket to Canada.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Go up there and get treated. They’ve already got a kind of debacle plan that Obama wants to do here.
CALLER: Yeah. I just don’t understand how these people think. I really and truly have anxiety.
RUSH: They don’t.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: See, this is where you go nuts if you start thinking they think. They’re reacting and they’ve been programmed. They’re emotional. They’re emoting.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: Imagine: What must your mind-set be if you’re American…? You’re born here. You’re a native American. What must your mind-set be to read a statistic that said, ‘The US is 34th in the world in health care?’
CALLER: It’s just ridiculous.
RUSH: What must your mind-set be to believe that, when you intellectually know that any important person or anybody who can get here who can afford it when they get sick, they come in here. Some go to France. I’m not trying to run France down but the world’s trying to get into our country. That’s what I would say to them.
CALLER: You’re absolutely right.
RUSH: But then —
CALLER: I just can’t. My mind is boggled by how they think. It really… (chuckles)
RUSH: Don’t expect to change their mind. See, with liberals you gotta go in with low expectations.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: If you go in with high expectations, you are going to suffer let downs. Low expectations you might be surprised now and then.
CALLER: Thank you, Maha Rushie.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: You’re my hero.
RUSH: Thank you, Vincenza, and hello to your detective husband.
CALLER: Thank you. (laughing)
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RUSH: By the way, Vincenza, you asked a question about the World Health Organization rating French health care at the top and United States 34th. I did some digging on this, and let me tell you the two interesting factors that go into the World Health Organization’s rating of health care. One thing they take into account is military people killed in action. (snorts) When you start comparing United States troop commitments around the world to those of France, you’ll find that the frogs are in very few places getting shot at. And another thing that they take into account… No, seriously, they do that, folks. Seriously. The second thing they take into account is homicides, and in a lot of our blue cities and a lot of our blue states run by Democrats for years, there are a lot of homicides. Maybe more so than in France. The French health care system, by the way, there’s a big seven-page story on it in the Wall Street Journal, and it’s a public-private system. They’ve got a private system and a public system just like ours. ‘They have recently imposed American-style co-pays on patients to throttle back prescription drug costs. They have forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses.’ The people don’t like it. The government controls 88% of health care, and the costs are skyrocketing. They got a monopoly on 88% of health care in France. The costs are going up. They can’t control it. People there don’t like it. So tell your people that.