RUSH: Hey, Rush, I’m a 24/7 member. I usually listen to every word you say, and I believe you. Yesterday I was having a rough day, as it seems you were. But I really got sick of you referring to unemployed people as people who don’t want to work. You were talking about California’s debt and you kept referring to the unemployed as people that don’t want to work. Well, I don’t live in California but I am unemployed, I’m 52, I’m female, and I’m sick that it’s so difficult to find work. I’m not proud to be unemployed. I certainly wish I was gainfully employed. Don’t tell me and everybody else that we’re happy to be unemployed and afraid to go to work.
Finally some spunk! If the e-mail was from California I’d feel better about this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to get back to the angry e-mail from Patty, who was fit to be tied. She said she had to turn my show off yesterday because I kept referring to the unemployed as people who don’t want to work. I was referring specifically yesterday to California where they are paying $40 million a day to pay people to not work. Forty million dollars a day. ‘I’m not proud to be unemployed,’ said Patty. ‘I certainly wish I was gainfully employed. The unemployment rate is almost 10% by the government numbers. You and I know it’s much higher than that. Please stop referring to me and millions of others who work 20, 30 years or more and now have to find work in this terrible economy as people who don’t want to work. Thank you.’
Why do you think that Democrats come up with school breakfast, school lunch, and school dinner? Yes, there’s now school dinner, and it ain’t gonna be long before there’s school midnight buffet, and then school snack. All of this is to buy votes, and it bothers me, it bothers me greatly. One of the reasons I was fit to be tied yesterday is because I just get sickened over the human destruction that takes place with the Democrat Party in power, with liberalism, with leftists. They destroy people’s dreams, ambition. They take away their humanity and they make ’em forever dependent. What do you get when you’re dependent? You get nothing and you always are agitated, and you’re always living in fear that somebody’s gonna take it away from you. You never learn how to provide for yourself. You end up resenting those who do. So we have a permanent class struggle created by the Democrat Party, created by the American left on purpose for their own power circumstances.
My tipping point yesterday was those schlubs over in the UK protesting tuition increases at university. Well, I got two stories today. One is from the French News Agency, and the other one is the UK Telegraph. ‘Benefits Culture is ‘National Crisis’, says Iain Duncan Smith.’ He’s the Work and Pensions Secretary in the UK. The Work and Pensions Secretary, this, I guess, is the equivalent of the head honcho of the Social Security administration, right? Here’s the story: ‘Iain Duncan Smith has described Britain’s welfare dependency culture –‘ and we’re headed there, folks, thanks to the Democrat Party, and that’s what this deficit panel is trying to create. ‘– as a ‘national crisis’ as he unveiled his reforms to the benefits system,’ and there’s that word. I just recoil at the word ‘benefits.’ Obama uses it all the time, talking about your benefits. You gotta get your benefits. We are training people that what government is is a source of benefits. And they’re always paid by somebody else, namely you and me.
The British government has gotten to a point where they have to convince people that it will pay to take a job, as opposed to seeking benefits. ‘Around four million jobs were created in the economic boom from the mid 1990s but 4.5 million remained on out of work benefits before the recession had started. He said a new Universal Benefit would lift 350,000 children and 500,000 working age adults out of poverty, while the number of ‘workless households’ would be cut by 300,000.’ Workless households. Workless households. Kind of like Food Justice. ‘The new scheme would also mean that 700,000 people on low wages would be able to keep more of their earnings by 2017. He said: ‘We want them to see the opportunities of work.’ … Mr Duncan Smith added that the changes were a recognition that ‘as a political class we have got this wrong for too long.” Okay, now, that’s the UK Telegraph story. Of course, the fact that would come to the biggest surprise to many people in this country is that businesses do not operate to provide benefits, and the government doesn’t exist to provide benefits.
Now, I can just imagine all these little New Castrati sissies sitting out there dialing their phones trying to get through to me to tell me what a mean, rotten scoundrel I am; about how I have no compassion, and it’s just the exact opposite. I want the best for everybody, and it ain’t found in government benefits, it’s not found on the unemployment line. I’m sorry, that’s not where it’s found. So you get this UK Telegraph story focusing on benefits. The French News Agency headlines it this way: ‘Government to Stop Benefits for Some Unemployed — The coalition unveiled plans to withhold handouts –‘ I kinda like that language. ‘The coalition unveiled plans to withhold handouts for up to three years for those who refuse a job Thursday in the biggest shake-up of the post-war welfare state, a day after violent protests rocked London.’ This is the real reason for those protests yesterday. It had nothing to do with tuition. You had two groups out there protesting. You had the students, and we were told in the news aftermath that there was to be a peaceful protest, the students exercising their wonderful human rights to go out and protest the rising cost of tuition, blah, blah, but then the anarchists heard about it and the anarchists ran out there and the story in the UK press last night was the anarchists hijacked the protest, turned it violent and went to the home of the Tories, their headquarters, the conservatives, and started kicking in windows of the office building where they are.
Now, I guaran-damn-tee you the anarchists were not showing up because of college tuition increases. The anarchists are showing up because of this. The anarchists were showing up because the government’s pension and work secretary was talking about the end of handouts. The anarchists were the ones carrying signs that said, ‘Free Education or up yours.’ Free education, why not just have a free everything? ‘The government also plans a ‘universal credit’ instead of the current system of separate benefit payments for housing and childcare as part of reforms aimed at cutting Britain’s massive deficit. … ‘This government is unashamedly pro-work,’ Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said in a speech to a volunteer group before he unveiled the plans before parliament.’ This guy is gonna start more riots with this kinda talk. In fact, I’m convinced that this is what caused the riots yesterday. So the government wants to introduce a sliding scale of penalties for those who either decline a job offer or fail to apply for a job they are advised to or don’t turn up for mandatory four week manual labor placements.
You know, welfare now accounts for a third of government spending in the UK, welfare, one-third of government spending. When you have to have austerity programs, because it’s not sustainable, they don’t have the money to do this, no society ever does, no government, via taxes, whatever. It just can’t be sustainable. So, when they have to pull it back, all these poor people have been conditioned to think this is what life is, they’re of course gonna raise hell. And we’re looking at our future here. We see it right in front of us. And there are ways to avoid this, by the way.