RUSH: I spent probably 12 hours on the airplane yesterday. I was getting e-mails. I did a lot of work, and as I’m in the air, I get a note from Brian Maloney. “Radio Equalizer” is his blog. He tells me that Warren Buffett’s secretary is gonna be an invited guest in the House gallery. That’s all the note said. Now, “invited guests,” do you know when this started? It started with Ronaldus Magnus. Some guy named Lenny Skutnik dove into the Potomac to rescue passengers of an Air Florida flight that had crashed on takeoff.
It had been deiced in a snowstorm but it didn’t get to take off soon enough after being deiced so it lost lift. There was no amount of power, and it plunged. I forget the bridge. Was it the Key Bridge or the 14th Street Bridge? I forget which. This guy, Lenny, just happened to be driving along and saw it all happen and bam, dove in there to try to rescue — Reagan brought Lenny to sit in the gallery at the State of the Union speech and introduced him. It was great. So the tradition began thus, and it was heroes that were brought forth and recognized up there — and pretty much that’s what it’s always been. It’s been expanded on from president to president to president. When I heard that Warren Buffett’s secretary was gonna be put up there as a victim or as a hero?
I can’t tell you how enraged I was at that abuse. I couldn’t think of the word that adequately described my emotions. It wasn’t just anger. Another mockery was being made of what is a constitutional requirement: A State of the Union. Warren Buffett’s secretary! I don’t care what tax rate she pays. I don’t care how many dollars she pays in taxes. She’s not suffering. She’s not hurting. Her life is not the epitome of unfairness. She is not a victim of anything! There’s no reason for her to be up there in that gallery under such auspices. The reason she was up there was so that Obama could highlight this silly notion of unfairness, which is a class warfare keyword to further this notion that Warren Buffett pays a smaller tax rate, a lower tax rate than his secretary.
As though there’s nothing anybody can do about that. There’s something inherently unfair about the Republican tax code, as though Warren Buffett’s secretary is eating pork and beans while sitting in the sewer grate, while her boss is flying around on his NetJets planes. And, lo and behold, she was up there! It was to further the simple notion that we need a tax increase on the rich. I mentioned this to some people that she was gonna be up there. “Well, why?” I said, “She’s got no choice. She probably wants to be up there but if her boss, Buffett, tells her she’s going — or if the president invites you or the first lady invites you — you go.”
If Warren Buffett would simply pay his secretary in stocks, she’d have the same tax rate he does, the same tax rate as Mitt Romney! Do you realize Mitt Romney…? I’ll get to this in a second. You look at the number of dollars Mitt Romney has paid in taxes, charitable donations, and Mitt Romney is giving away 40% of his income, if you count his tax rate and his occasional donations and other things. You look at the way he’s being castigated, though. I’ve had people, so many people ask me over the years, “Why? Why are all these rich guys all of a sudden so liberal? Buffett, Gates.” Folks, there’s a simple answer: The filthy rich will SAY they are liberal — they will do things in public that reflect that they might be liberal — to keep the peasants with the pitchforks away from ’em.
It’s all a game! Have you ever heard of a family called the Kennedys? Have you ever heard of a family called the Rockefellers? Every filthy rich individual or family must spout, support, do (in public) liberal stuff. It is how they convince people that their wealth is justified and is untouchable. It is a protection mechanism. It is to keep the Occupy Wall Street crowd off of their front yards and instead on the front yards of people that work at AIG. That’s all it is. And these filthy rich people who claim publicly and do in public liberal things are simply engaged in 100% acts of public relations. It accomplishes two things. It keeps the hordes away from you.
When the president comes up and suggests that the rich aren’t paying their fair share, they never say it about Buffett. Why? ‘Cause he says it about himself. “Yeah, Warren Buffett, he gets it! That’s absolutely right. Bill Gates, he gets it.” So, they’re left alone. The hordes, the peasants with the pitchforks never seek them out. The second thing that happens is that in many cases they end up being loved for it. The Kennedys were loved because it was thought that all they cared about was the poor, and the Kennedys never used their own money to fix any of this stuff. No liberal ever does. They always use everybody else’s. But that’s why they do this stuff. It’s pure public relations. It also justifies earning more. All you have to do is say, “I’m not paying enough!”
Why do you think the Clintons run around saying (Bill Clinton impression), “Hey, hey, yeah. (chuckles) Yeah, I’m richer than you are — heh-heh — and you know what? I don’t need that tax cut. I’m paying too little.” Okay, fine. You get a pass. You’re a rich guy; you and Hillary get a pass. We’re not gonna hate you. It’s simple PR, folks. I don’t even know how much of it is real. I don’t know how liberal Warren Buffett really is, but I know that Warren Buffett loves being in the news. His secretary up there in the House gallery, in the State of the Union, as a prop — as either a hero or a victim, regardless — as an example of the unfairness in our country is just simply appalling. It is appalling. It would be no different than dragging a Ted Kennedy secretary or a Nelson Rockefeller or David Rockefeller secretary. I don’t think people fall for it. I don’t think it worked. I don’t think it did. This stuff is just beneath contempt is what it is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Quick question: Does anybody know that Warren Buffett’s secretary does earn? Does anybody know what he really pays her? Where did this whole plastic banana, good-time, phony, rock ‘n’ roll stuff get started anyway? This notion she’s some pauper paying some high tax rate? What does she earn? They never tell us that. It’s a campaign prop. Now, I need to correct something on Romney. I said he gives away 70%. He’s giving way 40% of what he earns, and he paid $3.2 million in taxes. So if you combine with what Romney paid in tax with what he gave to charity, he gave away more than 42% of his income in 2011, with15% of his income to charity. Joe Biden gave away $369 to charity! Romney gave away 15% of his income. The Obamas gave 1%.
