Rush Deconstructed for the Media Matters Crowd

The congenitally leftist site Media Matters regularly collects "controversial" quotes by conservative personalities and displays them on its website for liberals to gawk at. It's supposed to be self-evident to visitors how insane these statements are.

Evidently this soft-sell strategy works, as evidenced by the reams of snarky remarks dumped in the comments section by loyal readers.

Rush Limbaugh is of course a favorite target of Media Matters. Please join me while I deconstruct a sampling of contentiously worded but eminently sensible recent Rush quotes (thanks to David Swindle for post idea):

"Continued unemployment benefits increases unemployment"

Rush bemoans the fact that recent Republican opposition to extending unemployment benefits has been based, not on the philosophy behind endless benefit extensions, but on the technicality of paying for them. Rush points out the fact that it's easier for people to accept a $325 a week check than to look for a job. Subsidizing something (unemployment) gives you more of it; taxing something (working) gives you less of it. Contrary to Nancy Pelosi's claims, unemployment benefits do not increase employment.

Everything Obama has done has been "an attack on the greatness of this country"

Rush cites the following disasters in Obama's first term: ObamaCare, intrusive financial regulations, a moratorium on drilling, bank and auto company bailouts, and the stimulus bill. So where does Rush get it wrong? Is it part of America's manifest destiny to impose socialized medicine, constrict financial institutions, ban exploration of natural resources, keep bad businesses from failing by punishing good ones, and spend trillions of dollars we don't have on projects we don't need?

Requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions "isn't insurance, it's welfare"

Eric Cantor recently announced that Republicans would not seek to completely get rid of the health care reform bill; some elements will be kept, such as coverage of preexisting conditions. Rush argues that forcing insurance companies to accept people with preexisting conditions is welfare. Insurance companies stay in business by getting many people to pay premiums; if they had to provide coverage to anyone who wanted it, people would simply wait until they suffered catastrophes and then purchase insurance. Thus, coverage of preexisting conditions = free money = welfare.

"The Constitution is an obstacle to [liberals], it's a Bible to me"

A caller wants to know how to bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives. Rush tells him that the things the two sides want done are incompatible, and that the left is no longer on the same page as the right. Rush is willing to compromise on policy details but not on the Constitution. When you have Democrats being caught admitting they don't worry about the Constitution, or trying to redefine it as involving more than protecting "negative liberties," then there's no room for negotiation.

Obama didn't lobby for 2022 World Cup because he is a "guaranteed loser... talk to Chicago about that"

Obama failed to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago, guarantee carbon emission reduction concessions at Copenhagen, help candidates in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, and get G-20 members to agree to currency inflation. He is, in every sense of the term, a loser. Yes, he won the 2008 presidential election-and an electoral victory gives one power, but does not produce actual results.

Past terrorists have been "young male Muslim Arabs," and now "everybody has to be groped"

Rush addresses dissatisfaction over the Transportation Safety Administration's decision to use invasive full-body scanners and "enhanced pat downs." We know who the enemy is in the war on terror, what they look like, their national origins, their ages. But for some reason we're supposed to suspend logic and pretend anyone could be a terrorist. Police officers profile suspects all the time, and residents of high-crime neighborhoods are grateful they do. If a suspect is a young, African American male, should police waste time stopping middle-aged white men and Hispanic grandmothers to prove they're not racist?

Some Republicans are "gun-shy about defending the rich," but "I, of course, do not have that problem"

Rush discusses a column in which Thomas Sowell expresses concern about the GOP losing the tax extension debate. Sowell notes that tax cuts for the rich raise revenue and create jobs. Republicans have that fact on their side, but they have to explain it to the public. Decades of pounding from the mainstream media have left the GOP queasy about speaking up. Sowell notes that we just won a landslide and asks, Why are we afraid to speak up? Rush's answer: The GOP does need to speak up, but in the meantime, I'm going to do it for them.

"Secondhand smoke is harmless"

A recent study by a Swedish health board claims that secondhand smoke kills more than 600,000 people each year. Rush notes that the World Health Organization conducted a worldwide study in 2001 that found that secondhand smoke has no impact on health, but suppressed the study, because its findings were politically incorrect. Rush observes that liberals dissemble about global warming, DDT, and other supposed health risks in order to control people's lives, so until there is better evidence about secondhand smoking, we shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt on this.

