RUSH: What a weekend, ladies and gentlemen. The Obama campaign called a time-out to news coverage. They called a time-out to anything regarding news over the weekend so they could all get a rest, and there’s more news that took place over the weekend than I’ve seen over a weekend in a long time. Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. The telephone number here, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Well, Circuit City has filed for bankruptcy. Why won’t the Obama people, why won’t the libs and the Democrats and the government bail out Circuit City? They just gave AIG another $25 or $50 billion, which means that more and more of you people will be paying my insurance policies — he-he-he-he — as will I. It’s an interesting story here. I love this story. Fannie Mae has reported a $29 billion loss in the third quarter. And remember, now, who used to work at Fannie Mae? Rahm Emanuel, Jamie Gorelick, Chris Dodd. Barney Frank didn’t work there, but they all had a role in propping the place up. And, of course, Frank Raines and Jim Johnson and so forth. Fannie Mae with a big loss, $29 billion.
This is from the Washington Post yesterday: ”A Quiet Windfall for US Banks.’ — The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration’s request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.’ This, folks, is delicious. ‘But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.’ Now, you will remember on several occasions on this very program I read to you the preamble as it is, as it were, of this bailout bill, and it gave the Treasury secretary sole power. The Treasury secretary became the most powerful man in the country, and he was given sole power to ensure domestic tranquility, to ensure the economic well-being of the American people, and so he decided to stick in a huge tax break for his Wall Street banker buddies.
‘The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill. When they found out, some legislators were furious. Some congressional staff members have privately concluded that the notice was illegal. But they have worried that saying so publicly could unravel several recent bank mergers made possible by the change and send the economy into an even deeper tailspin.’ By the way, when they say the administration did something, yeah, technically they’re right, but this was Paulson, because Paulson is the Treasury secretary. He’s given total power to mess with this $700 billion or $850, whatever it was, the way he wanted to. Basically what they did, this is from George Yin, the chief of staff for the joint committee on taxation, ‘They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks.’ They got rid of a big tax, they eliminated a tax on the banks to the tune of $140 billion, Paulson did, for his — (laughing) — look I know, I know, I know, but you just have to laugh about this, and the sight of legislators just now discovering this while they were immersed in the bill, a little five sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention. Apparently it attracted no attention to the legislators who were voting on it, either.
Oh, my friends, I don’t think they knew about the subprime crisis, either. If they’re going to do all of this, if they’re going to bail out the banks, if they’re going to bail out this, if they’re going to bail out that, why not bail out Circuit City? After all, Obama is going to need people to have televisions to be able to watch him. And we gotta go to digital TV next February or something. That’s the drop dead date for everybody getting rid of your old analog sets and going digital and here’s Circuit City filing for bankruptcy. I don’t know if they’re unionized or not. Maybe they’re not unionized, that’s why. McDonald’s big profit; Wal-Mart big profit. Huge, huge, huge profits, 8.1% for McDonald’s. They don’t have unions, either. This is not going to sit well with the Obama team. We cannot have businesses doing well during this period. I mean Obama ought to be applauding this recession, if he were intellectually consistent. Businesses are hurting all over the place, they’re losing money, they’re not making profits like they once did except for Wal-Mart and a few others, McDonald’s. They’re seeking bailouts all over the place.
I would think Obama and his team would be applauding all of this as spreading the wealth around and empowering the government. He ought to be pointing to decades of big government policies and taking credit for all of this because this is exactly what’s going to happen on a grand, mass scale if he does succeed with what he wants to do and they’re apparently going to hit the ground running. No centrism here at all. Executive orders, they’re still going to give the tax increases on the rich. By the way, I have to share with you the funniest story. I hope you find the humor in this. I live here in Palm Beach, Florida. We have a local paper. It’s called the Palm Beach Daily News. The nickname is the Shiny Sheet and it’s exclusively tailored for the people who live in Palm Beach. During the winter there’s about 40,000 people that live here, and during the summer they all flee and about 19,000 or so remain, I myself being one of them. I got the Sunday edition yesterday, and there’s a front-page story — (laughing) — you would never see this anywhere else in the country. A front-page story on how the wealthy are going to deal, what they are doing, how they are planning ahead for the Obama administration.
The Washington Post today has a story, women and minorities hardest hit, the poor hardest hit because of the economic slow down. They went out and talked to people and financial planners, and I guarantee you that the answers to the questions, everybody down here is talking about trying to accelerate income, get it into this year, report it as quickly as you can, everybody is talking about charitable donations might have to be cut back, people are not going to wait to see what Obama does cause they think that they know. The stuff is funny. How the wealthy are in trouble. How are the wealthy going to deal — (laughing) — and they talked to Democrats and Republicans as well.
