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RUSH: Look, I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but this does light my fire. These attacks on the traditions and the institutions, which have not only made the country great, but define human greatness — and permit it and promote it and inspire it — make me livid. This actually gets my juices going. It may be just a campaign technique, and it probably is, but I’m not going to rule out the possibility that this is what they would like our society to be: a bunch of people not working, depending on them.

I don’t have any doubt about that. They look upon “urine” — European socialized democracies with envy like you can’t believe. (Maybe urine, too, for all I know.) But it’s disturbing, folks. It is profoundly disturbing, ’cause they’re not gonna stop. Chuck Schumer is not gonna stop working. Barack Obama’s not gonna stop working. Well, he may. He never really started. But, I mean, they’re not gonna do this. These leftist Hollywood rich, they’re not gonna stop working.

They’re not gonna take their own advice on this.

This is simply about dumbing down the people they claim to be helping and supporting and all that, and they’re ruining people’s lives. Whether it’s a campaign ploy or whether they really mean it, it doesn’t matter. It’s just something to me that has to be fought on the educational front. Now, this whole thing… I’m telling you, this whole notion that work is a punitive thing and that not having to work is a liberating thing, freeing you from bunch of rotten choices and still being able to have your health care, that’s what this is really all about.

It’s about saving Obamacare and saving the Democrat Party from Obamacare, because, in the normal set of circumstances, this would have destroyed the party that came up with it. It would have ruined their electoral chances — and it may have done that, by the way. But in a last-gasp effort to save themselves, they’re now tarnishing and trashing work as a means of building up Obamacare. This is exactly what the CBO report said. Let’s go back, from Reuters:

“In its latest US fiscal outlook, the nonpartisan CBO said the health law would lead some workers, particularly those with lower incomes, to limit their hours to avoid losing federal subsidies that Obamacare provides to help pay for health insurance and other health care costs.” That’s being forgotten by the Drive-Bys. The Drive-Bys, the media, they’re now pretending that the CBO said that Obamacare will allow people to leave their jobs, not force them to work, in order to keep their subsidy.

Obamacare is forcing people out of work. So the Democrats are moving in and trying to claim that this is a choice they have now given people. “You think you’re being forced out, but actually this is what we planned all along ’cause we love you. We want you to have your health care, and we want you to not have to work for it — and, voila We’ve done it!” When in truth, real-life circumstances are forcing people to do whatever they can to get a subsidized policy because that’s all they can afford.

Remember, all of this is mandated by law. At some point whenever this damn thing gets implemented, everybody’s gonna have to have an insurance plan, an insurance policy. It’s the law, and most people can’t afford it. The mainstream media never mentions that the only choice that these poor people are facing is either, one, lower their income by way of lowering their hours, or lose their subsidy. Those are the choices.


Those are the choices the Democrat Party has offered them, not this liberating from the choice of having to work nonsense. No. The wonderful choice that now we’re supposed to be celebrating is one of two things. Either lower your income and qualify for a subsidy, or lose the subsidy. That’s the choice people have. Because they can’t afford it, otherwise, folks. Did you notice how the Drive-Bys tried to turn this around for the Democrats?

Every single outlet, every one of rushed out a “fact check” on the CBO report, and every one of them made the same claim. They said that the CBO wasn’t talking about jobs. “When they said that 2.5 million people would leave the workforce, that didn’t mean there would be 2.5 million fewer jobs. No, no!” That’s what they all, in unison, said. But that was never the point. The real point is the CBO said that people would cut back on their hours to the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs in order to lower their income so that they could keep getting their Obamacare subsidies.

The fact checks never even tried to dispute that. This has all been an effort here to confuse everybody and take what was just a horrible report about 2.5 million people losing their jobs, or reducing their hours in order to qualify for subsidies. That’s what the CBO said. That had to be turned around. That is devastating. That’s another nail in the coffin of the Democrat Party. That had to be turned around, and that’s how they’re doing it. “Oh, we’re liberating you from having to work!”

