RUSH: John McCain: Big Oil should return some profit, says prices for gasoline probably won’t drop any lower before the election. Big Oil should return some profit. Here he is on the Today Show today with Matt Lauer. Matt Lauer says, ‘How can you and the other CEOs sleep at night when people are having to choose between feeding their families and filling their tanks? Are those people reacting out of pure emotion, or is there some logic to people who are asking those questions?’
MCCAIN: There’s logic to it and emotion to it. I mean, after all, look what’s happening to Americans who are on fixed income, particularly low-income Americans. The oil companies have got to be more participatory in alternate energy, in sharing their profits in a variety of ways, and there is very strong and justifiable emotion about their profits.
RUSH: Sharing their profits? I have a friend who used to own a major travel agency. He retired. He’s on a fixed income, about $4 million a year from his municipal bond portfolio, tax-free. He’s on a fixed income. When is his wife going to share her profits from the beer distributorship? We need a windfall profits tax for beer distributors, folks. Has Congress ever investigated how beer distributors get to be beer distributors? If we’re going to demonize oil companies and other businesses, why do we leave out beer distributors? It’s like printing money to own one of those things. And what about book deals? Those politicians make lots and lots of money from publishing houses, which are corporations. Has anybody ever held hearings to determine why second-rate politicians get so many lucrative book deals? How is it that certain executives live free and clear of harassment but others do not? This is not the Republican Party I have known, with the tangential standard-bearer making these kinds of attacks.
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RUSH: Anyway, from the Washington Post today: ‘Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a proposal to tax the windfall profits of the nation’s biggest oil companies and eliminate some of [their] tax breaks, rejecting Democratic claims that the measure would help assuage consumer anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline.’ You see? This is classic. They weren’t going to do anything that would lower the price. They weren’t going to increase drilling, right here, right now. They weren’t going to do one thing to produce a drop more energy. All they were going to do was punish Big Oil (while leaving Big Beer alone. Gotta punish Big Oil. Here it is. It’s right in the Washington Post. ‘The Democrats claimed that taxing Big Oil would assuage consumer anger.’ That’s not going to assuage consumer anger. Consumers are a little bit more sophisticated than that.
Okay, so Big Oil gets taxed? Fine and dandy. And the price of gasoline doesn’t drop — and, in fact, keeps going up? And Democrats think people are going to be happy about that? ‘The vote was largely partisan, each party sticking to long-held positions,’ but the interesting thing about this story in the Washington Post is that Chuck Schumer was going to address high gas prices by putting oil profits into a trust fund. Here’s what Schumer says. He said, ‘Today we had a chance to deal with the issue of high gasoline prices, and the Republican senators sent a resounding no. Of everything they have done so far in terms of obstruction, this is the politically most damaging.’ The bill would have used the revenue to create an Energy Independence and Security Trust Fund, tasked with reducing US dependence on foreign and ‘unsustainable’ energy sources and reducing the risks of global warming.’
A trust fund! Sort of like the Social Security trust fund that doesn’t exist. Sort of like the Social Security lockbox that Algore created that sits right next to Hillary’s testicle lockbox — which, by the way, is not quite ready for the Smithsonian ’cause she’s still using it. A trust fund? Here, Schumer says it again: ‘[W]e had a chance to deal with the issue of high gasoline prices’ by taxing the oil companies. They’re supposed to ‘share’ their profits with the government. They’re supposed to give their profits to the government in a trust fund!
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RUSH: Audio sound bite number two, Matt Lauer. ‘Senator McCain, can we make advances in the gas price coming down in that short a time?’
MCCAIN: I don’t think that it’s going to be dramatically changed, but I can’t predict to you except to say to you: I don’t think it’s going much lower —
LAUER: So these are —
MCCAIN: — and it could go higher.
LAUER: These are the good old days?
MCCAIN: Well, they were — no, I don’t think they’re the good old days.
LAUER: It’s not going to get any better?
MCCAIN: The good old days were a couple of years ago.
LAUER: It’s not going to get any better than this?
MCCAIN: I don’t think so, not when you’ve got a finite supply, basically, and a cartel controllin’ it.
RUSH: (big sigh) Stand by to go to break. Stand by to go to break. A cartel doesn’t control this.
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RUSH: Grab sound bite 24, will you, Mike? This is just a very quick little hit, five seconds, you gotta listen fast to this, then we’re going to go to the phone calls. This is yesterday, and McCain is making a promise.
MCCAIN: I will veto every single beer — bill with earmarks.
RUSH: (laughing) He’s going to veto every single beer, uh, bill with (laughing) what do you think was on his mind when he said I’m going to veto every single beer? Could it be his wife’s fortune?
