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RUSH: I got a question here, ladies and gentlemen. I’m really starting to wonder and I will explain this as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears. I’m really starting to wonder here if Obama’s ideological hero was Karl Marx or Groucho Marx. Well, there are times I don’t know whether to take this guy seriously. Which is it? Where does he get his inspiration, Karl Marx or Groucho Marx? As I say I will explain this as the program unfolds. Happy to have you along. Another full three hours of broadcast excellence here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.

So they’re gonna pink slip all the teachers in Providence, Rhode Island. This is a place that spent one and a half, what, billion, million on wind power. We’ll get into that at some point. Indiana teachers, Democrats are fleeing. The governor there not all that upset about it. That would be Mitch Daniels. Republican governor not all that upset about it, that they’re fleeing the state. Ohio is next. Madison, Wisconsin, is still undercover. The media, by the way, the Wisconsin Drive-Bys know where the Wisconsin Democrats are. And now we do, too. We know where they are but they were covering it up. They were right in the room with them, they were conducting press conferences, the Democrat senators from Wisconsin were, and the media tag line was ‘from undisclosed location.’ Nothing undisclosed about it. From unreported location, because these clowns knew where they were.

So the journalists, the Drive-Bys in Wisconsin have clearly chosen sides, which is no big surprise to anybody. And where are the polls, ladies and gentlemen, from the AP, from CBS, ABC, Gallup, where are the polls about what’s going on in Wisconsin? Isn’t the media interested in who the public is supporting there? Or are they not able to get the results they want, even with all their oversampling and other skewing tactics? I mean seriously, folks, if there were overwhelming support for the fleeing Democrat senators among Wisconsin residents, don’t you think that we would be seeing this? But we’re not seeing those polls. You can bet that Obama wouldn’t have pulled back on his public support for these protesters in Wisconsin if the polls were not awfully bad for the unions. And Obama has pulled back. I got to thinking. If the Republicans in Washington had only fled the country when the Democrats were ramming their health care bill through Congress, seems like a brilliant tactic now, Democrats would have never had a quorum, and we wouldn’t be saddled with unconstitutional Obamacare. Had I known that this was a possibility, I myself might have even paid their airfare to Barbados or a foreign destination of their choosing. But nobody thought of it. The Republicans didn’t think of running away. They tried to stay there and fight this. They didn’t flee the country.

Anyway, the Democrat tactic opens up a whole new political weapon. Tool. You can’t say weapon anymore. It opens up a whole new tool. When things aren’t going your way, just scram. Flee the country if you’re talking about Congress. Flee your state if you’re talking about a state legislator. Let me get this straight. Let me try to batten all of this down and make it understandable. All of Obama’s talk about learning to live with less, about Americans using too much of the world’s resources, Americans being overweight, all of that, apparently that only applies to taxpayers. Not to public sector union members. Not to federal bureaucrats. Not to trial lawyers. Not to Jesse Jackson. In other words, those who don’t work for the government, or those who don’t get anything from the government, they need to keep giving until it hurts, and hurts, while those who take need to keep taking and taking. I think I pretty much have this understood now.

Obama’s out there, ‘We gotta learn to live within our means.’ No, we do. He doesn’t, and the unions don’t. The bureaucracy doesn’t. But we do. The people paying for all of this, we’re the ones that have to learn to live with less. We are the ones who have to sacrifice. We are the ones who have to live within our means. We are the ones who have to eat the twigs and the berries and all that stuff that Moochelle Obama demands that we eat, but they don’t. They don’t eat fruits and berries and twigs and all that rot. They’re out eating barbecued ribs. I don’t care if they’re short ribs, long ribs or baby back ribs. They’re out there eating ribs with all kinds of cilantro flavored potatoes on the side. But not us. We’re supposed to dial it back. This is what Obama means by sacrificing and spreading the wealth. The people that pay for everything dial it back. We do with less so that what we are saving ends up being spread around to all these other people: the unions, the union leaders, trial lawyers, Jesse Jackson, federal bureaucrats.

Now, while all this is going on, Obama continues to defy a federal judge in Florida, saying his Obamacare bill’s unconstitutional. He’s pressing ahead with Obamacare, continues to issue regulations that are tantamount to destroying our industry, as he continues to obstruct offshore drilling for oil. What is the oil price now? The oil price is $99 and Khadafy is threatening to do a Saddam on his oil fields. Have you heard about this? Khadafy is threatening to set his oil wells on fire. Khadafy ordered his Air Force to conduct bombing missions on Libyan citizens and they refused, they bailed outta there. At least a couple pilots did. So you’ve got all the instability in the Middle East here, particularly with the oil price now jumping. We could be looking at five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. We’re already at four dollars a gallon in California, and yet Obama continues to obstruct offshore drilling, continues to kneecap the private sector, private sector jobs.