Once again they’re appealing to the lowest common denominator. They’re going after the low-information voter and trying to make it look like this is one of the greatest inventions, and now they’ve got all of this scholarship, these professors and all these fall-right-in-line columnists who are now saying, “Well, you know what? This might actually be a good thing! The pursuit of the happiness is the pursuit of leisure.”

Ross Douthat has a column in the New York Times. I don’t know how to interpret this. I’m told that Ross Douthat is a “conservative” in, ah, the same vein as David Brooks. His piece ran on February 8th, so that would be Saturday. It’s for the Sunday Review, and I think it posted Saturday night. It’s “Leaving Work Behind,” and I don’t know if he’s advocating or mocking it. I just don’t know. I’m share with you some parts of this.


“When economists look ahead to the possibilities awaiting our grandchildren, they often see this divide widening even further, as the digital economy delivers rich rewards to certain kinds of highly educated talent, while revolutions in robotics eliminate many of today’s low-skilled, low-wage jobs,” and it goes on couple/three paragraphs. On the third hand, “this is where liberalism has a very important choice to make.

“It’s possible to defend Obamacare’s overall goals while also recognizing its potentially perverse effects, and conceding that we should try to minimize the number of low-skilled workers exiting the labor market. But it’s also possible to argue that as a rich, post-scarcity society, we shouldn’t really care that much about whether the poor choose to work. The important thing is just making sure they have a decent standard of living, full stop, and if they choose Keynesian leisure over a low-paying job, that’s their business.”

I honestly don’t know whether he is supporting that, criticizing that, or throwing it up as a possibility we have to consider. You know, ’cause much of opinion media today is (paraphrasing): “Well, on the one hand, you could do this. On the other hand I could understand not wanting to do that — and then in the middle, some people could choose to do both. I don’t want to be confused with agreeing with the other side, but the possibilities are limitless here.

We might have to someday consider the possibility, in our ‘post-scarcity society, that we shouldn’t really care that much about whether the poor choose to work’ or not. It’s none of our business, as long as they have ‘a decent standard of living,’ but don’t associate me with that! I’m just saying some people think that. Some people might not think that. Some people might think half of that.”

Anyway, we’re bending and shaping ourselves into all sorts of pretzeled forms in order it is not to criticize this. The “post-scarcity society.” Have you heard of that, Snerdley? “But it’s also possible to argue that as a rich, post-scarcity society, we shouldn’t really care that much about whether the poor choose to work” or not. Oh, and then there’s this part, too: “[I]t’s not always clear whether this larger welfare state is supposed to promote a link between work, security and mobility, or to substitute for work’s gradual decline.”

Now, I’ve always thought… (snort)

I’ve always thought that the ultimate aim of welfare was to get people back work.

But I guess I’ve been wrong about that!

Now, I know that some of you have always suspected the poor were a bunch of lazy bums and never intended to work, and you may have been right because now it says here in the New York Times: “it’s not always clear whether this larger welfare state is supposed to promote” work! Anyway, so when the Democrats are trying to come up with a campaign tactic, we get this kind of thing and others — in all sorts of learned, scholarly opinions columns and journals — trying to make it sound brilliant and deep. When it’s a surface — pure surface — emotional play.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’re gonna start in Chicago. Bob, great to have you, sir. Thank you for waiting, and welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Rush Baby, how are you doing today?

RUSH: I’m pretty good, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Fantastic. I’m driving through middle Illinois looking at all these farms and seeing all these truck drivers drive past me, smoking my Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur, and Rush, I don’t get it. These people, the liberal elites, they do not get it. You used to have to work to put food on your table. You used to have to plow the farm. You used to have to slaughter the pigs to put food on your table. And nowadays they just go to the grocery store and they say, “Well, it’ll come, you know, we have money, we can go buy our groceries and stuff.” Do you know how many people listen to you, Rush? You got truck drivers, you got farmers. If you were to say to farmers and truck drivers, “Hey, adopt a liberal mentality and slow down. Don’t work so much,” and the food starts to become scarce, we can prove to these liberal Democrat idiots that their policies don’t work, by proof, not by just complaining, by proof, Rush.

