RUSH: This is fascinating to me. It was a toss-up to be the lead item. It’s a Hillary item. I’m so bored with Hillary, as you know, I didn’t want to lead with the Hillary story. She’s out there, and she said something literally idiotic, and I know she doesn’t believe it. It illustrates that she’s pandering, that she thinks that after all of these years of Obama that there’s still some doubt that she is extremist leftist enough.
She actually said… She was talking to a bunch of economists and she said that we need to topple the 1% in order to save the American economy. What do you think when you hear “topple”? What do you think of? Destroy, overthrow. You think military coup. Something like that. Topple the 1%? She and her husband are in the top 1% of the 1%. All of the people they hang with are at the 1%. She is no more gonna topple those people than she is gonna reverse herself on abortion.
But yet she thinks that she has to go out and say it. She has to prove it because apparently she believes that there is doubt out there in in the Democrat Party base of her credentials as a serious and honest leftist. Look what she thinks she has to say in order shore up her support from that lunatic base the Democrat Party has created, that you have to go out and you actually have to promise to destroy the 1% in order to prove your bona fides.
And everybody knows that she in no way, shape, manner, or form believes this, and that in no way, shape, manner, or form is she gonna do it any more than Obama has done it. The victims of people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the little guy, the middle class, the supposedly beneficiaries of socialism, the supposed beneficiaries of the whole concept of the redistribution of wealth. And that’s what she’s talking about.
“By toppling the rich, I’m gonna go get their money! I’m gonna take it away from them. My first target’s gonna be the Koch brothers. I’m gonna take everything they’ve got!”
“Yeah, you do that — and then give it to me.” That’s right. That’s what they expect. Hillary is gonna take the money from them and redistribute it, and somehow these insane lunatic leftists that comprise the Democrat base are somehow gonna end up with the money. Yet it’s 50 years or more, and they don’t have a dime more to show for their votes for the Democrats than they would have otherwise. Topple the 1%. We had a sound bite yesterday I didn’t get to. I asked that it be saved; it was. Monday afternoon, Keene, New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton at the Whitney Brothers Furniture Company, she held a roundtable campaign event. During the event, this is what she said about small business in America.
HILLARY: From my perspective, I want to be sure that we get small businesses starting and growing in America again. We have stalled out. I was very surprised to see that when I began to dig into it. Because people were telling me this as I traveled around the country the last two years, but I didn’t know what they were saying and it turns out that we are not, uhh, producing as many small businesses as we used to.
RUSH: You know, I listen to this, and marvel at it. If we take it at face value on one hand, we have just listened to an unapologetic, abject idiot. Taken at face value. If we look at this through the prism of Democrat politics, we have just completed six years of the presidency of the first African-American president in the country, a historical president, who has had a great economic recovery plan. Remember, starting with the stimulus and Obamacare and any number of other things, we got unemployment down to 5.5%, and the economy is roaring.
I mean, that’s the line the Regime puts out. Mrs. Clinton is of the same party as the first African-American president, and she served in the Regime as secretary of state and she’s running around saying, “You know what? People have been telling me the past couple years that small business has kind of slowed down. Small business creation has leveled off, and I didn’t know that! I was surprised. I dug into it. People were telling me this when I traveled around the country, but I — I — I didn’t know what they were saying.”
How in the world can you not know what the status is of the people in this country whom you want to vote for you? How can you possibly be alive and breathing — even if you’re traveling all over the world, how can you possibly be alive and breathing — and not understand the plight, economic plight of people in this country? How can you not see 92 million not working and know what that means? How can you not see record numbers of people on food stamps and not know what that means?
Now, secretly in and privately, all of those numbers are good for Mrs. Clinton. The more people on the formal dole, the better. That’s how they view compassion, and that’s how they view their route and access to power and claiming and holding on it. But to run around and willingly portray herself as ignorant? “Yeah, I had people tell me the last few years, small business creation is really down. They were telling me this, and I didn’t know what they were saying.” What’s so hard about small business is in trouble?
How do you not know what somebody’s saying when they tell you that? If anything, Hillary Clinton’s in the process here of toppling herself, and to that extent being in the 1%, she may be suicidal in this sense. But this is just incredible. “As it turns out, we’re not turning out as many small businesses as we used to”? Yeah, when? Now, how do you think this went over at the Regime? Well, last night on MSNBC…
We’ve lifted the ban on MSNBC for one Obama sound bite because it does not contain any MSNBC anchor or newsman or personality or what have you. So this comes under the guidelines here of fair usage. I actually do not have to lift the ban on MSNBC to use this, because this could have happened anywhere. So the question Obama got was: Okay, Hillary is out there saying yesterday the economy is stalling and small business is down, and it’s been bad for a while, and she just found out about it. What do you think?
