×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: Unions are not about jobs. Unions are not about wages. You all see what’s happening. Maybe you haven’t seen what’s happening. If you don’t watch Fox News, you don’t know that the union thugs beat up a guy yesterday, because none of the networks are covering it. None of the networks and none of the newspapers are talking about what happened.

A Fox News producer got creamed yesterday. They actually had a bunch of people using the F-bomb on him and a couple guys took roundhouse haymaker swings at the guy. He was dragged away from one confrontation by the collar. I mean, these union people are fit to be tied, and this is gonna go on through 2014. I think it’s time for me maybe to revisit something about this union fight. In the real world, if you’re talking about real statistics that matter, such as how many jobs are created in states that are right-to-work. And, by the way, right-to-work simply means one thing: You get a job without being forced to join a union. You can get a job without being forced to pay union dues. That is the real problem as far as the unions are concerned. It’s the dues.

The dues, ladies and gentlemen, are nothing more than a money-laundering operation. That is all union dues are. I explained this many times in the past, but I want to go through this again to help put what’s happening in Michigan, what did happen in Wisconsin and Indiana, in perspective. It’s not about jobs. It isn’t about wages. It’s not about benefits. Those are the things that get all the attention. Those are the things that are said will be taken away from people with right-to-work, but that’s not at all what this is about. To explain this, let me first tell you what the Democrat Party is. The Democrat Party is made up of a bunch of coalitions. There are the feminists. There’s labor. The civil rights groups. The militant gay community, militant, politically active gay activists, and a number of disparate offshoots of each of those.

They each have their own separate agendas, but the one thing that unites them is socialism, or big government. Command-and-control government authority, ever-expanding government is the one thing, that’s the glue that holds them all together. The Democrat Party allows various leaders from each group to sit at its table of power, as long as those people hold up their end of the deal. Now, in the case of the Reverend Jackson or the Reverend Sharpton, they get a seat at the Democrat Party table of power, as long as they deliver 93 to 95% of the black vote every presidential year. The union leaders of all the different unions — they’re not all equal in the Democrat Party. Some have more power within the party than others. Some have a greater status. For example, with Obama, it’s SEIU.

The SEIU union is the number one union. That’s the union Obama’s closest to. They’re the largest. The autoworkers are a very close second. It’s not a wide gap, but not all unions are equal, and not all civil rights groups are equal within the Democrat Party. Not everybody running a union, for example, gets a seat at the table of power in the Democrat Party. The reason the unions get a seat at the table of power in the Democrat Party and what this is all about in Michigan and what it was all about in Wisconsin, what it was all about in Indiana, is money. It has nothing to do with jobs for the members. It has nothing to do with benefits or wages. Those are all the public things used to arouse public support and sympathy for the supposed downtrodden union members.

But that’s not what it’s about as far as the leaders of the Democrat Party and the leaders of the union are concerned. It is a money-laundering operation. Barack Obama or any Democrat president cannot simply write himself a check from the US Treasury. But they still want the money. They want the money for perpetual, never-ending campaigns, or whatever other reason they need money for. Now, the way it works with unions, the unions are exclusively tied to the Democrat Party. Have you ever wondered why?

Well, the popular reason stated is that the unions are made up of “working people,” and the Democrat Party, of course, is for the workingman, and that translates to “the little guy,” the downtrodden, the put-upon, the taken advantage of. It’s the worker who exists in sweatshop in slave-labor circumstances. The Republicans own this sweatshop. This is the public persona. This is not the way it is.

This is the perception. This is what the American people have been told for decades. The Republicans are the slave masters. They are the sweatshop owners. They are the big, evil Mr. Potters who are making sure that the little guys are spending the night in the snow along with the homeless. And so the union and Democrat Party alliance exists publicly, as far as perception is concerned, for fairness.

The Democrat Party is defending “the little guy.” The Democrat Party is defending and protecting worker, the slave, the oppressed blue-collar worker against the mean-spirited, extremist, rotten, low-wage-paying, Republican businessman. Now, none of that is true anymore, but you go ask an average American, and that’s what he or she will think. So Obama can’t write himself a check from the Treasury.

No Democrat can just write a check to the unions.

Obama’s getting close, though, to being able to do that. So what happens is this: The Democrat Party works in concert with unions to help them secure major, major, lucrative contracts. And notice, by the way, that more and more union workers are government employees. And note that more and more government employees make sometimes twice as much as the people in the private sector whose taxes are paying their salaries and their benefits and their lifetime health care and their lifetime pensions.

In exchange for the Democrat Party securing contracts — pressuring businesses, doing everything they can to support the unions in these fights — the unions collect dues from their members. The dues are then, 90%, spent on Democrats. That’s the money laundering, and that’s why there is hell to pay now in Michigan. It is that that is being upset. It is the money-laundering operation that’s being blow up.

