RUSH: Out of New York: “Opponents of [Mayor Bloomberg’s] limit on the size of sugary drinks are raising questions of racial fairness alongside other complaints as … restriction faces a court test.” Did you hear about this? The NAALCP’s (the National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People) “New York state branch and the Hispanic Federation have joined beverage makers and sellers in trying to stop the rule from taking effect March 12.” There’s a hearing set. This is Wednesday, right? There’s a hearing set for today.
I always get confused. When you have a Monday off, Wednesday seems like Tuesday to me. Anyway, “[C]ritics are attacking what they call an inconsistent and undemocratic regulation, while city officials and health experts defend it as a pioneering and proper move to fight obesity.” Man, this is incredible. You have the NAALCP and the Hispanic Federation joining forces to fight against a regulation on the basis of democracy and freedom? Did you know…? When Mayor Doomberg announced that no more 32-ounce Cokes and 7-Ups ought to be sold, did it ever occur to you that there was racial discrimination in his decision?
Did it ever occur to you that minorities would be hardest hit? Well,RUSH: You know why? Because if you go out there and just use your eyeballs and look around, you’re gonna notice that it’s minorities who happen to be the fattest. It’s minorities that happen to be the biggest and the most obese. That’s what they say. It’s not me saying it. It’s the NAALCP and the Hispanic Federation.
“The issue is complex for the minority advocates, especially given obesity rates that are higher than average among blacks and Hispanics,” and that’s not me, that’s “according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. The groups say in court papers they’re concerned about the discrepancy, but the soda rule will unduly harm minority businesses and ‘freedom of choice in low-income communities.'” So the 32-ounce soda regulation is being fought in New York on the basis that it is racist, which is something that never occurred to me.
But they’re pointing out that the obesity rates among blacks and Hispanics dwarf that among whites. So with Doomberg doing this because of obesity, he’s targeting blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities — and, as such, it’s discrimination. “Opponents portray the regulation as government nagging that turns sugary drinks into a scapegoat when many factors are at play in the nation’s growing girth.” The TV ratings. This kind of goes with the Gallup poll about how much pessimism there is out there. There’s the lowest amount of optimism among the American people since 1979, lowest amount of optimism.
I think it makes perfect sense. The second term of Obama, low optimism, low expectations, very little hope. “Yep, let’s stick with Obama! We’re not expecting much. We don’t have dreams. We’re not looking at great futures. Our expectations are nil. Let’s stick with Obama.” It makes perfect sense to me, and then when you see that the TV ratings for the inaugural ceremony were really down from 2009… They were really down. Seventeen million people watched Obama’s address in 2009, 17 million people, which actually seems kind of low to me given that 2008 campaign. Obama wins in 2009, and he’s The Messiah! He’s THE ONE!
He’s everybody’s answer whatever problem exists, and only 17 million people watch? I’m surprised at that. But you know how many watched this year? Seven million. Folks, less than half the number that watched in 2009 watched the inaugural this time. You couple the optimism being so low with the TV ratings for the inaugural, and I don’t think anybody cares. It’s like everybody’s saying, “What difference does it make anyway? It doesn’t matter. Just stick with the new guy. We don’t want to have the hassle of learning the new guy, this Romney guy.
“He doesn’t like his dog anyway and he let that guy’s wife die, so to hell with it. We’ll just keep Obama in there. We might end up getting a new cell phone, maybe one of those new Big Macs with French fries on it. Stick with Obama.”
The US Post Office. US Post Office. They’re gonna cut jobs. I have a Reuters story here out of Chicago. Get this. “US Post Office Cuts Threaten the Source of Black Jobs.” (Gasp!) Ugh. First we’ve got discrimination against the obese minorities in New York with Doomberg, and now it has been revealed that cutting back significantly on jobs at the Post Office is going to threaten an inordinate number of black people’s jobs. “While delivering mail on Chicago’s North Side, Lakesha Dortch-Hardy spoke about how much she loves her job at the US Postal Service, and how much it would hurt if jobs such as hers were to disappear.”
Yeah, those are the salad days when we were endorsing and sponsoring Lance Armstrong for $30 million. We were really proud back in those days with the postal service all over Armstrong’s uniforms and jerseys and his teammates. We were really happy. And now Lakesha Dortch-Hardy is speaking about “how much it would hurt if jobs like hers were to disappear. ‘These jobs are the middle class,’ said Lakesha Dortch-Hardy.” It says here she’s “a tall, energetic 38-year-old, who took long strides as she wheeled her cart along a row of two and three-story brick apartment houses.” Without this job, she doesn’t know where she’d be right now.