To African-Americans: "The Democrat party is the party of keeping you poor and downtrodden"

A caller asks why the media don't focus on the fact that if the Bush tax cuts are not extended, the lowest tax rate would increase from 10% to 15%, a 50% increase, which would disproportionately affect African Americans. Rush points out that Democrats are not the party that is best for African Americans but rather the party of segregation, Jim Crow, and the KKK. Until FDR used electoral strategies to turn African Americans his way, this voting bloc had consistently voted Republican. LBJ expanded this strategy with his Great Society in the 1960s, and Democratic presidents from Carter to Clinton to Obama continued it, with the result that illegitimacy and dropout rates are now higher in African American communities than in the 1950s. So remind me: how are Democrats the party that's best for African Americans?

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Your Relation to Inflation - What it Means and Why it Matters

Inflation is a man-made crisis. Unfortunately the inflationary crisis that we are currently staging is likely to be devastating. Please allow me to describe how inflation is created and explain why it affects your back pocket.

Inflation represents an increase in the money supply. To illustrate, let's say that you had a relative who passed away and stated in his last will and testament that his money is to be divided evenly among all living relatives. The estate is worth one hundred thousand dollars and you know of only nine other living relatives. One hundred thousand dollars evenly divided between ten people gives you ten thousand dollars each.

Suddenly, forty more people show up and claim to be related to the deceased and can prove it. Even though you did not know of their existence until now, these people are still legally entitled to an equal share. This has inflated the number of living relatives from ten to fifty but the value of the estate did not increase. Therefore, instead of getting ten thousand dollars each you now receive only two thousand dollars because of the inflated number of claimants.

When we increase (inflate) the number of dollars without growing the economy, each dollar then represents a smaller fraction of the money supply just as your inheritance was reduced by the inflated number of legal claimants. This consequently reduces the value of every dollar already in existence.

The reason that the price of an item goes up when inflation is involved is not because the item itself is more valuable but because the dollars being used to purchase that item are now worth less. Consequently you must use more dollars in order to continue buying the same items. A jar of peanut butter adds no more value to your life today than it did ten years ago, it just costs more due to inflation.

Just as you have a credit score based on your ability to repay debts, governments are evaluated as well. My Congress recently increased our own government's credit limit to slightly more than fourteen trillion dollars. The best way to put that number into perspective is to relate it to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) which represents the total value of all goods and services produced in this country in one year. Stay with me, this is almost over. Every American needs to know this.

See below for the GDP for three recent years:

2007 GDP - $14.56 trillion

2008 GDP - $14.61 trillion

2009 GDP - $14.25 trillion

When Congress recently raised the U.S. credit balance to $14.5 trillion it is difficult to see how that affects the average American taxpayer. Let's then compare our national debt to an equivalent household income in order to give this some perspective. Using 2009 numbers, $14.25 trillion dollars of GDP revenue divided into $14.5 trillion in total credit means that America will owe slightly over 100 percent of our GDP in unsecured debt.

It is equal to a family earning sixty thousand dollars a year charging up more than sixty-one thousand dollars in credit card debt. Actually it is worse than that since the individual Congressional members who voted for this situation can simply walk away and leave us with the obligation to pay back all of that debt plus interest. It is more like your neighbor running up your entire annual income in credit card debt using your identity and leaving you to deal with the consequences.

As a U.S. citizen I am on the hook for a portion of that $14.5 trillion. In addition to the debt problem, upcoming high inflation as described earlier will likely add yet another burden on our already weakened economy. Inflation and debt are separate issues yet they are connected in this instance because the debt level has spurred my government to inflate the money supply far beyond reasonable levels. Every economist understands this. You can ask any college senior economics major to describe the best way to create punitive levels of inflation. They will simply say "devalue the currency." And then say OK, what is the easiest way to do that? "That is easy" they will reply, "just print up truckloads of money." No wonder foreign nations are quietly moving away from the dollar.

So what is the solution to our current and pending economic subservience? The answer to that question is very simple to state yet virtually impossible to implement: Congress must spend significantly less money. The family in the above illustration would have to greatly reduce lifestyle costs and find additional sources of revenue in order to succeed financially. The way to grow an economy is to put more money into the pockets of citizens, not the coffers of government. Tax cuts perform this task beautifully. If our current Congress refuses to address these difficult decisions then hopefully the next one will. Remember November.

Todd Lester's career has spanned across many years and numerous industries. He has been registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and licensed to sell investments and insurance, worked as a retail manager, turned wrenches as an automotive mechanic, served cubicle time as an office manager and even owned his own business for many years restoring car interiors. And that is just since graduating college with a Finance degree. During much of this time, he was also a citizen soldier, serving twenty one years in the Army National Guards of both Louisiana and Texas as an Army bandsman. He has even performed as a clown with the Shrine Circus.