RUSH: I mentioned earlier that the Trumpster went over to the Department of Transportation today in a regularly scheduled event over there. CNN, again, their banner at the bottom of the page while Trump is speaking, “Trump Addresses National Transportation Department After Calling Comey a Liar.” (laughing) See, it’s impossible that James Comey could lie. Comey’s one of us! How dare Trump. They think Trump called him a leaker. Anyway, here’s Trump, and he’s telling the people at the NTSB how he’s going to clean it up. There’s way too much bureaucracy, way too many regulations. There’s way too many obstacles to making America great, and he has illustrations and all kinds of things, and he’s on a roll here. He was literally kicking it. Here’s some sound bites from it.

THE PRESIDENT: It took only four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge and five years to build the Hoover Dam and less than one year to build the Empire State Building. People don’t believe that. It took less than one year. But today, it can take 10 years and far more than that just to get the approvals and permits.

RUSH: The point is while all of this Comeyitis is swirling on Capitol Hill, and while the Drive-Bys and the Democrats are focused only on this, Trump’s out doing his job. He’s continuing to do what he can to move the agenda forward. Here is the next sound bite:

THE PRESIDENT: One gentleman from Maryland was talking about a 18-mile road, and he brought with him some of the approvals that they’ve gonna be the and paid for. They spent $29 million for an environmental report weighing 70 pounds and costing $24,000 per page. And I said, “Do me a favor. I’m gonna make a speech in a little while. Do you mind if I take that and show it?” So I’m gonna show it. These binders on the stage could be replaced by just a few simple pages. How can a country prosper under this kind of nonsense?

RUSH: Can you believe this: $29 million for an environmental impact report that weighed 70 pounds and cost $24,000 a page? What do you think’s really going on there? Do you think anybody’s really worried about the environment? That’s just a bunch of garbage, folks. This is just people dipping their hands in the public trough and getting their little share of the project under the guise of “protecting the planet, protecting the environment.” It’s a bunch of thieves disguised as regulators. Here’s the last bite. You’ll like it.

THE PRESIDENT: I was elected to change it. All of us in government service were elected to solve the problems that have plagued our nation. We are here to think big, to act boldly, and to rise above the petty, partisan squabbling of Washington, D.C. We are here to take action. It’s time to start building our country with American workers and with American iron and aluminum and steel. It’s time to put up soaring new infrastructure that inspires pride in our people and our towns. It is time at last to put America first.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So it was a couple of days ago that I mentioned I’ve been holding onto a story here about the efforts on behalf of Trump to get into some serious infrastructure repair. Now, to set the stage for this, I want to remind you that in February of 2009, Barack Hussein O requested a Porkulus package (it was called a “stimulus” package) of about $800 billion that eventually found its way to $1 trillion. Do you remember the avowed purpose? Infrastructure repair. We were gonna rebuild roads, we were gonna rebuild bridges (we were never told which ones), and we were gonna rebuild schools.

We were gonna do all of this to “modernize” America, and barely 1% of this money went to that. Most of that money, as I have detailed, went to unions. We were in a recession following the 2008 so-called financial crisis, and the Democrat Party did not want to lose any union dues, contributions. So while people were losing their jobs, most of that stimulus money was sent to the states to keep union employees — teachers and the like — employed so that they continued to pay union dues. A sizable portion of that $800 billion ended up back in the Democrat Party coffers in the laundered form of campaign donations.

It was never about infrastructure. And then Obama asked for another one to rebuild roads and bridges in his second term. None of it has been done. So Trump comes along and says, “We need to do it,” and he gets detailed. He says, “Our airports are Third World and deteriorating. We’ve got bridges that you don’t want to drive across; they look like rusted-out armpits,” and he’s serious about it, and he’s mentioned a trillion-dollar figure. Of course the reaction from the conservative right was (sputtering), “A trillion dollars! Where the hell you gonna get a trillion dollars? We’re running a $20 trillion deficit! Where — where — where are you gonna get money?”

