{"id":31225,"date":"2008-12-22T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:00:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T03:00:03","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T03:00:03","slug":"hypocrisy_charity_and_perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2008\/12\/22\/hypocrisy_charity_and_perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Hypocrisy, Charity and Perception"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Virginia in Bristol, Tennessee. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes. Hello, Rush. Merry Christmas to you — <\/p>\n

RUSH: Same to you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: — and major dittos from a longtime listener when I can listen, and I have several members who also listen to you faithfully.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Great. Thank you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019d like to bring up two things. First of all, I noticed in the news that there is still a lot of negativity associated with Governor Palin — who, I just wanted to mention, served both honorably as a mayor and now governor with much responsibility from public works to taxes and everything in between — but somehow there seems to be a lack of, you know, honorability in Washington, DC, at this point. But also I wanted to give you a compliment and hopefully a little Merry Christmas gift to you. While my oldest son was in college, he read your first book and Cal Thomas\u2019 book, and he was a business major. He added public administration. He went on for his masters in public administration at American University, and now he\u2019s serving as a public administrator in the field and, you know, working positively and honorably in making changes in his area — you know, almost daily, you know, trying to make a better life for people. And I just want to thank you for that.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You\u2019re more than welcome. I\u2019m happy to be accredited or associated with the good works of your son.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, he\u2019s doing well, and he loves what he does, and works hard. But that\u2019s why it bothers me when people in Washington downplay what people do, like what Governor Palin did from mayor on up and to people who have worked —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, you know, there\u2019s this thing called campaign rhetoric and this thing called politics. Sarah Palin was targeted for destruction precisely because she\u2019s effective, because she was rallying excited crowds that outdid Obama\u2019s. Obama\u2019s crowds were showing up just to be there. Sarah Palin\u2019s crowds showed up because of what she was saying, not how she was saying it. They showed up because they were genuinely thrilled to have somebody representing their point of view in a national campaign, and this scared a lot of people. It scared Republicans who are of the Rockefeller moderate stripe, the Colin Powell-Bill Weld Republicans. It scared Democrats and liberals. It scared the media. So she had to be destroyed. Folks, we\u2019re going to have to understand something. There\u2019s no such thing as an incompetent Democrat or liberal. Look, it makes total sense, common sense to compare Sarah Palin and her life with Caroline Schlossberg.<\/p>\n

In a case of those two women, there is no question — cut-and-dried, hands down — who is the more qualified to serve in an elected position in Washington, DC. It\u2019s not even close! Yet Caroline Schlossberg is said to be qualified because of her last name, because of her DNA, because she\u2019s ‘a mother,\u2019 and because ‘she cares.\u2019 Look at this Clinton Massage Parlor Library Foundation. Look at the conflicts of interest! Look, ladies and gentlemen. Practically all of the oil nations and sheiks from the Middle East have thrown gobs of money at the Clintons. His wife is going to be Secretary of State. Talk about a conflict of interest? But it will not be a Clinton because where the Democrats are concerned, there\u2019s no possibility of ethics violations, except in the case of Blagojevich, and these are selected cases. <\/p>\n

The same rules do not apply. Somebody sent me a note earlier today when we did our side-by-side comparison of Blagojevich and his denial press conference on Friday. I had Shanklin do the whole thing in the voice of Obama, and I said, ‘Be Obama. I don\u2019t want any funny affectations. Just be who the guy is because I want to illustrate that it\u2019s how he says what he says not what he says, that mesmerizes people.\u2019 So Shanklin did a good job and he put in all of the protracted, elongated pauses, ‘Eeeh, uuuh, ummmm.\u2019 Somebody sent me a note and said, ‘Look, Nixon did the same thing. Nixon had these pregnant pauses where he was thinking. How come Obama is treated one way and Nixon another?\u2019 (snorts) It\u2019s the template. Obama\u2019s thoughtful. Obama\u2019s The Messiah. Obama\u2019s deep. <\/p>\n