Because if you make it possible for somebody to get a job in Michigan in a union and they don’t have to join the union and they don’t have to pay the dues, then that’s money the Democrat Party is not getting. That means that job doesn’t matter to the union or the Democrat Party. They say they’re interested in employment? They couldn’t care less! They want the dues. The dues end up where?

The dues are spent in advertising for Democrat candidates. The dues end up as donations to Democrat candidates. That’s the money laundering. Union contracts are made, union labor, the money is paid by the business, the employer. Those funds largely end up back in the Democrat Party. It’s a circuitous, roundabout way for money to end up in the Democrat Party that nobody can really trace or follow and everybody accepts.

It’s part of the political process. You’re free to donate to whoever you wish within the bounds of the law. But when right-to-work comes up and somebody’s allowed to get a job in a state, in a union, without joining the union and therefore there are no dues, that means no money will be transferred to the Democrat Party either by way of donations or money spent in advertising for Democrat candidates.

And that’s what this is all about.

At the leadership level, that’s all this is about. It isn’t about poor, downtrodden workers. That’s what it’s said to be about so that sympathy and compassion are aroused among the low-information, average Americans watching this. But that isn’t what’s going on. The unions couldn’t care less. The Democrat Party couldn’t care less. If you go to states… The numbers have been run, and they’re all over the place.

Right-to-work states have higher employment and higher wages. People make more money, on average, in right-to-work states than people who work in you-must-join-the-union states. Employment is higher and wages are higher in state after state after state. So that’s what’s at stake here. What’s at stake is the Democrat Party having its money-laundering operation blown smithereens. It is a roadblock.

Actually, it’s not a roadblock. It’s an actual end to the union funding of the Democrat Party. It’s that funding which keeps them at the table of power, don’t forget. The deal for the union leaders is, they get a seat at the Democrat Party table of power because they facilitate this flow of money back to the party from union members. When that’s interrupted, when that doesn’t happen, the union leader ceases to be of value to the Democrat Party.

The Union Leader is thus denied a seat, theoretically, at the table. Now, it hasn’t happened yet but this is what will happen. Because the Democrat Party’s coalition is made up of these various disparate groups, and they must come through. They must perform. The union leader’s job is to make sure that all of that dues money, the vast majority of it, ends up back in the hands of the Democrat Party or is spent on advertising to elect Democrats.

The denial of that money by virtue of no longer requiring them to pay dues is a direct threat to the finances of the Democrat Party. The union leaders cease to have any value to the Democrat Party. And that’s why they are willing to engage in bloodletting and violence. It’s not to defend their rank and file. It’s not in defense of wages and health care. That’s just what they say. It’s not about oppression and the evil business owners.

It’s not about that at all, folks.

This is purely and simply about a source of funding to the Democrat Party being interrupted or blockaded or denied.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me give you perhaps the best example of the money-laundering operation I can think of, and that would be Obama’s stimulus: $787 billion. By the time it ended, it was close to a trillion dollars. Now, do you remember how that was sold? That was pitched as money for shovel-ready jobs, repairs of bridges and roads and schools, and do you remember that none of that happened? Do you recall where that money went?

The lion’s share went to unions.

For example, in Wisconsin, 90% of the stimulus money in Wisconsin went to unions, public sector unions. Ninety percent of it went to teachers unions and government workers. That’s the money laundering. Obama can’t write himself a check from the Treasury, but he came in with $787 billion. And all over this country, it went to union members. It went to maintain union unemployment.

Teachers didn’t lose their jobs while everybody else did.

Government workers did not lose their jobs while everybody else did.

And since they kept their jobs, they continued to pay dues. And the dues are what end up being donated back to the Democrat Party or used by the union to fund advertising to elect Democrats. So essentially a large percentage of the $787 billion from the federal Treasury was sent to the unions across this country, keeping union workers employed, keeping them paying their dues. The dues then come back to Obama and the Democrats.

That’s the money-laundering operation, and that’s what the stimulus was about.

It’s that simple.

It isn’t complicated.

It’s not really a conspiracy. It’s not new. It’s the way it has always happened.

And that’s what’s at stake when a state goes right-to-work.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want people to understand this, because it’s key to understanding what’s going on with the right-to-work. The stimulus is the greatest example. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, here are the real numbers. State public sector jobs benefited the most from the stimulus, the Obama stimulus. The date of this story is October 13th, 2009.

Seventy-five percent of 8,000 stimulus related jobs accounted for so far, back on October 13, 2009, were public sector jobs protected by the federal infusion by the stimulus into state and local government coffers. That number comes from the governor’s office. The jobs protected included teachers, cops, and other government workers. Of the remaining 25% it’s not clear how many were private sector jobs. That 75% number could be even higher. So here’s how it works, and this is key to understand it. Obama just can’t go to the Treasury and write himself a check. Obama took the occasion, took the opportunity of an economic downturn, took advantage of his honeymoon period, first black president, the karma, the aura, the excitement of a new presidency to basically defraud the American people.

