RUSH: Okay, California. I have been waiting for this. I have been hoping something like this would happen. California Proposition 30. We talked about this before it happened and we talked about it after it happened. Proposition 30 was, essentially, Californians voting to increase taxes on themselves, and it passed overwhelmingly. And when it did, both the former mayor of San Francisco and former assembly speaker Willie Brown was ecstatic, was happy.
He said, “These tax increases, these are gonna matter.”
Somebody said, “Why are they gonna matter more than others?”
“Because the people voted for these,” meaning, “We didn’t saddle anybody with these. They asked for ’em. They voted these tax increases on themselves.”
And, of course, Governor Moonbeam was all ecstatic as well. As you know, I read tech blogs as a hobby. And one of the tech blogs I read is owned and operated by the Wall Street Journal. It’s called, “All Things D,” “All Things Digital.” You may have heard of it. It’s not just a blog. It’s a full-fledged website, and they ran a piece yesterday by a guy named Ethan Anderson, who is identified as “a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He is a former Google Product Manager and the founder and CEO of Redbeacon.”
He’s also “the 2009 TechCrunch50 winner, which was acquired by the Home Depot earlier this year.” He writes a piece called, “What Proposition 30 Means for California’s Entrepreneurs.” I don’t know this gentleman, Ethan Anderson. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him. I do not know what his political leanings are. But the title of his piece is: “What Prop 30 Means for California’s Entrepreneurs.”
Here’s a few excerpts.
“In fact,” he writes, “developing countries often get saddled with country risk premiums, making it harder for them to attract capital because the mere threat their governments will someday seize profitable companies or industries keeps investors away. So it’s all the more puzzling that California, home of Silicon Valley and the densest concentration of entrepreneurs in the nation (possibly the world) would pass Proposition 30 in last month’s election.”
He doesn’t believe it.
He can’t believe it.
He doesn’t understand how it happened.
How did a state with so many entrepreneurs vote to raise taxes on themselves? It’s a good question. Now, California’s two states, or maybe more. You’ve got the coastal cities. You have San Francisco and the suburbs there on the coast, all the way down. You know, Palo Alto, San Jose, all that, and you’ve got Pebble Beach, Monterey. Very well-to-do. Carmel. You keep going and get down to LA, Santa Barbara, Montecito, San Diego. I mean, you’re talking…
Even up north to Humboldt County. On the coast, you’re talking very well-to-do. But then you go to the interior, to the agricultural valleys, and you have an entirely different state and you have an entirely different demographic makeup. It is in the interior valleys where the real damage of illegal immigration has occurred.
You have crime that’s not stopped, criminals that are not dealt with, theft. Farmers cannot do their jobs because the liberals that run this state have passed wacko environmental laws to protect snail darters and kangaroo rats and this kind of thing. We’ve been chronicling all this for the 25 years that we’ve been here. But as far as the people who live in the coastal cities are concerned, they don’t know about any of that.
They never go there; they never see it. California, to them, is Atherton. California to them is San Francisco. California to them is Palo Alto, San Jose, Cupertino, LA, Santa Barbara, Beverly Hills, San Diego, La Jolla, San Rafael, Martinez. All those glorious places are where all this entrepreneurism is and all this wealth, where real estate values, prices are the highest in the country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Ethan Anderson. Again, I don’t know what his politics are, and he’s really not my focus here. It’s still a fascinating piece. For example, subheads in his piece: “Prop 30 hits entrepreneurs the hardest.” He defines who an entrepreneur is. Works hard, invests his own money, borrows a lot of money, often works without a salary, creates jobs. The people that this country’s waging war against right now. Entrepreneurs. The people Romney was talking about. I don’t know. Some of this I intellectually do not understand. These kinds of people voting for Barack Obama or Jerry Brown or a Prop 30.
And then there’s a subhead piece here: “What Prop 30 will mean for California’s entrepreneurs,” and it ends up talking about the exodus from the state of California that will happen here by these people. Once they realize that, as he mentions, Willie Sutton said, “Why do you rob banks? That’s where the money is.” Why do you pass Prop 30? Because you gotta raise money where people have it. So they are the targets, and they just voted to make themselves targets. This state votes Democrat massive majority numbers every election. Local, state, doesn’t matter, other than a few small congressional districts.
The point of all this is that I could be holding in my hands here the very, very small beginnings of a bit of a backlash. And we’ll take it, if it’s happening. If it does happen, it’s gonna be small, and it’s a little late, but it still may be happening. Again, it may mean nothing, but it still fascinated me. I wanted to share it with you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Oh, yeah, yeah. I expect to be fully mischaracterized on the tech blogs for my comments on this piece, but I’m just gonna tell you. I don’t care where you go out there, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, HP (well, not HP), the venture capitalists all vote Obama. They all raise money for Obama. They all go to Obama fundraisers. And if you vote for Obama, if you go to Obama fundraisers, if you raise money for him, if you bundle for him, you may as well vote for Proposition 30.
They’re identical.
They’re voting for the same thing.
You are voting against your own wealth when you vote for Barack Obama.
When you vote for the modern-day Democrat Party, you are voting to open your back pocket, both personal and business. How they don’t understand that is mystifying to me, except I think I know how they’re lassoed. They’re lassoed with the “social justice” aspects of Democrat Party message. The whole “fairness” pitch. If you vote Democrat, you can’t possibly be a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes. The Democrat Party and Obama are cool and hip.
So you can be cool and hip and lose your wealth all in one vote as you try to feel good about yourself.
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