Nixon was a schemer. All Republicans are schemers! To expect the same kinds of standards to be applied here by the media is never, ever going to happen. Those standards have to be applied evenly by voters. And if there are a lot of voters who are not treated to a daily dose of just how unethical and corrupt Democrats are, then the argument is that they will never know it. It\u2019s just the world we live in. It\u2019s one of the challenges that we all face to take the truth to as far and wide an audience as possible. Look, here\u2019s another one. There\u2019s a great… I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m saying this. It\u2019s a great column by Nicholas Kristof, published on Saturday in the New York Times. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s entitled, ‘Bleeding Heart Tightwads,\u2019 and the essence of Mr. Kristof\u2019s column is how shocked researchers have been recently to learn that conservatives and Republicans are far more personally charitable of than liberal Democrats. He says, ‘We liberals are personally stingy. Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.\u2019 Now, Mr. Kristof, if I might interject here this is not compassion we\u2019re talking about. We\u2019re talking about hypocrisy. But, see, liberals cannot ever be called ‘hypocrites.\u2019 Democrats will never be called hypocrites, either. He talks about a book by Arthur Brooks: Who Really Cares? <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Arthur Brooks is referenced by Nicholas Kristof in his Saturday New York Times column, ‘Bleeding Heart Tightwads.\u2019 Arthur Brooks, by the way, is a guy that writes a lot of things, scholarly works. He\u2019s the guy who has chronicled how conservatives and Republicans are much happier people than liberal Democrats are. ‘Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, ‘Who Really Cares,\u2019 cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals. Other research has reached similar conclusions. The ‘generosity index\u2019 from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so. <\/p>\n

‘The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans…\u2019 Mr. Kristof, I must say, the fact that this surprises anybody is the problem. You guys live in your protected, cocoon-like worlds with all of your templates so that real-world truth is a shock. Conservatives have always known, instinctively, that Republicans and conservatives are far more personally charitable than liberals are. Liberals love to use other people\u2019s money to get their credit for compassion. ‘The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans… ‘When I started doing research on charity,\u2019 Mr. Brooks wrote, ‘I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Well, bingo! But there he proves our point. This pointy-headed guy, whoever he is, actually thought liberals did care more, because that\u2019s the template. That\u2019s the public relations. I can\u2019t tell you the number of times that people who care for me greatly will come to me and say, talking to me personally and as a conservative, ‘You\u2019ve got to do something to change what people think of you, because you\u2019re really such a nice guy, and all these people out there think you\u2019re the worst thing trodding the earth today.\u2019 Or, ‘You conservatives, you\u2019ve got to get more PR about the good works that you do.\u2019 I said, ‘What\u2019s the point of doing good works? Is it to get credit for it, or is it to do the good works?\u2019 There\u2019s a story (I guess it was yesterday, at some point during my show prep cycle) about all of the military people that George Bush and Dick Cheney personally visited, consoled, thanked, and spoke to over the years; both active military and their families. <\/p>\n

And everybody is shocked, because they thought that Bush was this cold-hearted, mean-spirited guy who sent other people\u2019s kids off to die in battle and didn\u2019t care. Now, those of us who know George W. Bush know just the exact opposite. But Bush doesn\u2019t do it to get credit for it. Our culture today is largely built on perception, not reality, and this is a great illusion. The reality of personal charitable giving is that Republicans, conservatives, personally contribute twice — more than double — what liberals contribute privately, and yet everybody thinks they\u2019re the ones who care. Everybody thinks they\u2019re the ones who are the good guys. You know, when people say to me personally, ‘Rush, why do all these people have these wrong perceptions about you? Why don\u2019t you do something about it?\u2019 I said, ‘What could I possibly do? They know. They already know the truth. They\u2019re not going to report it. They\u2019ve got their templates.\u2019<\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019m hated and despised by these people because I\u2019m effective. They\u2019re not interested in making me look good, and I don\u2019t do what I do to look good. I\u2019m not in this for public relations. My whole career, what I do privately, charitably, I\u2019m not into it for public relations. You know, the Harry Reid Smear Letter, that was a different thing. That was him trying to smear me and so forth with this ‘phony soldiers\u2019 business, but that was a giant national fundraising effort. It was not done to make me look good. It was done to embarrass Harry Reid and to raise money for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation using a Harry Reid written-and-signed letter. Let me expand this, this whole notion that people in this country react to public relations (PR moves, image, and so forth), because we just elected a president on that basis. I hadn\u2019t planned on discussing this, so if I tend to stumble while putting my thoughts together, please forgive me. <\/p>\n