We’re gonna stimulate the economy. We’re gonna grow jobs. We’re gonna create jobs, shovel-ready jobs, repair schools, roads, bridges, all that gunk, and everybody was all gung-ho. In fact, everybody loved Obama. He couldn’t do anything wrong. He was a messiah. Whatever you wanted him to be, he was. And all he was doing was giving money to himself and his party. That’s what the stimulus was. I don’t say this with animus. I’m simply pointing it out. It’s exactly what happened. Wisconsin is just one state. Minimum 75% of the stimulus went to protect existing union jobs. And all of those union jobs are dues paying, and it’s crucial to remember where the dues go. That’s the money laundering. Money from the Treasury to save jobs, to create jobs, whatever the sales pitch was, ends up protecting existing private and public sector union jobs.

Not creating new ones, as we know there weren’t any new ones created. Those dues-paying union members were not laid off in this down economy. They were not fired. Their jobs weren’t eliminated. They were saved. They were protected. In fact, there was a second stimulus, if you recall, for California, 25 or $30 billion. The stated purpose was to hire more teachers. That’s not what they did with the money. They took that stimulus money and they put it into the pension and health care funds of existing teacher employees, keeping them employed, keeping their pensions solid or as close to solid as they could. But as they were kept employed, they continued to pay dues, and the dues either ended up back in the Democrat Party or used in advertising to elect Democrats.

So, at the end of the day, what you had was $787 billion from the federal Treasury dispersed all across America, minimum 75% of it spent on maintaining existing union jobs. That’s the money laundering. That’s how the Democrats are able to appropriate money to themselves. The Republicans don’t get any of that. Unions don’t donate to Republicans. So here comes right-to-work. Right-to-work in Indiana, modified right-to-work in Wisconsin, now full-time right-to-work in Michigan. Well, very simply, what it does is allow people to get jobs, including union jobs, but not require them to join the union. And if they don’t have to join the union they don’t have to pay dues, and that’s all that matters.

When a job in a union isn’t paying any dues, the Democrat Party doesn’t get any of the money, and that’s why this fight. The union leaders in Michigan know that their influence with the Democrat Party is threatened here. This is why Clarence Thomas was so opposed, not just the ideology, not just the politics. Clarence Thomas confirmed to the Supreme Court, becomes the most powerful black man in America. And in such, Clarence Thomas illustrates that you can reach the pinnacle of your position without going through the civil rights coalition. You don’t have to do affirmative action. You don’t have to have the blessing of Jesse Jackson. You don’t have to have the Democrat Party behind you.

Do you realize what a threat that is to the civil rights coalition? Do you realize what a threat that is to the Democrat Party? The Democrat Party wants minorities thinking that they don’t have a chance unless the Democrats are their champions. And here’s Clarence Thomas lapping everybody. That’s why he had to be stopped. It’s no different than what’s happening with the fiscal cliff argument, just different terms.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sixty million Americans voted against Barack Obama. Sixty-plus million voted for him. But there were a lot of people that didn’t vote. The turnout from 2008 to 2012 was down somewhat. Obama’s was down three or four million votes, but so was Romney’s. Four million white voters didn’t vote from ’08 to 2012.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, so we had all the violence in Michigan yesterday, and Jay Carney, the White House, Obama, refuse to condemn it. Given a chance to condemn the violence that took place, and there was a lot of violence against a Fox News producer, the other networks didn’t carry it. If you don’t watch Fox, you haven’t seen it, literally, but it was brutal. It was profane. It was violent. A couple of haymaker swings. When you think of union thuggery, it was on. They tore down a tent, ripped a tent down. So they asked Jay Carney (doing impression) “Well, you know, violence means different things to different people. Passion is, I think, the better way to describe what was going on.” They won’t get anywhere near it.

Now, let’s go back, shall we? This is January 12th of 2011 in Tucson, University Arizona during the Together We Thrive Tucson and America political event to pay tribute to the January 8th shooting victims. That was the Gabby Giffords thing. They turned it into a political event. And here’s what Obama had to say, among other things, at that event.

OBAMA: At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized. At a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do —

RUSH: Get (bleep) out of my face!

OBAMA: — pause for a moment and make sure that we’re.

RUSH: Get (bleep) out of my face!

OBAMA: — that heals, not in a way that wounds. (applause).

RUSH: That was Obama, January 2011. There was a union guy shouting that at a Fox producer yesterday. “Get (bleep) out of my face! Shut the (bleep) up! Get (bleep) out of my face!” Big, fat slob of a guy. Typical, I mean, just typical. That was not the guy that took the swings. Another guy took the swings. So here is yesterday, Lansing, Michigan, on the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives, during a debate on the right-to-work bill, State Representative Doug Geiss, Democrat, said this.

