RUSH: This is Bob in South Jacksonville, Florida. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. Hello, Rush. Been listening to you for years. Keep up the good work, especially now.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Listen, Barney Frank, I heard him, he’s talking about pushing this $500,000 limit to all industries. What about the star basketball or football players so poor people can go see sporting events, too? How about that?
RUSH: That’s not going to happen. He’s not going to limit the pay of movie stars, athletes, or any of this. Look, this is not new. Grab audio sound bite number 29. This is not new. If you want to know where this executive pay limitation garbage began, you need go back only as far back as 1993, and it was the president of the United States, Clinton, who put a limit on the deductibility that a corporation may deduct on a CEO or executive salary. You could pay the CEO ten mill, but you could only deduct one million of it as a business expense. Do you know what this gave rise to? Yes, Snerdley, this limitation gave rise to the now-famous stock option. And how many of you people have been told to resent people who have stock options? Well, I remember Michael Eisner in December of 1992, just a month before Slick Willie was to be inaugurated, Michael Eisner cashed in $292 million of stock options from Disney to escape Mr. Clinton’s forthcoming retroactive tax increase. Well, some stock options were in existence, but the whole notion of limiting any kind of executive pay caused creative people to come up with other ways to pay themselves. And it’s going to happen now.
This $500,000 limit on executive pay, let me tell you why it won’t work. New York City will die! New York City needs a whole bunch of people being paid a whole lot of money so they can tax their butts off so that the city can maintain its stupid streets, potholes, and welfare state. Without the super wealthy in New York, it’s over. You might as well go get Kurt Russell in there, put a fence around the whole country and turn it into a prison, because that’s what it would be — Escape from New York, did you see the movie? That’s what it would be if you start limiting the pay of people whose taxes pay the freight in that city. That’s why it’s never going to happen. It’s just a populist ruse. It’s just designed to get people to, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ People are going to get poorer under Obama. Their taxes are going to go up. They’re not going to have jobs. They’re going to be angry. One way of ameliorating the anger is to say these bastard SOB execs are not going to get any more than $500,000. That’s supposed to make you happy when you head down to the unemployment office for your check. That’s supposed to make you happy when you cash in your food stamps for some dog food, that some CEO has been limited to $500,000, when the CEO is going to make as much as he always did, particularly if he isn’t accepting any bailout money.
So you’re being played like Stradivariuses. You’re being played like a bunch of violins. All this is typical liberal smoke and mirrors. You’re gonna get poor, you’re gonna get jobless, you’re gonna have inflation, you’re gonna have inflation so bad it’s going to be climbing into every pore of your body. You think your home is worthless now, give it five years. But the CEOs, ‘Yeah, we’re going to screw those SOBs! We’re going to make sure they make no more than 500 grand, and while we’re at it, we’re going to get back that $165 million. That’s your money. That’s your money. We’re going to get your money back for you from those dreaded AIG drecks. We’re going to get your money back for you. That’s right.’ Why, here, listen to Barney Frank tell us how he’s going to.
FRANK: Senator Dodd sponsored that in the Senate, and there was some modification. There are two things about call back. We have required call back with regard to any new rules compensation they have to have call back. The question about whether or not you can retroactively, if that’s a problem a piece of legislation wouldn’t necessarily have cured that. My own view, what I will be talking to the administration about, is people have been looking at that from the standpoint of the federal government as the entity that lent the money to these parties. We’re the owner of that company. There are some covenants that have kept us from doing that. I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights and then say as owner, ‘No, I’m not paying you the bonus, you didn’t live up to this contract.’
RUSH: Screw the contract, we own the company, screw the contract, I’m not paying you the bonus. Oh, by the way, I’m not paying your tax refund next year either because I don’t have it, you don’t deserve it, you should be paying more in taxes. Tax refund, oh, by the way, we’re going to raise your taxes, too. This man, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, these are your saviors, these are the people, along with President Obama’s teleprompter, that are going to lead you to the Promised Land of prosperity. God what a bunch of idiot jerks we are in this country. What have we given ourselves? What have we elected for ourselves? You just heard Elmer Fudd. Elmer Fudd is in charge of inspiring and motivating you to be the best you can be, the hell with contracts. We are going to take that bonus money back. Well, if they can do that, then nothing you have is yours.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Kevin in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It’s nice to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, great to talk to you. I got a question. Why doesn’t the CEO of AIG have a press conference, cite the exemption in this stimulus bill, and its author, and then write a check for the $163 million and throw in a couple million for the parties they had and say, ‘Leave us alone’?
RUSH: Well, see, they’ve accepted $173 billion in bailout money, and of the $173 billion, they have awarded $165 million in bonuses. We’ve now learned that Wall Street Journal is reporting Andrew Cuomo’s letter to Barney Frank. Folks, this was known. I’m telling you, everybody knew this but were acting like it’s brand-new — and it is news, ’cause they didn’t know it, but the people acting like they’re shocked and surprised knew it. Let’s see, what did I do with it? Don’t tell me I deleted it. Anyway, there’s something like 40 execs, 43 execs who got a million dollars or more in bonuses, including 11 execs who are no longer there. I must have trashed this. I didn’t mean to trash it. There we go. Let’s see. AIG paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, including 11 who no longer worked for the company, said Andrew Cuomo, the Reichstag attorney general in New York.
The top ten bonus recipients received a combined $42 million, he said. He described these payments in a letter to Barney Frank, Elmer Fudd, who is now trying to figure out how to get the money back. They could write the government a check for $165 million. It won’t matter. This is set in motion now. You see, all of this is a giant political ploy to distract. This is not about $165 million, folks. It’s not about a hundred… If it were about the money they’d be upset at the $93 billion that AIG gave away and didn’t use to shore up its own operations. That’s the dirty little secret! We’ve bailed out AIG with $173 billion, and they funneled $93 billion or more of it to other banks, without shoring up their own operation. This $165 million, this is not about the money. This is a political opportunity to play populism, and they’re creating the same kind of outrage the Dubai Ports Deal did.
It’s the same kind of thing here, but this is fraudulent. This is entirely phony, because AIG announced the bonus structure. They announced the date. It’s been known for months! I can’t say this enough. I’m sorry if you’re listening all day long today and you’re getting tired of me saying this. I’m sorry, but I’m the only voice pointing it out, other than some others. The American Thinker is doing a good job of this on their blog, but nobody is pointing this out. This is all a giant joke! This is a script. It is a three-act play. Have you people been watching ’24,’ by the way? Ohhh! You like it, Brian? Man. I feel like this country is in the middle of its own ’24.’ I mean, I wrote it down. I wrote it down last night. I’ll go through all the things happening in this season of ’24’ with this country involved. Not the TV show, but our own ’24.’ I am Jack Bauer! I am Jack Bauer. My own government’s coming after me at every turn. It happened again yesterday with that bumbling idiot Bob Gibbs. This is an act. This is a three-act play. The script has been written. Everybody’s doing their part, except I’m Jack Bauer, and I’m trying to say, ‘No, no, no! What you’re being told is a bunch of BS. We need to torture some people!’