RUSH: Well, the thing is that I don’t think it’s gonna work. People aren’t gonna starve themselves just to prove that liberals are idiots. You don’t need to do that. We already know that, and you don’t need to starve yourself. The farmers, the agricultural people, don’t need to get sick just to make a point. And again, what I meant when I said that Obama’s not gonna quit working. Schumer’s not gonna quit working. Take your favorite name of any prominent liberal, they’re not gonna stop working. They’re not gonna stop working.

They don’t really mean this. What they’re doing is running a cheap campaign ploy. They are attempting to tell hapless people that there is a, “Oh, Lordy, why, you have been liberated. You no longer have to work because of us. You can quit your job. You can get rid of your job and we can give you health care. Vote for us.” That’s what they’re doing. And like they’ve done for most of my life, they are in the process of destroying the human capacity of the people who support them, by advocating that these people just lay down, essentially. Just give up, all for their votes.


You can go through all these stories. You will not find one of these advocates for what I would call the “Quit Work” Movement, you don’t find one of them, not one, raising the question, “Well, who is gonna produce the money for them not to work?” Because they know somebody has to. They know somebody has to work. I mean, these great liberal columnists, they’re not gonna quit working. F. Chuck Todd’s not gonna quit working. David Gregory’s not gonna quit working. They’re not gonna do this. Everybody that’s responsible knows that work is how you provide for yourself. Look, this is sophistry to even have to remind people of this.

The real problem here is that once again the Democrat Party is attempting to grow and expand the lowest common denominator as the majority of the country. On a personal level it just insults me, what they’re doing to people. It’s sophistry to tell the people in this audience. The people in this audience don’t need to be educated about the purpose of work. I don’t think the Obama stash ladies are listening. But that’s the point. The Obama stash ladies, these are the people in Detroit. Obama’s first year they were awarding some sort of very limited subsidy for housing and there’s not enough to go around, like there never is in liberalism, and there are thousands of people lined up.

So our affiliate in Detroit, WJR, sends a guy into the crowd to ask ’em why they’re there. “Well, we’re here for our rent subsidy.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

“From Obama.”

“Really? Where’s he get it?”

“From his stash.”

“Where did he get it?”

“I don’t care. We don’t know.”

Now, had I been president, that would embarrass me, is my point. It would embarrass me to think that people that voted for me think I’m their dad, that I’m taking care of them, and I wouldn’t put up with it. But people like Obama, the Democrats, live off of it. This is my point. They promote it, they encourage it, and then they excuse these people who aren’t working and who don’t know how to work, never been taught how. They blame that somehow on the Republicans.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Kathy, Grand Blanc, Michigan, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. So fun to talk to you. I had a comment about the discussion you were having on work being the new social issue for the Democrat campaign.

RUSH: Oh, cool.

CALLER: I’ve wondered for a long time, I kind of saw this coming. I’ve been listening to you since the early nineties and I paid attention to the rise of the welfare state.

RUSH: Thank you. I am so happy to hear that you’ve been paying attention, really.

CALLER: Well, I actually wonder what took them so long to actually come out and say it, but it must have been the CBO report. What I wonder, though, is why the Republicans don’t talk to the funders of all these programs, the taxpayers? We’re out here, we’re waiting for —

RUSH: Wait a second. I can answer that. I can answer that in a generic sense. I ran into something, and I don’t have it at my fingertips here, but you know it and I know it, and we’ve suspected it, even talked about it before. But I ran into it over the weekend. Republican consultants advised both McCain in ’08, Romney in 2012: do not criticize Obama. Do not say negative things about Obama. That’s the Republican consultancy class. Do not go after Obama. It’s racial, Kathy. Don’t go after the Democrats ’cause Obama leads them, it’s racist, just don’t go there. The American people do not want to hear Obama criticized. That’s what they’re told.

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