GEISS: We’re going to pass something that will undo a hundred years of labor relations. And there will be blood. There will be repercussions.

RUSH: What was it Obama just said? Let’s see here. “At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized. At a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently.” “There will be blood.” Here’s Jimmy Hoffa Jr.

HOFFA: This is just the first round of a ballot that’s gonna divide this state. We’re gonna have a civil war in this state. What they’re doing is basically betraying democracy.

RUSH: Right. That’s yesterday afternoon on CNN. He wasn’t through.

HOFFA: ItÂ’s basically creating a free rider status. When people vote and the majority votes, that should be the people that control in that particular company. WeÂ’ve done this successfully all across the country. Those states that do not have right-to-work have thrived. The ones that do have right-to-work, like Mississippi, or Texas, end up being the last in education, the last in people making — having good jobs. We don’t want that here in Michigan.

RUSH: Wrong. Here are the numbers. “According to Michigan’s Mackinac Center, using data taken from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-sector, inflation-adjusted employee compensation in right-to-work states increased by 12% between 2001 and 2011 compared with just 3% over the same period in forced-unionization states.”

Wages are up, jobs are up, incomes are up in right-to-work states. Jimmy Hoffa Jr., who pledges a civil war, and Doug Geiss, “There will be blood,” are dead wrong. Remember what this is all about. This is preserving a money-laundering operation. Again, this isn’t about right-to-work. It’s about making sure that the Democrat Party gets its money. It’s a money laundering operation.

Very quickly. Let me go through this again. I’ll use the stimulus as an example. Basically a trillion dollars. Over 75% of the stimulus in 2009 went to union workers to maintain their jobs. It did not go to shovel-ready jobs. It didn’t go to repair schools, roads, bridges. It didn’t create jobs. We lost jobs. But it maintained union jobs. It went to teachers, cops, firefighters. Mostly teachers, public sector union workers in all the states that are blue. The reason is you gotta keep the union employees employed because they pay dues. The dues go where? The dues go into advertising and donations for Democrats, pure and simple. It’s a money laundering operation.

So federal Treasury was raided of a trillion dollars. It was sent to union members in the states, blue states primarily, and came back to the Democrat Party. See, Obama can’t go to Treasury, just write the Democrat Party a check, but he can ask for stimulus spending to create jobs. And in his first month he gets what he wants, it’s the honeymoon. He gets his stimulus and it goes to protect union jobs so that they don’t lose their jobs during the economic downturn, and it goes to union dues continuing to flow. Well, right-to-work states, you get a union job, you don’t have to join the union, and you don’t have to pay dues, therefore Democrat Party doesn’t get its money.

Union leaders lose their clout with Democrats. That’s what this is about. It’s no more complicated than that, folks. Right-to-work is not about fairness for employees. It’s not about any of this rotgut that Geiss or Hoffa are talking about. This is all so Jimmy Hoffa can stay at the Democrat Party’s table of power by delivering union money to the Democrat Party. It’s all it is. It literally is a money-laundering operation. Federal Treasury dollars go to union dues, which come back to the Democrat Party. And as long as that happens, Jimmy Hoffa’s a favored guy with Barack Obama and the Democrats. As long as that happens, Andy Stern is a favored guy with Barack Obama and the Democrats.

All these union leaders maintain their perks, their positions of power with the Democrat Party as long as they make sure that money, the unions dues, end up back in the Democrat Party, either with campaign donations or money spent on advertising. It’s that simple. And when the state goes right-to-work, there aren’t any union dues and the Democrat Party is out that money and there’s hell to pay. No more complicated than that. Here, by the way, is the audio of the Fox News contributor being threatened and beat up by the union thugs in Lansing, Michigan, yesterday.

CROWDER: What is it about right to work that you oppose so much?

UNION THUG: It’s because it’s the freedom to free load. They can suck all of the parasitical benefits and the hard wages that unions have negotiated and they get it for free.

UNION THUG: Get (bleep) out of my face.

CROWDER: DonÂ’t tear down the tent.

UNION THUG: Get (bleep) out of my face.

CROWDER: You hurt a lady in there.

UNION THUG: YouÂ’re addressing me (bleep). I didnÂ’t hurt nobody. Back the (bleep) up.

CROWDER: Okay.

UNION THUG: What are you going to (bleep) do?

UNION THUG: He’s got a gun! I’ll kill (bleep) with a gun!

RUSH: Did you hear that at the end? “He’s got a gun. I’ll kill (bleep) with a gun.” “There will be blood.” Ah, yes, just your average decent American citizen union thugs here. Desperate to hold onto their freebies. Desperate to hold onto their deal. That’s what’s happening.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This