Trump said, “Private-public partnerships,” and people like Snerdley said, “That’s not possible! You can’t do that. You can’t rebuild national bridges and airports and schools and so forth with private money.” We do it all the time. Have you ever seen…? You go to the hospital and you see the Ebenezer C. Scrooge Cancer Wing. How do you think it got build? Ebenezer Scrooge donated the money with the promise his name would go on the damn thing. All right? Well, that’s private sector. I mean, it’s… (interruption) Well, okay, private hospitals. It’s still private sector money, even though it’s charitable money.

All over New York, you can see it. All of these billionaires that want their names to live on forever: The Ronald J. Perlman Lipstick Foundation Cancer Wing at the Northeast Wing of the North Fork Hospital on Long Island. Whatever it is. Well, I have instinctively always understood the concept of public-private partnerships in order to rebuild roads, bridges, and so forth and so on. But that’s because I understand instinctively and appreciate capitalism. So I came across this. It’s actually an opinion piece. It was in the Washington Times on June 7th, so that means it was on Wednesday.

It’s by Alexander Markovsky and Herbert London. Now, you know who Herb London is, right? Do you have a…? (interruption) He’s professor, he’s a candidate, he’s been a political analyst. He was on Firing Line-type shows now and then. He’s a New Yorker; you should love him, right? “Capitalism Can Evolve If Allowed To.” Alexander Markovsky and Herbert London. I’ll just read to you the opening ‘graph here. “After proposing $1 trillion investment into infrastructure, the Trump administration is harnessing the brainpower of renowned experts to unlock the insoluble problem of how many jobs will be created for each billion dollars of spending.

“While stressing the obvious, the administration is missing the important point. The purpose of capitalism is not job creation.” Amen to that. The purpose of capitalism is not to create health care plans. The purpose of capitalism is not to forge “livable communities” with little gardens outside your standard, government-provided apartment. “The purpose of the capitalist economy is to create wealth,” and that’s why leftists oppose it. They want to be in charge of the wealth, primarily in how it is distributed and how the earning of it is limited.

The left hates capitalism, not because of freedom and liberty — although they do. But the primary they hate capitalism is that it is the most efficient engine to create wealth for the greatest number of people in a society that has ever been devised. Nobody’s ever claimed it’s perfect. Nobody’s ever said it’s flawless. But it’s better than anything else out there, particularly anything left has to offer. “The purpose of the capitalist economy is to create wealth. Employment and the subsequent distribution of the spoils of an economy are byproducts of capitalism. Since its inception, capitalism has been in a perpetual state of evolution…”

It is not a static set of principles or rules or of predictable behavior patterns. This has been true “from the Industrial Revolution that ignited an economy of mass production to the economy of mass productivity to, most recently, the economy of mass consumption. Each subsequent phase of capitalism has been associated with innovation, rise of productivity, and the immense creation of wealth.” Now, it is inarguable that the United States of America is the wealthiest nation that there has ever been. It is also inarguable that this is because the United States is and has been capitalist.

It is inarguable that the United States, in its heyday, created the highest standard of living for the most people in the history of humanity. It is inarguable. This is why the left so opposes it. Because it is a system. It doesn’t have a leader or an ideology attached to it, and therefore the left cannot control it. The left does not like self-reliance and individuality and the disparities in wealth and income that result. So the left has targeted capitalism forever on the pretext that it’s unfair, that it’s unequal, that it is mean-spirited, that it is white patriarchal Christianity — and all of these horrible, rotten things.

But the thing about capitalism that nobody allows themselves to think and to understand is that it’s always evolving. This is how it evolves as related to infrastructure. “Since its inception, capitalism has been in a perpetual state of evolution, from the Industrial Revolution that ignited an economy of mass production to the economy of mass productivity to, most recently, the economy of mass consumption. … Until recently, only the government could handle projects on the scale of the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system, but now large corporations and investment funds have sufficient resources to build projects on any scale.