“The cash-strapped US Postal Service has eliminated 168,000 jobs since 2006, and more cuts could result as it struggles to avoid its own ‘fiscal cliff.’ As the United States honors Martin Luther King’s civil rights legacy on Monday, many African-American workers may be facing new obstacles to achieving and maintaining a middle-class lifestyle.” Why? Why would that be, Reuters? Somebody help me out. What could possibly be happening in the country today that would threaten or provide “obstacles to achieving and maintaining a middle-class lifestyle” for many African-American workers. What in the world could be happening to cause that to happen?
It says here, “African-Americans represent 13.1% of the US population and 11.6% of the labor force, according to a 2012 US Department of Labor report. Nearly one in five African-American workers hold government jobs such as mail clerks, firefighters and teachers, the report said. ‘There’s a long tradition of the public sector being more friendly, or less hostile, to African-American workers,’ said Robert Zieger, emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. ‘The Post Office is the best example.'”
The Post Office, that’s where all of the comfort for African-American job holders is. There’s no hostility there. Twenty percent of all postal workers being black, that should tell us something. “There’s a long tradition of the public sector being more friendly or less hostile…” Why would that be? What’s so difficult about finding a job in the private sector? Well, this is another one of those questions that if I answer it — if I tell you the truth, if I’m right — I get in big trouble. So I’ll leave the question open-ended. But you can figure it out.
“African-Americans make up about 20% of US Postal Service workers and are the majority in some urban sectors … But the public sector has cut nearly 600,000 jobs since 2009,” and that would be when Obama was immaculated. This is ” due to shrinking government budgets and a range of other issues…” What shrinking budgets? What range of other issues? The only thing that’s happened since 2009 is the Obama regime. “The slower recovery for African-Americans in the labor market has, in part, been the result of government layoffs after the end of the recession was declared, according to the DOL report. In December, the black unemployment rate was 14%, roughly double that of whites.”
You know what this story is saying? This story is saying that African-Americans don’t have a prayer in the private sector. Their only hope of having a job is in the public sector, and Obama’s cutting jobs there.
“US Cuts Threaten the Source of Black Jobs.”
Who woulda thought?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Janet in Manhattan, I’m really glad you waited. I appreciate your patience. Thank you so much. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. Thank you, thank you. At the risk of sounding like everybody else who calls, I can’t believe I got on, but I did. So I’ll get to my point. I wanted to take issue with what you said about African-Americans being overrepresented in the public sector as opposed to the private sector.
RUSH: That wasn’t — that wasn’t —
CALLER: — and you were a little cagey about what you think the reason for that is.
RUSH: No, Janet, wait. That wasn’t me saying it. I was reading from a news story.
CALLER: Right. It’s fact.
RUSH: I’m just telling you what was in the story. It is a Reuters story out of Chicago.
CALLER: No, no, I’m not questioning that it’s a fact. It is a fact, but I was questioning what your reasons might be, why you think that is, and I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t know exactly what you were implying, but you seem to be implying that African-Americans are overrepresented in public sector jobs because they like it that way, and I would suggest there is lots of research to prove that that’s not the case. For example, about two years ago, as recently as two years ago, there was a study done by a major business college, and I can’t remember which one, people can Google it, I’m sure, and find it, and the experiment they did was they sent out a bunch of resumes, and one group of resumes, they put African-American sounding names on, you know, Leshon Washington, Latoya Jefferson, that kind of thing. And an identical group of resumes was sent out with names that did not have an African-American sound to them, and surprise, surprise, the African-American sounding named resumes got many fewer callbacks than the other ones.
RUSH: It’s sort of like the job version of redlining. I’m not denying that there’s discrimination out there.
CALLER: Okay, I thought you were.
RUSH: No. No, no, no. I was merely reacting to the story, the majority of African-Americans work in the government.
CALLER: Did they say the majority or did they just say more than would be proportional to their representation in society?
RUSH: Well, yeah, more than would be their representation in society.
CALLER: Yes. Yeah.
RUSH: Nearly one in five, 20% of African-American workers —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — hold government jobs, mail clerks, firefighters, long tradition —
CALLER: Right. And you didn’t say why you thought that was. You were very coy about that, and that’s not like you. You usually come out and say what you mean. So…
RUSH: Well, I’ve got a theory about it. I happen to think that, as Democrats, most African-Americans have a view of government that it is their biggest friend, that government’s the place that’s gonna protect ’em, that government is the safest, government’s the fairest. They’ve been oriented to think that way.
