RUSH: Hamilton, Georgia. Hi, Mark. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, I listen to you a lot. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t. I’d like to preface I hope we can have a discussion. I am not a Republican. I am not a Democrat. I am not a liberal. I am not a conservative. I feel as though I’m a human being on planet Earth.
RUSH: Are you a moderate? Independent?
CALLER: I no longer believe in our political system. I think the entire system has become corrupted with something called lobbyism, which in my view is a politically correct name for legalized government bribery.
RUSH: There’s a new name for it called corporatism, and a lot of people would agree with you.
CALLER: Yes, and I think our entire system has become so corrupted that it doesn’t matter whether I vote for a Democrat or Republican, ’cause they’re all gonna do the same thing.
RUSH: Well, you know, there are a lot of people that believe — in fact, I was watching this on TV the other night. Red Reddington on the Blacklist was sitting in front of the White House and he was telling an FBI agent, “It doesn’t matter who lives there. Who lives there has no effect on what happens in the world. This world is run by powerful people and corporations and terrorists and criminals and thugs, and they’re the ones running the show, and whoever’s in there, it doesn’t matter.” Red Reddington said that. It may be something like that you agree with.
CALLER: Well, in some degree I have to look at the truth of the matter, is that no matter who you are, even an independent, I mean, no one is voting for independents or Libertarians because they don’t believe they can win, but even to get on the ballot and even to have your name recognized in any form, shape or manner, you have to get money, and this means that, yes, corporatism is something that you just mentioned, I agree, but I have six issues, and I know we can’t talk about them all, but I believe that one of the problems facing our country concerning the debt is all these pensions that we pay out, be it military pensions or government job pensions. If you work for the government in this country, you sign up, and you work for 15 to 20 years, you get a pension for life. Now, nobody in the private sector gets that.
RUSH: Well, you know, that’s not just true, the federal government, that’s all the way down to town councils, that’s little towns. If you’re a fireman, police officer for 15 years, retire, you get a percentage of your salary for the rest of your life.
CALLER: Right. You know, I can’t complain because my father was 20 years military, and then he was 20 years civil service, and he gets two pensions now. So, you know, I’m not one to complain, but still, I have to look at that problem and I think that our government at least needs to start addressing that problem, at least saying, “Okay, in the future, we’re gonna have to curtail these pensions.” We can’t keep giving out all these pensions ’cause this is absolutely not sustainable, financially it’s not sustainable. Maybe it would be —
RUSH: Well, you know, one of the problems here, Mark, I mean, you’re right, there’s a lot of people, you are basically sounding like somebody in the Tea Party. They’re upset at the debt. They’re upset at the irresponsibility of all this. They’re upset that the power structure, what’s called the ruling class of Washington, is taking care of themselves at the expense of everybody else. And both parties do it, a lot of people believe. And the Republican Party is thought to be people that don’t believe in this. They believe in responsible fiscal behavior. They don’t believe in racking up big debt, but they don’t fight back against any of this.
CALLER: You know, I believe in responsibility myself also, completely.
RUSH: Well, that’s great.
CALLER: I do not believe in abortion. I believe abortion is wrong. I think people should take more responsibility before they get themselves pregnant. There’s a lot of things that I completely agree with you on. There are certain things that I don’t. I think that nuclear radioactive waste is very bad for our planet as witnessed by Fukushima Daiichi Japan now. Also in Washington state we have tanks —
RUSH: Don’t tell me, don’t tell me you’re in favor of these newfangled lightbulbs, then? Don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me that.
CALLER: (laughing) Have you heard about the LED lightbulbs? I think Philips got the contract.
RUSH: Yeah, I’ve got ’em in my iPad, I think.
CALLER: Yeah, LED light is becoming — (crosstalk)
RUSH: No, mine’s exo. Mine’s exo, it’s not LED.
CALLER: Compact fluorescents are gonna go out and they’re gonna get replaced by this LED stuff.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah.
CALLER: So, yes, I do believe in modern advancements.
RUSH: A light emitting diode, for those of you who don’t know what an LED is. And the more LEDs you got, the more light emitting diodes, the more battery power it takes, the more coal you have to burn.
CALLER: What is it, liquid electronic display, I think that’s what it means. They used to be liquid crystal display, but liquid crystal uses up a lot more energy than liquid electric display. But, anyway, yeah, you know, I can’t stand by as a human being and say that nuclear radioactive waste is a good thing.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: It’s not. It’s a terrible thing. And I think that we do need to start looking — and I know you disagree —
RUSH: Well, look, it sounds like in that sense, Mark, the Democrat Party is your party, because they want to take us back way in the past to windmills. That’s as old-fashioned as you can get, windmills. They’re the ones that want to get rid of incandescent lightbulbs and replace ’em with lightbulbs that have mercury in it that can kill you or poison you badly if they break. But the Democrats are the ones that are really anti-nuclear and anti-progress.
They’re the ones that believe in global warming and that man’s destroying the planet. You say you’re just a citizen of planet Earth, not a Republican or Democrat, but, you know, the Democrat Party sounds like it’s the party for you. ‘Cause, you know, these people are ancient. They’re opposed to progress. Any progress they consider to be a major problem, and they start ripping into it. So I can see how you’re conflicted with all this. But I appreciate the call. I really do.
You know, more and more people, folks, in all candor now, what he said at the beginning here, he called it lobbyism, but I said what it really is is corporatism, or actually crony capitalism would be another term for it. That is as big a problem as any that we face outside of socialism, communism, and some people think there’s no difference in the two right now. I mean, some people would tell you that we really don’t have socialism because the left is not desirous of owning the means of production, they just want to steal everything that is produced.
And the way they do it, the way they steal everything that’s produced, every dollar of income, they take it, they want it. Every product, they want to tax it to the point they get all the money, and they do this by aligning themselves with whoever is in power. And there is a lot of corporate cronyism or crony capitalism going on with Obama. He co-opted the hospitals. He co-opted the insurance companies. He got them to essentially support their own destruction by promising them spoils, promising them money and customers because they were gonna be close to him.
They supported him, and so they abandoned their normal flow of self-interest, and they abandoned any pretense of free markets, and they just gave it up and they totally aligned themselves with who was in power because who was in power was gonna take care of them if they supported what Obama wanted. Like GE, which is making money hand over fist. But Obama decided to give them grants of billions of dollars to explore some avenue of green energy. And Jeff Immelt, the CEO, ends up on Obama’s jobs council, for crying out loud.
GE ends up not paying any taxes. So that’s an example of crony capitalism. Obama and the wind bunch or solar bunch with Solyndra and so forth. These people just gave up making it in the free market and accepted the spoils of being close to power in the White House and that is a major problem here.