But I have been watching this Bernie Madoff scandal unrolled before my very eyes, and for those of you who have been following it, you are well aware that lots of people where I live (Palm Beach, Florida) have either been wiped out or severely hurt, and have lost a tremendous amount of their worth. But the story goes even beyond that. This is a community of… There are three or four different Palm Beaches, and there\u2019s the Palm Beach of everybody\u2019s image, and that is of old blue-bloods who are about 105, who start sipping gin cocktails at 4:30 in the afternoon and still don\u2019t know that we won the Gulf War in \u201991 \u2019cause it doesn\u2019t matter. That Palm Beach doesn\u2019t exist much anymore because those people have gotten old. Those people resented earned income. These are people that inherited family wealth from long, long, long ago. <\/p>\n

They look down on earned income. They\u2019re not just here, but anywhere in the country where there\u2019s this level of society. There\u2019s another Palm Beach that features the sons and daughters of the blue-bloods, who wouldn\u2019t know how to work a day in their lives if they had to, so they depend on coupon clipping and this sort of thing. I never see any of these people, by the way. I only read about them, but I don\u2019t see them. The other two Palm Beaches are made up of an ever increasing younger demographic who are still working, but because of the prosperity of the US economy, are able to afford to live somewhere either here or near here. This group still works, and those people hang around with each other. Some are semiretired but they\u2019re certainly not the blue-bloods of the old past. Now, in the Madoff scandal, what is being highlighted here — and I\u2019ve always had a bugaboo about this<\/p>\n

This is going to be a tough thing for me to explain, because I\u2019ve thought about it for decades. I\u2019ve been suspicious of it for decades, but I have never articulated it to anyone, certainly not publicly like this, \u2019cause it always seemed to be taboo because we\u2019re talking charities. But I\u2019ve always been amazed at how one climbs the ranks of society by being involved in ‘charities.\u2019 Many of these people don\u2019t donate a dime to the charity. They go out and raise money for a gigantic party, or series of balls or what have you — where the women put on their finest clothes and jewelry and the men reluctantly, you know, stuff themselves into tuxedos; and they head to these fabulous places where the cost to put the whole thing on may be a million dollars and the net amount raised is a hundred grand. All of the newspaper society reporters are there. All of the photographers are there; all the phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n\u2019 roller people who are impressed with people who have wealth. <\/p>\n

They might be reprobates. They might be worthless. They might be mean. They might be dull, boring. But because they have a lot of money, they are fascinating and what they do is considered fascinating. So this creates a cycle where these sometimes dull, boring, dry, phony frauds that are not donating a dime but are going out there and asking everybody else to give them a dime, then get their pictures in the society pages and written up. And they massage the reporters and they try to get all this good stuff said about them. They try to get themselves on the boards of directors of a lot of charities. They create boards of directors and put themselves on these things. It\u2019s all image. It\u2019s all PR. And they get all this credit for caring — and they are all liberal Democrats, the vast majority of them, and they\u2019re all empty suits. At the end of the day, there\u2019s nothing there. <\/p>\n

The Madoff scandal is illustrating this. All these charities have been wiped out, and you have to ask yourself, ‘Was the money ever really there?\u2019 There was a lot of money running around, but all these people owed it to each other in one way or another. Did anybody ever really have it? And if they had it, did they give it all to Madoff, and did he then redistributed the profits that came in the door out another door? I\u2019m spinning off of this story here about how conservatives are far more personally charitable than liberals, and yet liberals get all the credit. They get all the notice because they\u2019re on boards of charities, and they hold parties for charities. Hell, folks, try this. It gets to the point that retail outlets will hold a fundraiser for a zoo or something, and all the swells in town — it\u2019s not just here, a number of places — will show up to sip champagne, and donate 75 bucks or so, so that the baby jaguar can eat for another day. <\/p>\n