OBAMA: The truth is, is that we are the strongest economy among the advanced economies right now.
RUSH: What does that say?
OBAMA: And the — the main reason — the — the — the main way that we’re gonna strengthen the economy and keep the momentum that we’ve had over the last six years is to adopt the agenda that I’ve talked about. Let’s rebuild (pause) our infrastructure. We could be putting people back to work right now.
RUSH: We’re in the seventh year here — the seventh year — and we’re still talking as though Obama’s just got inaugurated?
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RUSH: We had $820 billion for a stimulus bill that was to rebuild the infrastructure, repair roads and bridges and rebuild our schools. Of course, it didn’t happen. The money went to Obama’s union buddies. We’re in the seventh year of his Regime, and he’s talking as though this is it is first year, and all these great things that will come from his ideas, and the thing that we need to do to grow the economy. There’s a story from the AP today, “Employers Cut Jobs in 31 States as Growth Slows.”
What growth? There isn’t any growth. “Harsh winter weather and a labor dispute at West Coast ports that disrupted shipping dragged down the economy in the first three months of the year. … All told, economists forecast that growth slowed to an annual rate of 1% or less in the first quarter…” Do you know what they told us it was in the second half of last year was 3.4%. That’s what they told us.
The growth rate was 3.4%. In the first three months of this year, we’ve had less than 1% economic growth. So Mrs. Clinton is right: Small business is down. Every economic indicator is down. The unemployment number’s a lie. It’s a totally made up and miscalculated number. Obama is running around irritated that Hillary is running down the economy, and so is Jen Psaki. Here’s what she said about that.
PSAKI: Well, I don’t know the statistics that Secretary Clinton was looking at, so that’s a good question. But I can tell you that small business growth has been a huge priority for this president. The economy is better than it was six years ago.
RUSH: If it’s been a huge priority, he is an abject failure because small business growth is stagnating like everything else in this economy is, except the 1%, many of whom have relationships with the Obama Regime propping them up.
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RUSH: Okay, so here’s where we are. Mrs. Clinton says that many small businesses have gone away. Small business growth has stagnated. We’re losing ground in the small business sector. Overall, the economy is dragging. Then after admitting that — and, by the way, I wonder how many small businesses have paid her 300 grand to speak or her husband 500 grand to speak. So she’s out there acknowledging that small business is in a rut, that the economy has slowed down, and on top of that, she promises a bunch of economists that she’s gonna topple the 1%.
She just gonna wipe out everybody, and she’s gonna end up calling it fairness, which is exactly how the left defines equality: Misery shared equally. Once that happens, then everything’s okay. Once the misery is spread equally, it’s great. They never try to spread enjoy. They’re incapable of it. The left is incapable of inspiration. They’re incapable of uplifting. They’re too angry. They’re too mad. They’re too pessimistic. They’re never happy, no matter what they get. So now everybody has to be miserable.
Everybody has to be unhappy, otherwise it isn’t fair. This is the woman who is said to be the presumptive Democrat nominee!
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RUSH: Here’s Jerry in Sacramento. This is my adopted hometown, and it’s great to have you on the program, Jer. How are you?
CALLER: Oh, good morning, Mr. Limbaugh. It’s good to be here. Just thought it needed to be pointed out to the American public, especially those who are victims of public education, that if you’re on food stamps or welfare, your income is in the top 1% of the world. So technically, Hillary’s at war with —
RUSH: Okay, now hang on just a minute out there, Jer. I want you to understand how people listening to the program are gonna hear that. There’s a guy at the Heritage Foundation named Robert Rector and his life’s work has been researching the subject you’re talking about, welfare and virtually every aspect. He has written several reports which make similar claims to what you just claimed. He says something like poverty in the US equals prosperity in much of the world. Now, you have just put it in real terms. You have just said that people on food stamps and welfare in America are in the top 1% of the world. Could you back up that assertion?
CALLER: Yeah. If you’ve got any money in your pocket, any money, that puts you in the top 78% of income.
RUSH: (laughing) Okay.
CALLER: If you own a radio, you’re listening to this show on, that’s it., You’re in the top 1%.
RUSH: “If you have any money in your pocket, you’re top 1% compared to people in the world.”
CALLER: Yes. That’s what the world is.