Now, Romney paid over $3.2 million to the IRS last year. How much did Warren Buffett’s secretary pay? And why doesn’t somebody demand…? If she’s gonna be used this way, why doesn’t somebody demand…? I’ll demand it! I want to see her tax returns. What is her name, Bosanek, is that how you pronounce her name? It’s B-o-s-a-n-e-k. Somebody has to have heard it pronounced, Bosanek, Bosanek, Bosanek? Whatever it is, where are her tax returns? She’s up there in the House gallery! She is a campaign prop at the Class Warfare Rally. She’s paying a higher tax rate than her boss, as though nobody can do anything about that.
What a scam this whole thing is, from the PR of the filthy rich pretending to be as far-left liberal as they are. And that’s just to see to it that people like you don’t clamor that they pay more. It’s just sheer dishonesty. Cut to the chase: It’s just sheer dishonesty. They come up and say, “Yeah, you know what I did? I called Buffett and then I called everybody and I said, ‘When you die, everything you’ve got, you should give to Bill Gates!’ Oh, man, are those now wonderful people. What wonderful people! See? These are rich people we can love! They’re going to give all of their money to Bill Gates.” Right. All the rest of us are told we should give it to government — and when we oppose it, we’re called greedy! So a little clue: If you ever become filthy rich or moderately rich, then publicly go liberal! That’s how you can keep everybody away from your money and that’s the only thing they’re doing.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I found something. I have to give you a little secret here. The last 40 minutes prior to each show I’m like Lucy in the chocolate factory. That’s when Cookie sends me the sound bites, and today’s roster is 55 sound bites. I’m an hour-and-a-half in, and I still don’t know what all of them are. I have not had time to look at ’em. I’ve got stuff flying in here, and that’s why — I’m just explaining something — I say going into the break here at the bottom of the hour, “Your phone calls are coming up.” Then at the break I found something that backs up exactly something I just said. So I’m gonna play this. It’s Obama talking about Warren Buffett’s secretary. I just now discovered I’ve got a sound bite for it.
I’m not complaining about it. I’m just explaining to you, the audience, you are who matter. I want you to understand. When I promise to go to the phones and I don’t, it’s not a trick. There has never been a more improv on-the-fly media show than this one, and there’s not a producer organizing any of this. Now, this is Obama talking about Buffett’s secretary, and this one sound bite encapsulates every theory, why these filthy rich people act like leftists and talk like leftists. Here is the class warfare class envy, the phony baloney Obama class warfare characterization of this woman as some victim of an unfair, rigged system? Does anybody believe Warren Buffett’s secretary is a charwoman? All right, here’s the bite, and it’s from the rally last night in the House chamber.
OBAMA: Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, or do we want to keep our investments in everything else? We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.
RUSH: Stop the tape. You see, right there. “We need to change the tax code so that people like me pay our fair share.” So the peasants with pitchforks will exempt Obama. “Oh, yeah, Obama’s a rich guy, but he doesn’t think he’s paying his fair share, so we’ll leave him alone. We love Obama. Obama is looking out for us. He’s not one of these rich Republicans who wants to take everything we’ve got and keep it for themselves and make us all homeless.” Here, grab audio sound bite six. Obama says it again from the class warfare rally. He says it a different way, but listen to this.
OBAMA: We don’t begrudge financial success in this country.
RUSH: You do!
OBAMA: We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get a tax break I don’t need, and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit or somebody else has to make up the difference.
RUSH: That is just outrageous. In the first place, this country is not a zero-sum game. This economy’s not a zero-sum game. That means if you get a dollar somebody loses it, that’s not the case. That does not mean if you get fired, somebody gets hired. Or if you get hired, somebody gets fired. That’s a zero-sum game and that’s not what this country is. The American people are not looking at things like he just described it. Obama plans on being filthy rich when he gets out of the Oval Office. Obama is planning right now how to become filthy rich without having to do any more work and without having to write any more phony books or paying somebody else to write ’em, whatever the hell happened there. And he is exempting himself from criticism for becoming filthy rich with this crap.
(imitating Obama) “We don’t begrudge financial success. We admire it. Hell, people like me talk about not paying my fair share, it’s not ’cause they envy the rich. It’s ’cause they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need…” Spare us the pain and misery of a tax cut you don’t need. That’s how the Clintons do it. It’s how the Kennedys did it. It’s how Bill Gates… Jobs didn’t do it, Steve Jobs didn’t do it. He took the money, kept it, and he cut off all philanthropy at Apple. That’s another thing. Here’s Obama wailing and moaning about outsourcing jobs and manufacturing jobs, and then there’s Jobs’ wife that was invited. There’s no greater outsourcer of work in this country than Apple — and I’m not criticizing it — and yet there’s Steve Jobs being praised by Obama last night.
I saw the Apple financials. They blew it out, set a record. I listened to their conference call and their earnings report. As you people know, I’m an Apple evangel. But my point is, here’s Obama ripping into American businesses that ship jobs overseas, and nobody does that better than Apple. And yet there’s Apple being honored. I’ll tell you, this was a mass of confusion, hypocrisy, lies, distortions and a failed attempt of a failed president to attach himself to America’s greatness, when he wouldn’t recognize it if it slapped him upside the head.