It\u2019ll show up on the all the society pages and columns of how greatly contributing these people are, how compassionate they all are, when the whole point here is for the retail outlet hosting the thing to sell whatever they\u2019ve got inside the store and to get publicity. It\u2019s all PR. There isn\u2019t a whole lot of substance to it, as this Madoff thing is illustrating. Some people — with the highest of reputations, the most impeccable reputations — are now toast \u2019cause they were associated with Madoff. I\u2019ll guarantee you: in the privacy of their homes, they\u2019re devastated, not just over the money that was swindled, but because of the loss of stature that they feel. I look at this, and I feel a little sad because the people who pursue stature to me are people who will never, ever be happy \u2019cause it\u2019s all external. It\u2019s all based on what you can craft as an image, which is what? What people think of you rather than crafting a life of substance and genuineness based on what you do, and who cares who knows about it. <\/p>\n

In fact, a lot of people want to live that way. They want to live a little anonymously so as not to be browbeat when their charitable donations are discovered. I look at all the money donated to charity in this country and I look at all the tax revenue that\u2019s transferred to the needy, and I really don\u2019t understand why we have needy people. All of the charitable giving and all of the taxes and all the transfers… What is it now, seven to $8 trillion in just the Great Society alone has been transferred from producers to non-producers since 1964, and we\u2019ve still got the same percentages of people in need. Every year a bunch of brand-new charities pop up, competing for the charitable donations, the charitable dollar, and we find that some of those are frauds. It\u2019s all about people trying to ingratiate themselves in some social structure someplace, in some social climate somewhere. In those situations, it\u2019s not the kind of person you are; it\u2019s how much money you have, and that\u2019s what\u2019s attractive about you, and I just think that\u2019s horrible. <\/p>\n

Well, to each his own. I would just hate to be trapped in that kind of life. So we have all of these templates, all of these theories that conservatives are mean-spirited, rotten SOBs, cold-hearted and mean. Liberals are the giants of compassion, the giants of tolerance! It\u2019s just the exact opposite. Liberals are tightwads. They try to give a lot of money that\u2019s not theirs. Conservatives do a lot of things privately. Nobody knows about it because they\u2019re focused on the good works. Conservatives don\u2019t seek PR because it\u2019s very difficult to get it unless you go out and hire a PR firm, and even then that\u2019s a waste of time. Hiring a PR firm is an abject, utter waste of time. You know what a PR firm is going to tell you? I\u2019ll use myself here. It\u2019s easier to do that. Let\u2019s say I\u2019m concerned about my public image, and I want it changed. I\u2019m going to go out, and I\u2019m going to hire the best PR firm I can. You know what they\u2019re going to tell me to do? They\u2019re going to arrange a meeting with the New York Times editorial board. This has happened to me. <\/p>\n

I said, ‘Why do I need to talk to them? I\u2019m hiring you!\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘Well, they need to speak with you. They need to see who the real you is.\u2019<\/p>\n

Okay, then I fire them, \u2019cause there\u2019s no way that\u2019s going to change anything. I\u2019m not gonna go groveling to some editorial board! It is what it is. And if you can\u2019t be made happy by the substance in your life — if you have to rely on what other people think of you and phony baloney, crafted images — then you are setting yourself up for some type of similar experience to those who got involved with Bernie Madoff. Maybe not on that big scale, but certainly on some scale.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: If you are a Limbaugh Letter subscriber, ladies and gentlemen, we had this story about how conservatives are far more generous than liberals on a personal level. In the May 2008 issue of the Limbaugh Letter on pages 12 and 13, what is amazing about it is that it\u2019s found its way into a New York Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof, who has written a piece called, ‘Bleeding Tightwads.\u2019 Now, Mr. Brooks also, the author of the book entitled Who Really Cares, writes this: ‘When my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views,\u2019 which are, conservatives are more personally charitable by half, or by two times than liberals are. This guy tried everything he could to massage the facts, and he had to change his views. He also found this: ‘If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.\u2019 But then again we\u2019d have to ask ourselves, do we want liberal blood coursing through the veins of otherwise innocent people? <\/p>\n