You will not believe this. This the from the New York Times today. I cannot believe that this is actually happening. Headline says it all: ‘Bake Sales Fall Victim to Push for Healthier Foods.’ This is a story out of Piedmont, California. ‘Tommy Cornelius and the other members of the Piedmont High School boys water polo team never expected to find themselves running through school in their Speedos to promote a bake sale across the street. But times have been tough since the school banned homemade brownies and cupcakes. The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie,’ remember Bill Clinton used them to help balance the federal budget. (laughing) Dan’s Bake Sale. We used a bake sale here to rally conservatives in Fort Collins, Colorado. ‘The old-fashioned school bake sale is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students.’ I kid you not. ‘The guidelines were passed by lawmakers in 2005 and took effect in July 2007. They require that snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat.
‘The Piedmont High water polo team falls woefully short of these standards, selling cupcakes, caramel apples and lemon bars off campus in a flagrant act of nutritional disobedience.’ (laughing) Right here, says it in New York Times today, flagrant act of nutritional disobedience. ”I know obesity is a big problem, and it’s good the school cares,’ said Sam Cardoza, a senior who briefly became a successful entrepreneur last year when chocolate chip cookies were banned from the cafeteria. ‘At the same time, you shouldn’t stop a kid from buying a cookie.’ California is a hatchery of food trends, but its regulations are not the country’s strongest. From 500 to 600 school districts nationwide now have policies that limit the amount of fat, trans fats, sodium and sugars in food sold or served at school, with the strictest rules directed at elementary schools, said Jamie Chriqui, a senior research scientist with the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.’
All roads lead to Chicago here. ‘The idea is that policy interventions to reduce consumption ‘will do for junk food what smoking bans and taxes did for tobacco,’ Ms. Chriqui said.’ Right, I’ve noticed all those kids getting thin out there. I’ve seen there’s a wave of thinness. We have a plague almost out there of malnutrition that’s happening. ‘If bake sales are out, ‘healthy’ fund-raisers, like carwashes and balloon-o-grams, are in. In Oakland, Calif., new traditions are replacing old ones: a ‘Healthy Halloween’ vegetable platter for kindergartners.’ Vegetables. A vegetable platter for kindergartens at Montclair Elementary in Oakland, California. I kid you not. ‘In California, bake sales are waning because ingredients cannot be regulated. Sales are banned during school hours but may be held a half-hour before or after school. … Anna X. L. Wong, a kindergarten teacher at Jefferson Elementary, incorporates ‘good foods’ versus ‘bad foods’ into the curriculum and offers her students healthy snacks, including–‘ I’ve never heard of this, e-d-a-m-a-m-e, you ever heard of that? Soybeans? How do you pronounce the word? Nobody knows. Okay, so healthy snacks, including soybeans, ‘her version of preventive medicine. ‘We talk about the word ‘courage,” Ms. Wong said of her young students. ‘That means being brave enough to try new things.”
So bravery and courage, new things involving the diet and so forth. So bake sales falling victim to a push for healthier foods. Students have been found in flagrant acts of nutritional disobedience at Piedmont high school in California. I know it’s not funny. It’s scary as it can be, but I mean people are the strangest. You know, I grew up in southeast Missouri and we’d drive down to Kennett, Missouri, to visit my grandparents. My grandfather down there ran a cotton compress, and we’d go through the soybean fields, and I loved the smell of soybeans, but you eat one, it’s worse than eating a raw chestnut. You don’t want to do it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I checked the e-mail during the break. ‘Rush, why are you laughing about all of this? They’re canceling bake sales with baked goods in it? These are traditions. Why are you laughing?’ What else can you do here, folks? We’ve been sounding the warnings on this kind of encroachment by these wackos on the left for all these years. If people want to go out and vote for people who are then going to appoint people in the education system or wherever that are going to enact these kind of things, then fine. If this is what people want in California — if this is what they vote for and if this is who they vote for — then all you can do is laugh at it, and anywhere else as well. If this is what people want, let ’em have at it.
At some point this is all going to come back and bite everybody in the rear end. They’re not going to know what happened and the only question is going to be: Is it going to be too late to really roll any of this stuff back and change it? Will the left have so much entrenched power, unelected entrenched power for generation after generation, will there be any chance to roll it back? At some point red lights are going to go off. The brains are going to start functioning normally again, and people are going to realize where all this is headed. The danger, of course, as we’ve been discussing is when you have 47 million Americans that pay no income tax (and whatever percentage of voters that is, 35, 40% of voters) when they figure out that they can vote themselves a mortgage or whatever they want without having to pay anything for it, you’re not going to get ’em back.