Can you imagine if he had one-tenth the interest in private sector jobs that he does in union jobs? Do you realize that his focus on jobs is all about union jobs. We all know why. But imagine if he had that kind of energy and interest for private sector jobs. Teachers unions, SEIU, the AFSCME, all the rest, they deserve all they can get, all they can grab. We pay for it. They go for it. They get all they can grab. They somehow are entitled. They somehow have been screwed over by this country all these years, and now it’s their turn. Now that they’re on the inside, they get their hands in the till, and the till better be full. We better keep making payments to it. It just so happens that a chunk of what all these unions are grabbing from the taxpayers somehow managed to wind up in the Democrat Party. At the end of the day, isn’t that interesting? A chunk of what they grabbed from the taxpayers ends up in his and the Democrat Party’s war chests. No wonder he wants union guys to work. They have to pay dues that end up in his war chest. No wonder he wants more union jobs. That’s more union dues that end up in his war chest and the Democrat Party’s war chest. So what does the redistribution of wealth mean? He’s out there talking to Joe the Plumber during the campaign, spread the wealth around. What does that mean?

The redistribution of wealth means stealing from the taxpayers and giving to the Democrats, their favorite supporters. And as we told you at the time, that’s what a large part of the stimulus bill was all about. It was a slush fund taking money from taxpayers, funneling it through Obama’s administration, sending it back to the teachers unions, the SEIU, AFSCME, public sector unions in the states, all to protect them from the recession. Do you realize now, folks, that’s what the stimulus was about? It was about one thing: protecting Democrat donors from the recession. Making sure that Democrats — union, public sector, private sector, doesn’t matter — all of these union people, make sure at the government level, state, federal, make sure they didn’t lose their jobs. So that their union dues would continue to be paid and those would end up in the coffers of the Obama war chest and the Democrat Party. The single purpose of the stimulus: make sure Obama’s supporters kept their jobs. It’s that simple.

Meanwhile, we hear this nonsense about the right to collective bargaining with public sector unions. Even George Meany opposed it, the forerunner to John Sweeney. Even FDR opposed it, the right to collective bargaining, public sector unions. Collective bargain against who? The people. You’re not collective bargaining against some cigar chomping, fat executive sitting in a boardroom in Detroit at General Motors, Ford or Chrysler. Collective bargaining against the taxpayer is what collective bargaining for public sector unions is all about, and FDR was smart enough to know that that would lead to people hating government. And if you’re a Democrat, and you want to tie up and cement power forever as being the party of government you need people to love government. People end up hating government, getting mad at government and you’re the party of government, you and your party are in heap big doo-doo. Little Indian lingo there. FDR knew this. George Meany, the early union guys knew this. That’s why they said, ‘No, you can’t have collective bargaining, you can’t even unionize public sector workers. Can’t even do it.’

Well, the current mob doesn’t care. They don’t care who you hate. They just as soon intimidate you into voting for them as opposed to making you love them. They don’t care. Now, once they get their hands on the federal Treasury, which they now have, they can make sure that their people don’t lose jobs, don’t lose pensions, don’t lose health care during the recession, so that their donor money will continue to flow. Nonsense about this right to collective bargaining. The same president who ignores the will of the people wants collective bargaining. He wants these public sector workers to have their fair treatment accorded them. He wants them to be heard. He wants them to be respected. He runs around and he says, ‘They’re our neighbors and they are our friends at church,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Fine and dandy, sounds wonderful, coming, however, from a president who ignores the will of the people, in this case, the people who pay for all of this largesse, the taxpayers of this country who are just now beginning to figure out their taxes are what is paying union dues that end up in the coffers of the Democrat Party. And yet those people ought to be thanked each and every day.