Quickly, Mary in Madison, New Jersey. Great to have you on the program. Nice to have you here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Nice to be here, Rush. Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Same to you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I read Who Really Cares last year, or earlier this year I guess it was, and one of the things that I\u2019m thinking is out there among your listenership I know there are a lot of Democrats, and they\u2019ll be thinking, ‘Oh, sure, Republicans have more money, that\u2019s why they give more money,\u2019 you know, the party of the rich. But it turns out that Arthur Brooks found he compared statistically family to family, according to income, and people in the family, so it\u2019s leveled, it\u2019s person to person, and there\u2019s no doubt about it, conservatives are more generous people, and I found not only with their money, but also with their time. They volunteer behind the scenes. They don\u2019t show up at balls —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Exactly right. <\/p>\n

CALLER: — they do the grunt work in the back room.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Look, we do have our charlatans who do things for show.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: But there\u2019s also substance behind what they\u2019re doing. They just want public credit for it. A lot of us couldn\u2019t care less about the public credit. But it\u2019s an interesting question. Even in similar income levels, the charitable contributions, personable, of conservatives dwarf liberals, and there has to be a reason for this. And I, ladies and gentlemen, know what it is.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Donna in Dallas, great to have you on the program.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It\u2019s good to talk to you.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Same here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: My opinion about why liberals don\u2019t give as much as conservatives is because deep in their heart, they believe that it\u2019s the government\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, there\u2019s a lot of truth to that. Remember liberals, too, are people who get by. They really think they\u2019re good people just because they tell people they care. Liberals don\u2019t have do diddly-squat to fix anything. In fact, liberals can make it worse, but as long as while they\u2019re making it worse, they talk about how much they care; it\u2019s their good intentions, of course, versus their results. But I think if you look, Donna — and this will be controversial to some, but that\u2019s what you expect when you hire me. I think you\u2019ll find religion is a (if not the) dominant key. I can\u2019t prove it. It\u2019s just my instincts here. I think religion and the notion of private, charitable works is a fundamental reason why there is far more personal charity from conservatives as opposed to liberals. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Andrew in Molalla, Oregon. Hey! Nice to have you on the program, sir. Welcome.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Welcome to you, too, Rush. Merry Christmas. Good to talk to you.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I appreciate that.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I had a question to the Madoff scandal. They are telling us, the news media and everything, that that money just disappeared. I thought maybe you were the expert that could tell me where in the world it disappeared to.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right, now, where do you think the money went? Let\u2019s use the figure $50 billion because that\u2019s what Madoff said. Nobody really knows yet how much, but let\u2019s use the $50 billion figure — and it\u2019s a Ponzi scheme. You know what that is, obviously?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes, sir.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay. So where do you think the money went? <\/p>\n

CALLER: That\u2019s still an unanswerable. Heh, heh.<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, it\u2019s very answerable. Let\u2019s walk through the steps here, because this is — by the way, I don\u2019t blame you for asking. This is the one element of the story that the ‘exhaustive examinations\u2019 by the Drive-Bys have yet to answer. You have a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that starts whatever number of years ago. You go out to your original investors and they give you whatever, a billion dollars. And you have that billion, and you take your share of it as the schemer. You siphon off whatever you want, and then you pay whoever your runners are. The notion he was doing this on his own is difficult to believe. He had to have people hyping the business. And we know, we found out who they are. They were getting a point-and-a-half per investment, gross investment made by clients. And the way they were doing this is going out and telling people about these great returns this guy is getting and then denying them access to the fund. <\/p>\n