As long as we’re talking about bailing this out and bailing that out and making the government in charge of more and more businesses, as long as there are significant number of Americans who apparently are in favor of this, you’re just going to have to wait ’til the whole thing collapses, because it will. Things like this cannot be sustained. And, by the way, I keep hearing people say, ‘Well, these buyouts and these bailouts and the government taking over this business and that, it’s just temporary, Rush. They’re going to roll these things back in the private sector.’ Oh, really? Government gives things up? Government gives things away? We shall find out.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, this is just delicious as well here. From the Salt Lake Tribune: ‘For nearly a year, Salt Lake City’s One World Cafe — founded on the altruistic goal of letting customers set their own meal price — has been on a crash course with business reality. In mid-October, employee paychecks bounced and the longtime manager was fired. Bo Dean’s dismissal angered the rest of the staff enough that they walked out in protest. Founder Denise Cerreta was forced to call a temporary staffing agency so she could serve customers. Inexperience seems to be the main problem for the nonprofit cafe at 41 S. 300 East. ‘As the restaurant grew, I didn’t have the expertise at running a kitchen,’ acknowledged Cerreta … ‘We needed more structure and a more professional kitchen.”
That’s not the problem. They’re a nonprofit! They ran a nonprofit One World restaurant, anybody from anywhere could come in there. You pay what you want as a customer. You go in and you order the soybeans or the watercress vinaigrette, whatever you’re going to have and then you pay them whatever you want, and you walk out saying, ‘Wow, this place is great!’ Then the owner finally figures out she’s not making a profit and blames it on the fact that she doesn’t have enough business experience and so forth. Try your ideology. ‘Nonprofit Eatery Can’t Bring Home Bacon.’ Now they’re several thousand dollars in debt and they’re nonprofit. ‘Rush, you sound happy about it.’ I am. I’m just ecstatic when stupid people know that they’ve done something stupid.
I don’t think this woman understands she’s done something stupid yet, by the way. I think she still thinks that she’s God’s gift to food. I think she still thinks that she was doing a very altruistic, very compassionate, humanitarian thing, and now she just says, ‘We needed more structure and a more professional kitchen.’ How you going to do that when you let the customer decide what they’re going to pay you? Where are you going to get the money? You’re in debt. Maybe they can get bailed out. Maybe — what’s the name of this place? — the One World Cafe. Maybe the One World Cafe can get bailed out. ‘A recent review of the business showed the restaurant was overstaffed and management of employee time was poor. It never even had an employee time clock.
‘The restaurant also had failed to keep concise records of food costs and fixed costs. All told, mismanagement cost the restaurant $8,000 to $10,000 a month, Cerreta said.’ It’s not just mismanagement. These are a bunch of liberals. These are liberals playing games with the reality known as life. These are liberals playing games with the reality known as business, and these same kinds of people we’ve just put in charge of much of the federal government. ‘During the past week, the restaurant has implemented new kitchen procedures and hired a new executive chef and sous chef. ‘We were financially shaky, but we will be fine,’ Cerreta said. ‘We are in no danger of us closing.” Really? (interruption)
Are you kidding? Dawn just said, ‘Maybe the Allen Brothers?’ Yyou think that the One World Cafe serves beef? You think you can go in there and buy beef, and do you think…? (interruption) Oh, of course it would be profitable! Do you think that people would actually go out and…? (groans) If they did, if these guys at the One World Cafe would… (sigh) I don’t know that I would want Allen Brothers anywhere near this place, to tell you the truth. I love Allen Brothers too much. I don’t want Allen Brothers to get a reputation that stinks. I mean, if you’re the primary supplier of food, you don’t want the restaurant serving it to go bankrupt — and certainly you don’t want to sell it to a nonprofit. One World Cafe, a nonprofit restaurant.
Oh, yes, we’re just being compassionate! So while it’s a nice try for Allen Brothers to go in and save the place, I don’t want Allen Brothers anywhere near the One World Cafe because the One World Cafe is not going to make it. I doubt that they even sell beef in there anyway. I gotta get a picture of this place. I want to see where it is; I want to see what it looks like. I’m probably doing more for the One World Cafe than anybody possibly could. I’m sure there are people in Salt Lake that listen to this program that despise me, and here me making fun of this humanitarian effort here that is an embarrassment to American business — and they’re going to go flood the place now and make sure that it stays open. I’m giving them free advertising. I’m going to flood the place and make sure it stays open.