RUSH: I know what you mean. You know, actually, one of the truths… There’s a guy. Oh, I’m having a mental block at his name. I’ve interviewed him for the Limbaugh Letter. He used to be the Reagan administration. Three years ago he wrote a piece. I think it was for USA Today, but I’m not sure. He said the biggest untold story in all of journalism is the decline in poverty around the world. Oh, what’s the man’s name? I’m having a mental block on his… (interruption) Who? (interruption) No, no, not Art Laffer. No, no. Not Art Laffer.
No, no, no. No, no. He wasn’t a cabinet level guy or anything like that. You’ll know the name when I remember it, but his point was that the United States, as the leader of the Free World — just by virtue of our existence as the world’s lone superpower, as the good guys in the world, as a result of defending freedom and liberty all over the world — have raised the standard of living in parts of the world that used to be in the depths of poverty like most of this population this country would never even be able to relate to.
It’s something he said the as you say US should be credited for. The statistics did happen to materialize during the Obama administration. So actually economic circumstances for many in the world are on the rise. It’s still, however, far below the poverty level in this country.
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RUSH: The name I was looking for was Herbert Meyer. Herbert Meyer is a former advisor and analyst from the Reagan years, and he was the first back in… It’s two years ago now, actually had a column. I forget where it was. Some newspaper. But the grossly unreported story happening at the moment was the elimination of poverty in so many parts of the world. It was a huge story, and the reason it was a huge story is the responsibility for it played by the United States.
The role the US played in lifting the world out of poverty just with our decency and goodness, our way of life and the things that we defend and protect, the inspiration that we provide. Of course such a story would be papered over and ignored, and in fact that news was not welcomed by a lot of people. The world being in poverty is necessary for organizations like the UN to continue to fleece member nations, like us.
It’s just like the race industry needs racial strife in order to profit, in order to stay in business. The last thing that Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton want, for example, is an actual colorblind society. That would be death knell of their businesses. Poverty is the same thing, folks. There are a lot of people like that. The Democrat Party profits on poverty like you can’t believe, to give you an example. There’s no way the Democrat Party wants to eliminate poverty.
If they did, they wouldn’t be importing illegal aliens who are unskilled and uneducated and flooding the US economy with them. They would not be doing this in any way, shape m. They need a permanent underclass. The Democrat Party needs people in poverty. So any story that chronicles the rise out of poverty by whole nations or otherwise large groups of people is not something to rejoice over. I know that sounds kind of brutal, but it happens to be true.
Now, our caller, Jerry from Sacramento, made the claim that Hillary Clinton’s out there claiming she wants to topple the 1%. This is why this woman bores me. She doesn’t anymore mean that than if she claimed today that Planned Parenthood’s an enemy and she wants to shut it down, and she’s converting to pro-life. She wouldn’t mean that, either. She’s gonna say whatever she wanted to say to shore up her credentials as an extreme leftist because the extreme left is now the mainstream of the Democrat Party.
There is no left wing of the Democrat Party. The whole Democrat Party is an extremist bunch of radicals now, and Mrs. Clinton must think that. I mean, to come out with some asinine comment like topple the 1%? She’s the 1%! The people she was talking to are in the 1%. The people that she’s fleecing that donate to her foundation and her husband’s foundation are the 1%. For crying out loud, it’s asinine. But she figures there are enough idiots out there that will think she can relate to them by saying that she’s gonna go out and she’s gonna take their money.
“She’s gonna punish ’em I like Hillary,” is how it’s supposed to work. It’s just mind-numbing in its audacious ignorance. Now, our buddy Jerry in Sacramento said, responding to this, that if you have any money in your pocket, you’re in the 1% of wealth in the world. If you are on US welfare or US food stamps, you are in the 1%, the top 1% of the world. He’s not far wrong. I mentioned Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation who has practically devoted his life to the study poverty and economics by demographics.
Some of the stuff that he’s produced, I remember in the early nineties when I first stumbled across it, I started repeating it, ’cause it was shocking. It was things nobody else was saying. And it bore up. I mean, his rigorous research had borne accuracy, and it was true. And it contained… I’ll just have to create a statistic off the top of my head. I may not get this exactly right. But it was along the lines of how many poor people in America have cars and air-conditioning and cable TV versus what real poverty in the rest of the world’s all about.
I happened to just recite what he said, and there was this group called FAIR that went out and got with the AP and wrote a story about how I lie and make things up. It was a long AP story, and the media picked up on it. That was when they first threw down the gauntlet that I lie and make things up, and I was just quoting Robert Rector. But they were so frightened by the data that there isn’t real poverty in this country, there is relative to wealth in this country, but around the world the way most people live, there isn’t poverty here.