CALLER: Well, to the extent that they do find it easier to get those jobs. You take a civil service test, nobody knows what color you are, and you cannot by law be discriminated against. You send out a resume, and you also cannot legally be discriminated against, but de facto it does happen. So if you were African-American and you wanted to be sure you could get a job with some security and some, you know, good pay and pension, what would you do? After you sent out ten resumes and got rejected or no call back, you might go to the government because in that sense it is safer for you. It is more guaranteed.
RUSH: Well, it’s a chicken or egg question. I mean, you’re arguing that government’s the last option, and I’m simply telling you that I think for many it’s the first simply because —
CALLER: No.
RUSH: — of the way the government is portrayed. It’s being portrayed, government is the end-all in everybody’s life now. Your interaction with government is what’s gonna define you as a citizen. That’s what Obama really is all about.
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: Let me read to you something from the article. “‘There’s a long tradition of the public sector being more friendly, or less hostile, to African-American workers,’ said Robert Zieger, emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. ‘The Post Office is the best example.'”
CALLER: It’s true.
RUSH: You think he’s making your point.
CALLER: Yes. Absolutely. You know, you can research that. I wish I could give you chapter and verse, a website on —
RUSH: Well, you don’t have to. I don’t disagree with you. The point of the story here is that the government is massively cutting jobs —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — in the post office and, as such, a greater percentage of people losing their jobs at the post office are gonna be African-Americans.
CALLER: Yes. But why are they cutting those jobs —
RUSH: The point of the story is how unfair that is.
CALLER: Yes, but isn’t that because of the Republican conservative mantra that government is the enemy and —
RUSH: No.
CALLER: — public sector workers are getting too many benefits and they don’t like unions. That’s why they’re cutting those jobs because they’re cutting the funding for them.
RUSH: Janet — (crosstalk)
CALLER: — hostility towards government.
RUSH: Wait a second. Republicans don’t have any power. This is Obama doing this.
CALLER: Oh, the Congress is Republican, isn’t it, the House of Representatives? They have a lot of power.
RUSH: Obama —
CALLER: They vote the budget. If they don’t vote a budget —
RUSH: Do you really want to try to make the point that the Republicans are cutting post office jobs?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You’re smarter than that.
CALLER: No, I’m not.
RUSH: You can’t possibly believe that.
CALLER: That’s very patronizing of you.
RUSH: The Republicans are making the post office go broke?
CALLER: Do you know why the post office is in trouble? Because under the Bush administration some years ago, and a Republican Congress, they passed a requirement that nobody else has to meet, that the post office has to fund its health benefits for 75 years in advance.
RUSH: Ohhhh.
CALLER: Oh, yes. You can Google that, too, Rush.
RUSH: How unfair. It’s the unions that made the post office go broke, Janet.
CALLER: It’s not going broke.
RUSH: It’s the unions that made the post office go broke. The post office just announced they’re raising the price of a stamp. You know what that’s gonna result in? Fewer people mailing letters. It’s just like subway ridership down, raise prices. Airlines, fewer people flying, they lower the fares. The price of a stamp ought to be coming down if you want to increase volume. They don’t know what they’re doing. Unions, health care and so forth, but the idea that Republicans are cutting, there is no cutting. What’s happening is a reallocation of resources.
The budget’s not getting smaller. The government’s not getting smaller. It’s growing. Obama has decided he wants that money for health care. Obama’s decided he wants that money for stimulus. Obama’s decided he wants that money for whatever else. It’s not the Republicans doing this. If it were I’d be the first one applauding some fiscal responsibility. The Republicans aren’t doing anything in this regard. They’re giving Obama everything he wants. Every budget agreement that he wants he gets. The Republicans are caving left and right. You’re smarter than that, Janet. I know you are.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: That law that Janet was talking about that required the post office to fully fund health care benefits for all those years out in the future, that law was passed in 2006. I know the law that she’s talking about. And that law has stood. That law could have been changed by the Democrats and Obama when they had total control of DC after 2006 when Pelosi took over. It coulda happened the first two years of the Obama regime. But nobody’s decided to change it. The post office is a convenient dumping ground where the government can throw all the problems ’cause nobody has a great love for the post office out there. It’s all a game, folks.