You tell somebody (especially this crowd that thinks they\u2019re a cut above anyway) that there\u2019s something super-exclusive, outperforming anything and they can\u2019t get in, that just makes \u2019em want it more, and so you hook \u2019em. So he had a bunch of runners, he had a bunch of hookers that were getting these people in. The money comes in, and the runners, the rainmakers, they get their take. The schemer takes his and puts it someplace. He buys three yachts. He buys a corporate jet. He buys four homes. Then he buys his brother a home, buys all these things, and that creates the public image that, ‘Wow, is this thing really growing! Look at Bernie!\u2019 And then Bernie starts joining country clubs, starts playing golf with these guys and he starts joining these charities himself, and he starts showing up at all these charitable benefits in a black tie, and he\u2019s the toast of the town. He\u2019s making everybody rich — and he\u2019s getting rich, understandably so. People don\u2019t begrudge him his five houses or four and his airplane, and his three yachts, one in the Med. Oh, four houses. He had one on the Cote d\u2019Azur in the south of France. <\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, he\u2019s not paying returns. What happens is that the first billion or whatever it is that comes in, Bernie lops off his share, and he does probably invest that money somewhere for a while. He keeps recruiting new money, Andrew, and what happens is these original investors are the ones that do get paid. The first people in the Ponzi people always get paid, but how did they get paid? In this case they got paid by seeing a financial statement that said their investment was growing at 10% a year, no matter what happens. They might have taken some cash out of it now and then, but the odds are they left it there. So the money that went in, Madoff got to do with it whatever he wanted, and this just kept going and going and going. <\/p>\n

As new people sent money in the front door, Madoff would send out financial statements to his early investors showing these increased profits. If some of them wanted cash, he had the cash on hand to send to them. The money on paper actually went to the investors. What has happened is, we find out that it was all on paper. It was never actually really invested. What he had to do, what any Ponzi scam artist has to do is to keep taking money coming in the front door and giving a little bit of it away to the people in the backside who were the first in, in order to make it look like things are growing. Now, there was whatever it was, and that $50 billion is somewhere. It has not vanished. It\u2019s just not in the investment accounts that the investors put up that Bernie Madoff started for them. It is somewhere. It didn\u2019t just vanish. It vanished from those who had it. It was stolen from them. And, you know, Andrew, what brought all this to light was the market plunge.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Democrat Party may have brought down Bernie Madoff with this October Surprise plunging market. Because even his robust clients (who thought he could do no wrong, who were seeing 10% increases while the market was down 30%) apparently enough of them got panicked at the same time and they made requests for redemptions, meaning they wanted their cash for these accounts that they thought they had, totaling $7 billion; and he didn\u2019t have it, and he couldn\u2019t raise it. He was feverishly trying to raise new money from new investors for his scheme, from China and from the Middle East, to cover that $7 billion. He could not get it. So when there was no cash, that\u2019s when he gave it up. <\/p>\n

The money is somewhere. It\u2019s impossible for it to have vanished because it existed. And remember, some of the people who invested got some back early on. This was going on for years. You know that people have cashed out some of these investments and sold them. At some point, this had to be legit. There had to be a small share of it that was legit. There had to be some genuine investment in some genuine market instruments early on. After a while, after the early customers are satisfied, they then sell their reputation to Madoff. ‘Oh, yeah. When I need it, it\u2019s always there. You don\u2019t want to take it out, though. It\u2019s growing by leaps and bounds.\u2019 So after a while, nobody wants it. They trust him totally because everybody doing business with him sings a song of his reputation that is just impeccable, unassailable. So the money is somewhere. That\u2019s what they\u2019re trying to figure out now in The Lipstick Building and the three floors that Madoff occupied.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Gail in Sioux Falls, I have one minute, but I wanted to get to you. Welcome to the program.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Rush, Christmas greetings from the frigid Midwest.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you, sir.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Being one of your students, I hark back to about eight years ago when Dick Cheney divested himself of his holdings and gave I think nearly $7 million to charity, and I believe that Algore, the record that was made public was just a little under $400 dollars.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s right, Cheney, $7 million from his Halliburton holdings.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And I think the number for Algore was $256. I might be confusing it, but you\u2019re right, it was less than $400. But, see, that\u2019s not hypocrisy. No, no, no, in the current realm, see, Algore cares. He spends his life helping other people. Not being cold-hearted. His whole public persona has been to help people. That\u2019s how this works.<\/line><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Virginia in Bristol, Tennessee. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Yes. Hello, Rush. Merry Christmas to you — RUSH: Same to you. CALLER: — and major dittos from a longtime listener when I can listen, and I have several members who also listen to you faithfully. RUSH: Great. Thank you. 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