RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who watched Obama’s little commercial last night, and you really think the times are tough in America, this economy is really just horrible, it’s inhuman what people have to put up in this country. Can you believe having to cut back on the purchase of snacks for the kids and make half of what you used to buy last a whole week. I mean, that’s a hardship, Obama told us this last night. And of course Ms. Sanchez having trouble with the milk and so forth. Last night on Your World with Neil Cavuto, he interviewed the founder of Jeno’s Frozen Foods, Jeno Paulucci, who was alive during the Depression 79 years ago, and Cavuto said, ‘What do we risk doing when we keep comparing things to the Depression, do you think?’
PAULUCCI: I feel very sorry for the people today whose 401(k)s have gone down maybe 30, 38%; the housing, people with foreclosures and so forth, but we also gotta remember that we’re living pretty high on the hog. Every child or person has got a computer, got a car. The World Series, 50% of the tickets were $1,500 or $2,500 the last two games.
RUSH: And Jeno Paulucci continues…
PAULUCCI: Let’s take a look at that Depression, because I was there. We had people jumping out of buildings. We had bread lines for a slice of bread and a scoop of water. We had cardboard jungles where people’s families would live together. We had shantytowns that were called Hoovervilles. We had hobo jungles! My father used to make 25.20 a week; $4.20 a day, six days a week. He was put on one week every six. That meant $4.20 a week, and we had to pay a dollar and a quarter for rent, ’cause we lived in a flat that was about three rooms and a half. And so we survived. But, by gosh, we didn’t have computers coming out of our ears.
CAVUTO: (laughing)
PAULUCCI: We didn’t have a BlackBerry, Strawberry, whatever hell it is.
RUSH: (laughing) ‘BlackBerry, strawberry…’ That’s Jeno Paulucci, the founder of Jeno’s Frozen Foods, describing what it was like for the Great Depression. I know, look, my parents did the same thing. ‘When I was young…’ This is a tough sell to people alive today who have never known anything like that. I can remember my mother and father, grandparents. That Depression was the most formative thing in their lives, and they insisted on my brother and I doing certain things: saving everything we could, going to college. They constantly told us how bad things were because they were afraid it could happen again. You know, I was a smart aleck little kid. I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Dad. I understand it was pretty bad, but I look at you now, you came out of it okay, and, besides, I can just try to learn about it. I can’t relate to it. I didn’t live through it.’
‘You smart aleck! I don’t want you to live through it again, don’t you understand? That’s why I’m trying to raise you to understand various things and so forth.’ So, this guy goes on Cavuto. I guarantee you if Ms. Sanchez or the babe that is having to cut back by half on the snacks for the kids because of the hard economic times, if they had to watch, this, they’d say, ‘Oh, he doesn’t understand our lives! He just doesn’t understand how hard it is, because…’ Look, the point is: Look at the expectations we have. This is what I was talking about and have been talking about for months: the expectations we have precisely because we are Americans. There’s one country in the world in the history of humanity that has produced those expectations, and it’s us — and that’s why the election is so crucial.
That is why it is important that people understand the alternatives in this election. We’ve got the guy running in the Democrat Party who does not believe in our exceptionalism. He thinks it’s over. He wants you to see this country the way those four families were portrayed last night. He wants that to be this country: in a constant state of need, with him as the great redeemer who is going to solve all this. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, gave his best shot on the economy and our way of life last night. He was with Larry Kudlow on CNBC. First question: ‘How worried are you about this tax and redistribution story, should Obama win?’
WELCH: Sunday’s New York Times had a front page right-hand column talking about the looming unemployment. When you went to the jump page inside, you came to a two-page story on Rhode Island which for some reason the McCain camp has not jumped on. Rhode Island’s unemployment is at 8.8%. There was story after story, very sad stories of two-income families being out of work, a hairdresser out of work, a restaurant closing. The New York Times, naturally, did not make the connection between taxes in Rhode Island and unemployment. 8.8% is 40% higher than the national average of 6.1.
MICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA: And they have higher taxes there?
WELCH: And Rhode Island’s taxes, it’s the 48th most unacceptable state for business.
RUSH: So the next question from Kudlow: ‘Well, let’s just focus on, just for folks who may not be familiar, the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. That’s the one that would do away with the secret ballot in union organizing attempts. You ran a huge corporation, GE. What’s your view on that impact on workers, the economy, or the unions?’
WELCH: Look, you want a union when you got a horse’s ass running a plant.
CARUSO-CABRERA: (laughing)
WELCH: But you don’t have that today. You generally don’t end up with that. You end up with… In 1973, 54% of the elections went to the unions. Last year, 54% of the elections went to the unions. But you had a secret ballot. You didn’t have a bunch of goons going out and having people check off and coming and showing up at your front door with, ‘Here. Now, you have a union.’ Think what it will do to small business, Larry. Think what it will do, if we unionize it. We have three industries in America: airlines, autos, and teachers. Three of the most troubled industries we have.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Are dominated by unions.
WELCH: All driven by unions.
CARUSO-CABRERA: Yep.
RUSH: ‘All driven by unions,’ Jack Welch. I thought we had three, but that’s it, just two, but he was on fire last night. Oh, we…? Yeah, see, I’m out of order here. Go ahead and play it. Let me find it, because I’ll give people the question. We had 47 sound bites, and they never come in in the order I use them, so everything gets out of order, but… Well, I can’t find number 17. Everything I’m looking for, I can never find. Just play the Welch sound bite. It will self-explain itself.
WELCH: Without question, Larry. I support a lower capital gains tax. I support lower taxes on capital. Capital is what drives productivity. Productivity is what drives competitiveness. Competitiveness is what drives jobs. I’m a jobs voter. That’s why I don’t want a Free Choice Act. I want people to vote for a union if they want one. If we get a jerk for a manager, let ’em have a union but I don’t want them sneaking around in the night doing it. I can’t imagine how a businessman can come out for Barack Obama with his policies.
RUSH: That’s exactly Fouad Ajami’s point in his Wall Street Journal piece. They’re not thinking that he’s going to be harmful to them, Jack! They think everything’s going to be just as it is now except with a new guy that the world loves and so forth. Really, it’s politics of emotion and so forth. Psychologically it’s just the politics of vapidity. People taking leave of their senses for a moment or two, getting all caught up in a dream and devoid, absent reality.