The taxpayers of this country ought to be thanked. They ought to be shown appreciation. They ought to be giving deals here and there. No, they are impugned, stupid idiots in flyover country. He ignores the will of the people, he ignores election results, he ignores federal court orders, thumbs his nose at the law, and the rights of others, yet tells us that collective bargaining for government workers is some kind of enshrined human right. Really? Really? Then what about people who are forced to join unions when they don’t want to? What about their rights? What about people who are members of unions but oppose their money being used to support liberal policies, politicians in the Democrat Party, what about their rights? What about the public that has to pay the bills for these massive unfunded liabilities, the pensions and the health care benefits? What are their rights? You see, my friends, it’s not about rights. He can talk about the right to collectively bargain, he can talk about an enshrined human right people have, blah, blah — it’s not about rights. It’s about politics and power. And for too long Obama and his party have used government unions, so-called collective bargaining and the power to confiscate through taxation to build an unholy alliance against we, the people.

The Democrat Party and their holy alliance with unions equals an unholy alliance against we, the people. Shared sacrifice? Shared sacrifice, right, Barack? Spread the wealth, right, Barack? Yeah, tax everybody except your buddies. They’re the beneficiaries of all the taxation. Transform America? Right, Barack. Grow the government? Yeah, right, right. Grow the government. Where’s that happening? All in the name of the people, the same people who are repulsed by all of it, we’re not growing the country. We are growing the government but not the country all in the name of people who are repulsed by it. And while they eat ribs, for us it’s, ‘Let ’em eat carrots.’ Only The Messiah and his family get to eat the ribs, short rib, long back, baby back, whatever other kind of ribs they are. Actually I am starting to wonder whether Obama’s ideological hero is Karl Marx or Groucho Marx. It’s an open question.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let’s look at it in terms of the stimulus. The stimulus bill as I said from the get-go was nothing more than a slush fund. Now, it was presented as something to rebuild our roads and bridges and our infrastructure and keep our teachers working and create a whole bunch of jobs, 8% unemployment would be the max. We’re gonna get it down to 8%, it would not go any higher than that. We’re gonna put people to work, the federal government can do this. Well, where’d the money end up? The money ended up in state budgets. And who did it help? It helped state employees stay employed while everybody else was losing their jobs. Now, if you’re Barack Obama and you would like to get your hands on $800 billion for your campaign war chest, you can’t propose a piece of legislation and go to Congress and say, ‘Pass a bill, $800 billion for the Democrats.’ It wouldn’t pass, plus it’s not legal. So what do you do?

You propose a stimulus bill to put Americans back to work, to fix the circumstances that evil rotten George Bush left us all in. We’re gonna rebuild the roads. We’re gonna rebuild the schools. We’re gonna get middle class employment happening and we’re gonna make sure all this happens. All we need is almost $800 billion, that’s all we need. People go, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ because Obama’s living off the love of the inauguration, nobody knows anything about him yet. They still believe in all the mythology about messiah this, messiah that. ‘Yeah, yeah, man, yeah.’ Okay. So the year goes by and there haven’t been any new roads, and there’s no new schools, and the bridges haven’t been rebuilt. In fact, the Metrodome roof collapsed, no money to fix it, how can this be? Yet nobody’s raising any questions about it. Where’d the money end up? Where did it go? I told you. In fact, most of the money wasn’t spent until 2010. Most of the money wasn’t even scheduled to be spent ’til 2010, which is an election year. After the first year of the stimulus, a full 70% of it remained because it was a slush fund. So that money, the vast majority of it went to keep public sector union people employed, because as they are employed, they pay union dues, and their union dues end up back in the Democrat Party.

So a pretty good sleight of hand. Obama gets his $800 billion stimulus bill, and, what, maybe half of it ends up in the hands of Democrats across the country, state, local, national? Pretty smart move. All because it went to state public sector union employees who kept their jobs. Have we heard yet of the massive layoffs in the states? Have we heard of foreclosures on homes of people who live in states that work for the government, public sector union, have we heard this, have we heard these stories, we heard the sob stories about this? Have we heard one state talk, gotta lay off, only in Wisconsin, 1,500 layoffs, may happen this Friday, and look what’s happening. It’s intolerable. So the $787 billion is a slush fund, it takes a circuitous route, and a portion of it ends up in the Democrat Party. Same thing here in Wisconsin. Average citizen, nonunion, pays his taxes, his taxes keep union people employed, they pay their dues. As we all know, public sector unions 100% support Democrats. Where is the money going? Why is the reason that they get raises? The more they make, the higher their dues are. Voila. The bottom line, all of this stimulus spending, all of this spending to keep public sector union people employed is nothing more than a money laundering operation to make sure that campaign donations continue to flow to the Democrat Party. It’s that simple.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 13th of 2009: ‘State Public Sector Jobs Benefit from Stimulus.’ Look at me. Look at me and listen. ‘The first solid — if still incomplete — employment numbers for federal stimulus spending by Wisconsin state government show that retaining government positions was job one. Three-fourths of 8,284 stimulus-related jobs accounted for so far were public-sector posts protected by the federal infusion into state and local government coffers, Gov. Jim Doyle’s office reported. That included teachers, police officers and other government workers.