So, anyway, during the break, my vast research staff and I (which would be me) dug deep, and we found out an interesting, discovered an interesting stat out there. You need just $34,000 annual income to be in the top 1% of the world, and you can do that on welfare and food stamps in the United States. In fact, you can do so well on welfare, you can do better than taking a job. You can end up living better on welfare than working, so bastardized has become the US welfare system.
Get $34,000 a year, and you’re in the top 1% in the world. Now, here’s a number that’ll shock you. Now, this number is 10 years old or maybe 15. It may have changed a little. But it wasn’t that long ago that if you earned $50,000 of the United States of America, you were in the top 10%. I’ll never forget the first day I used that number, Snerdley looked at me like I had been co-opted by aliens, because it sounds ridiculous. “All you need to be in the top 10% is 50,000?” Yeah.
It was a great illustration of the way average versus mean people live. Now, here’s a quote from Herbert Meyer when he wrote about this a couple of years ago. “When you stand back from all the yelling and the screaming… you can see what I believe is the most important trend in the world … the world is emerging from poverty fast. This is the biggest under-reported news story in the world. By 1980 or 1990 about two billion human beings were out of poverty, since then another half billion have crossed the line out of poverty; a lot of them in India and China.
“In the last six years 20 million Brazilians have emerged. When you put all these numbers togetherÂ…each year between fifty and one hundred million human beings are leaving poverty behind. If we can continue this trend within our lifetimes, and certainly within our childrenÂ’s lifetimes, the overwhelming majority of human beings will no longer be poor. This is the biggest thing that’s happened in the entire world.” It was in Forbes.
The column was in Forbes, and it was titled, “The Next Big Thing From the Official Who Predicted Communism’s Demise,” and that’s Herbert Meyer. Herbert Meyer is one of the aides to Reagan who predicted that communism, Soviet communism would collapse on itself by virtue of its own immorality. The Herb Meyer piece — interview, actually — was in Forbes January 3rd of 2013. Now, here’s some Robert Rector numbers, and he’s the Heritage Foundation scholar who looks into this.
From 2011. “The following are facts about persons defined as ‘poor’ by the Census Bureau as taken from various government reports.” So Rector hasn’t made anything up here. It’s Census Bureau numbers, 2011 Regime numbers: “80% of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36% of the entire US population enjoyed air conditioning,” but today 80% of the poor do. Defined as below the poverty line, “92% of poor households have a microwave.” Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31% have two or more cars or trucks.
“Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70% have a VCR,” in 2011. I remember using these numbers, what they were back in the early nineties, and, man, the left came after me like I was just making it up. Using these numbers and believing this just destroyed all of my credibility. Here’s the Daily Mail in March of 2013: “The End of the Third World? New Study Shows World Poverty Could Be Eradicated in 20 Years.”
In the meantime, the standard of living in the United States is going the other way. It is not to relive ancient history from the first hour, but there’s Mrs. Clinton out there saying that she’s shocked to learn that small businesses are not being created, that small business is vanishing. People have been telling her this for two years and she says she didn’t know what it meant, and she started looking into it, and she found there’s an overall stalled-out US economy.
That just sent the Regime flying into a fit of rage and anger.
But I thought people like Hillary and Democrats large and small were the ones in touch with the little guy. I thought Democrats cared so much that they already knew the plight of most people in America. I thought they already were aware how poor people are, and it’s the rich that have caused it. I thought they were in touch. How can somebody who claims to be the champion of the little guy, like Mrs. Clinton or any Democrat, come along and proudly admit that she was shocked to learn of the current plight of small business?
Where is the intelligence in even saying it or admitting it? I mean, you don’t… Well, who is she trying to reach? There are no coincidences with these people, so who is she trying to relate to there? Who is she trying to impress? Who is she trying to reach out to? (interruption) You think the Elizabeth Warren faction? Well, we’ll know that’s true if Hillary discovers that she’s part Indian. (interruption)
You laugh, but would you be surprised if at some point down the line Mrs. Clinton discovered some Indian blood way, way back in the family tree? (impression) “Yeah, you know what, I was, you know, Bill and I, he, we didn’t have anything to do, you know, the other night, and after we watched the videotape when I was singing in Selma, you know, we went to Ancestry.com, and I learned, you know, that I’m part Cherokee!” You can laugh all you want, but don’t, as they say, rule it out.
