Open Hatch

CALLER: Well, exactly.

RUSH: Let me tell you something.

CALLER: But when I talk about your wealth —

RUSH: No, no, no. Let me tell you something about this wealth business. I’ve been broke twice in my life. When I was 31 years old, I was making $17,000 a year. I have been fired I forgot how many times. Seven times! So I’ve been there. This constant refrain that I’m “out of touch,” is just bogus. That’s another thing that really bugs me: this movement within the Republican Party to claim that the middle class is in great suffering and pain. I understand if you own a house, and your value of your equity in your house is plummeting, that you’re worried, and I understand that totally. What you need to hear is the truth of why it happened, so that you can make plans in the future. These are cycles, and everybody in every country and every society goes through them, and ours are not nearly as bad as people around the rest of the world are. I know health care is expensive. That’s why I’m focused not on making it more expensive, but on making it cheaper, and how you do that? You do it with conservatism! I’m by no means out of touch on this. If the health care industry were priced like every other industry is on the patient’s ability to pay, then we’d fix the problem, and that’s the direction we have to head in.

But if we’re going to keep this notion that everybody’s entitled to have whatever they want medically paid for by their neighbors, then we are finished. We are finished as a country; we are finished as a society. You can talk about my wealth, but let me tell you something, sir. I don’t depend on anybody else for anything, and it was one of my objectives when I grew up. I didn’t want to be obligated. I didn’t want to be dependent. I didn’t want to owe anybody. I don’t buy into insurance plans because it’s a hassle! Now, I know a lot of people don’t have that freedom. I used to not have that freedom, either. But I do now because I worked for it — and if I can do it, a lot more people can do it than think they can, and that’s conservatism again. People are much better than they know. They have much more potential than they know. But when you’ve got a Democrat Party and a movement telling them they suck, telling them they can’t get anywhere because the deck is stacked against them and the people stacking the deck are Republicans and so forth, then you are diminishing the country; you’re diminishing the future, and you’re destroying people’s lives.

……

The health care problem in this country is getting worse, while people are voting on for people who are making it worse because they hear these people saying, “I’m going to fix it.” Well, the people in charge of fixing it have no interest in it getting fixed, because if it gets fixed, you don’t need them. You can rely on yourself. This health care debate is one of the most infuriating things I witness every day, because I get so sick and tired of people buying hook, line, and sinker a lie. “I’m going to get everybody covered. I’m going to make sure everybody gets health insurance in this country. We’re going to make sure it’s not just the rich.” It doesn’t happen, does it? When you have government telling private industry how to operate, this is exactly what you get, and it’s going to happen in energy. It’s already happening in a number of other industries, too. It’s happening in the auto industry…

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Given that, and with Romney winning Michigan (yay!) largely due to connections to the state and his track record for reviving faltering industry, and his promise to revive Michigan’s faltering auto industry - I gotta ask what Romney plans to do to revive the auto industry in Michigan. He favors privatization of health care and insurance - not making health care a government responsibility, which in my opinion, and in agreeing with this transcript here, is the only realistic and positive approach.. how do you encourage a private commercial sector like the auto industry without subsidizing? I’m going to look into that..