RUSH: Fort Worth, Texas, and Doug. Thank you for calling, sir. Nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I’ve been listening to your show for 18 years and love every minute of it.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: The reason I was calling, I was listening to your show yesterday and I heard the quote from Anthony Weiner talking about the death tax and how people getting to keep that money is not fair, and I almost ran my truck off the road when I heard that. I was so irritated —
RUSH: Right, it’s ’cause they’re dead. We ought to raise their taxes ’cause they’re dead.
CALLER: But what made me so irritated about it is that it’s not fair for estates to be able to keep their — and by estate, I’m talking about money that’s going to a family or to someone that is a legal heir, it’s not fair for them to keep their money, but it is fair for someone to be on unemployment for what they’re shooting for is three years and sit home and watch Oprah and whoever else they’re watching and not contribute anything to society, and I say that as a self-employed person. I’ve been unemployed twice in my life. The last time I was unemployed I was unemployed for about three weeks and decided that if I wasn’t gonna find a job I was gonna create a job. I know there’s thousands of things that people can do sitting at home all day. There’s things they can do that can generate income. If nothing else this is the time of year you can go out and hang Christmas lights on people’s houses, people pay you for that as well. So what’s fair is people earning their own, people not expecting the government to take care of everything for them. And what really bugs me about this whole program is that these liberals, it’s like they just don’t understand where the money’s coming from. They don’t understand —
RUSH: How long have you held this view? I’m sure you felt this way before you heard Weiner say what he said yesterday.
CALLER: It’s been a long time. I never believed that unemployment — I think unemployment should be a stepping stone —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — to another job. I don’t think it should be a way of life.
RUSH: Here’s my point. You’ve known this for years. You’ve known that Democrats believe that the wealth tax ought to be 50% and that once somebody dies they’re dead and that their heirs shouldn’t get it, that it ought to be a giant transfer of income and redistribution, put the money back into so-called circulation. But why all of a sudden now it sounds like you’ve reached a tipping point. If I’m right, why all of a sudden now is this getting to you the way it is?
CALLER: Because what I’ve noticed in the last couple of years is everything is an attempt at a revenue stream. And I believe that this is just one more area that they’re looking at and saying this is someplace we’re gonna have to raise taxes. We can take a backdoor approach and we can get revenue here. We can take this backdoor approach and get revenue there. What they’re doing with this, they’re killing innovation, they’re getting companies or they’re getting people that may be able to take that money and use it —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — to start an industry —
RUSH: Right. Here’s the thing. They’re doing it on purpose. You think they’re wrong, and fundamentally they are. But they’re doing it on purpose. I would submit that the reason — and it’s not just you — there are more and more, Bernie Goldberg wrote a column recently on his website in which he attempted to thank the rich for all the contributions they’ve made to the country. And he told me he was excoriated by more than half the people that responded. How dare he praise the rich. You either know it subconsciously or it’s in the forefront, what you know is there’s an all-out war now and you are seeing it right in front of your face. The unemployed are being treated as virtuous. They are being treated to further payments while not working, now up to three years. You’re seeing more and more Democrats come out and actually wage war on the rich; wage war on working people; wage war on creative people; wage war on the people that provide jobs; wage war on the productive people of this country. You see it now. It’s been a little bit more abstract, but now these guys lost the election, and the mask is off and you are seeing the genuine Marxists that they are, you’re seeing it, and you’re seeing the venom that’s attached to ’em. I mean they look at what happened to Charlie Rangel as fair. You know, there’s an all-out war against productive self-reliant people in this country by the Democrat Party. That’s what you notice.
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RUSH: Here’s Bob in Berkeley, nice to have you on the program, sir, hi.
CALLER: Yes, thanks for taking my call. It’s an honor. Wanted to make a point. I worked in Portland, Oregon. Well, I had a boss, I did sales there with a few other guys, and every time the boss saw how much we were making in commissions, he would change the pay structure. But once we got 
the new pay structure for the year, we would go to work and figure how to exploit that pay structure so that we could continue making what we were supposed to be making in our sales. Well, I feel like right now with the tax codes, what they’re doing is they continue to change this, making it hard for me to really strategize with my company and figure out ways where I can move around and find the loopholes. And I feel like if they would just give me something set for five to eight years, well, then I’ll go to work and figure out how I can make money and save on my taxes by taking advantage of different loopholes that are out there. But as they continue to change things, it makes it really impossible for me to look ahead and start to structure my company —
RUSH: Well, it’s a good point. It’s an excellent point. And we’ve had the same tax rates for ten years. We’ve had ’em. And now they’re starting to talk about changing them. And they’re (paraphrase), ‘No, we’re not gonna change them, we’re gonna leave them the same for two years and then we’re gonna raise them’ — which defeats the whole purpose. I know that happened in 1986 when we really lowered rates and got rid of a lot of deductions. To this day there are people still ticked off! We had a guy call today about it, still ticked off that their precious credit card interest deduction was taken away from them. They’re still livid about it. You remember? They’re still mad about it. I almost lost this audience over that issue when it happened. That happened, this show started two years after that, people were still livid about it. So I get your point.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, if we were on the ball and if the Republicans were on the ball, the question being asked would be: Why are the Democrats trying to take away unemployment extensions here at Christmas? That’s how this ought to be framed. If we were on offense, that would be the question: Why are the Democrats trying to take away unemployment benefits here at Christmastime? That would put them on defense. That’s the question we should be asking.