“[So] there is no imperative for the government — federal, state or local — to” be the only financier. “[T]here is no imperative for the government [to] maintain modern infrastructure when private capital is available to do the job.” When we say that we should privatize this or privatize that, why do we say this? It’s always better, isn’t it? When the profit motive is there, it’s always better. It’s more efficient. It works better. Trump’s talking about privatizing the air traffic control. But there’s been any number of instances where we’ve tried to privatize this or that under the theory that it would be done better.

Well, why not infrastructure? Why is infrastructure supposedly out of bounds? Why? When it comes to bridges and roads and schools, why is it that only the government can do that? Why can’t the Filthy Rich and You’re Not Hedge Fund help to renovate some school, if that’s where they want to invest their money? Why can’t the investment firm of I’ve Got More Than You’ll Ever Have and I’m Laughing at You About It not build a highway or two if they think it might be a valuable investment? “Well, because then they own it and they can restrict who uses it!” (laughing) And you think the government doesn’t? (laughing) You talk about government owning and restricting people on things?

The government restricts what you can say, they restrict what you can watch, they restrict now what you can eat, they restrict what your health care is gonna be, and you’re worried about them restricting roads! You see how this works? We’ve so, so fallen for the premise that only government can do certain things. But then when we get around to privatizing, people always applaud it. Well, I mean, the left never does. Privatize this; privatize that. Prisons, you name it. When you are endeavoring to create wealth by virtue of creating profit, you’re gonna have a much more efficient operation a bunch of bureaucrats — who have no idea what they’re doing, by the way.

Only the government should run health care, right? Why? Barack Obama doesn’t know the first thing about it except maybe how to use a Band-Aid. His wife doesn’t know the first thing about nutrition or what everybody else should eat, but she’s the expert, right, because The Oprah says so. You know what? Speaking of The Oprah, I saw something the other day that… This is profound. The Oprah said she would not want to interview Trump. The Oprah will interview anybody! Well, not me, either, but she specifically wouldn’t want to interview Trump.

Why? What are you afraid of?

(impression) I don’t want to give that pig any kind of notoriety whatsoever.

“Privatization of the infrastructure will open a new, multitrillion-dollar frontier for capitalism, and its effect could be massive. It has the potential to create a long-term economic expansion that will dwarf the scale of the Pacific Railroad and…” By the way, who built the railroads, Mr. Snerdley? (interruption) That’s right. Practically… (interruption) Well, who made all the money from them? Not all the money, but does name Vanderbilt ring a bell? All right. There are… (interruption) Well, I forget who they exploited. I mean, Mel Brooks got even with ’em. But there are still to this day heirs of the Vanderbilt money that don’t have to work. (interruption)

Well, Anderson Cooper is a… He works, but he’s a descendant of the Vanderbilts. His mother, obviously. But the railroads are built by private money. There was also W. Averell Harriman. Does that name ring a bell? LBJ loved W. Averell Harriman ’cause he was married to Pamela Harriman, who was Pamela what’s-her-face that everybody… (chuckles) (unintelligible) … dated her. Ambassador to France, ambassador to Europe, Ambassador to Vaginaville. She was ambassador to everywhere. W. Averell Harriman actually founded and discovered… What is it? The place out in Idaho. (interruption)

Sun Valley! You can still see… If you go to Sun Valley, you can still see the original ski lift that W. Averell Harriman built. You wouldn’t get on it today, but it’s there. It’s sort of like a statue. The point is that private sector infrastructure used to be the name of the game, and there’s no reason it couldn’t work again, and it’s certainly not inconceivable that you could have a government partnership with certain private sector individuals. But you have to be comfortable with capitalism, because if you’re not you’re gonna oppose this ’til the end of days.

Related Links
The Hill: Trump Speaks at Department of Transportation
Washington Times: The Economy of Mass Prosperity - Alexander G. Markovsky and Herbert London 

        

                                

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