June 1, 2009
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RUSH: Okay. People have been waiting patiently on the phones. We'll go now to Mansfield, Ohio, and Mike, we'll start with you today, great to have you, sir, hello.
CALLER: Heyyyyyyyy. It's an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I'm starting to lose the signal here, I'll get out where I can defeat better signal. (interruption) I feel like I'm talking to the president.
RUSH: A lot of people wish you were.
CALLER: (laughing) As you should be. You know, we got an announcement this morning that our Ontario stamping plant was closing. That Ontario stamping plant employs hundreds of people.
RUSH: Now, wait a second. A lot of people -- Ontario, Ohio, stamping plant. What happens at a stamping plant?
CALLER: The announcement was made on the radio this morning that the plant was closing. They didn't give the exact date, but they this notified employees this morning. Not only does that affect that stamping plant, but it affects our steel mill here, and it affects three other major manufacturers that provide for that stamping plant.
RUSH: What happens in a stamping plant? What do you do there?
CALLER: My understanding is they make like door panels, hoods, any of the stamped components for the vehicles.
RUSH: All right. I figured it wasn't the plan that's going to stamp the Obama logo on the cars.
CALLER: (laughing) No. And I mean, the hundreds of employees, the city of Ontario gets 40% of their income tax from that plant. We have already lost -- and I can't give you an exact figure, number on police officers. We don't have enough police officers to maintain even our county.
RUSH: But I'll bet you have a bunch of bureaucrats that still have jobs that you could fire and rehire the cops with that money.
CALLER: Oh, most definitely. As a matter of fact, they just had an article not too long ago in the paper about city officials and how much money they were making.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I mean, if you take a 3%... "Oh, we took a 3% pay cut!"
RUSH: Yeah, big whoop.
CALLER: They're making $150,000 a year. Three percent isn't going to hurt you.
RUSH: That's not the point. Oh, it hurts. I don't care how much you're making when you lose anything it hurts because everybody lives to their income level. It hurts. But that shouldn't be why you should be satisfied with the decision, because somebody's going to hurt? I'm not saying you, but this is the way they buy off communities. "Oh, look! These big bureaucrats, they're going to take a hit, too, 3%." "Oh, they're going to get hurt? Good!" End of story. No! When you have a community -- state, city, local, federal community -- telling you that they gotta cut cops and they gotta can you tell firemen because of this horrible economy or lack of tax revenue or whatever, tell them to cut the overweight bureaucracy with a bunch of people sitting at desks not doing anything and rehire the cops. (interruption)
Question from Mr. Snerdley, the program observer. Okay, the question from Mr. Snerdley: "How will some of these communities...? As it's just been described here in Ontario, Ohio, if 40% of their tax revenue comes from the stamping plant and the stamping plant gets closed, then 40% of the operating revenue for the town vanishes. How are they going to survive, laying off cops? What's going to happen to the crime rate?" The cynical voice in me says, "It fits the Obama mold right out of the box," because the more chaos you have in the more places, the more demand for action you will have, and the one entity in our entire nation that can never go bankruptcy is the federal government because it can print money. So, if you have to bail out Ontario, if you have to bail out California...
Even though they say they're not going to, you let this stuff get bad enough. And if people still think that Obama is The Messiah and can fix this stuff rather than blaming him for causing it or being a party to it. See, I don't think people understand that this kind of pain and suffering fits somebody's master plan, and it's hard to convince people of that. What president would want citizens to suffer? Okay. You ask that question: "What president would want citizens to suffer?" and I have to ask you: It's been five months now, and we have employed every fix Obama told us, and it's only gotten worse. Grab... What is it, sound bite 32? Thirty-four? Stupid things in... Thirty-one or 32. Grab number 31. No. It's 32. For those of you asking yourself, "Why in the world would a sitting president want people to suffer?" here's what your president said today.
OBAMA: I will not pretend the hard times are over. Difficult days lie ahead. More jobs will be lost. More plants will close. More dealerships will shut their doors, and so will many parts suppliers. But I want you to know that what you're doing is making a sacrifice for the next generation, a sacrifice you may not have chose to make but a sacrifice you were nevertheless called to make so that your children and all of our children can grow up in an America that still makes things, that still builds cars, that still strives for a better future.
RUSH: Who is calling us to make this sacrifice? Nobody's calling us to make this sacrifice; it's being forced on us. It's being forced on us. By the way, Mike, Mansfield, Ohio, talking about what's going on in Ontario and all the rest of you that work at a Chrysler-related business or a GM-related business? I, like you, thought the rich were going to be paying for everything. I thought the rich were going to get their taxes increased so that you wouldn't suffer. Do you remember, it is I, El Rushbo, who has been warning you for the longest time that when liberals come talking about raising taxes on the rich to make 'em pay their fair share, and you go along and (applauding) clap your hands, "Yeah, baby! Yeah, baby! Yeah, baby!" it's the little guy who gets hurt.