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RUSH: Chris in Germantown, Tennessee, nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I was just going to ask you, why can’t we attack these oil prices and the oil shortage like we had when we’ve set up for war during World War II or even when we had to rebuild the West Coast after earthquakes or Katrina, you know, just go out and set your mind to it that you’re going to drill in this country. They could take the mothballed military plants, convert them to refineries and get this thing solved.
RUSH: Exactly right. Why can’t we do it?
CALLER: You tell me, other than all the libs in the Congress.
RUSH: Well, it’s not just the libs in Congress. It’s the leftists who populate the environmental movement. It is leftists who populate any number of movements who have as their aim the destruction of American capitalism, the cutting of America down to size. This is a serious thing. People don’t want to believe this, they think, ‘Rush, you’re getting a little too overboard here.’ This is about making sure this country is no longer a superpower. There are people inside this country and outside this country who want to cut this country down to size, who want to harm us. They hate us.
CALLER: That’s why this is going to be a war.
RUSH: It’s gotta be a war, but somebody’s gotta declare it. Now, the Republicans in the House and the Senate yesterday finally stepped up. Boehner did some great things; McConnell did some great things. They rejected this windfall profits tax.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: They’re finally stepping up, and there are people, like Newt Gingrich has got his website: Drill Here. Drill Now.
CALLER: I found that this morning. That’s a great thing.
RUSH: Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less. They got 500,000 signatures on their petition. So these things are in the works. I think it’s great. People are starting to get fed up with this. And then when they learn that the party that claims to care most about them and says they have all this compassion, that their only plan to deal with this was to raise taxes on the oil companies to punish them so that people paying four dollars or more for a gallon of gasoline would not be as mad. But the Democrat plan did not include one drop of new energy produced, or discovered, or refined. So they admit that their plan is not about anything other than making sure that while you’re mad, the oil companies get soaked. They have no desire to cheapen oil and gasoline. The Democrat Party right now does not. This is a ticket to their reelection, they think. Folks, this is serious stuff. This slow increment loss of liberty and freedom — what do you think high gas price does to your liberty and freedom? What do you think about a party that’s not interested in taking action within the laws of supply and demand that would lower your gasoline price and other related petroleum products? It’s something that people need to consider long and hard. There are people actively standing in the way of prices coming down by trying to thwart the laws of supply and demand. The same people demanding energy independence are the same people standing in the way of it happening.
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RUSH: McCain has done it again, ladies and gentlemen. This is the second time that I know of. McCain was at a town meeting in Philadelphia; he was asked for his position on drilling in ANWR and elsewhere. He wasn’t happy that the subject came up. (doing McCain impression) I knew I shoulda ended this before that question! ‘He said that he opposed drilling in ANWR for the same reason that he would not drill in the Grand Canyon. ‘I believe this should be kept pristine.’ Now, the proposed oil and gas exploration in ANWR would only affect 2,000 of the 19 million acres, or .01%. On offshore drilling, McCain said, ‘I respect the rights of the states to control the waters off their coasts, but I think we should tell states like California and Florida that we will drastically increase the revenues they would receive if they open up those waters for exploration.” But we can’t drill in ANWR because that’s like drilling in the Grand Canyon. Now, this is the second time that I (because I’m on the cutting edge) heard McCain make this analogy.
What is the analogy? He is comparing a tundra, which is ANWR, and the Grand Canyon. It’s like saying, ‘I can’t dig a hole in my lawn because the next time thing you know, Yankee Stadium will be at risk.’ There’s no comparison. Nobody goes up to ANWR to take tours! It’s barren! Yeah, this energy problem. You know, you people call here, ‘We need a war. We need a battle. We need drill here, drill now, right now!’ I agree with you, but look at these two presidential candidates. Neither of these candidates can explain us what his plan is to increase energy. All they can do is attack producers. Both of them are! McCain wants to attack CEO pay and ‘share the profits’ for the big oil companies, and the Democrats want to tax Big Oil and establish a trust fund. Both parties are running candidates that don’t have the slightest understanding of capitalism. Not one of these candidates is telling us what they’re going to do to grow our supply of energy, and our access to it. It seems like both of these candidates have no problem sending billions of dollars to other countries for the oil, many of these countries are our enemies. Maybe they could both explain how doing all that increases our national security, too.
