“Manage the Public Dollars”

OBAMA: Those of us who manage the public dollars will be held to account to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and our government.

RUSH: President Barack Obama, in his inaugural address on January 20th. Greetings, my friends, it’s Last Chance Friday.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: Live from the Southern Command in sunny south Florida via New York City, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: Those of us who manage the public’s knowledge will be held to account to spend wisely, reform bad habits, do our business in the light of day. Everything that he said in his inaugural address is being done in just the opposite way, but it doesn’t matter what he says, it matters how he says it.

Greetings and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, welcome, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. Nice to have you here. Telephone number if you want to be on the program on Open Line Friday, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. Roger Kimball has a post today at PajamasMedia.com and it contains a couple of Ronald Reagan quotes, Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail. And this, by the way, is the Ronald Reagan that so many conservatives in the media tell us we should forget.

This era of Ronald Reagan is over. We need to adapt conservatism so that we, too, as conservatives can use government to attract that group and that group and that group of middle class voters so that we win back power. It’s time for us to acknowledge that government is a central focus of everybody’s life and that the era of Reagan is over. Said Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail: ‘This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves.’ Contrast that to President Obama, who said on the campaign trail: ‘Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.’ Shows you just how far we’ve come.

Here’s Reagan: ‘Back in 1927, an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said that the American people would never vote for socialism but he said under the name of liberalism the American people they would adopt every fragment of the socialist program.’ It appears to be happening. At the end of October, President Obama said, ‘We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.’ And of course we could add to that Rahm Emanuel saying you don’t just let a crisis go to waste. I mean this is too important, it’s too big, we can’t let this crisis go to waste. It’s a chance to do all the things that you wanted to do. So they’re in the process of getting it done.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Joe in West Palm Beach. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Honor and a pleasure.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: A little stimulus talk. My question is: Whatever happens to tax cut for people earning under $250,000? You hear nothing about that any longer.

RUSH: Uhhhhh. Let’s see. Well, I have to think you’re right about that. We haven’t heard about… There never were tax cuts in this stimulus deal anyway. There were tax ‘credits.’ But there aren’t any tax ‘cuts’ per se, and we learned yesterday that the maximum that anybody who does get a little reduction in their payroll tax is going to net $13 a week up until January, at which time it will be $8 a week, and that’s the extent of it but you’re right, there are no tax cuts.

CALLER: Well, that’s one of the things that Obama was running on during his campaign. You heard it over and over again.

RUSH: It doesn’t matter what he says. This is the thing, Joe.

CALLER: Ah.

RUSH: It’s about what he says. I guarantee you he goes out and makes these appearances and all people hear him say is he’s going to put gasoline in their tank get ’em a home, get ’em a car, get ’em a kitchen, get ’em a job. That’s what they hear him say.

CALLER: Right. Another unkept campaign promise.

RUSH: Well, yeah, but, you know, that’s standard for a lot of politicians. This is far worse than that. This is a genuine transformation of the country as devoted to its founding, the founding and the concepts. The Constitution is the enemy of Barack Obama. The Constitution and the facts of any story are Obama’s two biggest enemies. The Constitution was written by founders who feared precisely what’s happening. They feared an expanding, never-ending, growing government, with more and more power. If he thinks the Constitution was written to limit the power of the government. The Constitution has to be set aside. The Constitution has to be ignored. Or, it has to be rewritten by liberal judges who, when cases come before them, can rewrite their own law, claim that it’s constitutional, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. This has been going on for a while, as you well know. It’s a total transformation of the US government, the US system, and it is being done on purpose. How else, when you have some dork radio host on some liberal station ask a former president, ‘Do we need to have enforced media accountability?’ I guarantee you if anybody is for enforced media accountability, meaning from the government, they don’t care a whit about the Constitution — and my guess is they probably don’t even know what’s in it.