The little guy is getting hurt. And this is the real shame, if you can identify just one. The rich, the achieved, they've got theirs and they're gonna lose a lot of it. A lot of it's going to be taxed away from them. But at least they got there. The real crying shame here is what all this is going to cost middle-class people that voted for Obama thinking their problems are over. This is going to put the brakes on their realization of the American dream. This brings the pursuit of the American dream to a screeching halt. And your president just said you gotta defer your American dream for the rest of your life. What you're doing now is sacrificing so that your kids and their kids might have a chance to pursue their American dream.
But how are we going to define the American dream by the time we get to the next two or three generations? Without a middle class that is striving to elevate itself, without a middle class inspired and motivated to seek to improve, there goes the country. I don't care what will the rich do. I don't care what they own. I don't care what they invest in. I don't care what their businesses are. You convince the middle class that it's not worth trying anymore, and you have killed the American dream. With rare exception, every achieved, wealthy family in this country started out middle class or worse. The exceptions are people who inherited, and that's not a whole lot of people.
I mean, even the "robber barons," quote, unquote, of the old days were born with nothing. It's always been the dream of the middle class to be able to raise their standard of living. The belief that it can happen, the belief that it's out there, has kept them striving for it. And Obama just told them today, at least those in the auto business, "Stop striving! Your purpose is to eat excrement sandwiches for the rest of your life. It's not there for you. All that's ahead for you is worse." I don't know how this plays in a positive way. I do not know how it plays. I don't know how you get away being the most beloved figure in the country by telling people they have no future.
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RUSH: Here's Andre in Houston. Andre, nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: Good to talk to you. Love the show.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: My question is, this guy says that he don't want to run the company, but at the same time he's laying out a plan to fix the company. You already answered the question for me. But this thinking that this thing is gonna work that he's got planned, do you see any way in the future that this will work?
RUSH: You gotta define working. You know, we're to that point in time now -- so you're asking me, is there any way I can foresee in the future what Obama's doing today will make General Motors a success? Is that what you're asking?
CALLER: Exactly, yeah.
RUSH: Okay, define General Motors succeeding for me, before I answer that, what you mean by that.
CALLER: The way it was before, when they were producing cars, the cars they producing now that people wanted, and the thing he's going to produce now --
RUSH: No.
CALLER: -- you say that people want that --
RUSH: No. Because the kind of cars to produce have now been taken out of the hands of the experts who know that or supposedly know that. I don't want to play Obama sound bites all day. But he said here this is gonna speed up the production of these green vehicles, which means these little tinfoil cars. People are going to have to be forced into those. They don't buy them of their own volition. We're seeing this with hybrids. We're seeing it with all these puddle jumpers that people have out there. The people that buy them are making a statement. It's like wearing a ribbon to say you have consciousness about AIDS or breast cancer or whatever. They buy these cars to make a statement. Most of them are not buying it for practical reasons, and the sales of hybrids and these kinds of cars are way, way down. So people are going to have to be forced into these cars. Now, will GM succeed from Obama's standpoint? Obama doesn't care a whit whether it makes a profit. Obama doesn't care a whit who loses a job. What Obama cares about is tearing the country down to size. And if he wants people in these little putt-putt mobiles and this is the only way to do it, then whatever happened today and happens in the future, General Motors is going to be a rousing success.
CALLER: Exactly. Could I say one thing, Rush?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I want to be your Official Obama Criticizer. (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: This guy has got to be the biggest disaster I ever seen. I'm automotive technician, I'm a Chrysler certified technician, I'm also Ford certified and GM. He's killing the economy for me and the people that I know. I don't see nothing that he's doing is going to fix it and I --
RUSH: Wait a minute. It's guys like you that he was going to champion.
CALLER: He's killing us. The people who were praising this guy have got to be blind. He hasn't done nothing. He ain't created one job that's sustainable, besides in the government. The private sector is dying, but still he's spending all these trillions of dollars for what?
RUSH: Okay, let me ask you a question. Do you think all this is by accident, happenstance, or is this maybe really what his agenda was all along?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Yeah, all right.
CALLER: You're a smart guy.
RUSH: You qualify as an Official Obama Criticizer. And you can call any time you want and be a criticizer. We can't hire you because you have to be a member of a union, and we don't hire union people.
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RUSH: Remember, Barack Obama said today he wants us to sacrifice for our children and our grandchildren, right? The problem is he has stolen their money. Those children and grandchildren will be born broke because of all the deficit spending of Barack Obama. He's a generational thief. He wants us to sacrifice for them.
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