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RUSH: Matt, Grand Rapids, Michigan, you’re next. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Good. Very good, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, I’m a nontraditional age college student, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a few weeks. You’re not going to believe this. I have to take an environmental class to graduate, and so I’m taking one now. And last week we discussed alternative energy sources and fuels and all this type of thing, and after the teacher went on for about ten minutes claiming that oil companies need to seek alternative sources, I raised my hand and I politely said, ‘Well, why should the burden fall on oil companies to seek alternative energy sources? If environmentalists want to pursue it, wouldn’t they seek capital on their own and wouldn’t they invest in their own pursuit?’ And he said, well, yeah, you have a point, but what I’m finding is, is this whole philosophy that I see on college campuses is that the big oil companies have the burden of finding new sources when, quite frankly, I think they’re quite comfortable in providing the service that they do.
RUSH: Look, you’re exactly right. And the next time you go to this class here’s the next thing to tell ’em. Why should Big Oil be ordered, in a free market, by anybody, environmentalist nutcases or Democrats, why should they be ordered to go out and find competing energy sources ’cause we are not outta oil. The environmentalists are trying to shut down the oil industry while we have no alternatives. It is all about an attack on capitalism. You gotta be careful how you say that in a class because these people won’t understand it, especially the professor, and they’ll go nuts. But just ask ’em, you know, should McDonald’s have to invest in pizzas?
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RUSH: Bob in Chicago, Illinois, nice to have you here on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Likewise, Rush. Thank you for taking my call —
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: — and for all the wisdom you bestowed upon me.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.
CALLER: Yes. Rush, what I want to mention, you had a call a short while when a government said to you, his closing words were, ‘and especially when you have a cartel,’ and he meant that the prices couldn’t be lowered for fuel oil.
RUSH: That was not a caller.
CALLER: Oh, I’m sorry.
RUSH: It was Senator McCain.
CALLER: Was that McCain who said that? (laughing) Well, that’s worse!
RUSH: I’ll double-check this, but… (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: It was Senator McCain, yes. Senator McCain said, ‘I don’t think so, not when you got a finite supply and, basically, and a cartel controlling it.’ That was Senator McCain that said it —
CALLER: He’s right.
RUSH: — on the Today Show this morning.
CALLER: And it is a cartel. The only thing is it’s an environmental cartel that is controlling things here.
RUSH: At least in this country, yeah — and the environmental cartel is made up of the leftist wackos who have influenced willing accomplices in the Democrat Party.
CALLER: I’m trying to use it in discussions when people keep blaming the oil companies for everything and I explain to them that the cartel, really, is here. I called it the American cartel, but it’s really all over the world, too, with people like George Soros sponsoring it. So that’s the impression I get.
RUSH: Yeah, I think you might be pretty close to it. But Bob, I got something. Here’s something.
CALLER: Yes?
RUSH: The next time you have conversations with these friends of yours and they start blaming and whining and moaning about the oil companies, I want you to ask them a question. I want all of you people to do this. This can be fun.
CALLER: Yes?
RUSH: You simply say, ‘What has environmentalist A — the Sierra Club, the Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Research and so on — done to put a drop of gasoline in your tank?’ Ask ’em: ‘What has any Democrat Senator done to put a drop of gasoline in your tank, or have natural gas for your barbecue pit or whatever you use it for.’ Ask them: ‘Why in the name of the crap cannon…?’
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: ‘Why in the name of the crap cannon are you criticizing the one bunch of guys that enables you to fill up when you pull up at a gas pump?’
CALLER: Well, you’ve got it, Rush.
RUSH: Do you realize the demagoguery of this? The one group of guys that’s making this possible are the villains! I’ll tell you, it’s another thing. Here’s another thing you tell ’em, Bob, because the Democrats admitted this. I had the news story in the first hour. They admitted that their effort to raise taxes on the oil companies yesterday had only one purpose, and that was to ‘assuage the anger’ of people who are upset at the price of gasoline. ‘Assuage the anger’ means they, Democrats, wanted to be able to say, ‘Hey, we just raised their taxes,’ and then consumers are supposed to go, ‘Yeah, you sock it to ’em! You soak ’em! I feel better!’ But not one penny of reduction in price would have taken place as a result of the Democrat bill. So they’re not about finding any new energy, either. So all of these egghead, know-it-all, leftist extremists — who have nothing, not one bit of credit can they claim to being able to if you feel the energy needs of this growing economy and country; and the Democrat Party, same thing — are now attacking the group of guys that does this? By the way, it’s no different than attacking the doctors and the nurses who are in the American health care system. This is what I mean when I say that there’s just too much of this venomous hatred for the real heroes and success stories in this country. And the people who don’t do diddly-squat about anything are held up as great heroes. Saviors, if you will. They have no backbones. They are nowhere near the backbone of this country. The country would cease to exist as it does, if they got their way — which, incidentally, is their objective.