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RUSH: Scott in Visalia, California. Welcome, sir, and I appreciate your patience. Hi.
CALLER: Yes. Thank you. I think… I’ll trying to get to articulate it correctly, but I think you’ve already covered it. Earlier you said the Democrat liberals never have a plan to increase the wealth of the little guy, the middle class. But I don’t think it is anything to do with a plan as much as they can’t afford to. Their whole ethos is based on power for the chosen ones, whether it be economics or immigration. The more people you have independently financially well off, the less they need government, the less they need the state and local, the less power and hold they have.
RUSH: That’s exactly right.
CALLER: How many years — 20, 30, 40 years — have they had the opportunity to fix immigration and never have? Because if you fix immigration, truly fix it, they don’t need you anymore. It’s like a carrot on a stick. You give the mule a bucket of carrots, right?
RUSH: That’s exactly right. You could use any number of examples. Let’s go back to the 1980s. Look at what happened the 1980s. The top marginal tax rate was 70% in 1981. By 1989 it’s 28%. The amount of money collected by government in those eight years nearly doubled, from $500 billion to $1 trillion by lowering tax rates. In addition, the tax rates coming down, those tax cuts led to higher employment, lower inflation.
The 1980s were a boom economy, and the Democrat Party has forever since been rewriting history to cast those eight years as the economic worst since the Great Depression. You’ve heard them talking about trickle-down doesn’t work, Reaganomics, this and that. They have to make sure that everything that creates prosperity for the greatest number of people is defeated. The way to say it… I mean, if you really want this to penetrate, here’s a party that sets itself up as the lone, truly compassionate party.
They have the best interests of the lower classes, the little guy, however you want to characterize it, whatever you want to call ’em. The fact of the matter is the Democrat Party needs people in poverty in order to stay in power. Just like Jesse Jackson needs racial strife, just like Al Sharpton needs it, just like every other civil rights coalition needs people having their civil rights violated. These are people who earn their living based on this kind of strife, people who earn their living on the backs of people in poverty.
Frankly, folks, this is one of the things that’s so frustrating to me personally as a conservative. We actually do want the best for everybody, and we know how to achieve it. We know that most people left to their own desires, if properly motivated and inspired, will do far better for themselves than if they just sit around slothfully and wait for somebody to take care of them. They’ll be much better human beings, they’ll have more dignity, they will enjoy their life more. Somehow this has equaled cold-heartedness, mean-spiritedness, and extremism.
When in fact, cold-heartedness is found right there in the Democrat Party, which empowers itself on from people in poverty. It’s obscene, actually.
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RUSH: Mr. Snerdley, you chuckle when I say be on the lookout for Mrs. Clinton to discover that she has Indian blood. Don’t forget back in 1999, AP story, August 6, in 1999, “Hillary Clinton Has Jewish Roots.” Remember that? From the article: “In New York, where one of every eight voters is Jewish, it certainly won’t hurt that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton can note the Jewish branch on her family tree.” That’s right. She claimed to have Jewish ancestors when she was running for the Senate from New York.
This is more from the 1999 AP story. This is choke-yourself-to-death funny. “Mrs. Clinton, who is Methodist, ‘has very fond childhood memories’ of the second husband of her grandmother, Max Rosenberg, a Russian-born Jew, said Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the first lady’s Senate exploratory committee. Wolfson said Thursday that he doesn’t ‘expect it will have an electoral impact, and we don’t see it in that context.'” Right, so why talk about? (laughing) It’s incredible.
And, by the way, some stats from the 1980s, just to back up my claims. Under Ronaldus Magnus, Ronald Reagan, economics, 1980, black unemployment in the 1980s fell by 20%. Black unemployment plummeted, like everybody else’s did, too, by 20%. Under Barack Hussein O, also known as The One, black unemployment has increased by 42%. I mean, the idea that the Democrat Party looks out for the little guy, the Democrat Party protects the little guy? The Democrat Party feeds off of them.
The Democrat Party gets rich off of them. The Democrat Party keeps them poor. The Democrat Party needs a permanent underclass. For a bunch of reasons, not just their votes. But they can point to the underclass. They blame the Republicans for it. They blame the rich. They blame the 1%. Those people, that permanent underclass, they used to have all the money, don’t you know, and the rich came along and stole it, and trickle-down was where the rich were gonna get it back. But it didn’t trickle-down; therefore trickle-down doesn’t work.
That’s how they bastardized the whole thing. Just basically lie and make it up.
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