They probably overpay for what they’re getting. (interruption) I doubt that. Liberals don’t go that far. They still want other people’s money to pay for what they do and for what they get. But they’ll still stream in there to show a measure of support with bodies, but no… See, this is why, ladies and gentlemen, so many of you have said over the course of the past week that you enjoy the technical malfunction that was allowing Snerdley to be heard chatting with me during monologues here. We finally got it fixed Brian, over the weekend, didn’t we? We finally got it fixed. One of the reasons why I do not want Snerdley to be heard is ’cause this is his brainchild: Allen Brothers at the One World Cafe, and it’s an idea that stinks, because this place is a failure. Allen Brothers couldn’t…
They’re a bunch of liberals in there. They’d probably attack the Allen Brothers shipment when it got there if they found out some was coming! Besides that, there’s only two to three percent of prime beef available to people in this country. Allen Brothers gets it, and they sell it to people like me. I don’t want it wasted on a bunch of longhaired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking FM types walking into the One World Cafe! The last thing we need is to deplete the supply of the great food at Allen Brothers. I got a bunch of golf buddies coming in for the annual Limbaugh Open this weekend. It’s going to be four nights in a row of stuff from Allen Brothers, and I’m not going to have my supply cut. I don’t want the day to come where I call ’em up and order and hear, ‘Sorry, Mr. Limbaugh. We’re a little short this month. This new restaurant, the One World Cafe in Salt Lake City…’ It isn’t happening. Bobby, New Jersey Turnpike, driving around the fruited plain. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, sir. It’s nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Rush! What a pleasure to talk to you, man. It’s amazing that I got through. I just wanted to comment on the bailout of the auto industry. My opinion is it’s just delaying the inevitable. I work for a company that calls on both the final assembly and suppliers, and, you know, it’s sort of the unspoken secret amongst everyone in management and running the place that their costs are just prohibitive. With what they pay, you know, hourly workers and the union workers, compared to the transplant companies — Nissan, Honda, et cetera — that, are mostly in the South and nonunion.
RUSH: It’s not just that. It’s also the fact that the Japanese companies that manufacture here in the United States don’t have to factor in health care costs to the extent General Motors and the Big Three do as well. You know, I understand what you’re saying. This kind of cuts both ways: General Motors and Ford and all they made the deals.
CALLER: Exactly. Management was weak. They were shortsighted and didn’t have the backbone to instill lasting — or practices that would be lasting — as a business model. They just mortgaged the future to, I guess, prevent strikes
RUSH: Okay, so what do you think ought to happen you think? Just let the market take care of itself and let the new auto company emerge?
CALLER: I’ll say this much. I’d rather be… I would never buy a non-American car at this point in my life. I’d be sickened by it. But at the same time, I think it’s just unsustainable. It cannot endure. I think the union needs to be busted and that’s just the reality of it.
RUSH: Well, that’s not going to happen.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: In fact, the exact opposite is going to happen. More small businesses are going to end up being unionized by virtue of Obama ramming down everybody’s throat this Employee Free Choice Act. No secret ballot in whether you unionize your shop or not.
CALLER: It’s terrifying, Rush.
RUSH: This is one of the plans. That’s why I think Obama ought to be celebrating all this stuff because this chaos, as you say, provides an excuse and opportunity for the government to bailout even more. ‘Well, we can’t let that go bad. Look at all the employees would be out of work. Look all the health care we’d lose. Gotta prop that up. We can’t let AIG go bankrupt. They might have to miss their spa treatments out in California. We can’t let Bear Stearns go. We can’t let these people go.: We can’t let anything go. It’s too crucial. So the government’s going to investing practically in an ownership role in everybody out there. Not everything, but in a significant number of important businesses, and they’re going to be unionizing even more of them. This is going to be one of the most radical transformations of our culture and society that we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes.
CALLER: Right. Basically, you can point to any industry that’s unionized, and those are the industries that are really struggling right now and cannot compete with especially foreign competition, but just can’t compete in general. Their cost bases are just unrealistic and unsustainable.
RUSH: It’s going to get worse.
CALLER: Yep. Exactly.
RUSH: The financial services isn’t unionized; it’s just run by liberals, just like the One World Cafe in Salt Lake City.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But I know what you mean. Automobiles are unionized. Health care has a lot of union workers in it. What’s the third? I’m having a mental block. I know what it is, but there’s a third one. (interruption) Well, not including government. In fact, last week we got the unemployment numbers out. Government was the only sector where employment grew. (laughing) It was! I kid you not. (laughing) I’m sorry, folks, to laugh at this, but government was the only employment sector that grew, of any significant size.