‘Of the remaining one-fourth, it’s not clear how many are private sector jobs, and whether the jobs were retained or newly created.’ So a full 75% of 8,000 ‘stimulus-related jobs’ accounted for so far were public sector posts. So Milwaukee got a portion of the stimulus. Seventy-five percent of the stimulus was spent on maintaining public sector jobs, exactly what I just told you the stimulus was for. This is from the story: ‘The main effect of the stimulus money that went to state and local governments was to prop up health care and education spending so the state could balance its budget without huge tax increases.’ [repeats]

‘The main effect of the stimulus money that went to state and local governments was to prop up health care and education spending’ for state employees. Not private sector employees ‘so they could balance their budget without huge tax increases.’ Of the stimulus bill in Wisconsin (I don’t have the amount of money at my fingertips), 75% of it went to protect 8200 public sector jobs in Wisconsin and their health care plans. You thought the stimulus was about building a road or a bridge or refurbishing something. Shovel-ready jobs, right? You thought it was all about reducing the national unemployment rate and fixing the recession. It wasn’t. It was about making sure union people stayed employed so they can continue to pay dues to the Democrat Party during a horrible recession.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So are the numbers and some commentary: ‘$701 million in federal stimulus money…’ Again now, the source for this is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from Milwaukee, Wisconsin: ‘$701 million of the Obama stimulus bill,’ the Porkulus bill, $701 million, went to Wisconsin; $632 million of it was spent shoring up health care and pension and wages for public sector employees — 8,000 of them. Now, the regime was telling us that the stimulus would — what? — create three to four million new jobs in the private sector, that all the job creation was in the private sector. They just plain lied — and lest we forget, on top of the $787 billion stimulus, Obama came around again with a $26 billion stimulus specified to the teachers.

Remember during the height of the stimulus, the recession kept happening, and remember the Democrats kept wringing their hands about, ‘Oh, we might have to lay off teachers,’ and of course no parent wants the teachers laid off. ‘Oh, that’s our kids! They’re doing it for the kids.’ So Obama came up with 26 billion additional dollars targeted for the teachers, just last summer — and as we noted at the time, that all went to paying for their union pensions and retirement benefits. None of it went to rehiring laid-off teachers, as we were told it would. We were told it was. In LA, we cited what happened in LA and California. They did not use the money to hire new teachers. They shored up existing teachers and their pensions.

Now, Obama’s recently submitted budget also includes untold billions that are slated for the public sector unions in the name of improving education and repairing our infrastructure. Now, what this exposes, folks, is a great deal more than what has already been said or written. This is, and always has been, an effort to beat down the middle class Saul Alinsky style. Now, as much as the left wants to refer to this as ‘class warfare,’ that template doesn’t work here. They are not taking from the rich to spread the wealth. They are taxing the middle class to enrich a relative few state, public employees. This is not class warfare as they have always talked about it.

I mean, you could say in one sense that it is class warfare in America, but not the old-fashioned classes that it is Democrats like to talk about between the rich and the poor. The workers and the bourgeoisie. This is between the political class, government class, and everybody else — and it’s being fought in places like Wisconsin. This is exactly what’s happening. This is an attack on the middle school, not the rich. Make no mistake about this. All of this involving the public sector unions is an attack on the rich, or is an attack on the middle class. It’s the middle class and their taxes that are paying for all of this. Let me give you a quote here.

This is Bob Chanin. Bob Chanin, the general counsel to the National Education Association, in his farewell address to the NEA convention last summer, here’s what he said. This is the head of the teachers union. Well, the legal counsel, the lawyer to the union. He said, ‘Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.’

It’s not that we’re doing it for the kids, it’s not that we have greater ideas, it’s none of that stuff. ‘We have power.’ That’s why we are effective. And that’s what Obama knows. So you’ve got an effort here to beat down the middle class. They want to talk about class warfare all they want, but, see, collective bargaining for state and public sector unions falls apart. Collective bargaining is against the people. The people, the vast majority of ’em, are middle class. The rich are not getting soaked here to pay for public sector union people. It’s not the rich getting’ soaked. It’s that simple.

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